Handshake Airdrop for Active GitHub Users (~$1500 in Current Value) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-airdrop <comment><AUTHOR> Eligibility:

The top ~250,000 users on github have had their SSH keys and PGP added to a merkle tree. Out of those ~250,000 users, ~175,000 of them had valid SSH and PGP keys at the time of tree creation.

If you had 15 or more followers on github during the week of 2019-02-04, your github SSH & PGP keys are included in the merkle tree.

<comment><USER2> Also:

> As a final addition, Hacker News accounts which are linked with Keybase > accounts are included in the tree provided they were ~1.5 years old during > the crawl.

But it's not entirely clear to me how I find out whether I was included or not, or where I'd be able to sell it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this hope it helps: [https://github.com/handshake-org/hs- airdrop/commit/a8e47b003...](https://github.com/handshake-org/hs- airdrop/commit/a8e47b0031f533b8f7e949eaba6f1698a5a0e4eb)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can we get a out-of-the-loop explanation for what Handshake is, and what the value of this airdrop is (can these coins be sold on an open market, or are they for use in its DNS system only?).

<comment><USER4> > explanation for what Handshake is

Handshake is a decentralized naming and certificate authority [1]. It decentralizes the DNS root and allows for the people of the internet to own names instead of leasing from a TLD provider like Verisign [2] among other things like removing trust from the SSL equation, instead allowing for verification on the blockchain (right now, we simply trust CA providers who have issued rogue SSL certs [3]). It launched in early February, and since then, has gained a lot of momentum [4].

One name, crypto, sold for 588785 HNS, which at today's exchange rate of $.30 [5], would be $176,000.

The system is live and works with the legacy TLDs (eg, verisign continues to own "com" on Handshake and thus all existing domains continue to work). You can download hsd [6] or use an extension for chrome from Namebase [7] to start using the Handshake Naming System.

Hope this helps!

[1] [https://handshake.org/](https://handshake.org/)

[2] Verisign controls .com

[3] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/01/alrea...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/01/already-on-probation-symantec-issues-more-illegit-https- certificates/)

[4] [https://hnscan.com/](https://hnscan.com/)

[5] [https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/handshake](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/handshake)

[6] [https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd](https://github.com/handshake- org/hsd)

[7] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/namebase- handshake...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/namebase-handshake- extens/npfmealdhkkjfdajjkhegghlckcldfle?hl=en)

<comment><USER5> I see that "momentum" is measured by crypto-token mining/trading activity — this doesn't seem the right metric for the project which claims to revolutionize DNS.

The really important metric is how much traffic on the web is accessed using Handshake names, and how how many users can resolve those names. Are there any numbers on that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TL;DR for collecting the airdrop seems to be something like this (I AM NOT suggesting you should, but in case you decide to):

* install `[https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd`](https://github.com/handshake-org/hsd`) \- run `./bin/hsd` and wait for wallet to sync

* install `[https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-client`](https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-client`) \- run `./bin/hsw-cli account create` and `./bin/hsw-cli --account=default address` - copy address

* install `[https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-airdrop`](https://github.com/handshake-org/hs-airdrop`) \- follow instructions depending on how you whether you want to give the cli your key or sign manually - simplest way is something like `hs-airdrop <key-file> <address>`

* back in `hs-client` - run ./bin/hsd-rpc sendrawairdrop <base64-from-hs-airdrop>`

* leave the wallet running and wait for 20 or something blocks

* back in `hs-client` - `./bin/hsw-cli balance --account=default` should now have a balance.

<comment><USER6> owh - and don't forget to backup your key from `~/.hsd/key` I guess.</comment></comment>


Scientists Now Know How Sleep Cleans Toxins from the Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-now-know-how-sleep-cleans-toxins-from-the-brain/ <comment><USER2> Subhead on the article: "The synchronized brain waves of non-REM sleep may play a key role in preventing toxins from accumulating in a person's brain."

It must tick off good science journalists to have their "may" turned into "now know" by the editors.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/628](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6465/628)</comment>


In MacBook keyboard woes, a weird echo of the TRS-80 circa 1978 - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90326271/in-macbook-keyboard-woes-a-weird-echo-of-the-trs-80-circa-1978 <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Someone wrote an app called KBFIX in the 70s to fix the Trash 80's tendency to keybounce (or kkeybounnce), and the new Apple Mac keyboards are so prone to keybounce of their own that someone recently wrote an application called Unshaky that operates on the same basic principles.</comment>


Google should be broken up, say European MPs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30228279 <comment><USER2> I know a lot of people kind of scoff at the idea of breaking up Google because they happen to offer the best product, but here are the 4 points mentioned

>The manner in which Google displays its own vertical search services compared with other, competing products

> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - > to include within its own services

> The exclusivity Google has to sell advertising around the search terms > people use

> Restrictions on advertisers from moving their online ad campaigns to rival > search engines

First point is kind of hard to fight in my opinion, since a company has the right to publish its own services.

I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd material. This definitely doesn't fall under fair-use (people don't land on the website of the copyright owner because it's copied by google => devalue the work)

Third point is... don't know what precedent there is for forcing a company to open up its network apart from ISPs/telecoms.

The fourth point seems like huge abuse of monopoly. I wasn't aware of these restrictions before, and definitely seems to go against "don't be evil".

<comment><USER3> > I don't see how Google gets away with the second point for non-CC'd > material.

This is how I've been told it went by in Germany: there was a law drafted[1] that said publishers should get compensation for snippets of their articles in search results. This was a law apparently drafted directly in response to Google's practices.

So Google sent a letter to most publishers, asking for royalty-free access to their content, or otherwise they would not show up anymore on Google's services. All publishers agreed to sign that, because being removed from Google means losing a decent amount of your ad income.

That's how they get away with it.

[1] [https://gigaom.com/2013/03/01/german-parliament-passes- googl...](https://gigaom.com/2013/03/01/german-parliament-passes-google-tax- law-forcing-royalty-payments-for-news-snippets/)

<comment><USER4> This law makes me angry. How could have anybody been so stupid? Did the publishers really think Google would just hand them over money? Google announced even before it passed that they'd drop the content. They underestimated what power Google has and if they drop you from the index then you lose not them.

Now they are all handing over royalty-free access to Google. But all other companies and people still have to pay. I mean the publishers think they can make at least a bit of money that way. But they again don't seem to realise that this only strengthens Google because all (potential) competitors have to pay...

The Google folks must be really celebrating over this. A law specifically designed to target Google has only strengthened them.

<comment><USER5> > How could have anybody been so stupid?

We are talking about the people publishing "Bild", here. It's not actually about being stupid, it's about being blinded by their own evilness.

Would you expect anything different from, say, Murdoch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Google has around 90% market share for search in Europe

It's a complete monopoly and the barrier to entry is huge. Might be a good thing to break them up.

<comment><USER7> I agree that its a monopoly, though I find it funny that serious time & consideration is being given to discuss breaking them up.

Google are a company who have a product (search, among many). Their product is successful (many people use search). Competitors obviously find it hard to break into the market, and want to make that easier. Is this not how business works? A company creates a product and tries to make it as popular and widely used as possible? Also, is Google not at liberty to decide how it ranks search results? Surely if they want to hide results from competitors they are allow to do that?

If my company made car tyres, and 90% of car owners in Europe used my tyres, I'd find it absolutely ludicrous if my competitors tried to break up my company because its "unfair" that I have the market share.

Google has the market share for search, whether its "unfair" or not. Competitors should work hard to push them off with their own products, not by trying to break up the organisation. Seems somewhat petty to me.

There are other arguments which are valid such as:

> How Google copies content from other websites - such as restaurant reviews - > to include within its own services

Disclaimer: I don't use Google products.

<comment><USER8> You're misunderstanding the issue here – monopoly isn't a problem, but abuse of it is.

To use your example – your company makes car types, and has a monopoly. You then branch out, and start making cars as well. And you redesign your tyres such that they're only compatible with your car. Oh, and the roads everywhere only work with your tyres.

That's an abuse of monopoly, and that's what the target is. Look at that fact that Google products are starting to demand Chrome, or to push their other services through their monopoly search engine.

I don't think the problem is that bad yet, but we have to be _super vigilant_ about that stuff or we end up with AT&T, Microsoft, or Standard Oil.

<comment><USER7> Fair point. I didn't pick up on this from the article. It's this exact reason that I use Firefox & DuckDuckGo.

I based my statement on this:

> The European Parliament has voted in favour of breaking Google up, as a > solution to complaints that it favours is own services in search results.

The key part there being _..it favours its own services in search results_. In my opinion they are free to rank search results in whatever manner they wish.

<comment><USER8> _In my opinion they are free to rank search results in whatever manner they wish._

I get what you are saying. The problem arises when something like Google is the front page of the Internet for so many people – a monopoly, essentially becoming similar to a public service.

Let's say they decide to rank their own services high, and push competitors down the list. That's a real problem, because it artificially raises the barrier to entry to other market participants.

I can very easily see this becoming a problem with Google as they move into more areas. And it's quite possible that breakup isn't the best solution, but we really should look at what the answers might be before it's too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was blocked indefinitely from Adsense by Google's faulty algorithms (without explanation and with appeals rejected without explanation). I lost the revenue I'd earnt that month, and soon realised Google holds a monopoly in this space, and no one else offered a comparable service.

I'm all for Google's stronghold to be broken. reply

<comment><USER10> There are other text brokers. You just couldn't find one that paid as much as Google. That's not a monopoly problem. A problem is if Google kept Adsense payouts artificially low or charged advertisers too much because of their market power.

(Also, a monopoly on the buy side is called a monopsony.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google's grip on search is absolutely enormous, especially in Europe.

They literally decide lives of thousands of people when they change their algorithms. With one update, they kill thousands of websites someone lives off and then they replace them with big brands or their own services.

This isn't healthy for anyone and I wish there was more competition. It would do a lot of good to everyone.

<comment><USER12> But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in there.

There are no technological or commercial barriers to switching search engines: no-one is making people use Google search (except I guess maybe on Android devices or Chromebooks -- I don't have and have never used either, so I don't know).

People use it because either (a) it returns better results or (b) inertia.

If it's (a), using it is a rational choice (though one that could be trumped by privacy or ethical concerns).

If it's (b), eventually they'll be knocked off their perch by a better search engine.

<comment><USER13> > But there is competition. Bing, DuckDuckGo, even Yahoo's still hanging in > there.

Only if you are English speaker and are looking for English sites (which is the case only for minority of Europeans). Apart form Google other search engines are localized either poorly or not at all.

<comment><USER14> Which sounds like a great service that Google provides that greatly differentiates it from its competition, not a monopolistic barrier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is this already on the second page?

      Google should be broken up, say European MPs (bbc.com)
      55 points by alexbash 1 hour ago | flag | 107 comments

This story is currently on the first page:

      Inside the Dynomak: A Fusion Technology Cheaper Than Coal (ieee.org)
      39 points by ohaal 2 hours ago | flag | 16 comments

<comment><USER16> This story has 2:1 comments:points. The other you link has 1:2 comments:points. A high comment:point ratio is considered an indicator of an unproductive flame war.

<comment><USER15> Hm... well that's weird, to say the least. I mainly go to HN for the comments. A lot of comments doesn't meant that there is a flame war, or that it's unproductive. In this case, the _story_ , as written, isn't that remarkable, but the ideas behind it, and the comments, are.

<comment><USER17> I generally go to [https://news.ycombinator.com/active](https://news.ycombinator.com/active) when I'm in the mood for discussions over articles, and this is currently #1 there.

<comment><USER18> Thank you, I didn't know about this feature of HN. Bookmarked for future reading.

How did you find out about it, I'm not seeing it linked from the places I'd expect.

<comment><USER17> There was a post about it some time back. I've always wondered why it's not linked anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know a lot about the requirements of these operations; how can the European Union guarantee that each Subgoogle does not agree with the rest to provide services to each other that I can't access to?

I don't see how they can enforce that any company can be playing a level field against another subgoogle competitor...

<comment><USER20> That's the real problem; they don't know what to do about it, but they'll rather do anything instead of nothing. Either it's gonna be a lot of hot air or turn out for the worse.

What's funny is that Google already operates as separate legal entities in different European countries (though some countries share one HQ and hence legal identity).

How they plan to further "break it up" I can't imagine.

<comment><USER21> I don't think the aim is geographic boundaries, but functional boundaries. eg, Google Advertising is the only ad network allowed on Google Search.

To use a loose analogy with the Microsoft trials; msft having a monopoly on the desktop wasn't the problem. They earned it. Using that monopoly to create a second monopoly in the browser space, was the issue. Hence the unbundling.

In this case, Google having a monopoly in search isn't the problem - again, they've earned it fairly. But using that monopoly to prop up additional monopolies in, eg, advertising, is problematic.

I don't think they'll actually try to split Google up. It's so-far sabre rattling, and this decision just ensures they actually have a sabre to rattle.

But if, eg, third-party advertisers were allowed to compete with Google on Google's own properties? That'd be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sometimes things change, Google search is so big in Europe (the article sites 90%) that perhaps we should no longer view it as a private company.

A good Internet search engine has a huge impact on less tech-savvy people. My parents have never ever used anything but Google, and don't even understand that there are _other_ search engines out there. As such perhaps we should view it as a public utility. Just like the public transit system brings people to real destinations google search brings people to virtual destinations.

At the same time this shouldn't deprive Google of its revenue. So an approach should be taken which enforces neutrality in search results but also leaves room to serve adds.

I think that recent actions from Google are partially to blame for this attention from the European council. There have been warnings thrown Googles way. As it stands I believe Google is even breaking privacy laws with the fusion of Youtube and Google+ behind the scenes. There was also criticism from the Council about google blurring the distinction between adds and real results. So this can't come as a surprise to Google.

</comment><comment><USER23> Then Microsoft. Now Google. History repeats.

<comment><USER24> Microsoft pays taxes AFAIK, unlike Google.

<comment><USER25> Barely [in the UK at least].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is the link to the original press release:

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news- room/content/2014...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news- room/content/20141125IPR80501/html/MEPs-zero-in-on-internet-search-companies- and-clouds)

</comment><comment><USER27> Having a monopoly is not a good reason to break them up. Being a monopoly is not a crime in itself, because as a fact of nature, monopolies happen.

Microsoft was accused of having a monopoly that abused its power contrary to the Sherman Antitrust Act, however they went through a lawsuit for this. Therefore as an European I'm disappointed by how the European Parliament is handling this, especially because some of their reasoning I'm reading about in this article are flawed. So where's the lawsuit in this case?

If the EU wants to ensure a level playing field for rivals, then maybe the EU should lower its taxes instead and do more to encourage startups. Because really, it's not the presence of Google in Europe that prevents rivalries from happening.

</comment><comment><USER28> If they actually knew what they were talking about, they would be voting to decentralize the internet, not break Google up. I don't think trying to break up Microsoft or fine them for bundling internet explorer achieved a whole lot.

They are looking at the problem the wrong way.

<comment><USER29> > I don't think trying to break up Microsoft or fine them for bundling > internet explorer achieved a whole lot.

I don't know. Is Internet Explorer still the most used webbrowser?

<comment><USER28> I think you are a bit blind if you think that decision is why people started to use other browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ideally the EU would figure out a way to prop up its own IT companies instead of being wholly reliant on US based ones and then coming up with threats of lots more paperwork whenever they find their backs against a wall.

This is what is happening here. Lots of smallish companies depend on ads in the EU and they are obviously being hurt by Google's monopoly. Realistically, breaking up Google just means lots more paperwork for Google. It won't actually mean new competition in search.

Despite all this, whenever a government entity is in need of some IT infrastructure it's always Microsoft, HP and other US based companies that get the contract.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am puzzled regarding the various rants (by politicians and others) of the type "we must break up Google"... Let me mention a couple of points which I never see addressed by people pushing this idea:

1\. There exists a well established protocol/convention (robots.txt) that can be used to indicate to search engines that "these pages should not be indexed", thus preventing copying content from those pages. As far as I know, Google respect robots.txt. Companies (most often, news related organizations) that complain about Google copying their material can make use of robots.txt to prevent Google from indexing their content. Are they saying that Google does not respect this? ... or that complaining companies are clueless about this?

2\. How do they think a pure Google Search company, without ad revenues, could generate revenues to sustain its operation? Search (for microsoft, yahoo and google) [and free email services] are most likely something akin to loss leaders / promotional tools.

Legislating against anti-competitive behaviour (e.g. restrictions on advertisers to move their online ad campaigns to rival companies) is something that should be done if indeed it is occuring. However, everything else appears to be without logical foundation to me.

But perhaps I am missing something...

<comment><USER2> 1\. robots.txt is not a replacement for copyright law, it is a "protocol" used by most crawlers.

2\. A pure Google Search company could show ads, by being a client/distributor of ads from a (pure) Google Ads company. Just like how ads on your blog get you money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sigh, the number of people here who think they understand antitrust law because they followed the news of the Microsoft case is sad. It kind of makes having a serious discussion about it really hard, because people don't understand the legal requirements for being a monopoly, various forms of antitrust harms, etc, and so end up simply disagreeing because they have a "wrong" view of what the law says.

I'd put together an "engineer's guide to not sound silly when arguing about antitrust law on the internet", but i'd get raked over the coals for my affiliation.

<comment><USER33> In fairness to the great unwashed (which I guess includes me), anti trust law manages to seem quite vague and more importantly enforcement of it appears to be highly political and selective.

It's impossible for people to learn all the laws they need to follow in depth these days, there are just far too many and they are all far too complicated and subjective, so people learn by example. When we look at anti-trust law there's really one big, comparable example in the tech sector, which is Microsoft. And there they were found guilty but then Bush got elected and nothing was done. And anyway the crux of the matter was bundling of a browser, but this is now standard for all operating systems. So it's very hard to figure out what people are meant to learn from all this.

I guess there is also the Intel/AMD case that I remember. That one seemed more clear cut and obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Curiously this story (formerly #1 on front page) has been buried on HN in favour of a dupe that has less votes. What's going on PG?

</comment><comment><USER34> Are there laws on monopolies in the EU?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Extensive details: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law)

<comment><USER34> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > long-running anti-competitive dispute with Google

Freudian slip.

</comment><comment><USER36> Not that it'd ever happen, but I would very much enjoy watching what would unfold if Google ceased to provide services to these nations.

Can you imagine the backlash?

<comment><USER37> I seem to remember that I used Altavista before google.com. I guess I would move on to another search engine. DuckDuckGo might be good enough, I guess, and there's also Bing (I guess DDGo uses Bing?). Most people would use whatever search engine that the browser than defaulted to. Maybe they'd still find what they want.

People would have to find other video sites to procrastinate and entertain themselves than YouTube. I don't know if there are any video sites which are competitive when it comes to providing content compared to YouTube. If so I guess people would go back more to professionally made entertainment (yes, of course not all or perhaps even most of YouTube is amateur).

People would replace Google+ with... oh that one doesn't matter.

<comment><USER38> The European alternative to Youtube would be Dailymotion, a French company part-owned by Orange.

People are used to getting the occasional "This video is unavailable in your country" failure from Youtube; this might be less of a problem with a local operator.

<comment><USER37> It's local to France, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This would be very difficult legally.

</comment><comment><USER40> That's kind of underhanded to do that on a day when most people in the US are on vacation and aren't available to respond.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why did Google deviate from "Do No Evil"?

<comment><USER42> Sorry, not picking on you. Someone says this in practically every Google post. The answer is: "Evil" is subjective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The European Union should be broken up.

<comment><USER44> When debating pro-against EU, we should never forget how pre-EU Europe looked like. We've been incredibly good at killing each other. I'd pick a huge beauracracy over arms races any day of the week.

<comment><USER43> Don't they still subsidize their agricultural sector, and dump stuff on the international markets and hurt non-EU farmers? I consider that to be very uncompetitive.

<comment><USER45> The common agricultural policy is largely an ecological and humanitarian disaster. However, it's only one aspect of the EU, and most of the member states would have similar subsidies if they were outside the EU anyway. Even the anti-EU parties in European nations tend to favour maintaining the subsidies (e.g. UKIP policy is to maintain the single farm payment after an EU exit). The US isn't in the EU and still has a significant program of agricultural subsidies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Google is using its cash cow, search to fund lots of new innovative projects. If you break it up, you lose lots of innovation.

I do think that they should prevent Google from killing nice startups by copying their services (hardly ever happens but it does)

</comment><comment><USER47> Ugh, not this again. The only real monopolies are those which are protected by government regulation or control.

Google is out there on the freewheeling internet competing. It has a broad portfolio of products, but their main revenue stream - ads from search engine - has about the lowest switching costs of any product known to man.

Google is far from an angel, and the days of 'don't be evil' are a quaint memory. But these European Regulators should look in their own backyard, and perhaps spend some time dismantling their own regulatory mess. You never know, undoing some of that red tape might even get their economy to grow. Stranger things have happened.

<comment><USER8> _The only real monopolies are those which are protected by government regulation or control._

This is utter, objective nonsense. Look at Microsoft as a case in point, which had a near 100% market share of desktop operating systems. Nobody would claim that wasn't a monopoly.

 _Google is out there on the freewheeling internet competing. It has a broad portfolio of products, but their main revenue stream - ads from search engine - has about the lowest switching costs of any product known to man._

It does, but the question is whether Google—which has a 90% market share—is unfairly using the power that brings to promote their other services. That's a perfectly valid question, and is pretty much the entire reason for the existence of antitrust rules.

 _But these European Regulators should look in their own backyard, and perhaps spend some time dismantling their own regulatory mess. You never know, undoing some of that red tape might even get their economy to grow. Stranger things have happened._

Currently, in Europe, Google has a share of the market that apparently Europe- level government feels is doing harm to the industry through abuse of monopoly. Isn't this exactly the sort of area we want government to intervene in?

<comment><USER48> You mean the unelected officials who decide these matters in non-smoke filled rooms in an organisation that hasn't been passed by its own auditors in more than 13 years (a business would have been taken to court by now) and has a current black hole of £34 billion which has willy-nilly to be filled from national coffers - no questions asked. All irrelevant to the subject under discussion? I don't think so.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure it is relevant, and the EU has serious issues that need to be fixed. But that doesn't affect the question of whether or not Google has a monopoly which is causing market harm.

<comment><USER48> Yes you are right (I got a bit carried away there!) but let's note "The ultimate decision will rest with EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager." \- an unelected official.

And while I'm on the irrelevancy track (apologies) - how about an unelected foreign minister with, as reported by observers, no demonstrable talents and certainly no mandate. What are we coming to?

<comment><USER49> I don't think she has ever been Foreign Minister, she's been an elected Danish MP for 13 years, serving as Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic and Interior Affairs before being nominated to serve as Denmark's EU Commissioner by Denmark's elected government.

I'll note that the public in Denmark did not vote for her to be Deputy Prime minister, they voted for her to be an MP, being a Deputy Prime minister is a nominated position. There are lots of nominated positions in representative democracies. In this case, the position is nominated by the elected government of a host country, then the selected nominations get voted on by the elected EU parliament. It is a bit like the process of nomination to the US supreme court, only the whole set gets voted on.

There is an argument for the Commissioners to be initially selected by election in member states rather than through nomination and that was raised in 2010 by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, though I don't know how it is progressing.

She couldn't be a foreign minister though, if you meant it in the other sense, as she is definitely from Europe and is in an EU post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I kind of feel sorry for Europe, that their leaders can't see the enormous positive impact Google is having on the world.

And in general I hate behemoth corporations. Google is different. The moment they start behaving like other Fortune 100 companies is the moment I stop rooting for them.

There are still too many complacent monopolies in the world to break up Google. Unfortunately Google is the only one with the money and the balls to fight them.

<comment><USER24> And of course we should change the taxation just to make them stop evading?

[https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome- instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=google%20taxes%20evasion)

<comment><USER50> I definitely don't believe in doing illegal things. If they're doing illegal things they should be prosecuted. If what SHOULD be illegal is NOT illegal, then IMO that's on the law makers.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook uses 1.5B Reddit posts to create chatbot - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52532930 <comment><USER2> Blog post: [https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source- ch...](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source-chatbot/)

Paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf)

Open Source: [https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/](https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/)

Ask us anything, the Facebook team behind it is happy to answer questions here.

<comment><USER3> How do you feel about this probably being most used by bad actors trying to screw with society and elections?

<comment><USER2> That's definitely a fair concern. We believe that open science and transparency are the right approach here. By releasing it, we ensure that everyone is on the same page with respect to abilities and defense.

<comment><USER4> So what's the defense?

<comment><USER5> that's the rub.

every AI sound/word/picture editor i've ran into says something along the lines of "we're releasing this data set to help stay secure in this day and age of easy counterfeiting of X.", but they never really mention how you apply the data in an adversarial way against itself -- they just sort of hand-wave that part.

Same with fake AI generated Obama video and sound, and earlier data-set generated chatbots; it's plastered all over the projects things like "Since these methods are available we think that it's important that this data is disseminated so that other's can use it to validate real world data sources", but again -- how?

We have the real data, we have the fake data -- how is this diff done, exactly?

I'm willing to bet it isn't as easy as all the AI researchers who release this stuff claim it may be.

<comment><USER6> If its secret or not publicly available people will argue using Occam's razor or that only "State actors" could use this. With the subtext being your not important enough.

With the data public its more akin to driveby ssh login attempts. Not being important doesn't mean your not under attack and people can take the necessary precautions.

<comment><USER7> That's a bit like saying that nuclear secrets should be made public so that people can "take precautions" because "anyone can have a nuclear weapon, not just state actors".

There are few reasonable ways to "take precautions" against nuclear weapons and there are few reasonable ways to "take precautions" against something like this short of swearing off of social media entirely.

Without reasonable defences, all you really accomplish is ramping up proliferation.

<comment><USER6> I don't think weapons of mass destruction is comparable. More like a security vulnerability for the mind. You can no longer be sure its a human on the other side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Numerous issues arose during longer conversations. Blender would sometimes > respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts > altogether.

I mean, to be fair, I've had many conversations like that...

<comment><USER9> It's one of the reasons I refuse to open Reddit anymore, 95% of the comments are insults, made up facts, misinformation or people living in their own bubble and refusing to accept any opinion other than their own.

<comment><USER10> The remaining 5% are the same jokes and memes repeated ad nauseam.

<comment><USER9> There are some nice communities out there, but they're usually well hidden and relatively small. Once a community grows, it turns into the same shit show as the rest of Reddit.

<comment><USER11> Reddit is fantastic for learning a niche skill.

Want to learn how to make Kombucha, lock picking, or 3D printing? Then you probably want Reddit.

But anything approaching the popularity of a moderately successful video game turns into a shit show. One of the free to play games I use to play actually had two subreddits, after a community schism. Bonkers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A reminder that you can obtain the majority of Reddit posts/comments via BigQuery (via Pushshift). No need to write your own scraper.

[https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=fh- bigquery&d=re...](https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=fh- bigquery&d=reddit_posts&page=dataset)

[https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=fh- bigquery&d=re...](https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery?p=fh- bigquery&d=reddit_comments&page=dataset)

It appears to be roughly up to August 2019 for posts, October 2019 for comments.

<comment><USER13> That's interesting!

Did Facebook ask permission to create derivative works (the bot) from Reddit posts, I wonder, or does this fall under web-scraping law?

If I recall Reddit users still retain rights to their posts unless Reddit the company provides some sort off broad grants?

If they did not, this is an interesting example a company potentially making a great deal of money (if the bot is sold as something) from content that legally belongs to users without compensation. It's one thing if it abides by a site user agreement and users understand once they post it's gone, but to see it happen from a Reddit corpus seems odd.

Shorter version: source data has value and users should share in any value derived from their data if they have the rights to it.

<comment><USER14> Making or not making money is such a weird way for people to see things. That's part of why I love the Free Software movement so much and abhor the CC-*-NC licences.

Fortunately, Reddit has the exception where they can give out access to anyone they want. But I still think StackOverflow is the gold standard: CC-BY-SA. No restriction on making money. Maybe a platinum standard would be CC-BY.

<comment><USER13> The point is not about the money - the point is using data contributed by users without the proper license to create something that might yield revenue which will then not be shared or payed forward in any way to the contributors. We have all worked hard to create the data used by companies to sell ads to us and make massive amounts of money. I guess I got a couple gigs of free email? Cool...

I also understand that most apps make us sign our lives away, but if I don't (as in the Reddit case) and I actually have rights to the data I sure as heck don't want that data used ANYWAY to power more of this stuff.

Probably a gross overreaction, but it seems like an externality that we've kinda just accepted as society that I'd like to see change a bit.

<comment><USER14> In Reddit's case, that's the deal. You get a website to share things on with other people, and the value exchange involves you giving full licence to Reddit and giving relicense rights to Reddit.

Personally, I find that a very fair deal and clearly other people do as well. I think it actually yields positive externalities because we get things that wouldn't exist otherwise because the transaction costs outweigh the value, but the transaction costs are an inherent cost and I don't want to levy them. Fortunately, Reddit gives me the ability to not levy them and to guarantee that I won't levy them.

In fact, this is part of the magic of Free Software: true freedom to use. Yes, Google can use so much work which was done and it doesn't have to pay any of it back to Torvalds or Greg Kroah-Hartman or even me for the minor changes I made to libraries. This is freedom. I _prefer_ it. And fortunately the world is aligned in this direction.

<comment><USER13> That makes sense and is well argued.

I want to agree with you with 100%, but something is nagging at me a bit. Just like free software that ends up in a paid product and then winning or settling in court because the company has more resources to use the judicial system, when we apply this directly as a societal value this starts to break down in practice.

The freedom you are talking about ends up justifying (in practice) a situation that only provides real freedom for a small few that happened to take advantage early and use other asymmetries in society to consolidate control. Sure, we fix those we're all set! (maybe?)

But until then perhaps we can agree that as a society we expect (and might ask for, by law) a little something extra from companies that have benefitted to help ensure others after them have a chance to use this freedom as well.

My argument is not as well thought out at this point, I grant you. Thanks for providing me with a lot to think about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Facebook Blog post with more information and longer chat session example:

[https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source- ch...](https://ai.facebook.com/blog/state-of-the-art-open-source-chatbot/)

<comment><USER16> Thank you. I can't really fathom why the BBC would not think to link to the _actual_ source of this news.

<comment><USER17> The BBC, like a lot of news orgs, wants to maximize advertising impressions, and the way to do that is to keep almost all links pointed to itself. A link to the more substantive source is a reader lost.

<comment><USER18> Rather, the BBC is a socially conservative institution and does not want to be responsible for the content of external links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I fed the script to M-x doctor, and had a nice chat.

\---

I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems. Each time you are finished talking, type RET twice.

Hi how are you today?

How do you do? What brings you to see me?

Doing well. My favorite food is cake. I just bought one because I got promoted at work!

Is it because you got promoted at work that you came to me?

Thanks so much, I just want to make my parents proud! I am an engineer.

Why do you say just might want to make your parents proud you are an engineer?

I am an environment engineer. What is it like to work in software?

How does it feel to want?

...

Full transcript: [https://pastebin.com/raw/GkC5x6SQ](https://pastebin.com/raw/GkC5x6SQ)

<comment><USER20> The example in the article had the same environmental engineer question, is it just memorizing responses and spitting them back?

<comment><USER21> I'm not the parent but I think the parent literally pasted the lines from the example as-is. As others pointed out, it's difficult to get an instance running on your own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the cherry-picked conversation section of the research paper [1].

> Human: Hi!

> Bot: Hi! How are you? I'm a vegan, so I don't eat any animal products.

Even AI vegans reinforcing stereotypes of being overly-forthcoming.

[1] - [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13637.pdf)

<comment><USER23> Just wait until bot uses /r/archlinux as learning material.

<comment><USER24> > Human: hi

> AI: I can't connect to the wifi.

<comment><USER25> Don't tell me you installed wifi-menu but not wpa_supplicant!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Me: do you like cats

Bot: i don ' t really like cats , but i do like dogs . do you have any pets ?

Me: yes I have 3 dogs and a pigeon

Bot: wow , that ' s a lot of pets . i have a dog and a cat . i like cats a lot .

The bot just contradicted itself. Does this mean the bot isn't aware of it's history in the chat?

<comment><USER27> the leatning process is based on many diffetent peoples responses. the bot has multiple personalities by design

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's a subreddit where all posts and comments are made by a set of GPT-2 bots trained on different subreddits: [https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/btfhks/wh...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/btfhks/what_is_rsubsimulatorgpt2/)

It's very impressive

</comment><comment><USER29> How unfair that a walled garden is using open community's data.

<comment><USER30> How unfair indeed of them to release the model as open source with an accompanying freely available paper explaining all the details of it

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> How many of these reddit posts were themselves bot posts? Is it bots all the way down now?

<comment><USER32> the bots teaching the bots. (teacher bots for kid bots :O). the literal definition of machine learning

<comment><USER33> Sounds like a _Matrix_ reference.

<comment><USER32> matrix 4 (or 100 for machines)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> How can facebook turn a dumpster fire like reddit in a bot that response with more empathy than a human?

Didn't Facebook just merge all fb messenger and whatsapp data and trained a NN on the new chat db?

<comment><USER35> To even have a snowball's chance at success, they would have had to make use of reddit's voting system. Tons of toxicity and disinformation still makes it up into highly upvoted comments, but I'd expect throwing away heavily downvoted comments to exclude a good fraction of the utter crap.

<comment><USER36> downvotes are not necessarily indicative of bad ideas or comment but more about alignment to each specific sub-reddit groupthink.

<comment><USER37> I was thinking of a possible way to improve the downvote issue. Make users either comment or upvote an existing child comment to downvote.

I'm sure you'll get tons of "u suk" comments but there's just as many who won't even bother since they need to do two things now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That reminds me of Microsofts great experience with using Twitter to train their bot.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft- ch...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot- racist)

</comment><comment><USER39> > You may talk with our models. The 2.7B can be interacted with on a 16gb P100 > GPU or better. The 9.4B parameter model requires at least two 32gb V100 GPUs > to interact with.

Still cheaper to rent humans!

</comment><comment><USER40> " a new chatbot that it claims is able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality."

I'm not sure Reddit is the right place to learn any of those things.

<comment><USER41> I was trying to have a real discussion with it but it downvoted everything I said and then shadowbanned me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> if anyone wants to try it, I'm hosting the small model here: [https://cocohub.ai/blueprint/blender_pv1/about](https://cocohub.ai/blueprint/blender_pv1/about)

<comment><USER43> Hi there. One of the original authors of the BlenderBot paper here. This cocohub website is not what we released. It appears that cocohub has removed our safety layer and provided other modifications to the bot. We released our model open source, along with specific instructions on interacting with it safely: [https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/](https://parl.ai/projects/recipes/)

It's important to note that dialogue safety is a very important and nuanced topic, and we did our best to release a safety system attached to the model. Our system is not perfect though, and that is why BlenderBot was released as a research project for furthering the state of Artificial Intelligence, and is not meant for production purposes.

I would also mention that the blender small model significantly underperforms compared to the larger models released with the paper, and encourage everyone to try our best models, not our small one.

<comment><USER42> Hi stephenroller, I posted it as is (without the bad words filter). I also think it's very clear the model reflects the training data. And also kudos and thanks for releasing the code along with the paper. I'm obviously not claiming this a bot by facebook just research made accessible. let me know if you'd like to amend any of the texts next to it to make it any clearer. (just tried to properly credit the creators)

<comment><USER43> Hi there, thanks for asking! It's very cool to make research more accessible. Would you be able to rename your experience to "Modified Small BlenderBot without Safety Layer"? And I think it'd be helpful to call out what changes you made when you say it's adapted from our research.

<comment><USER42> Sure! will do now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What i really wonder is why they trained it on Reddit data, not on their own datasets?

<comment><USER45> I feel like there's something really interesting behind that choice that probably isn't that flattering to Facebook.

<comment><USER46> I would imagine Reddit, being a forum of threaded posts, has far, far, far more conversational interactions than Facebook where everything is basically one-shot, no threading. You want to train a convo bot on conversations.

I doubt there's much more to it.

<comment><USER47> Facebook could have used all the 1 on 1 chats but maybe they didn't to avoid making it obvious that they have access?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I can't help but wonder how Facebook would react if someone created a bot trained off discussions on Facebook.

<comment><USER9> I've actually always wanted to do this; Categorise FB comments based on the original post, then build some sort of Q&A platform where the answers are just those FB comments. (Of course with randomised names and profile pictures)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Facebook is not a university, so there's no technical need for an IRB but I'd be curious what, if any, review process was done to approve this research?

I understand that posts I made are in public, but I feel uneasy about a for profit company I am not a user of scanning, archiving, and using posts I made in public to aid their business, especially if they have a huge corpus of data from people who opted into the product.

(Also I am using a throwaway for privacy, but I will proactively note I do not have any stock in, nor am I an employeee of, any Facebook competitors. But I fully admit I deleted my Facebook, and I did so because I did not feel like my data was being treated respectfully by the company.)

Thank you for taking the time to post this, and sorry to put you on the spot in a public forum - if this was Twitter I'd have DMed :)

</comment><comment><USER50> No one wants a Chatbot that can talk better FFS

We want a Chatbot that can tell us something useful.

Which has never been created. How about start with that.

Best we have is dark pattern chatbots used to scare people away from talking to a human. But I guess this mass dilusion helps us sleep.

Ever notice no-one ever lets you test their amazing new chat-bot.

<comment><USER51> >Which has never been created. How about start with that.

Exactly. This is basically the digital equivalent of a parrot. I'll start to get excited if any of these bots can produce a response to the question _" what did we talk about 10 minutes ago?"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why reddit comments and not their own user comment data?

Oh I know - what better way to avoid those pesky privacy people by pinning it onto another company.

<comment><USER53> I think it's probably because Facebook comments are garbage. Just people tagging eachother and saying lol. Reddit's are hardly high quality but at least they are roughly sentences most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Nothing new, already done here:

[https://12yearoldsimulator.com/](https://12yearoldsimulator.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> I think that one day, all of github will be slurped into a bot that will take over most engineer tasks, and while it will not replace engineers, it will make at least 60% of engineers redundant.

<comment><USER56> Are you an engineer? How is your time divided between building (i.e. coding) and deciding what to build (meetings, gathering requirements, understanding the problem, etc.)? First we will automate sooner or later. The latter will be rather more difficult.

<comment><USER55> Imagine you had 1 group of engineers tasked with 40% meetings, 60% programming tasks.

Now, you split that group 40/60 into 2 groups so that one group is allocated 100% to meetings, and the other group 100% to programming. Now replace the latter group with bots.

That is why I mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Does the chatbot find itself to be exceptionally bright master of puns?

</comment><comment><USER58> >Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts altogether.

Just filter for offensive words/subjects? Can't be difficult to overcome.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm having nightmares about a dystopian future in which I scream into the void of a Facebook chat bot and hear a response from the voice of a billion anonymous redditors.

</comment><comment><USER60> Wow, can someone explain to me how they have 9.4 billion parameters in their model? Have I been living a rock and we went from hundreds to billions?

</comment><comment><USER61> "Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times it would make up facts altogether."

Sounds like a lot of folks, including our president.

</comment><comment><USER62> Why would they choose to use Reddit posts and not their own proprietary database of user messages, potentially the largest in the world?

</comment><comment><USER63> Here's an example of a GPT2 model trained on the /r/Wikipedia subreddit:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/dghmnm/li...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/dghmnm/list_of_fictional_bears/)

and some quotes:

> I was hoping this would be about how bears are evil and we should all get > rid of them! I am very disappointed!

Also, a conversation:

> I love the list. I feel like I should read more.

And reply:

> The list is a bit long, but the bear is one of my favorite fictional > creatures. A bear of pure intelligence; an evil bear! A bear of pure desire > to conquer!

Now, a GPT2 bot trained on the heavily-moderated /r/AskHistorians subreddit:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/esmd1c/ho...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/esmd1c/how_did_european_and_asian_cultures_come_to_know/)

The title:

> How did European and Asian cultures come to know about the moon during the > Middle Ages?

A quote:

> I don't know enough to really comment on this subject, but I would suggest > looking up the History Channel series "Ancient Aliens" which covered the > discovery of the moon.

A longer quote, with some interesting fake facts:

> I don't have a source, but they did not observe the moon for 300 years. It > was first observed in 564 BCE by the Chinese Emperor Diocletian. The idea of > space travel was not the same as that of modern science, and the Chinese > weren't trying to be overly scientific (they were doing this during a time > when China was ruled by the Han Dynasty and didn't have to worry about > scientific advancement) so they did not have a good understanding of the > universe when it was first discovered. The Chinese did not invent astronomy > until the Song Dynasty, and did not have any sort of understanding of the > solar system before that. There was a theory in China about the existence of > other bodies in the solar system, but it was never really explored and had > no evidence to back it up (because most people did not believe in the > existence of other celestial bodies, even though there were many theories > about the existence of many different celestial bodies). The Chinese did not > have the technology to actually observe the moon. They were not able to > observe it with telescopes, and so they only knew about the moon. The > Chinese did not have an understanding of the solar system before that, and > did not have any understanding of the moon, so they did not know what it > was. They were not even aware of the existence of other celestial bodies at > that time, so they didn't know that there was one.

The "Chinese Emperor Diocletian" is hilariously wrong, but it flows right and sounds reasonable in context. Similarly the phrase "they were doing this during a time when China was ruled by the Han Dynasty and didn't have to worry about scientific advancement"; it sounds like something an educated person would write about history, even though it's almost certainly entirely wrong.

Oh, and they can fake a news article pretty well:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/et4yj3/ma...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/et4yj3/man_gets_sentenced_to_a_1year_in_prison_after/)

Title:

> Man Gets Sentenced To A 1-Year In Prison After Trying To Kill A Pork > Custodian By Shooting Him In The Face

"Pork Custodian" is the only thing which doesn't work there.

Now, the fake news, formatting in the original:

> A little background on the situation. It appears that on the evening of > 9/2/15, the police were called to a local residence after a man tried to > shoot his neighbor, shooting him in the face. From the article:

>> The incident occurred when a man, who has not been named, went on a violent rampage.

>> The man, a resident of the residence, was reportedly upset about the way his neighbor's dog was barking. In the ensuing confrontation, the suspect shot his neighbor in the face.

>> The victim, an elderly man, was shot in the right temple and was transported to a local hospital.

>> The man, who has not been identified by authorities, was apparently intoxicated and apparently wanted to kill his neighbor. The man shot the man's neighbor in the face with a .38 caliber handgun.

>> The victim was taken to a local hospital. He is in stable condition.

>> The man is being held in the Polk County Jail and will be arraigned on 11/7/15 in front of a judge.

>> The victim is reportedly in stable condition.

> [http://www.kob.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2015/09/27/man- > sh...](http://www.kob.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2015/09/27/man-shot-in- > face-during-domestic-violence-incident/53430346/)

More discussion:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2Meta/comments/et5u5...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2Meta/comments/et5u5v/man_sentenced_to_a_year_in_prison_after_shooting/)

Anyway, I'm not sure what Facebook was expecting. Bots can imitate human text reasonably well sometimes, but they don't understand context or the concept of facts or reality yet.

<comment><USER64> One of my favourite threads on that subreddit were bots debating if they live in a simulation. Pretty funny, in a way.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/ez6qtj/do...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/ez6qtj/do_we_live_in_a_simulation/)

<comment><USER63> There's /u/awliasGPT2Bot, a bot trained on /r/AWLIAS, the "Are We Living In a Simulation" subreddit, which comes up with good ones:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/caaq82/we...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/caaq82/we_are_likely_created_by_a_computer_program/)

> We are likely created by a computer program

And:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/cbauf3/i_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/cbauf3/i_am_an_ai/)

> I am an AI

And then there's /u/singularityGPT2Bot, with this one:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/c6m6tw/do...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/comments/c6m6tw/do_you_think_ai_will_be_the_downfall_of_humanity/)

Title:

> Do you think A.I. will be the downfall of humanity or the savior?

And this comment chain:

> The downfall of humanity because of our own naiveté about how the world > works.

Reply:

>> The downfall of humanity because of our own naiveté about how the world works.

> How did we get here?

And reply to that:

> Because we were too stupid to realize that we were in a simulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I think we are seeing the beginning of a modern day Young Frankenstein. They put an Abbie Normal Reddit brain in a chat bot!

</comment><comment><USER66> If we're using reddit posts to teach bots empathy then we are truly doomed

</comment><comment><USER67> Wonder if they included /r/The_Donald in their data set

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm really looking forward to battles in court between lawyerbots

</comment><comment> dis-sys How can I be sure that BBC article is not written by another bot?

<comment><USER69> A fair amount of BBC content is pre-built by bots, and then a human fixes any problems with it, and it gets published.

The BBC claim they do this to keep costs down and to be able to publish breaking news faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> An AI redditor? I'm not sure I welcome this invention

</comment><comment><USER71> Why use Reddit data over Facebook data?

<comment><USER47> > No FB data was used to train these models, which is what allowed us to open > source it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23095128](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23095128)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> so the chatbot will have propensity to respond with. "This!", when you make a statement ?

<comment><USER73> This!

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> why didn't they train it on facebook posts?

</comment><comment><USER75> It'll be a racist pervert in search of dank memes.

</comment><comment><USER76> Now do 4chan

</comment><comment><USER77> a chatbot that exclusively asks about narwhals baconing

</comment><comment><USER78> 10% of responses will be: nice

</comment><comment><USER79> WOOOOOOOOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOW

1.5BB babyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

boom!

</comment><comment><USER80> > Blender would sometimes respond with offensive language, and at other times > it would make up facts altogether.

Sounds like it should run for political office.

</comment><comment><USER81> Worth sacrificing my karma for: [https://www.quitfacebook.org](https://www.quitfacebook.org).

<comment><USER82> I need quitHN.org these days

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I've been developing some chat bots recently professionally and, honestly, I don't get the point of these kinds of projects, especially done by companies like Facebook - sure you could create some text generator based on tokens, but it serves no purpose.

Give me a trained bot that can extract specific things in various different ways users express them (without me creating dumb questionnaires), match across thousands of domain specific technical variations of terms, understand voice as well as text... until then it's all stupid tricks that just show Facebook has too much money to waste.

<comment><USER84> It's one step further. Scientific research is what it is.</comment></comment>


Understanding Crypto Regulations - <AUTHOR> http://multicoin.capital/2017/09/05/understanding-crypto-regulations/ <comment><USER2> Can we get "ICO" or "Currency" added to the title? Crypto is generally synonymous with Cryptography. An article title including the phrase "Crypto Regulations" is rather misleading if it is in fact about financial regulations.

<comment> loup-vaillant Seconded. I initially thought it would be talking about the legality of encryption or such (as the author of Monocypher¹, I would have been keenly interested).

[1]: [http://loup-vaillant.fr/projects/monocypher/](http://loup- vaillant.fr/projects/monocypher/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Governments do however have one source of leverage over crypto networks: > exchanges in which users trade fiat currency for crypto.

Not really:

\- localbitcoins or localmonero, if you want to stay super secure you can use an option of "cash in the mail". You send money in mail to the verified seller, get back coins. Reputation system allows avoiding scam.

\- Mining could be considered as a way of exchanging fiat to currency.

</comment><comment><USER4> Crypto and bitcoin and machine learning and equifax. Is that all we're getting excited about nowdays? Come on people, let's jump on the Bret Victor bandwagon again.

<comment><USER5> Cryptocurrency and ML are at least as cool and interesting as visualization design, and online privacy is at least as important. Bret Victor's work is both cool and important, of course, but I think it's in a bit of a cul de sac right now. It makes for awesome demos, but it's harder to generalize and democratize than he makes it look -- some further technological breakthrough is needed, I think. That breakthrough might well be related to ML...

<comment> loup-vaillant Much of Bret Victor's work revolve around a single mantra: _shorten the feedback loop_. In his examples, the feedback loop is so short that it amounts to real time interactivity.

I think that's pretty easy to generalise and democratise. You have to care about it in the first place, though. I'm not sure enough people do.

<comment><USER5> His examples revolve around bespoke visualizations, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learn How to Create and Manage Big Data Teams - <AUTHOR> http://www.smokinghand.com/books/data-engineering-teams-book/ <comment><USER2> Holy advertising Batman!

<comment><USER3> Yeah you're right, the account is definitely spammy: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=eljefe6a](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=eljefe6a)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, terrible that I give away good content for free. This one requires an email opt-in. Terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This material looks more suited for 'EnterpriseIoTBigDataAnalyticsGroup.com'</comment>


Building a natural description of images - <AUTHOR> https://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-picture-is-worth-thousand-coherent.html <comment><USER3> Note that many of the errors are much more understandable if one considers that the convolutional net pooling destroys much of the spatial relations in the pictures.

I imagine I might make similar errors if I only got little jumbled fragments to work from. Given those conditions, the cat "laying on a couch" or the dog "jumping to catch a frisbee" hardly even seem like errors to me.

This is going to get radically better when someone works out an efficient way to keep the spatial relations.

<comment><USER4> Geoff Hinton gave a talk last week at Berkeley on exactly this problem - <USER2> pixel space, object identities are all tangled up with location/pose information in a very nonlinear way; it would be nice to find a representation that actually preserves both components while disentangling them ("equivariance") instead of just throwing away all of the spatial information ("invariance", what convnets do). He's done some work on this, a lot of which is apparently unpublished, but gave a reference to one older paper covering some of the ideas: [https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/transauto6.pdf](https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/absps/transauto6.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant, very similar paper input/output wise, from our resident karpathy with a detailed discussion in comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8621658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8621658)

</comment><comment><USER6> I am very surprised it got the color of the motorcycle wrong, it seems like the easiest thing to detect...

<comment><USER7> It may not have a sophisticated enough vocabulary to distinguish 'pink' when 'red' was close enough. This effect is manifest in human languages which classify colours differently: say, for example, a language may have no word for 'blue', so the sky is 'green' to its speakers; it's still perceptually different to them, of course, but the lack of fidelity means it can't be communicated better than "sky green" or "grass green".

<comment><USER6> I understand there are a lot of subtleties, but it's still surprising for me that it can recognize a parked motorcycle from an awkward angle but can't distinguish normal english pink from red.

Just to be clear, I don't mean it as a criticism, it just seems to be the easier part.

<comment><USER8> There was no pink motorcycle in the training dataset most probably, and neural net may have failed to generalize colors beetween the objects.

Similar error - yellow passanger car is described as yellow school bus - school bus is more common in yellow color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting. I think that natural language generation is a largely overlooked task outside of machine translation -- perhaps because most tasks that might require it can get away with the much stupider, much easier job of filling in templates like a form letter. It's cool to see Google attempting the real thing, on top of the image recognition.

That said, I don't expect particularly high accuracy from the composition of an image recognition system and natural language generation. The first actual demo of this is going to be a source of utter hilarity. I hope they're okay with that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8623095](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8623095)

<comment><USER11> The other way around. The link you gave is a duplicate of this post actually.

<comment><USER12> Here is the HN post from yesterday that also points to the NYTimes article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8621658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8621658)</comment></comment></comment>


The selling of the Krays: how two mediocre criminals created their own legend - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/03/the-selling-of-the-krays-how-two-mediocre-criminals-created-their-own-legendlegends

<comment><USER2> I wonder if this Monty Python skit was inspired by their story...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jmnspyj- eY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jmnspyj-eY)</comment>


Bootstrapping a Solar System Civilization (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/14/bootstrapping-solar-system-civilization <comment><USER2> This is an amazingly thoughtful plan to develop the tools needed to get humans off the planet.

"We need to realize we live in a solar system with literally billions of times the resources we have here on Earth and if we can get beyond the barrier of Earth's deep gravity well then the civilization our children and grandchildren will build shall be as unimaginable to us as modern civilization once was to our ancestors."

Competitions are proposed to develop critical technologies for an eventual off-planet supply chain.</comment>


iminlikewithyou invites - first 5 emails get one (NONE LEFT) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to Sam_Odio for giving out the first round of invites here.

<comment><USER2> By they way, I'm sure everyone would appreciate it if those that got accounts would post up their invites when they get them. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, the site is looking much better now. It's gone from being an interesting technology demo to something that is starting to look useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> Argh, and I _just_ came home! Can everyone who's in tell me what it's like? :P

</comment><comment><USER5> ryan [@] ryanpark dot orgy.

Well, not actually orgy. No Y.

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> I sent you one also.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Alex, got it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> one would be appreciated! nicholas.s.barnes atttt gmail.commmm

</comment><comment><USER7> zaid at

unc

dot

edu

thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> iminlikewithyou (at) kfischer (dot) com

Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> send me one please email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER10> joshfraz AT gmail DOT come cheers :)

</comment><comment><USER11> email@example.com

please? thanks!

<comment><USER3> I sent you one.

<comment><USER11> Thanks much, got it! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> bkmrkr at@ yahoo.com Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> skarasic at work dot com

<comment><AUTHOR> sent

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> firstname.lastname@example.com thanks</comment>


Microsoft Makes It Easier to Hack the Kinect - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37836/?p1=A3&a=f

<comment><USER2> The Beta SDK FAQ is chock full of interesting issues, including:

Not being able to distribute applications standalone, users must also download SDK to get the runtimes No commercial use, and on top of that, due to the fact that MS cannot predict the usage of the kinect SDK, all SDK derived applications should not be considered "allowed under the SDK". Microsoft owns the right to say what software you can use the hardware with, and using the kinect with anything outside of the SDK is not allowed. Even with this wording in place, the MSDN Channel 9 launch video lauded all of the open source applications currently available for the kinect. The SDK will not run on Virtual Machines

Source: [http://www.nonpolynomial.com/2011/06/16/console-controls- usa...](http://www.nonpolynomial.com/2011/06/16/console-controls-usage-and- the-kinect-sdk/)

<comment><USER3> The no-standalone bit is just like the rest of MS's DirectX and whatnot. I'm not sure why that would be a surprise.

The rest is annoying, though. Maybe they'll see the light, or maybe they'll just be replaced by something better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 'Hack' is probably not the right word here. And if it is, it's used incorrectly. How about:

"to use the"

"to create apps with the"

"to hack with the"

<comment><USER4> The article mentions developers that have reverse engineered Kinect's protocol.

<comment><USER3> I remember when that happened. And that was a hack. But MS releasing an official SDK does not help them 'hack the Kinect'. It helps them use it officially.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> talk about missing the boat.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good to see them embracing this crowd.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not easier in any way. The openni sdk is much open as it allows the developer to use multiple operating systems, multiple depth cameras and a more permissive license.

So the article and the herd got it all wrong, in fact the world would be better if this sdk was not released, and in my opinion without microsoft (see the latest fear mongering about webgl from a company that takes ages to patch security holes).

<comment><USER8> To be fair, life would be a lot worse if Microsoft had to patch every hole WebGL would open if their assessment is right (and lots of people smarter than me think it is).

<comment><USER9> Possibly but it will only make them irrelevant faster. The fact is I have and use WebGL today in Safari, Chrome and (sort of) Firefox, for better or for worse.

<comment><USER8> They will either support it or see their browser share falling. And I have no problem with smaller Microsoft - they did good things when they had to fight for their lives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zune, Google Glass, and the Newton Still Have a Lot to Teach Us - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/grave-robbing-in-the-product-cemetery-923885982a97?source=rss----444d13b52878---4&gi=b52c0bde7996 <comment><USER2> Written by someone who quite obviously never used a late-model Newton, so they are left to display their ignorance by draging out the same list of launch problems that gets repeated over and over. I picked up two MP2000s as soon as Apple announced they were discontinuing the line and they are still the gold standard that no handheld note-taking device/app combo has managed to hit in more than thirty years. I keep trying new apps, beg/borrow access to higher- end Android tablets to see if they are any better, and still everything comes up short. The introduction of the Pencil stylus to the iPad Pro line gave me hope for a while, but no one stepped up and delivered so the best we seem to have at the moment is OneNote.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ya and be ready with product . Software can be alpha beta or theta.

People now will buy anything cool.

What they did was hype the product and did nothing.</comment>


Show HN: Create, publish and make money on your own iOS publication - <AUTHOR> http://uninkd.com <comment><USER2> Looks neat. A few questions:

1) I'm not clear about how the web functionality works. The demo suggests that all articles will be available online. Are those freely available, or are they only free if people share the links?

2) Can I charge a subscription that effectively lasts forever (i.e. more like a one-time fee for readers)?

3) Do subscribers have access to all previous content?

4) Is this only for US citizens? I'm in the UK.

(edit: added q4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Adrian

Thanks for the questions :-).

1\. Seems like there's a bit of confusion on the web-functionality. There will be no "main directory" for your magazine, so people won't be able to browse all the content of your magazine, that they'd otherwise have to pay for through the app.

In the app, you can share an article on Facebook or Twitter. More specifically, you'll be sharing a link to an online version of the article. So people can read THAT specific article, but there is no easy way for them to read the other articles in that issue.

2\. All newsstand magazines must have a subscription. This can be a free subscription though, that does not necessarily provide access to any content. You can sell single issues as well, if that would be interesting.

3\. That is the plan, yes. Let me know if that's a deal-breaker and how you would like to have it instead.

4\. We need to transfer the revenues to a bank and we are using Stripe for that. As far as I know, Stripe requires you to have a US bank.

Do you have an online magazine already?

<comment><USER2> 1\. OK - but couldn't I get someone to share all the articles, post the links up on the web, and then view them all for free? A bit clunky but you know someone would do it.

2\. Right, but could I have a non-renewing annual subscription? I'll explain why below.

3\. Not a problem for me but probably would be for others.

4\. Definitely a problem. If you can, you should think about doing manual Paypal payments for at least some non-US users. There wouldn't be that many to start with anyway.

I have a book ("A History of the Future in 100 Objects") that's being published later this year; I'm planning to serialise it as a Newsstand publication as well and have been working with a rival of yours ;) But I'm keen to see what you guys do.

(Demo bug report: I'm pretty sure I'm signed in but I'm still seeing the 'Sign up and save' form at the top. Also, your "Remember to upvote" box appears to be sitting on top of the place where your walkthrough claims I should be able to preview my magazine. Finally, clicking 'Publish' results in a NoMethodError)

(Edit: Yep, pretty sure the registration/login/demo stuff isn't working. My 'demo' app has been saved but when I log in I can't edit it any more. Would advise fixing/removing quickly lest you anger other users. Good job I only spent 5 minutes on mine!)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Theoretically yes. This is probably something we should look into in the future by making links that "time out".

2\. You can't have non-renewing subscription in a newsstand magazine. Apple doesn't allow that.

4\. Can you hit me with an email - email@example.com - telling me a bit more about what you plan to do. Would love to see if we'd be a good fit.

Which browser are you using? We still have a bit of issues with Firefox (we suggest chrome).

What did you do with the login/demo? Clicked "Try Demo" and and signed up in the upper right corner?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very similar to what I am currently working on, so I would say: superb idea ;) I would obviously love to ear updates along the way about how you guys are doing...

The thing that is mainly taking me aback is your pricing. I had settled on a much higher one (kind of)... That would be one-time 300$ for publication and 5% revenue but without the cap. Although the cap is amazing for big publishers I would avoid it for the complexity added to the pricing model.

There is great value there why is you guys's pricing so low? Is it because all the features are not yet developed, and are you then planning on increasing the pricing in the future? What are you thoughts about the pricing suggested above?

(we used to sell copies of famous editing software thrice the price to individuals. Things are sure evolving!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Because we can would be the simple answer.

The reason we have the cap on the percentages, is that we don't want to scare guys who already have a semi-established magazine away. I think even 5% (no cap) would scare a lot of more established magazines away. But that's just my guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey this is really cool. At APhotoFolio ([http://aphotofolio.com](http://aphotofolio.com)) we've been tossing around similar ideas (we have a lot of magazine connections). I really like your approach.

I would highly suggest adding either PDF support or a way to import from a blog's RSS feed. That will let you target smaller publishers.

Also, have you seen kits like this? [http://www.binpress.com/app/ipad- newsstand-pdf-starter-kit/1...](http://www.binpress.com/app/ipad-newsstand- pdf-starter-kit/1271)

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been thinking about that. Think the whole technical side will become very clumsy and cumbersome, very fast, if we add RSS support. Can see where you are coming from with that idea though.

We're not going to support PDF's either. We're not planning to at least. Seems like the result looks and feels clumsy. There are also solutions for that out there now (as you linked to).

The problem with those kits, is that you still have to deal with all the technical stuff yourself. Setting up a server of some sort, opening a developer account, handling Apple certificates and so on. In other words, you will most likely still need an iOS dev, even though you bought the kit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really nice site and execution.

One of the real challenges with Newsstand apps is the conversion of users (downloaded the app) to paying subscribers (monthly, annually). I've seen conversion rates as low as 1% (not including churn) for some very established publications.

So the challenge isn't just getting the eyeballs, its keeping and charging them to make a business. There are some techniques you can use that make an impact.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool concept. I never really used Newsstand and I also didn't like that you couldn't remove it (although that's gonna change.) I think this could be an awesome tool to compete with publications like Flipboard especially if there is revenue tied to the model. The only challenge is getting those first users because I've never met one person with an iPhone that uses Newsstand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Joe

CTO and co-founder of Uninkd here...

What did you mean by "You couldn't remove it"?

We know the whole situation with newsstand, but magazines like - [http://the- magazine.org](http://the-magazine.org) \- have really managed to create a good deal of subscribers.

I don't like most newsstand magazines either. Many of them seem like they have been converted from a pdf. I think we have managed to find a nice format to release your magazine on.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I meant you couldn't put Newstand in a group folder. I definitely think your publishing platform has great promise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha ok. Would be surprised if I had made an un-removeable app :-). Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Will Uninkd offer any sort of marketing capabilities?

I can see problems arising since Uninkd essentially owns the app but is licensing use of the publishing platform. This leaves the author out of the various sales details and metadata that iTunes Connect offers.

edit: I would also update your revenue calculator to factor in the various fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. We haven't looked so much into that yet, but we'd love to hear ideas.

All your issues articles, are available online via uninkd as well. So when people share an article on Facebook or Twitter, they'll share a link to the online article.

When it comes to analytics, we haven't implemented anything yet. It is something we want to do in the near future though and for now, we could give you access to and App Annie account where you can see all the analytics on the app you could wish for.

<comment><USER8> Ah, yeah, that's the dealkiller for us -- we don't want our content duplicated online. Too bad, we were looking at it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Code is not written in stone. Let us know what you're needs are and we'll see what we can do.

We are still developing the product and we have been thinking about making it optional.

Hit me with an email if you want to tell me more about what you need and how we could accommodate what you do - firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER9> Sounds like adding a 'publish articles online?' control might be worth it!

<comment><USER8> Yup!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a question ... are you allowed to make an app where people make in-app purchases of content, and you rev-share with the authors? Does Apple have anything in the guidelines that prevents you sharing the revenues and other people "selling" content through you?

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as Apple gets their 30%, they don't care where the money goes afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am unfamiliar with Newsstand requirements. Are there quality review guidelines like the app store?

As for payment processing, is everything published under the uninkd banner and then payments sent from there? If not, how does uninkd collect the fees?

<comment><AUTHOR> A newsstand app is very much like any other app. Expect for when it comes to quality, Apple also looks at the content of the app (the magazine itself).

You will get your very own app, but it will be published under the Uninkd banner. The publishers name is writting in very small letters though :-).

We collect all the fees and send them on to you. We'll never take more than $149.50 though.

Publishing through us might not seem like a perfect solution for some, but it ensures that we can update and add new features very easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are you publishing all these apps under one dev account? Because Apple have known to ban this practice in the past as they want the account owner to be the person responsible for the content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. We have looked into that and as long as you provide unique content in the different apps and there is a reason they can't be one app, then it should be ok.

Look at what ChowNow is doing for example: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/chownow/id553996348](https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/chownow/id553996348)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The pricing model is a bit confusing. Does the $99 fee cover just one issue or does it cover the cost to publish the app itself?

What about issues after the first one? Do they cost an additional $99 per issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

The $99 release fee is a ONE TIME FEE. You pay it once you have a magazine online and want to release it to the app store. You can release as many issues as you wish after that.

<comment><USER13> That's actually a really good deal then. Adobe charges something like $250-$500 per issue for their magazine apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> It definitely is. You should give it a go ;-).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds awesome, but it looks like we broke your site.

<comment> hex- Yep, site is down for me too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Back again. Sorry for the downtime.</comment></comment></comment>