Show HN: Free hi-resolution photos for your website. 10 new photos every 10 days - <AUTHOR> http://unsplash.com/ <comment><USER3> What the hell's happening to HN? Why so many negative put downs on pet projects? Someone just posted 10 free images for you to photoshop your startup's screenshot onto. Shut up, take it, and say thank you.

Jesus Christ! What? Your poor egos are hurt because you didn't change the world before age 25 and now have to attack everyone's pet project for not being the next flickr?

So what did you guys make? Post links please.

<comment><USER4> And down-vote them.

Honestly. Nearly every crappy comment I see, while lower on the page, is still _black_. They're sending a signal that such behavior is _acceptable_. Kill them off ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's amazing how much the title submission can influence comments.

Original title: "Hated expensive, crappy stock photos so I made this."

Current title: "Free hi-resolution photos for your website. 10 new photos every 10 days"

A lot of these comments are really negative and might be confusing to people who didn't know the original title. And frankly, when you have a title like that to start, it warrants some of the criticism.

If you just take this site for what it is, and what the new title says, then it's awesome and no one should really have a problem with someone spending their time taking great quality photos and releasing them for free.

<comment><USER6> The title is still too general, if I understand the point of these photos: They appear to be intended as splash images for app websites (I guess the first batch of 10 is for desktop apps), with the implication that you will perspective-distort a screenshot and superimpose it on one of these, using it on your home page.

It's not a bad idea. It certainly can lend a more dramatic look to a low- budget brochureware site, although were these to become popular, they'd quickly become recognizable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are millions (billions?) of stock photos in the world, and your plan is to replace all of them with 10 pictures of a MacBook Air?

Even with more pictures it's unlikely you'll beat a Creative Commons search on Flickr:

[http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=cc&ss=0&ct=0&...](http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=&l=cc&ss=0&ct=0&mt=photos&w=all&adv=1)

<comment><USER8> Why does he need to beat Flickr? Should I not open an e-commerce shop because Amazon exists?

I think this is a great idea. Why go through the hassle of selling your photos and worrying about people stealing them when you can make money on ad revenue instead?

<comment><USER9> "Should I not open an e-commerce shop because Amazon exists?" - probably not, and definitely not if you're going to only sell 10 things.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure the many thousands (millions?) of small-business online stores could have benefitted from this advice. Obviously they were mistaken in believing they could make a profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but a slight critique. There's some lens chromatic aberration in the bokeh/blur... a better lens that performs with little chroma wide open would solve it, or failing that stopping down just a couple notches down from wide open.

Yet another reasons people pay for hi-resolution high-quality photographs, or take their own. Photographs cost money because they provide value, and some random photos taken by a non-professional don't always cut it. Great of you to give it a shot and put it out there though.

<comment><USER11> I love this advice. While most commenters are addressing potential legal issues, you addressed a technical issue - the art of taking the photographs themselves. That's awesome of you. I hope to see more of this kind of advice on HN.

<comment><USER12> Technical issues are irrelevant if there are prohibitive legal issues at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the developer took MVP to the extreme.

For legal reasons it's critical to fully explain the license on the photos available for download, and the terms for anybody submitting the photos. Unfortunately it's really not enough to just say: "Free hi-resolution photos for your website."

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the comment. Looking to add something now. Apparently this is the most 'open' and least restrictive of the CC licenses: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US> but it still says we would need to attribute the author which we don't require.

<comment><USER14> There's also CC0 which puts the work into the public domain <http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Thanks. Added this text "do whatever you want" and linked to that license: <http://cl.ly/image/3J0C3L1R301B>

<comment><USER15> Thanks for putting the works into the public domain Mikael! You should link to the actual license though: <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/> Thank you again and good luck with the effort!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Those looking for stock images: google image has a creative commons filter. Trying to find free "stock images" is a road to hell. The key word is "creative commons".

<comment><USER17> Example searches for both Google Images and Flickr.

[http://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/search?as_st=y&tbm=isch&hl=en&as_q=venice&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&cr=&as_sitesearch=&safe=images&tbs=sur:fmc&biw=950&bih=979&sei=XaenUcq1MuTl0QHvoIDYDQ)

[http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=venice&l=comm&ss=0&#...</a>

<comment><USER18> how do I even find that setting in a normal images search?

I don't see it under search tools...

<comment><USER19> "Usage Rights" at the bottom of this page: <http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search>

You get there by clicking the gear icon on the right side of the image search results page; 'Advanced search' is under that. Yay for Google making one more tool more difficult interact with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You tread dangerous ground offering free images with logos and brands in them. Be careful in choosing a license.

<comment><USER21> I can't upvote this enough. The first thing that jumped out at me when I was browsing the photos is the prominent "Macbook Air" branding on the laptop. Unless you have Apple's permission to use their trademark in your work, you could be on shaky legal ground should they choose to pursue legal action against you.

There's a reason why advertisers will edit out branding of products that they happen to use in their ads. The most prominent examples I can think of are tire companies. They use recognizable luxury and sports cars to show off their tires, but, if you look closely, they've edited out the logos and nameplates of those cars. Presumably this is to legally shield themselves from those car manufacturers accusing the tire company of misusing their trademarks, or implying an endorsement where none exists. In this case, it might be wise to edit out the Macbook Air and Apple branding, so that it doesn't look like you're being endorsed or supported by Apple.

<comment><USER22> "Presumably this is to legally shield themselves from those car manufacturers accusing the tire company of misusing their trademarks"

I wouldn't assume that. It could also be simply because they don't want to give publicity to another brand. For example it's hard to believe that if Coach decided to put an ad with an Apple Macbook in it they would have an issue with that. [1]

In any case here are the Apple guidelines:

[http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual- property/guidelinesf...](http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual- property/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html)

I see nothing on this page which prohibits someone from using an Apple product in a photograph and it's almost impossible to believe that Apple could claim trademark (or even if they could would expend energy to stamp this out) over someone taking a photo of their laptop. In other words a picture of someone sitting in a coffee shop using a Macbook, iphone whatever.

[1] That said Coach is a large company and they would almost certainly be ritually correct in their approach. Done on a smaller scale the amount of care does not have to be the same.

<comment><USER20> Our local credit union was sued by the city for using a picture of a local bridge on their debit cards. The credit union owned the rights to the photograph that was provided by a local photographer. The city owned the right to pictures of the local bridge. Vicious cycle.

<comment><USER23> How does a city "own the right to pictures of the local bridge"?

<comment><USER24> This is just insane...

"However, a French court ruled, in June 1990, that a special lighting display on the tower in 1989, for the tower's 100th anniversary, was an "original visual creation" protected by copyright. The Court of Cassation, France's judicial court of last resort, upheld the ruling in March 1992.[54] The Société d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SETE) now considers any illumination of the tower to be under copyright.[55] As a result, it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in France and some other countries."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_claims)

<comment><USER25> From what I understand, they won't go after a tourist posting to Flickr, but they will go after anyone trying to sell images or use those images in a commercial way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What I surprise; HN crapping all over a show submission. Not even in a constructive form, hate for the sake of hate. Love it. Though to be fair, I'm glad you all seem to see no value in this. I'll use these and won't in turn have to replace them as they take on the ubiquity of Bootstrap

</comment><comment><USER27> Well this is great if you are looking for apple products displayed in a cafe environment with that natural wood feel. If not, I guess I'm out of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! Will add more (and different photos in the future). This was just the first batch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why do all of the photo's have Apple products in them?

I would recommend displaying the license in which these high resolution photos can be used, because "free" isn't a license.

<comment><USER29> > Why do all of the photo's have Apple products in them?

Some people believe they become better humans for using Apple products. By showing it to the world they think that other people will agree.

It's exactly like the cross.

<comment><USER30> And color me unsurprised - of course there's a Moleskine notebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nice shots, but why not just submit them to Wikimedia Commons/Flickr/etc under Creative Commons license? Much better chance of people actually finding and using them, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER32> why the hate guys? he made some good looking pictures and is offering them for free. And the top 3 comments here are people hating. Creative Commons is difficult in most stock photo use cases - there is often the requirement to display an attribution close to the picture, which would look odd in most designs. So please calm down and try to appreciate the effort.

</comment><comment><USER33> Quality + Scarcity = You get what you pay for.

If you don't want to pay the big bucks and don't use a lot of media, hire a photographer. In any large city a LF photographer post on craiglists will net you more emails then you know what to do with. If you only need a handful of shots just use one of the many "Fiver" type sites.

I don't know why this post is upvoted so high, unless your website sells macbooks, watches, or glasses of water, the premise is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER34> <http://sxc.hu> has a ton of free stock photos of varying licenses/quality. Also searching on flickr for cc'd images often will net you some good photos.

</comment><comment><USER35> Oddly, the first thing that I noticed is that the image of him typing at the keyboard has really bad chroma aberration (notice the purple around all the keys).

<comment><USER36> The photo quality would be rejected at some stock sites not just thanks to this severe chromatic aberration (try a better lens?) but also the excessive post processing causing contrast fringing, etc.

These cannot be used in commercial print for discerning customers.

I've found great results on Flickr with a Creative Commons search, and buying stock photos for commercial work is a tiny part of a print piece budget.

<comment><USER25> >> These cannot be used in commercial print for discerning customers.

Yeah, I'm not sure that's his target market. Most of the people who would use his images probably don't even know what CA is or how to spot it -- they just care about "free".

I imagine that more serious image hunters would stick with the big stock agencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe you could try turning on your screens, perhaps using a white or light blue fullscreen image so there is some kind of light reflected into the hands and objects surrounding the devices. Otherwise it will look odd when somebody photoshops a screenshot on top of the black screen.

Some of the other feedback is spot on, but I, for one, thank you for your intentions. Being thankful and polite is so underrated.

</comment><comment><USER38> The photos look amazing. May I ask what the license is on these photos?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Everything is free for commercial and personal use.

<comment><USER39> Would you mind throwing that up on the top of the page?

EDIT: Rather, making explicit that they are royalty-free images for both non- commercial and commercial use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! Working on it now. Thanks for the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is cool, good work. My startup is in the photography industry–don't worry about competing with Flickr's CC images or even microstock sites. Just focus on _"Splash images for your software/mobile startup."_ ... if anything, you're competing with the free PSDs you find on Dribbble

I have a full studio with Profoto strobes. If you need some more contributors, let me know.

Some other thoughts:

\- I think you'll grow out of Tumblr and Dropbox real quick (I'm already seeing Dropbox errors)

\- Give people an option to "buy out" an image from the set. For, say, $100 someone can license exclusively an image and it's no longer available.

\- Include some Photoshop files that place a screen shot on the image and apply the proper perspective/warping. People can then just drop in their screen shots.

Good MVP.

EDIT: Here's a quick-and-dirty example of a PSD with a "placed" screenshot that is adjusted properly to fit the screen:

<http://cloud.bigfolio.com/unsplash-1.psd>

</comment><comment><USER41> It's... just a bunch of photos of Apple products.

Not even close to a full stock photo replacement.

<comment><USER42> And the phone's not even an iPhone 5. What is this, 2011?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> 10 CC photos of an Apple laptop at the top of hacker news...

This is someone winning a bet that they could get anything to the top of hacker news somehow, right?

</comment><comment><USER44> Common, this is pure Apple dope... And how cliché! The neat and clean hacker standing straight in front of an espresso and his shiny Macbook lying a sweet wooden table...

Hacking is sooooooo cool and clean!

</comment><comment><USER45> Stock photography is way more than Apple overpriced products and shot-at-f1.4 bokeh-powered pictures.

</comment><comment><USER46> Also, Flickr has lots and lots of good quality CC and other free to use licensed photos.

<http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/>

</comment><comment><USER47> I love stuff like this - super simple solution to a common pain point.

<http://placeit.breezi.com/> is a very similar service with CC images.

<comment><USER48> This site is great. Does the image placement, and blending correclty

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Why all the hate? You guys are always telling people to launch early and at the end of the day the OP is sharing something that he created to help out his peers, for free and with the promise of more to come.. I certainly appreciate it!

edit: I see a lot of you took issue with the original title:

> "Hated expensive, crappy stock photos so I made this"

Granted, it wasn't a great title but I kind of get where he's coming from - <USER2> used to spend hours trawling through istockphoto and shutterstock for decent photographs and a lot of it matched that description.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is awesome, I've also felt the same about finding photos. I hope this changes that. Keep it up! I'll contribute when I learn some post processing so you can have more awesome photos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. We're looking for photos to add so when you're ready, you can submit them here: <http://unsplash.com/submit>

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> All of the comments here hating on the "only 10 photos on Apple" seem pretty ridiculous to me. Clearly, the author chose a theme for today and will add more non-Apple photos later.

Then again, the OP did release it right at the start, before it'll be useful to anyone, so I'm surprised it's hit the #1 spot.

Even if you do keep this pace, you'll have a grand total of 365 pictures after a year, covering something like 36 topics. Not exactly ground-breaking. It would be great if you could crowd-source and curate the best pictures.

</comment><comment><USER52> Stock photography sites are about being able to search with any keyword and come up with a photo that you can instantly use. The value is in convenience, not the photos themselves

</comment><comment><USER53> Some really good shots here, they will come in handy at some point in my current projects release span. Thanks for the free images. I don't get why everyone here is being so negative? You are getting free high quality images to use for your startups, be grateful you are getting anything at all. I know for a fact you could get money for these images on a paid stock site.

The HN community has really deteriorated in the last year or two.

</comment><comment><USER54> I think these photos are meant for designers to superimpose their designs on top of the screens? Not sure if the focus is on the objects in the images.

</comment><comment><USER55> What incentive do photographers have to submit to your site? At least on the 'majors' (istockphoto, dreamstrime, shutterstock et al) they earn something. And if you are the only one doing submissions, you can't possibly cover all categories so if I'm in search of a particular shot I am unlikely to come to your site. Not trying to be negative, just trying to understand what your plan is.

<comment><USER56> Maybe a license-enforced watermark of the photographer's name.

<comment><USER57> but then it's crappy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> My problem with stock photos is, people in them look like robots. Understandable, since they are usually not actors. Many times when they are talking, they don't look at each other but some crap object. When taking 20 variants of a scene, at least one should involve people talking with each other. That's what people usually do when they pose for a stock photo set for an hour.

</comment><comment><USER59> I like the idea but this project badly needs all legalities fixed (license is missing, there is a person but no model release, maybe more).

</comment><comment><USER60> Another site with high quality public domain photography is <http://www.pixabay.com>

</comment><comment><USER61> 10 free photos, and it's all Apple fanboy photos? Thanks anyway I guess, don't look a gift horse in the mouth :)

</comment><comment><USER62> Absolutely, definitely not, hipsters!

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny you mention. Our first idea for the domain was hipsterphotos.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Looks great, and it's an awesome idea. I'm not sure what your incentive to continue doing this will be, but please do. Also, I would much prefer quality over quantity. So, if one week you don't have time to create something great, just skip it. (My opinion of course)

</comment><comment><USER64> I initially thought it was a service to embed your app's screenshot onto any device.

Which, btw, would be awesome.

<comment><USER65> PlaceIt does just that and is awesome <http://placeit.breezi.com/>

<comment><USER64> I see. Cool idea, but would work nicer if done client-side so it could update all those images at once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Nice idea, but without a search/tagging system, how is someone supposed to find relevant images?

</comment><comment><USER67> Thank you so much for this. The pictures are beautiful, and I've used them to spiffy-up my medium profile. Just published a post with one of them as the header in "IMHO".

Again, really great work, and thank you again.

</comment><comment><USER68> Nice idea (even similar to <http://picturesdeal.com>) and very good photos kudos mikaelcho.

</comment><comment><USER69> You can still obtain some decent free stock photos on sxc.hu, although many of the searches are filled with links to premium photos.

</comment><comment><USER70> Awesome, really excited about this.

Just a thought: You should have a "tip jar" so people can show their appreciation where it counts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. Thanks for the "tip."

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Since Dropbox is 509'ing, can someone who's downloaded the photos mirror them somewhere like imgur instead?

</comment><comment><USER72> Thanks for these; iStockphoto has gotten really nasty lately (higher prices, and restrictive licenses).

</comment><comment><USER73> Why is this the top post on HN?

</comment><comment><USER74> Why not one photo a day?

<comment><USER75> Because 10 photos in 10 days sounds like more? I dunno.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Thank you for your generosity. Good luck with this project.

</comment><comment><USER77> wtf?

some1 snaps a few pics of his macbook air!

and boom is one top of the HN front page

<comment><USER63> He created something that apparently a lot of people on HN find interesting (it wouldn't be on the front page otherwise). Personally, I make iOS apps so it could be useful in the future. On top of that, anyone who gives stuff away for free that took them a measure of effort gets my attention.

Also, he had an idea and executed it and released it, so he gets points for that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> So you took a couple of pictures (that appear to be Apple ads more than anything, as an aside)? I'm sorry if this sounds negative, but I find it completely disingenuous that you denigrate an entire industry and portray a pittance of images as the salvation.

When you pay for a stock image, as an aside, a part of the value of paying is economic scarcity: That the images that you choose aren't blanketing every Wordpress site, etc.

<comment><USER79> _"I find it completely disingenuous that you denigrate an entire industry and portray a pittance of images as the salvation."_

Huh, where did he denigrate an entire industry?

Lots of hate in this thread, which I don't get. Granted, you can find a lot of free stock photos on the internet, but I find the idea of curated list of photos targeted for product landing pages valuable. This was clearly an MVP and for some reason HN audience found it valuable and voted it to the front page, but I don't see how it deserves all the negativity that is shown in many comments.

<comment><USER80> The original title said something negative about stock photos (but I can't recall exactly what).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure how it got changed but this was the original title, "Hated expensive, crappy stock photos so I made this."

<comment><USER80> The guidelines ask submissions to use the page's title. Moderators often change them to conform. <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> As somebody who did pro photography for a few years, these photos are a good example of why you should never shoot JPG, but RAW instead, and process everything in 16 bit per channel until you actually save the end result.

Your process resulted in absolutely horrible posterization, can be clearly seen on this one (display of the laptop):

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18793141/macbook-air- all...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18793141/macbook-air-all-faded- and-stuff.jpg)

<comment><USER82> :(

Error (509)

This account's public links are generating too much traffic and have been temporarily disabled!

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> 10 pictures of a macbook air gets you front-page top placement on HN.

Now that I know...</comment>


Petter's DIY Segway; not bad for 300 euros ($450)... - <AUTHOR> http://p1r.crf.nu/segway/

<comment><USER2> Considering a normal Segway costs about 4-5 times that, it's pretty impressive stuff! I'd like to know how long the batteries last/how fast it could go. Seems a lot more portable than an actual Segway as well.</comment>


TechCrunch Disrupt at it's finest: Lumier's Windows enhancement platform - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/24/lumier-adds-a-new-coat-of-paint-to-windows/

<comment><USER2> This was incredibly awkward and painful to watch. It goes to show why you should avoid buzzwords as much as you can when pitching, it just looks like you're compensating for a lacking product. Startups can learn an absolute ton from this, namely:

\- Only demo when you actually have something to demo (an animated start menu does not count).

\- Drop the buzz words, and just describe why the hell it's going to improve my life.

\- If you're going to put up a pre-launch website[1], don't just list your investors like that is some sort of indicator you'll be amazing, at least put some product information on there.

Cullen's performance here intrigued me, especially his self-noted notoriety in the Windows community. A quick Google search unearthed this: <http://www.bluescreenofdeath.org/?p=85>, where he discusses "Project Copenhagen" in 2009. It's pretty much the product they claim to be building today, but now with the backing of SV Angel and the Founders Fund. According to their website[1], "It's gonna be big. Really big.". My personal feeling is that there just isn't enough people who will go out of their way to skin their Windows PC, even if it does improve the experience.

1\. <http://lumier.com>

<comment><USER3> I agree that the actual information content in this 'pitch' is abysmal.

As for the presenters' technique, I'd like to add:

\- Speak whole sentences, and keep continuity.

\- Don't interject 'Errrrr.... So! Ehm, ..." all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is <http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/> \- how different this would be?

</comment><comment><USER5> Having both pitched, critiqued and been critiqued, seeing the range of presentation and communication skills at Disrypt NYC is very 'illuminating'. However, in addition to what has already been mentioned by olivercameron, there are couple of things that should encourage us to pause in completely dismissing lumier. Firstly, good presentations and good products are not synonymous, nor is the opposite universally true. Secondly, not having a full demo does not mean that the idea lacks value or relevance. I think the key thing here is that Cullen had difficulty articulating his vision, or the product's promise. Whether he proposes simply to skin windows (like a mac) and extend it into the cloud (like the Chrome notebook), or he envisions something else entirely, that was not made clear.

<comment><USER4> True. Google wave's presentation was one of the best I've heard. It's also an awesome technology, but as a whole it did not succeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This presentation looks like an early Mark Zuckerberg speech. Awkward and painful.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody know of a node.js hosting provider? - <AUTHOR>

I've been reading up a little on Node.js and I was just wondering if there are any hosts out there that provide preconfigured Node.js hosting options that I could just start dropping code into and playing with and load testing without messing with too much configuration.<p>My other question is, if the options for this type of hosting are few to none, do you think there is or will be a market for this type of hosting? <comment><USER2> I've been running my Node.js instances on a shared hosting account at Webfaction. Extremely stable, very easy to set up, very cheap to maintain.

It's where I test my builds of Luno, actually. (<http://github.com/ryanmcgrath/luno>)

</comment><comment><USER3> There won't be a market. Yet. It will take a lot more momentum before it happens. Ruby has Heroku and Engine Yard. But the Ruby ecosystem is _much_ larger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, after posting this I jumped on the #node.js irc and got the same response. It's too new, a lot of people are goofing off with it, checking it out and trying out different implementations and such.

I wonder if there are any production websites running on node.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not just use a cheap Linode (or slightly less cheap Slicehost if that's your thing)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I could do that pretty easily and start toying around, but I'm thinking more along the lines of setting up a hosting provider using one of the existing web frameworks for node.js (like Express, Coltrane, etc), a templating engine, and database interface. What if there were a straight forward way to say "drop your templates here, put your models here, and your javascript to interact with them here"? I'd like to get a simple blog or super light weight CRM up and running on a host somewhere and start load testing it :-p.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking along these lines as well. I was keen on Appjet and I think it would be great if that void were filled with something node.js-based. (Or maybe narwhal? Or both?)</comment>


Ask HN: How to distribute coins for new cryptocurrency without ICO or mining? - <AUTHOR> I'm developing new cryptocurrency and I don't wanna do ICO. My goal is to give 95% of all coins to as many people as I can for free on day one. I can see two options:
1) Take the last 1M active bitcoin addresses and convert them to my cryptocurrency. You just set your private key and you will own 1 coin(doesn't matter how many bitcoins you have). My code will be open-source, but still people have to write their bitcoin private key to 3rd party software, which is not great.
2) Create algorithm which will scan the network and If you open wallet It will give you 1 coin. So It will be based on unique IP addresses, which is also problem, because one person can run it on botnet or drive around city and connect on different networks(public wifi).
Do you see more options? <comment><USER2> There are lots of strategies for airdrops. Send me an email to:

"throwaway@${MY_HN_USERNAME}.com"

And I'll be happy to help.</comment>


Apple to build huge €850m 'data centre' in Ireland's fields of Athenry - <AUTHOR> http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/technology/apple-to-build-huge-850m-data-centre-in-irelands-fields-of-athenry-31014151.html <comment><USER2> Both Ireland and Denmark are notoriously "tax efficient" options in Europe. You can't really blame corporations themselves for seeking the best deal for themselves, their customers, and let's not forget the shareholders.

However the system that brings this about is of course to blame, the same system that brings sweatshops and environmental ravage; feral market capitalism.

Although it's a system that does indeed increase the overall size of the pie, it must be properly stewarded and milked (via anti-trust laws, taxation, etc, etc) to ensure that the capital owners don't run away with the whole thing leaving just crumbs for everyone else.

Unfortunately as you can see, the international environment is not ideal for providing the consistent measures really required, and companies will slip through the cracks to find the best deals for themselves, often much better than if they were under any single tax regime.

<comment><USER3> As a Dane this is the first time I've heard "Denmark" and "tax efficient" in the same sentence. Denmark is notorious for high taxes.

Right now there's a huge scandal about Danish companies that have moved to European tax havens.

<comment><USER2> [http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-billed-as-perfect-tax- haven.8...](http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-billed-as-perfect-tax- haven.8286.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's amazing that €850m project is expected to bring only 300 jobs during multiple phases of construction. Avg'd out thats nearly €3m of expenditure per employee. Nearly double Apple average earnings per employee of $2m. Impressive!

<comment><USER5> Well seeing as how it's basically a one story building filled with computers, you can assume the truly vast majority of that money is to be spent on the computers made (and generating jobs) wherever they are sourced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So Apple has built one other data center recently. Are they seeing this much growth from their video offerings to justify this?

I always thought that the primary video offering through Apple TV was NetFlix, not Apple's services.

Are these data centers to offering Video for iTunes or are they the storage for iPhoto/etc?

Or is Apple just moving off of others infrastructure to their own for efficiency sake?

What is the drivers for these huge data centers?

<comment> k-mcgrady They do a lot more in 'the cloud' than video. The entire iTunes Store, iCloud (which now lets you backup your entire photo library), Maps, streaming music (iTunes Radio and Beats Music).

<comment><USER6> I guess. I just know in my house, the downloads of Apps, Maps, and Photos are really small compared to Video -- streaming video is +90% of our house's bandwidth.

But I guess at Apple's scale Apps, Maps and Photos add up to a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kinda surprised nobody has brought up the whole Microsoft Ireland thing going on right now.

Maybe Apple sees Ireland as a privacy conscious data-haven.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hmm. This article refers to the data centre as an "Apple Factory" and misspells Tim Cook's name.

</comment><comment><USER9> So they are building a search engine?

You can see the marketing already; it'll be Apple wading in on personal profiling and data capture with shiny marketing that points the finger squarely at Google.

I suspect their search engine will be crap however, unless they are logging everything you do with your phone :-D

<comment><USER10> > You can see the marketing already; it'll be Apple wading in on personal > profiling and data capture with shiny marketing that points the finger > squarely at Google. I suspect their search engine will be crap however, > unless they are logging everything you do with your phone :-D

The difference between Apple and Google is that the former makes money by selling products and the latter makes money by providing free services, building profiles, and selling advertisements.

Even if Apple did start building profiles of users, their end goal would be to create a better user experience, get users into the Apple ecosystem, and sell them hardware. It would not be to directly make money from the search engine by building profiles and serving advertisements.

Personally, I would be completely fine with paying Apple a monthly fee for access to a fully featured search engine that doesn't profile its users.

Having said that, it's completely possible to build a good search engine without profiling users - for example, DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER11> > The difference between Apple and Google is that the former makes money by > selling products and the latter

You mean renting products. A device without root, with locked bootloader, without the ability to install any software that you wish is not really sold.

<comment><USER10> > You mean renting products.

No, I mean sold. Renting is when you no longer own a product once you stop paying for it.

I rent Netflix's service. I purchase my iPhone. Once I've paid for my iPhone, Apple won't take it back.

> A device without root, with locked bootloader, without the ability to > install any software that you wish is not really sold.

It is. It's simply less valuable to someone who wants root, an unlocked boot loader, and the ability to install any software.

Would you say you purchase the new Keurig machines or would you say you rent them?

<comment><USER11> The fact that I cannot use my iDevice at all before connecting with apple servers (on an iPhone, just because I did not had sim during first boot, I was not able to use it even as an iPod) shows who controls what the device can do. It is not you - the owner who payed for it.

> Once I've paid for my iPhone, Apple won't take it back.

But they can still wipe it remotely ...

Oh you obviously own some amount of atoms and molecules. You just don't own and control what makes your device useful or device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, I was born and raised in Athenry, so this is a very nice surprise :)

<comment><USER13> The fields there, would you say they lie low? Are they populated by small birds? b^)

<comment><USER12> Not really, it's mostly sheep and the un-employed :)

In all seriousness, it's a lovely little town, with some nice scenery and good people. This new data-centre should see at least a short-term boost to the local economy, which basically sank into a black-hole after The Collapse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can't say having a competitive tax rate doesn't bring jobs!

<comment><USER15> The double Irish isn't a competitive tax rate. It is a tax evasion scheme. Just some links I found quickly:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/ireland-still- addi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/ireland-still-addicted-to- tax-breaks.html) [http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abolition-of- double-...](http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/abolition-of-double-irish- in-budget-2015-welcomed-by-eu-tax-commissioner-1.1963188)

<comment><USER16> Actually it turns out corporations pay more tax in Ireland than they do in countries like France or Canada: [http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ireland- tax-haven-1796050-N...](http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/ireland-tax- haven-1796050-Nov2014/)

<comment><USER17> If one can get rid of the large amount of work that goes into preparing taxes, many companies would prefer a simpler system as opposed to one riddled with loopholes for things like propane and natural gas tax breaks for mint farms; I am looking at you Washington!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like an awfully large datacenter - 1.7mil sq ft? That is more than 2x (closer to 3x) the size that Google/Amazon/Microsoft build.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apple chief executive Tim Cooke?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is data centre in quotes? Is it not a real data center?

</comment><comment><USER20> This is so incredibly stupid. Latency to Ireland from all over western europe is way more than anywhere else.

Irelands tax evasion methods will not last.

<comment><USER21> Oh come on. You got stats to back that up?

Anyway. Maybe it's going to serve North America?

Here, I drew (on) a fiber-optic cable map for you: [http://imgur.com/yoEo9km](http://imgur.com/yoEo9km) (first time I've ever used imgur to make a point, heh)

Seems like this is the cable: [http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/24814-us-300m-tran...](http://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/item/24814-us-300m-transatlantic- fibre) \- that'd be the Republic's `Taoiseach' (prime minister) grabbing a photo-op there.

Here's a news report from the Irish Times about the Apple investment, don't know if it has any additional news but anyhow...: [http://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-decision-to- build...](http://www.irishtimes.com/business/apple-s-decision-to-build-in- fields-of-athenry-is-a-big-win-for-ida-ireland-1.2113919)</comment></comment>


Hacker News: DMCA - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html <comment><USER2> Is this new? Because I can't find a corresponding listing in the Copyright Office's list of service provider agents (<http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/a_agents.html>).

The reason I'm wondering is that the Copyright Office does require you to provide an email address for your designated DMCA agent, and I'd like to know how they got around that.

(The requirement for registering an agent, by the way, is 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(2).)

<comment><USER3> There's one here: <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agents/n/news_ycomb.pdf>

<comment><USER4> Is that a childs' handwriting?

<comment><USER5> It might have just been filled out on a tablet.

When I had to fill out all my job paperwork for my new job, I used pdfpen on my iPad for everything, and it looks like it was written by a toddler in crayon.

<comment><USER6> Why would you do that? I would bin any application that looked that way automatically.

<comment><USER7> Potential law suit for disability discrimination?

<comment><USER8> Or a field which requires fine motor skills.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's a good point. Some jobs have intrinsic requirements for which no reasonable adjustment can be made, and thus legal discrimination happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's just lame that a site like this could be accused of copyright infringement, unless it's a text-only post or a comment. Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal - the DMCA takedown notice should have to be directed at the linked site, not the linking site. It's not YC's job (or Google's job) to fight copyright infringement by policing their indexes.

But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.

<comment><USER10> Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. That's a copyright violation, and without a DMCA policy like this Y Combinator is by default liable for the infringement.

The DMCA policy and registered agent gives a content creator a method to notify Y Combinator of the violation so YC can take it down. How else would they know who to contact or how to protect their rights?

If a site has a proper policy and agent (and abides by the policy) it gets safe harbor - it's not liable for the infringement. It's not an unreasonable amount of effort, and the scheme is a pretty decent compromise between protecting copyright holders rights and allowing user generated content.

<comment><USER11> >Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim.

Yes, andrewljohnson agrees about that. However, his point is:

>Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal

And I have to concur. This should not be a copyright violation.

<comment><USER12> So... what of TPB? All they do is link to copyright material; none if it's hosted there.

<comment><USER13> TPB is legal. And they don't even link to copyrighted material, they link to a swarm from which you can git information on where to download copyrighted material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Times have sure changed: [http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050331050049/http://ycombinator.com/legal.html)

<comment><USER15> Not that much: <http://ycombinator.com/legal.html>

<comment><USER14> Interesting. From today's page source:

</comment></comment></comment><comment> simba-hiiipower _You may not communicate the information specified below by email._

haven't really read through a dmca policy notice (or whatever you call this) before, but is this standard practice?

i think it's a good policy as it (somewhat) raises the cost of submitting a notice, which would presumably deter overzealous lawyers and prevent some false takedowns, but given how quickly i've seen things get pulled i'd never have imagined that notices would have to be sent by any means but email..

<comment><USER16> They aren't emailing them, they are faxing them. This won't raise the cost since they accept faxes.

<comment><USER17> People in US still use faxes? Funny!

<comment><USER16> Only lawyers and realtors, from my experience

<comment><USER18> Healthcare offices as well, e.g. for requesting records, transferring records, etc.

<comment><USER19> Honestly, I don't know what terrifies me more about such businesses: storing my personal information on pieces of paper with no way to track their movement, or storing my personal information on (what is most likely) unsecured computers. They are both pretty horrific, but I think I prefer them to store it on paper if they can't/won't afford to have secure computers.

I can't count how often I've seen doctors offices use Windows 2K or XP Home Edition this year alone. Even saw a doctor use a computer after closing down "does your computer have viruses" IE popups -- and then proceeding to enter my private info into their (probably HIPAA-certified, which, at that point meant squat) patient tracking application.

Just saying that paper is not always necessarily worse than electronic records.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are we allowed to submit DMCA Counter-Notifications by email, or do we still need to use (fax or regular mail) to do so?

<comment><USER21> in bold 6 lines down. <http://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html>

try faxzero, works for me. <http://faxzero.com/>

I have never sent a dmca request to ycombinator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I sincerely hope the YC team has made sure the HN entity is legally separate from any asset-bearing entities they might have. Last thing anyone wants to happen is for you guys to get sued by some sort of errant copyright or defamation BS and have them get at any other assets you have.

DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice. I am just a dude.

</comment><comment><USER23> Link should also appear on this page:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> Usually procedures and policies are put in place because of out of ordinary incidents. Haven't seen DMCA notice from HN for the longest time and it pops up now. Can we assume someone actually tried to sue HN for copyright infringement on the user-submitted content?</comment>


Want to know what a VC term sheet looks like? Sample here. - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologystartuplaw.com/2008/01/11/a-sample-term-sheet-for-a-venture-capital-financing-in-a-technology-startup-involving-series-a-preferred-stock/

<comment><AUTHOR> An interesting read for anyone contemplating taking money. Shameless plug: if you find this confusing, I posted a thread on Sunday that provides a good way for founders to broaden their legal knowledge. Here it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110713>

</comment><comment><USER2> Is a dividend a normal thing for a term sheet? I've never really heard of that before.</comment>


Ask HN: How to determine fair salary for consulting job? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN, how would you go about determining a fair salary for a permanent position at a consulting firm? Would it be related to the hourly/daily rate they'll bill clients for your work? Some kind of salary + commission or bonus structure? None of the above? And is it normal to take travel time into consideration?<p>I've read a lot of articles on here about billing for independent consultants, but I can't seem to find anything about working for a consulting firm. This is for a small firm that serves a very niche market, so I'm not even sure where to begin looking for salaries to compare. Any help would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Independant consultants are advised to bill on _value-added_. So for example patio11 consults on how to improve the conversion rate of visitors to a site. Using his light grey arts, he can go from 2% conversion to a 4% conversion. For a site turning over 10million a year he has just made them an extra 10 million a year.

So he can charge commensurately.

The question I would ask you is how does your prospective employer charge? Are they just billing hours and charging? Are they delivering projects that have clear value outputs like patio11? Is their profit related to the number of hours you work (bums on seats), or could you do a days work and move them from 2-4% conversion as well?

Now ask how does your prospective employer make its money - usually they charge the client X and pay you .6x and pocket the difference.

Their risk is not having projects to charge X and still paying you .6X.

So - you could do three things

1\. take the usual salary of X - employee consultants tend not to get paid much differently to actual employees - so try glassdoor.

2\. Are they open to you taking on risk - that is can you get .9X for the willingness to get 0X if no projects come in the door? You are then a freelancer, and they simply find the jobs.

3\. Are you willing to take on that risk? If so you probably dont want to be an employee

<comment><USER3> _For a site turning over 10million a year he has just made them an extra 10 million a year._

Now here is my question: From what I understand consulting is different from implementation. If you go into project management and supervise the process of implementation everything can be value based.

But what happens when you stick to a classic consulting perspective i.e. leave the implementation for others to do? Meaning when patio11 would pack his bags after running through his presentation and recommendations, what is he going to bill his value on? Based on "predicted" savings/revenue?

I somewhat fear that value based consulting draws the consultant into the nitty gritty of implementation, almost becoming a project manager of his suggestions for optimizations. And if somebody else screws up along the implementation process, it is going to stick with the consultant's reputation.

Can anybody comment on that?

<comment><USER2> I do not know patio11 but I am pretty certain he does more than present and run, and so can charge more. I get the impression from his blog that it is more a case of the client committing to a certain project (ie 250k worth of developer time, plus his fees, in order to increase metric x). He leads the project, enthuses the developers, puts the charts on the wall and basically earns his keep.

Three months later they have enough of his brain cells in their heads they can wave goodbye.

Personally I would love to sit in an armchair at the Diogenes club and have people come pay me for my opinion on what they should do. If that was ever a consultants role I think it is long dead.

Yours

Mycroft

<comment><USER3> But doesn't this lead to a culture of quick fixes? Meaning no long term perspective, but just squeezing out any short term quantifiable result while completely ignoring the long term impact of that?

Just imagine what would happen if this were about customer segmentation or something like that. A super short term focus would suggest a client to drop all contracts that are relatively unprofitable, even so on the long run these are there for relationship building. That would be disastrous for gaining larger contracts as these are mostly gained through building up a reputation by fulfilling smaller, less profitable contracts. But for the consultant there would be no motivation to bother about anything that does not result in an immediate benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always examine PRECISELY how much (money), the firm in question will profit by my input. Then after nailing that down as closely to accurate as I can possibly do...I currently charge on a Contractual Basis 33 and 1/3rd percent of the ACTUAL projected profit they will make. There are the few rarest of folk that will be straight up with you and tell you EXACTLY how much your services will benefit them....tho not always dependable (even tho they will swear on a stack o Bibles and whatever else that they are being Truthful and Open with you...you cannot always count on it to be Honest. So, bottom line is; do your homework, figure out as closely as you can based on your personal knowledge of THEIR business Models as you can, and then charge accordingly....as I said before...currently my rate is 33 1/3 percent of anticipated profit.

As in ALL things, you will only get what YOU think YOU are worth....do not expect others to pay you a nickel more than what they believe YOU BELIEVE YOU are worth. Good Luck !!! Much Success.

Regards, J

<comment><USER2> so in my imaginary patio11 example above - he makes them 10million in revenue (at say 50% EBITDA), he should send in a bill for 1.66 million (5m x 1/3)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The market rate for a person with your skillset (which is only likely to include a commission or profit-share if you're expected to take responsibility for getting clients to spend more, or they can't afford to promise market rate)

The fact the firm might bill a client a large multiple of that for your time is irrelevant: they take on the risks and responsibilities associated with winning the business and overheads and probably add value to your time with some combination of reputation, proprietary data/software/methodology, other team members, training and support etc.</comment>


The Dawn of AI: How to ensure the promise outweighs the perils - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21650543-powerful-computers-will-reshape-humanitys-future-how-ensure-promise-outweighs

<comment><USER3> Let's not kid ourselves, there is simply no way to ensure the promise outweighs the perils. I'm talking about superintelligence here, not artificial general intelligence, although it's almost certain superintelligence will arrive shortly after AGI.

Anyone who is not scared shitless of what's to come simply does not truly understand what AI is capable of. If you're one of those people, do not compare AI to ANYTHING that you are familiar with today in regards to computers/software.

Superintelligent AI will be like a god that knows your inner thoughts, desires, hopes and dreams as well as nearly everyone else on earth. It will manipulate people with ease - it's not even an issue. Whatever it wants to accomplish, it will, with or without human approval.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that we are not currently ready for the arrival of superintelligence, I think it's worth emphasizing that there is time to prepare, that there is useful preparation to be done which may get things to a point where it will be safe (or at least marginally safer), and that if you _are_ feeling worried, it may be best to channel that feeling into useful action and get involved with the research!

Good places to start are the Machine Intelligence Research Institute's Research Guide ([https://intelligence.org/research- guide/](https://intelligence.org/research-guide/)), which summarizes the aspects of the problem they've worked on and think are important; and the Future of Life Institute's Research Priorities ([http://futureoflife.org/static/data/documents/research_prior...](http://futureoflife.org/static/data/documents/research_priorities.pdf)), particularly Section 3.

<comment><USER3> Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not against trying to prepare against it - perhaps we can discover a breakthrough that does defend against AI (although I'm very doubtful in the long-term). It is worth a serious try though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now we are scared of something we haven't even created . We are far from real AI, but even so, how could the "interests" of a machine conflict with ours? I mean, they work with electricity, and we are hardly good sources for it. I cannot see how our future electric horses are going to be anything but useful to us. I 'd be more afraid of modified humans than computing machines.

<comment> loup-vaillant The machine does not hate you, nor does it loves you. But you are made of atoms, that it could use for something else.

\---

If you create an AI with a genuine utility function. And that AI manage to be gazillion smarter than you are (think the difference between us and chimps, only much greater). Then it is likely the AI will (i) convince you to unleash it upon the internet, (ii) become even more powerful and totally unstoppable, then (iii) accomplish whatever it was programmed to accomplished.

If the goal is to keep humans safe and happy, it might imprison everyone in playgrounds, and drug or lobotomise any unhappy people, or restraint any suicidal people. Or, if you specified "happiness" with pictures of smiling people, it might resort to facial reconstruction, or it might just tile the solar system with molecular smileys, because that maximises the "make people smile" goal much better than actually making people happy. And while we're at it, happiness isn't the only thing we care about…

If the goal is to answer some difficult math question, it could tile the planet with computer, destroying the ecosystem and all humans in it, so it can compute the answer, and display it on a screen, for nobody to see it. Or maybe you programmed it to tile the universe with paperclips, because that goal is easy to debug. Oops.

\---

As long as we're limiting ourselves to narrow AI (ordinary programs, really), we should be okay, and most of the consequences should be manageable. But as soon as we get to genuine AGI, we must worry about intelligence explosion and value alignment, so we can avoid creating a god that want something we don't.

<comment><USER6> Or we might end up with something a bit like the Culture - which is pretty much the best case scenario for humans co-existing with god-like AIs:

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

Vinge and Stross both hint at the worst cases - and they would be pretty bad, simply having using atoms re-purposed might not look that bad by comparison:

 _" There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life."_

<comment><USER7> The default outcomes are bad; Culture would be pretty great by comparison.

Worst-case scenarios are not likely for the same reasons best ones aren't - the default is AI indifference (they use you for atoms)

Since you mentioned worst, this is a must-read-classic :) [http://hermiene.net/short- stories/i_have_no_mouth.html](http://hermiene.net/short- stories/i_have_no_mouth.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This thread is identical to its parody.

Speculation about the future is fun, but I think a lot of people would be disappointed to see what AI actually looks like right now.

The talk of runaway post-singularity AI is in the same class as imagining the future after cold fusion, warp drives, and ant-gravity.

edit: anti-gravity. Though ant-gravity sounds fun too.

<comment><USER7> In the 1930s Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) repeatedly suggested, sometimes angrily, that the possibility of harnessing atomic energy was "moonshine".

The examples you mention are of things actually likely never achievable, while there is an existence proof of intelligent machines walking around everywhere.

<comment><USER8> Right! and I'm concerned about one or more of those meat machines going maniac and posing an existential threat to the rest of us. I'm much more worried about that than a descendent of Watson going all Ultron.

I'm far from a pessimist or Luddite. I'm optimistic that studying the smart meat machines can help us make better AIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an AI student, I find the entire field to be a complete misnomer insofar as its very mention sends the imaginations of lay individuals in completely unrepresentative directions. To counter this problem, and perhaps combat the propensity to publish articles with crap fearmongering clickbait titles, I propose we rename Artificial Intelligence to Stupid Mathematical Tricks With Applications. I feel the title is much more representative of the type of stuff AI researchers actually work on.

<comment><USER7> You're underestimating the field. The goal was always intelligence, and many leading researchers are pretty openly aiming for that. Stupid Mathematical Tricks are components of intelligence, and while it's true SVM with a cool new kernel is not going to take over the world, good prediction ability is something you can build on (as for example deep nets do to some extent). In the limit people should be thinking of implications of intelligent machines, not Stupid Mathematical Tricks. Whether it's an important topic at this point in the fields development is a debatable topic; timelines differ drastically among top researchers.

<comment><USER9> I have attended on many occasions top AI conferences and have spoken to more researchers than I care or could count. I can tell you there is a very little interest in "intelligent machines"[1]. Rather, everyone I have ever met works on different types of problem solving techniques. What constitutes a "problem" and what makes a successful "technique" differ wildly. Taking a step back however and analysing the field as a whole you will find one commonality: almost all the research can be described as searching and sorting: i.e. stupid mathematical tricks.

The AI of today is not so drastically different from the AI of our academic grandfathers; what's changed is our ability to scale up to larger and larger versions of the same searching and sorting problems. Certainly there are worrying implications in this; machines that are able to parse and sift through very large data sets present all kinds of headaches for privacy and safety but let's not kid oursevles: there's nothing intelligent here. Tomorrow's AI is almost certainly going to be just a better version of today's AI; i.e very fast and dumb as a bag of hammers.

[1] The exception is when researchers need to sell their wares to funding bodies and the media. It is much easier to impress upon the lay person an idea involving "intelligent machines" than it is to explain what we actually do.

<comment><USER7> I would expect to get this kind of impression from an average researcher, because that's what average researchers do (even at AI conferences). What do the top researchers think? Google paid 10M per head for DeepMind guys, explicitly working on AGI. Top researchers at FB works on specifing "Artificial tasks for artificial intelligence" ([http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2015:main#antoine_bordes](http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2015:main#antoine_bordes)), basically a better Turing metric. Schmidhuber, one of the original Deep Learning folks, [http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/) has always been very open about pursuing AGI. There is a lot of work on combining graphical models with logic, for example Pedro Domingos' work, the goal is clearly machine reasoning.

Also, I'm sympathetic to Roberto's point about how the brain works; I definitely agree that there is no magic; it might just be a few stupid mathematical tricks layered all the way down.

<comment><USER9> > I would expect to get this kind of impression from an average researcher

Not even out of the gate and already reaching for an ad-hominem. You must be fun at parties.

> What do the top researchers think?

The same thing. Except when they're in front of a camera. Then they get all stupid and start talking about machines being on the cusp of taking over. This phenomenon can be observed all the way back to the origins of AI. After the interview is over these same researchers go back into the lab and are once again searching and sorting.

> There is a lot of work on combining graphical models with logic, for example > Pedro Domingos' work, the goal is clearly machine reasoning.

I feel there is a difference between automated reasoning and intelligence. All current AI is just machines imbued with human insight and (often, especially in the most effective cases) domain-specific knowledge. These efforts manifest as search and sort techniques that allow said machines to analyse facts and propagate information in order to select from myriad possible actions. There is no intelligence here except that which we provide. It's all smoke and mirrors. We don't even know what intelligence is; how can we aspire to replicate it? AI researchers are, by-and-large, just Computer Scientists. Not biologists, not psychologists; just guys and gals working with ever more elaborate Turing Machines. The algorithms they come up with are without exception dumb dumb dumb.

> Google paid 10M per head for DeepMind guys, explicitly working on AGI

Please. DeepMind is just a startup based on (among other things) David Silver's work into reinforcement learning. Google is not interested in these guys because they want intelligent machines; they just want automatons to better sift through reams of data in order to make recommendations and better sell you crap you do not need.

<comment><USER7> > Not even out of the gate and already reaching for an ad-hominem. You must be > fun at parties.

I think you misunderstood; I did not mean you're an average researcher - <USER2> have no idea - but unless you hang our with hotshots at AI/ML conferences (which is a bit of a club) you're hanging out with average researchers.

<comment><USER9> Do I really need to start mentioning names and h-indexes for you to take my point seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _humans have been creating autonomous entities with superhuman capacities and unaligned interests for some time. Government bureaucracies, markets and armies: all can do things which unaided, unorganised humans cannot. All need autonomy to function, all can take on life of their own and all can do great harm if not set up in a just manner and governed by laws and regulations._

This. Superhuman intelligences already exist, they just depend less on us every day.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't neccessary call all of them "superhuman", their intelligence is usually not the identifying characteristic. But they're definitely alien minds, pursuing their own alien values, thinking in an alien way.

<comment><USER12> > _their intelligence is usually not the identifying characteristic_

Intelligence in this context in the sense of a means to perpetuate their existance and get more power, not as some moral characteristic. Besides they can employ tons of Nobel prize winners (e.g. Feynman and co in the Manhatan project), and build crazily-smart stuff (for _their_ purposes).

<comment><USER11> I didn't mean intelligence as moral characteristic - the observation is that many bureaucracies tend to do a lot of dumb, self-defeating things. As alien minds, they're not very smart - just smart enough to be dangerous.

<comment><USER12> > _the observation is that many bureaucracies tend to do a lot of dumb, self- > defeating things_

Isn't that true for people too, that can otherwise be extremely intelligent? From being terrible at social life, to sabotaging their careers and so on?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I suppose it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Posted this on HN a couple days ago but I don't think anyone saw it: [http://justinpaulson.com/posts/0bb97847af7e2123f6173361](http://justinpaulson.com/posts/0bb97847af7e2123f6173361)

tl;dr: Robots and AI will not be built as separate entities, but will instead be incorporated into our own bodies. They will not be the superhumans, we will be.

<comment><USER14> That's the future I'd hope for, too (ignoring having the currently powerful become inconceivably more powerful and the havoc that could cause), and I don't feel myself qualified to properly evaluate the likelihood of each scenario.

My main disagreement is the phrasing of "create an intelligence with free will." I tend to disagree with the notion of "free will" being like this Spark of Life that is placed into a system to imbue it with a new nature. A system doesn't need to have free will to be dangerous. There could be AI systems that are built not to be independent in determining goals (which would, as you say, be less practical to humans), but to be very good at figuring out how to achieve the goal its creators gave it. Even the simplest systems we have now involve determining sub-goals to achieve in order to achieve the main goal.

The problem arises when it turns out that the creators of a system gave it, just slightly, the wrong goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"Crucially, this capacity is narrow and specific. Today's AI produces the semblance of intelligence through brute number-crunching force, without any great interest in approximating how minds equip humans with autonomy, interests and desires."

I'm not sure why we would want AI to have autonomy, interest, and desire? It's almost like solving a problem that doesn't exist.

<comment><USER14> Phrasing it this way leads to the implication of autonomy, interest, and desire being like these modular things, sort of Aristotelian "Things" that are bestowed upon minds, like Star Trek's Data putting in "the Emotion Chip."

If you build a drone navigation system that can reroute based on weather conditions rather than being a manually human-guided remote control bot, you've given it some degree of "Autonomy." Give it a goal (to get to a destination with minimal fuel costs) and now it has some limited "Desire." Give its camera face processing algorithms to deliver an item to a specific person? Now there's "Interest."

These aren't going to be characteristics that we plug into a program in a Frankenstein-like manner, but just actions and behaviors, rooted in practical code, that will from the outside resemble things we call autonomy etc. when talking about each other.

<comment><USER15> I see what point you are trying to make and would just say I'm not worried about plugging these things into a drone delivering parcels while rerouting through difficult weather.

However, I still don't see why you would want to take it beyond that. I imagine that some people do in fact want to put in "the Emotion Chip," and I still have the same question; why? I don't think human desire is the same as goal setting or that facial recognition is the same as interest. That's good programming, what I'm talking about is something different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That guys head isn't compatible with the latest c-type connector. That upgrades gonna cost him.</comment>


Buzzwords and the Paradox of Credibility - <AUTHOR> http://blog.crowdspring.com/2010/06/small-business-startup-marketing-buzzwords/

<comment><USER2> Curious about the upvotes on this one - I found it lacking much meaningful content.

The only redeeming value was that the author arguably misused the buzzword 'paradox' in the title.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Please allow ourselves to introduce ... ourselves"_

Upvoted for the funny Austin Powers reference.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Buzzwords do for exposure what paparazzi do for the reach and famous.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'Magical' and 'revolutionary' aren't buzzwords. Buzzwords are widely used, or even _over_ used, and tend to imply some specific (often technical) meaning, though that meaning drifts with abuse over time. 'Open' or 'standards-based' or 'enterprise-grade security' are buzzwords.

'Magical' and 'revolutionary' are not widely used in competitive product descriptions, and don't have specific meanings -- they're intentionally vague. They're meant as, and understood as, evocative puffery.</comment>