Software That Predicts a Neighborhood's Wealth from Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/penny-an-ai-that-predicts-a-neighborhoods-wealth-from-space/ <comment><USER2> The helipad issue seems pretty intuitive. Personal helipads are so rare that the system probably hasn't seen enough to "learn" that this is a sign of extreme wealth. Virtually all the helipads the system has seen are probably on the roofs of hospitals and inside airports, neither of which is particularly associated with "high income".

<comment><USER3> I have a different take. If I'm affluent I don't want helicopters landing around my house, too much noise harshing my mellow. So I use my affluence to influence the government to not allow the permits necessary.

<comment><USER4> Ever heard of the Hamptons? It's not about your own personal taste, wealthy people actually do have helipads.

<comment><USER3> Probably less of an issue for neighbors when the estates are expansive, but dropping a helipad on (as the article suggests) trump tower or amongst the brownstones of NY is probably going to meet some resistance.

I did spend a few min panning around the Hamptons in Google maps and didn't see any helipads. Not saying they don't exist, just not ubiquitous even amount the wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is this software supposed to be used for? On their site ([http://penny.digitalglobe.com](http://penny.digitalglobe.com)) they only say they're "hoping to spark a conversation". If it's a critical conversation they're hoping to spark, I wish they would follow projects like White Collar Risk Zones ([https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com](https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com)) and go further into absurdity to make it clear what they're saying. As it is, it's too easy for someone confused about what "AI" can do to take this seriously as a tool for urban planning.

<comment><USER6> its a PR ploy to sell data to corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> User changes small element of '100% confident' data-set followed by a regression to the mean. This sounds like an over-fitted model to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> There is a startup in Montreal that estimates how much solar roof installation will cost based on house photos from space.

<comment><USER9> Wasn't that Google though?

<comment><USER10> Yea project Sunroof: [https://www.google.com/get/sunroof](https://www.google.com/get/sunroof)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Next: a software that predicts a person's wealth by looking at them.

<comment><USER12> The household wealth gap between races is _much_ bigger than the income gap in the US. You could probably get statistically significant results by just basing it on skin tone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Preoccupation with how _wealthy_ others are is not a good use of your time.

 _Different types of objects and shapes seem to be highly correlated with different income levels. For example, lower income areas tend to have baseball diamonds, parking lots, and large similarly shaped buildings (such as housing projects). In middle income areas we see more single family homes and apartment buildings. Higher income areas tend to have greener spaces, tall shiny buildings, and single family homes with lush backyards._

I live within 2 miles of a baseball diamond. What do you think of me now?

<comment><USER14> Of course it's a good use of time. Knowing where the wealth is, and who controls it, is a prerequisite for forcing it to be shared more equitably.

<comment><USER15> Can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but "forcing" the wealth to be "shared more equitably" is a surefire way to generate capital flight. That's alright if your goal is to turn the United States into a giant Venezuela with nukes.

<comment><USER16> Do you believe rich people will leave the United States if we taxed them more heavily?

<comment><USER17> Such a thing is only logical for them, yes.

<comment><USER16> I think most of them enjoy the US beyond just our tax rates but if they really are pure citizens of the world who have no interest in the US, then let them leave and raise those tax rates.

<comment><USER18> They'd be able to move their capital outside the country while still residing inside it, and enjoying the other U.S. benefits.

Assuming those with the ability to move their wealth overseas would do so, the people most affected by substantially raising taxes would be those without enough wealth to move it... those outside the top 1%, 0.1%.. whatever super- rich people the policy aims to target.

Although it isn't ideal that the wealthy can 'shop around' for the most tax- friendly nations, it certainly happens, and Switzerland is a fine example of that capital flight in effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> highly likely an overfitted model if such a small change can drive such large variation

</comment><comment><USER20> _News Flash_ : computer judges books by their cover, yields opinions regarding stereotypes developed by using statistical methods and correlation as an indicator of likely causation.

 _Up Next_ : How to use fMRI images of fish brains to determine sentience.</comment>


Is Computer Science a science? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/PUBS/CACMcols/cacmApr05.pdf

<comment><USER2> "In a sample of 400 computer science papers published before 1995, Walter Tichy found that approximately 50% of those proposing models or hypotheses did not test them [12]. In other fields of science the fraction of papers with untested hypotheses was about 10%. Tichy concluded that our failure to test more allowed many unsound ideas to be tried in practice and lowered the credibility of our field as a science."

That's quite an important observation for further development of computer science.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I agree with the author's conclusion, which seems to be that the newer generations of computer scientists are going to identify less with its separate sub-domains (science, math, engineering) than with the discipline as a sort of whole. Typically, I'd expect that undergraduates and graduates going through universities are going to have their perception of the field shaped heavily by which of the three sub-domains the university faculty most closely identifies with. A lot of the major computer science schools do have a greater emphasis in certain areas--for instance, I went to Cornell, and you could really feel how much emphasis the school placed on theory (i.e. mathematics), and that's shaped my impression of what CS really is.

</comment><comment><USER4> No.

Science is the study of the natural world and his argument that CS meets this requirement fails. Think about mathematics. Just because mathematicians are interested in, say, calculus, and calculus can be used to model physical phenomena, does not make mathematics a science. CS can be a tool used for science, just like math, but it in itself is not a science.

<comment><USER5> Mathematics and CS are formal sciences, which observe and study theoretical ideas to discover new truths.

Biology and physics are natural sciences, which observe and study the natural world to discover models of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Funny. My advisor always wants a simulation to back up anything I do. Then again, any sort of scientific method isn't used until you do research. It's not taught as a way of operations in classes directly.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have only worked in machine learning sub-domain of computer science.

People in this field are all about testing hypotheses. This make sense of course, considering it's data and result oriented.

</comment><comment><USER8> Totally agree with the conclusions: "The science paradigm has not been part of the mainstream perception of computer science. But soon it will be."

GNE, BS in Computer Science</comment>


Show HN: Server monitoring & Real-time Website Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://vanillamonitor.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Please note it's a prototype, I spent only about a month putting in together. It is, however, fully functional prototype, and I would very appreciate if you could give it a go and let me know your thoughts.

Please use demo with password "pokemon" to log in.

Thanks for all of your feedback.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please note that the dashboard is a work in progress - essentially the only holdup is that they cost close to $2,000 to license. :(

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would anyone be brave enough to actually try and use it? Once again, it's a prototype only.

<comment><USER2> I would doubt it. Quickly scanning the front page doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the application is either stable or would actually work.

For example: the only link that works in the nab bar is the "login" link. The demo link results in a page error "'AnonymousUser' object has no attribute 'backend'" while the other links do nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, yeah. It's a technology prototype. Sweet wrap and a marketing blah is only about to come.. There's really no complexity there. I disabled DEMO link because I do not want random people to access it. You need to use login "demo" with password "pokemon" to access the app...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Finish off the application, or at-least get it to a public beta stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is becoming sort of an issue. I need to put in JS, which I need to outsource, and graphics, which I need to outsource, and the money are super tight right now.. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> None of the links work.

<comment><AUTHOR> You need to use login "demo" with password "pokemon" to log in..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 502 Bad Gateway</comment>


Marvell Announces ThunderX3: 96 Cores, 384 Thread 3rd Gen Arm Server Processor - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15621/marvell-announces-thunderx3-96-cores-384-thread-3rd-gen-arm-server-processor <comment><USER2> It's nice to see the use of 4-way SMT on Arm in the server space. The recent news of Ampere Computing (headed by Intel's former president) launching their 80 core data-center focused Arm processor was great too, however both their processor and AWS's Arm based Graviton processor attempt to seemingly keep things more power efficient and/or "secure" [0] by doing away with hyper- threading. While it can be argued that the security model is better without SMT as Intel's vulnerabilities from recent years show, I have a slight hunch (Disclaimer: I have no expertise in chip design whatsoever!) that given the out-of-order execution [1] of instructions in all modern processors that there is potentially a fair bit of unused instructions capacity in each clock cycle without SMT, even for server workloads.

[0] [https://www.eetimes.com/startup-ampere-attacks-intels- streng...](https://www.eetimes.com/startup-ampere-attacks-intels-strength/)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of- order_execution](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution)

<comment><AUTHOR> The OS can always mitigate that by avoiding running threads with different security contexts on the same core.</comment></comment>


India watchdog reviewing antitrust allegations against Facebook's WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-whatsapp-antitrust-exclusive/exclusive-india-watchdog-reviewing-antitrust-allegations-against-facebooks-whatsapp-sources-idUSKBN22R2XQ <comment><AUTHOR> 'The Competition Commission of India (CCI) is reviewing a complaint filed in mid-March alleging that WhatsApp was bundling its digital payment facility within its messaging app, allowing it to abuse its market position and penetrate India's booming digital payments market, the sources said.'

Original title was too long. It was:

Exclusive: India watchdog reviewing antitrust allegations against Facebook's WhatsApp - sources</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Wealth-o-Meter - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/05/18/follow-mark-zuckerbergs-worth-in-real-time/

<comment><USER2> It must be kind of crazy for him to watch the stock price move. Imagine seeing your net worth go up and down by millions of dollars almost every second.</comment>


How to use Resque Scheduler - <AUTHOR> http://blog.redistogo.com/2010/08/05/resque-scheduler/

<comment><USER3> Regarding Redis-To-Go: what am I missing about their pricing scheme? $110/mo for 500 megs? A 500M Slicehost slice, which (it seems to me) is 2 commands (curl and make) away from being a redis server, is $38/mo. And it can do other things!

(Seriously: what am I missing?)

<comment><USER4> Don't forget:

      - Installing the OS
      - Securing the server
      - Setting up backups
      - <USER2>

None of these are particularly hard, it just depends on how much you value your time to set them up.

<comment><USER3> I wondered whether that was the value prop, because 80% of that stuff you get "for free" with Slicehost and Linode. Backups, maybe?</comment></comment></comment>


Comparison of image formats - <AUTHOR> http://wyohknott.github.io/image-formats-comparison/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've made this a while ago and updated it this week. It's a site to showcase various image codecs and still image from video codecs. You can compare codecs at various quality on a subset of 50 pictures from Xiph. Some typical metrics are also presented (VMAF, PSNR-HVS-M, Y-SSIM, RGB-SSIM, MS-SSIM).

My hope is that one of the next-gen video codec will be picked up as a new format to replace the venerable JPEG.</comment>


Calysto: A Scheme kernel for Jupyter that can use Python libraries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Calysto/calysto_scheme <comment><USER2> > Currently a couple of magnitudes slower than Python

The video was nice. Scheme/Lisps already have great debugging. I am wondering where this is headed. What are the gains aside from Scheme and its syntax? The opensourcing of Chez Scheme has me preoccupied for now. Put Chez Scheme in Jupyter!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really fun idea. Not sure what

> complete Scheme functions (one can fall back to Python for now)

in the planned work means and the link to the course website is broken, but interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER4> Which RnRS is this designed for if any?</comment>


Using OpenType variable fonts in CSS - <AUTHOR> https://advent2017.digitpaint.nl/19/ <comment><USER2> It doesn't seem to be working under macOS Safari (Version 11.0.2 (13604.4.7.1.3)).</comment>


Start Up Chile Entrepreneur Responds to Investor's Departure - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/la/2011/12/27/start-up-chile-entrepreneur-responds-to-investors-departure/?awesm=tnw.to_1CNiK&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=Spreadus&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Start-Up%20Chile%20Entrepreneur%20Responds%20to%20Investors%20Departure <comment><USER2> _One of the many things entrepreneurs must do is to show your supporters that you will do whatever it takes to succeed._

I really hate the "entrepreneurs/founders will do whatever it takes to succeed" trite phrase. It's common on developer and founder blogs and should be retired due to overuse. Does anyone think that founders and startup people will actually, for example, sacrifice their firstborn child or amputate their arm to make it in the business world?

Now, obviously the author is engaging in hyperbole, and doesn't really think people should sacrifice "whatever it takes." But that just goes toward my point. We know it's unnecessary to say it to prove we're serious, so why don't we stop using it and replace it with real-life language based on commitment, intelligence, trust, and hard work?

</comment><comment><USER3> As being the same round with Rich, I couldn't be agreed more with him.

</comment><comment><USER4> The VC should have really figured out his commitment to Chile before announcing to the world that he's starting a $40 million fund.

But then again how do you raise a $40 million fund without screaming it at the top of your lungs. He probably knew going in that he was risking his reputation by doing this.

<comment><USER5> Agree that he should have figured out his commitment to Chile. Since funds usually run on 10 years, doesn't that imply a 10+ year commitment from him?

As I commented on the other thread discussing his interview, I don't get how a foreigner with NO solid local business connections expected to raise $40 million within 6 months in a conservative environment. The govt inviting you does not mean keys to the banks/the wealthy's pockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> interesting point of view.</comment>


Should your robot driver kill you to save a child's life? - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/should-your-robot-driver-kill-you-to-save-a-childs-life-29926 <comment><USER2> This debate has come up a few times now and I doubt it reflects the reality of what responses to such situations can be practically expressed in code using today's computers and languages anyway (in the absence of some AI that can make 'ethical' decisions).

I suspect the best collision avoidance algorithm in such scenarios will simply be decelerate as quickly as possible whilst maintaining course. Then a 'best effort' at avoiding a collision can be seen to have been made, and perhaps the pedestrian will survive their injuries. This is what a human driver would have most likely done?

What if the child/small adult (can the computer vision practically recognise the difference) is themselves quite 'evil' (again, another value judgement) and is running in front of robot cars in such situations on purpose?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's best we start considering these things _before_ we get computers good enough to make it an issue, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It is a stupid question, but not even because people, even children, should be responsible of their acts, but because a driver should expect such occurences.

This is the reason why speed limits are very low in residential and school areas: because it is expected that there are people on the side walks that _could_ possibly change direction, move on the road, and even perhaps stop (fall) there.

Similarly, when driving in the mountains or in the Arizona desert, you might go fast when there are nobody around, but if you see somebody walking on the side, you must take into account his possible changes of dirrection, and therefore slow down. Around highways, there are often fences to prevent people to come close, so that cars may go fast. Also, you don't go as fast when there is fog than when the sky is clear: you have to expect more unknowns when there is fog than when it's clear.

Now, I'm not saying that human drivers apply speed limits (either legal or moral (ie. "bayesian")) often or at all, but they should.

I'm saying that a robotic car will have much less difficulties in controlling scientifically its speed, taking into account the presence of people, animals and other mobile objects surrounding it, their velocities and their possible direction changes. Therefore a "tunnel" situation as described in that articule won't occur (unless there's a bug in the software).

</comment><comment><USER4> This is easy to answer and quite frankly a stupid question.

Why should you have to pay for someone else's mistake? If a child runs out in front of a car, it is either their fault or their guardian's fault for allowing them to run into traffic. It's tragic, but to suggest the driver should give up their life for someone else's mistake is ridiculous.

Who in their right mind would get inside a car that is programmed to commit suicide in certain "ethical" circumstances?

<comment><USER5> > Who in their right mind would get inside a car that is programmed to commit > suicide in certain "ethical" circumstances?

I suspect there are various classes of people that would choose this option. Believers of certain religions, old/hill people with high morals or strictly pragmatic, aspirant suicides, risk lovers, etc...

Not for me, though :-)

<comment><USER6> The point is, even if people do buy such a car, they don't often come back for a second car. The business will run out of customers very quickly. You do the math.

<comment><USER7> > The point is, even if people do buy such a car, they don't often come back > for a second car. The business will run out of customers very quickly.

This seems to assume that the frequency with which drivers (automated or otherwise) are faced with "someone is going to die, you or the other person, and which one depends on your driving choices" situations is very high.

This is not consistent with the evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Allowing designers to pick the outcome of tunnel-like problems treats those > dilemmas as if they must have a "right" answer that can be selected and > applied in all similar situations [...] it becomes clear that there are > certain deeply personal moral questions that will arise with autonomous cars > that ought to be answered by drivers.

The answer is not as clear-cut as the example would suggest. First, it's not zero-sum since computer control results in more safety overall. The computer has more information available (e.g. sensor readings on all sides) and can react much faster (eliminating the ~1.5 s typical reaction time [1]). The driver and the kid in the road will both survive more often this way.

Second, drivers can be pretty selfish. E.g. everyday behaviors like cutting people off or running red lights offer little benefit for the cost of endangering everyone on the road. How many would simply set it to "always drive over the kid in the tunnel"?

[1] [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/STHF0203_1#.U9wU2...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/STHF0203_1#.U9wU2fldXzg)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, drivers are selfish; humans are frequently selfish.

For example, if a truck driver has the option of hitting another car head-on, or running off the road and just wreaking the truck, they will frequently hit the car.

The reason being, if there's no evidence of a second vehicle in the accident, they will end up being responsible for the loss of the cargo, and lose their job.

Plus, the truck driver will typically survive a head-on with a car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd say that in the example given in the article, the best decision would be to slam into the side of the tunnel instead of hitting the child. It makes no difference the age of the child, since if they are laying in the road, there's a high likelihood that they will be killed and moderate likelihood that you' be deflected enough to be seriously injured or killed as well by choosing the 'through the living being route' since that particular case is fraught with uncertainty, the most logical choice is a controlled crash. Since cars these days have airbags and crumple zones and such things, it's hard to hit an inanimate object and get killed in such a vehicle. And with car insurance, and unlawful death lawsuits in practice, it seems the financially responsible choice is to have a controlled crash. So to all those saying there is no 'right' answer, you are generalizing the problem too much. The question as stated in the article, not generalized to all situations, but to the situation as it was stated, seems clear.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's also a bit of a red haring. While it could happen in very rare instances, the whole benefit of the automated car is that the number accidents will drop off a cliff. When nearly every car on the road is automated then there simply won't be many accidents any more.

<comment><USER12> It's not necessarily that simple.

You're assuming the best possible implementation of autonomous car will be the one which actually arrives on the roads. Given the daunting complexity necessary to even make that feasible,it would surely be the first system of its kind and scale without a considerable number of flaws due to bad programming, exploits, cost cutting, unforseen consequences, etc.

The more 'intelligent' and 'autonomous' the cars are, and the more of them there are on the road, the more likely it is systemic problems will arise. This is not a criticism of the idea of autonomous cars but just an inevitable result of complex systems interacting. Just because they're computers, doesn't mean they won't fail, or that accidents will be _so_ rare as to be not worth considering. Airplanes almost never crash now compared to a century ago, but that doesn't make worrying about air safety, or the affect of automation on pilot competence in the event that manual control becomes necessary, a red herring.

<comment><USER3> There's only two systemic problems in the current road system that I know of: traffic jams, and the fact that increasing road capacity increases road traffic (and therefore doesn't reduce the potential for traffic jams). They're entirely due to the behavior of human drivers (given the surrounding circumstances in part too, of course).

Are other systemic problematic effects known in the current road transportation system? Notably, are there any systemic effects that lead to increasing speed and accidents, rather than traffic jams (not that traffic jams don't cause accidents, since human drivers are running too fast, not expecting jams).

It seems obvious that the two systemic problems above, won't occur with intercommunicating robotic cars.

It would be "fun" to discover new systemic epiphenomenon with robotic cars, but I would expect them to be more discreet and even less "catastrophic".

<comment><USER12> You also have to consider potential problems with the cars themselves, in terms of engineering and software, as well as potential issues with networking, weather, inaccurate satellite data, etc. It would be a vastly more interconnected and complex system than the one which already exists.

<comment><USER10> But you're also seemingly forgetting that cars these days are very safe, with airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, roll bars... this whole 'should it kill you' is not likely an issue these days. Look at all those idiots who crashed their cars going 80mph and lived to tell about it (tesla for example). The point being that if a car controlled the crash, your chances of survival are far better. So it's an option of killing someone or having a controlled crash, not 'kill or be killed'.

<comment><USER12> Ok, that's fair. The chances of autonomous cars ever being built with fewer safety features than currently exist is pretty much nil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting question:

Looking at Issac Amimov's laws, I believe that the 0th law would cause the child to die because that outcome reasonably reduces the number of humans potentially harmed in the situation (as driving into the wall may cause unpredictable results including additional harm to humans).

Looking at the EPRSC / AHRC principles of robotics, I believe the child would die because robots are artifacts and should not invoke an emotional response.

See: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_robotics](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_robotics)

<comment><USER12> It might be worth mentioning that Asimov's Three Laws were plot devices meant to be broken by robot antagonists for the sake of drama, and that actually taking them seriously as a framework for AI ethics is probably a fool's errand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe we'll get ethical settings in our robots so, like a human driver today, we get to decide if we'll kill the kid or kill ourselves. But the problem with letting user have too many options is that we might end up at a less than optimal global outcome due to prisoner's dilemma-type choices. There could be more people killed, worse traffic, worse energy efficiency, etc. because users choose the selfishly beneficial options.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Unless instructed to by me, _my_ robot driver should never leave the road unless it is to _save_ me, not kill me. The decision should be to drive the car into the area that causes the occupants the least harm.

<comment><USER15> I've never understood this logic, especially since you're deciding on the rule for _all cars_ , not just your car. Shouldn't you prefer that the rule be to minimize the number of people harmed, since this is the option which (when taken over all cars) will minimize the likelihood of _you_ being harmed?

<comment> jack-r-abbit I actually put emphasis on "my" for a reason. I was talking about _my_ robot driver. You should be free to instruct _your_ robot driver how ever you wish.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, sure, but now suppose that you're going to decide the rule that _everyone 's_ car will follow. Are you still going to choose what amounts to defecting in the prisoner's dilemma?

Put it another way: this is one of those very rare occasion where collective cooperation (a la prisoner's dilemma) is possible. Shouldn't that... be the thing we want?

<comment> jack-r-abbit I would not be deciding that rule for everyone's car. I would provide a checkbox (or what ever way there would be to customize a car's options). I'm a pretty big believer in user settings. I wish more software gave users more options on some of the stuff some random developer thought was best.

<comment><USER15> The thing is, in the absence of collective action people choose to defect in prisoner's dilemmas. Giving people the option results in everyone defecting. Having it be preset results in everyone cooperating. Everyone cooperating is a better outcome for _everyone_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Simple. Whatever will cost the insurance company less!</comment>