Looking for a co-founder? post here (3 rules apply) - <AUTHOR> Ok with all the cofounder finding going on. I thought i'd start a useful thread.
There are 3 rules
1. Put in your location in the comments 2. If there is someone in your local area looking for a cofounder meet them this weekend.
3. Not too much spiel - keep it fairly enigmatic
Three rules. Go forth and conquer.. <comment><USER2> I know pg says you need co-founders, but I have a feeling that partnering with a _stranger_ will hurt your chances of success more than it will help. I remember Jessica saying a major cause of death in startups was founder disputes (link: [http://www.grid7.com/archives/189_podcast-28-jessica- livings...](http://www.grid7.com/archives/189_podcast-28-jessica-livingston- of-y-combinator.html), around the 14 minute mark).

<comment><USER3> I co-founded our startup after reading an ad for a hacker and convincing the other guy to take me on as a partner instead of employee - we met for the first time 2 years ago to talk about the startup that would be, today we've got an angel-backed team. Meet new people and start work with them - it can work, you'll soon find out if it doesn't. Keep in mind looking for people with complimentary qualities though - I put our success 100% down to how we each have a responsibility for well-defined "halves" of the company - me product & tech, him sales, marketing, community, legal, biz dev etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> right on. Jesse's excuses above can be attributed to a lack of balls in changing his situation.

Don't sit on the fence. Make stuff happen. This president's day weekend is finding a cofounder weekend...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay, I'll start. I'm 24 and living in San Francisco. I'm a programmer but would like to find another technical person to work with. I have three ideas for a startup:

1\. An easy software solution for multivariate testing web pages. 2\. A bid management tool for PPC. I'm thinking something like www.efrontier.com, but for small and medium sized businesses. 3\. Totally different from the top two, but I'm interested in a personalized (or well-balanced) news site. Findory would be the best comparison. Of course, it failed, so I am a little bit hesitant and I think relying on advertising as your only revenue source is very risky. If you're interested in the latest technology that could be used in this area, check out <http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/sh.pdf>

My email address is in my profile.

<comment><USER5> _My email address is in my profile._

The email address in your profile is only visible to you and the YC management.

<comment><USER6> Then, when editing one's HN profile, it could indicate it better (whether the info is shown publicly or not).

<comment><USER7> But News.YC prides itself on having both a terrible user interface and a terrible user experience.

What kind of site calls a feature "noprocrast" without giving any detailed information about what it does? Only news.yc!

\--edit

I wonder why I am being modded down. Maybe I said it too sarcastically. News.YC really does have a terrible interface. Look at the account settings page-- imagine yourself as a user who has never been there before. It's confusing and poorly documented. I love this site for the content and the simplicity, but Paul Graham is a programmer and spent very little time on the user experience, which makes sense. I don't blame him.

But it is still a bad interface. I'm pretty sure 99% of people who fill out the "email" field expect their email to somehow be visible to other users. It's right next to another field that IS visible.

<comment><USER8> Shiny graphics do not a user experience make.

<comment><USER7> Of course not. Craigslist has an amazing masterpiece of an interface and uses no icons/pictures at all.

<comment><USER8> There seems to be some disagreement over what we mean by 'user interface' and 'user experience'. Those who downmodded you probably thought 'I like using YC news just fine thanks.'

When I hit the little ycn button on my dash, i'm immediately greeted with a list of interesting articles, flanked by comments that are worth reading. That's the most important part of the user experience for us, so here we stay.

<comment><USER7> Ah. The content here is great. I'm not denying that YC is awesome.

It just has a sub-par interface. Compared to other sites, it has a terrible UI. It's not very user friendly, and it could be much more so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a technology entrepreneur in Provo, UT. I'm starting a "master-mind" group here with other entrepreneurs, business owners, or executives of start-up's. I want to keep it to under 10 people for now. If you're not familiar with the master-mind concept, it's where entrepreneurs sit down all (in our case Saturday once a month) day and brainstorm on eachothers' business ideas.

John D. Rockefeller attributed most of his success to his frequent master-mind meetings with other business owners. In fact, 90% of what we now know as Rockefeller's achievements came after Thomas Edison joined his master-mind group.

If you are interested, send me an email and include your phone number: email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> so you aren't looking for a cofounder? Then i don't think this is relevant on this thread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I live in southeast New Hampshire, about an hour and a half drive from Boston. I'm interested in meeting people who are involved with the intersection of political activism and technology. I'm working on a web application to help grassroots groups run letter writing campaigns and various other activities. I enjoy working with Ruby and Rails and also run the NHRuby.org user group. Drop me a line at sgarman at zenlinux dot com.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. México. Will move as needed to get text twext.

2\. Este fin de semana en San Miguel de Allende. La semana que entra en México, D.F. para <http://consol.org.mx>, buscando programador para <http://twext.com/gig>

3\. <http://twext.com/overview> wants great hacker to add value to unicode texts by formatting them twext. Why? So we can more easily learn natural language like Español, Français, Português, etc etc. So we can communicate better. Twext text works on computers and prints on paper. Today, a billion people are learning English.

a.) [http://olpcnews.com/content/localization/learning_language.h...](http://olpcnews.com/content/localization/learning_language.html)

b.) <http://more.read.fm/more_language#why.3F>

4\. Spiel: Lisp?

</comment><comment><USER12> Hailing from State College, PA (home of Penn State) here. Working on an app that aims to be a one-stop shop for open source learning: a cross between Wikipedia (for students) and SourceForge (for teachers); with courses, lectures, classes, and tutorials that anyone can create, edit and use.

Unfortunately, I was an absolute noob when I came up with the idea ~8 months ago, so I am learning as I go along (ironically, what I really need is something like ezLearnz to help accelerate my learning). As such, progress is slower than I expected; I hoped to have launched ezLearnz by February, but I still have some development to do. Hopefully, the launch will occur within a week, give or take a few days, at <http://beta.ezlearnz.com> . I'm developing in RoR, so a RoR developer would be ideal.

My contact details are in my (public) profile.

</comment><comment><USER13> Santa Monica, CA.

If you are creating or have a nice idea for a client based on the webdav protocal (web-based or desktop), we would be interested to work with you. We have the server implemented already which works with existing clients and developing other clients

</comment><comment><USER14> Looking for a Lead Developer for the coolest new music site. We're 2 fun, music obsessed girls looking for the right engineer to make our great idea a reality. We're located in San Francisco. email rose at imthemusic dot com

</comment><comment><USER15> Three liberating real-world app ideas on the table. Atlanta, 30.Two successful ventures under belt. Looking for young-ish, VP of Engineering to partner / co- found / code third.

<comment><USER16> "Real-world app ideas"

Elaborate?

<comment><USER15> "Real world" is probably better described as tools & apps that will dramatically change the way non-technical people do business. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER17> oh my

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I live on the Maine/NH/Mass border area about an hour north of Boston. A Ruby developer. Lots of ideas, in various prototype stages. Looking to take some time off of freelancing and focus on one of them with 1-2 other people for a few months.

Not looking for an immediate cofounder as much as just other local entrepreneurs with moxy to meetup with from time to time, exchange ideas and skills. If things click, we can go from there...

</comment><comment><USER16> 24 living in Atlanta. Working on an accounting suite for small businesses called Aloe. Very very raw pre-alpha quality build up at <http://aloe- acct.com>

Looking for someone who can kick ass and take names. A Rails developer would be great, but I'm also looking for someone who has business chops and a good understanding of accounting principles.

<comment><USER19> I've been working on a similar concept on and off for almost a year. It's on the shelf right now, but I wouldn't mind talking. I've done a lot of research into Oracle and Peoplesoft and (to a lesser degree) Peachtree and Quick Books. If nothing else, I could share some insights on database schema, etc. tl @nospam@ onlyshallow.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Switzerland, Luxembourg or inbetween ;)

25, university degree, looking for a cofounder with experience in natural language processing and clustering of documents (like <http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~hinton/absps/sh.pdf> someone else posted below). Preferentially Java. Idea is blog search related.

<comment><USER21> I am in Munich and would be interested to meet.

<comment><USER22> And I'm in Innsbruck. I'll remember to look you up if I'm in Munich again - feel free to come down here to visit some time for day of hiking or skiing or something.

bluelu - where in .ch? I am in Zurich sort of regularly on business these days.

<comment><USER20> I live in Zurich. Maybe we can meet for a dring sometime soon. I will contact both of you.

<comment><USER22> I guess so, because you don't have any information at all in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hi all,

Ok, I'm not looking for a cofounder, but rather a lead developer to help commercialize our software. We are a funded startup company in Salt Lake City, UT. If interested, you can see our Craigslist ad at: <http://saltlakecity.craigslist.org/sof/576377282.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> Wade Meredith, 26, Kansas City

Graphic design, GUI, CSS+HTML, SEO, Blogging, Viral Marketing

wademeredith.com <\---portfolio site/contact me here.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm in Palo Alto, California. I'm 24, I've been running my company for 10 years, and I'm looking for someone who knows how to sell the products I already have to people. Or, if you'd like to help code new ones, that would be cool, too.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not exactly looking for a co-founder but I'm looking to meet smart people with interesting ideas. I like working on interesting projects whether it's my idea or someone else's. I'm located in Chicago (for now).

<comment><USER27> Milwaukee, WI - We will be at techcocktail 7, you should come find us. we want to meet people that like to work on fun projects.

<comment><USER28> I'll be there too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> While I'm not sure how well HN works as a co-founder-finder (confoundit), I'll test the waters. :P

19 living in Santa Clarita, CA (just north of Los Angeles). Contact info, as well as stuff I've done is available in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1 man band in Tampa. Wouldn't mind teaming with a LAMP / AJAX rock star. Here's what I'm doing...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=114568>

<comment><USER31> Do you need a drummer?

<comment><USER32> Do you play?

<comment><USER31> Lately, just Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I'll pick up a decent electronic kit one of these days though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks like a lot of people are simply interested in meeting other hackers in their area, whether looking for co-founders or not. Maybe that should be part of the site at this point.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why must someone meet with the person who posted that same weekend?

<comment><USER34> Just what I was about to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was posted at the start of the weekend. Some people are already getting together.

Just imagine what would happen if you left this for next weekend. And then felt a bit lazy, and put it off for another few days. Then didn't bother meeting up at all. Chatted over IM, got offended by something someone said because they were nervous and then never met at all.

Momentum breeds momentum. People have a huge inertia to changing their situation.

If you want to stay how you are, then do it. Everyone around you will be finding great people to work with and moving on.

<comment><USER34> More tough for some of us who are broke and have no car to do this all within one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I need a person into writing copy. If you like to write articles, sales text, web page copy please let me know. Click on "gscott" to see what I am doing and where it is going.

<comment><AUTHOR> what city are you in?

<comment><USER35> San Diego, California.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm in the Los Angeles area. Mainly looking for an interface graphics designer, but anyone else could be interesting. Doing work in Seaside. phil at dizm.com

</comment><comment><USER37> I am going to be in Leeds, UK in 2 months time working on a p2p database/webserver. If you are interested, around the UK, and know Java, let me know!

<comment><USER38> Pretzel - I'd be interested in meeting up. Graduated from Leeds last summer, and I've been scrambling round in the startup world since.

Anyone else from the UK, let me know. The Songkick guys held a UK hackers meetup last year, so we're probably due for another one soon. Maybe we could do one in Stratford-Upon-Avon?!

<comment><USER39> Theres BarCamp Brighton in a few weeks which will be attended by a load of smart hackers. I suggest you check it out if looking for a cofounder: <http://www.barcampbrighton.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am not exactly looking for a co-founder right now but I'd definitely like to make friends with ppl with startuppy interests.

Location: Seattle, WA.

(Proximity not a requirement)

</comment><comment><USER41> If anyone in western Canada (Calgary, Alberta) would like to toss around some ideas send me an email (see profile).

</comment><comment><USER42> i'm a programmer fresh out of college in bergen, norway (planning to relocate to boston or bay area). i'm 34, and i'm building a neural network to do speech to text. i need another programmer, preferrably someone with more experience than myself, especially with browsers and low-level signal processing.

<comment><USER11> speech to text interests me because SLS (same language subtitling) now helps many in india learn to read..

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/same-language- subtitl...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/same-language- subtitling.html)

synxi theory: with tools to easily sync/caption youtube, kaltura, etc, we can make a fun way to learn/teach each other language, (ie engelsk, spansk, norsk, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> New York, NY - doesn't have to be a co-founder, just always happy to meet more smart people.

email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER44> It's nice to make friends but this isn't how you start up companies

<comment><USER30> From the responses on this page you appear to be correct.

What would you suggest?

<comment><USER44> The pairings that are made today would be best to apply for future cycles later in the year. Most people here you talk to will at best end up as an employee in your eyes, it's going to be hard to treat them as equals when most people are just throwing out soft skills they want filled.

My partner and I have known each other since high school but he went off to college while I went into the military. After reconnecting we've been working on small projects on and off for the past couple cycles to learn each others quirks, styles, and most importantly trust.

And after attending our 5 year high school reunion it's really surprising that people we haven't talked to in awhile turned out to be doing very similar tech things as well, even if they're not in the area. It surely doesn't hurt to look up Facebook some old friends and see what they're doing or what they're working on. Maybe some hate big corporate culture as much as we all do here.

A better way would be for people to list out their work experiences or market they're analyzing for their startup.

For example, one of the failed ideas I was researching for was event planning and building an evite competitor. After 4 months I dropped it but I've kept plenty of notes about trends, other websites, feature lists, specs, and so forth. If anyone wants to discuss it feel free to get in touch with me at email@example.com. I also worked at a big corporation working with CMS tools, search tools, publication, enterprise software for PLM processes. If you want to build software to optimize those fields, again, get in touch with me.

Likewise my current idea is dealing with Flash video and Flex environment, and accessibility. If anyone has experience with that, please email me.

Start emailing people and sharing with them your ideas for feedback, then ask them for another referral to someone else you can talk to until you've literally have no one left to talk to. I've been keeping track of all my conversations and people of interest in iCal and 37s Highrise and building my business network. I'm also inviting local people to lunch to pick their brains.

But it's completely youthful naivety to think this is the right way to cofound a business together.

<comment><USER30> Thanks. Already been doing some of what you suggest. This just looked like an interesting thread.

In the meantime, back to work.

<comment><USER44> I've even got you stored in my little database as the ERP guy

<comment><USER30> Thanks. I never thought of describing myself that way, but who knows, maybe I can find 2 chicks who dig it.

<comment><USER40> They will, when you get acquired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Miami, FL... 25. Doing hardware stuff...

</comment><comment><USER39> sharpshoot: What's the reasoning behind Rule 3: 'Keep it enigmatic'?

I'm in Bristol, UK if anyone wishes to get in touch.

<comment><USER46> Guessing: you have to be serious enough about actually co-founding something that you're willing to meet people in person to get opportunities.</comment></comment>


There is any way to help people by-pass Internet shut-down in Egypt? - <AUTHOR>

"NET WITHOUT BORDERS"
I was wondering... does somebody know an easy way to stablish within the Egiptian domain a proxy server to restablish connection to the rest of the world... independant from the ISPs.
I'm thinking, this kind of communications shut-down is not new (Iran, North Korea, China, Myanmar), and even in the states some people want to create a "shut-down internet" button.
We have to figure out some way to protect access and neutrality to the net; for this kind of political crisis, and for natural disasters... (just remembering that for Chile's last 8.8 earthquake, the net came down because of some fiber-optics cut, and the only communication working were landlines and SMSs)
EDIT1: Egypt can use this number for dial up: +33172890150 (login 'toto' password 'toto') - thanks to a French ISP (FDN). Via @ioerror <comment><AUTHOR> EDIT2: [http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/0025210/Egypt-Cuts-the- Ne...](http://slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/0025210/Egypt-Cuts-the-Net-Net- Fights-Back)</comment>


Oracle says trial wasn't fair, it should have known about Google Play for Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/at-hearing-oracle-complains-of-tainted-trial-against-google/ <comment><USER2> _" Android is doing this using Java code," said Hurst._

I thought the whole point is that Android _doesn 't_ use Java code and that APIs are not considered code.</comment>


Analyst: Apple to release 'closed' Netbook with iPhone-esque App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.last100.com/2008/12/16/analyst-apple-to-release-closed-netbook-with-iphone-esque-app-store/

<comment><USER2> <http://daringfireball.net/2008/12/apple_netbooks_eh>

Gruber does a pretty good job of calling this one what it is: bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably not. Do people really want to carry around something that's not pocket-sized and can't run general purpose software? Probably not. Do developers want to write an iPhone app AND an app for one of these? Probably not.

With no software, this won't work.

Besides, why pay the Apple tax when all you need is a web browser anyway?

<comment><USER4> I can't think of a better time to pay a premium for excellence in user interface design than when my physical user interface is constrained.

$1M/day in sales at the iPhone app store (august data) suggests people want more than a web browser on small devices.

I don't think Apple would sell a "badly wounded MacBook", I think they'd sell a "premium communications solution"... either way it would be the same hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> analyst, n. : one who speaks from his ass

Look, it's very simple: iPod Touch. Sure, it isn't a "netbook", but it is a relatively cheap device running a stripped-down Mac OS X optimized for a smaller screen and "cloud computing" without cannibalizing higher-end sales, while having an ecosystem of third-party apps though an Apple-controlled store. Can I have this guy's job now?

Why would Apple choose to further fragment it's product line by entering a segment that their CEO has specifically said they aren't going to enter, when they could just continue selling devices with much of the same functionality in a market where they have no significant competition? Because of a larger screen and a keyboard? Oh please.

It probably behooves the larger PC OEMs to get on the bandwagon because they compete much more directly with ASUS, et al. in that they sell systems that run the same software, but meanwhile, Apple is selling scores of perfectly capable network computers to people who still think they're buying a music player or a cell phone.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If Apple markets a Netbook-type appliance the way it knows how, developers will jump on board. That's just how it works.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not make a docking station for the iphone. (I saw it on a blog a while ago but I think it was just photoshopped or something)

So it's a screen and a keyboard, and your iphone pops in somewhere for the guts of the computer. You even use the iPhone screen as the touch mouse. I bet people might pay 300 or even 400 for that.

<comment><USER5> I think what you saw was a patent application, and while the drawings were of a laptop-sized device fitting into an iMac-sized device, an iPhone-scale system would be more likely to see the light of day.

I'm wouldn't hold my breath, though. How large a display can the iPhone/iPod drive? How to justify the cost for something that is not a primary computer? What happens to your phone functionality? What about the accelerometer? What about rotation, as most apps are designed for vertical orientation? Wouldn't using the mouse as an input device be redundant? Would emulating touch control with the mouse (like the simulator) be adequate? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just add Bluetooth HID support and hang a magnifying glass in front of it? Etc, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm tired of all these apple netbook rumors.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am almost certain Zittrain had prophecised an extension of the tethered iphone model to the desktop. Intresting turn of events if it comes to pass.</comment>


The Risky Business of Hiring Stars - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2004/05/the-risky-business-of-hiring-stars/ar/1

<comment><USER2> Stock analysts, programmers, same problem :-) The money quote is this one ... _" Top performers who join new companies find that the transitions they must make are tougher than they had anticipated. When a star tries to learn about the procedures, personalities, relationships, and subcultures of the organization, he is handicapped by the attitudes of his new colleagues."_</comment>


Arthur Ganson's Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/Sculptures.html

<comment><USER2> Go see these in person at the MIT museum if you ever get the chance. They also have a nice collection of holograms.

</comment><comment><USER3> His TED talk explaining motivations and methods, etc., is worth a watch: [http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculptur...](http://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_ganson_makes_moving_sculpture.html)</comment>


Deep Learning for Compilers - <AUTHOR> https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/36866 <comment> 0-_-0 I long thought that compilers are an area where deep learning could make a huge difference, with dynamic compiler construction you could even do a hardware architecture search to find HW and instructions that is efficient _after_ compiler optimisations, but I guess that step is sill a few years down the line. It might turn out that moving complexity to the compiler this way (instead of complex branch perdictors in HW) is the better choice.

</comment><comment><USER2> A past discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18748193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18748193)

<comment><USER3> This is the PhD dissertation of one of the authors of that article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm concerned because (1) when deep learning fails, it tends to fail in very weird ways and (2) current deep learning techniques tend largely to be black boxes.

So you could end up with a compiler that largely works, but occasionally generates incorrect code, and if it does, there is no "underlying reason" for the code generation error, and you may not even be able to extract a small reproducible case, because the error may only appear when compiling the whole original compilation unit.

<comment><USER5> Modern optimizing compilers are already effective black boxes with massive "surface area complexity" that fail in strange ways and have bugs. That they have heuristics written by humans doesn't necessarily mean they're explicable. None of that is new, honestly. You can find lots of bugs with already existing tools.

The paper in question also uses DL for two things that have nothing to do with optimization, benchmark generation and fuzzing (which actually make existing compilers _more robust_ ), and the third technique which does learn optimization heuristics (between domains, even!) but it comes across as trivially deterministic. There is nothing to suggest that, say, deep learning cost models for a compiler will "magically generate invalid code" anymore than a compiler today already will. Furthermore, in this case the model isn't doing semantic translation between the input domain and output domain, it's rather answering queries like "is this better on a GPU or CPU" or "What is the best granularity to do this parallel task" i.e. it is constrained to a problem that is highly dimensional and variable, but in a sense has no impact on the outward semantics. This is how many such approaches work: they do not use models to "generate semantically equivalent results", but instead use them to replace existing oracles that answer questions a compiler already had to ask: "Is representation A cheaper than representation B, in this context?" is a very different problem than "Magically generate programs equivalent to A." The question is then whether your hand-written oracle is better than a machine learned one.

The problem you're imagining, I suspect, is that the system will hit strange "performance cliffs" where one tiny tweak to the source will magically tank your performance, similar to adversarial approaches. But this is already the case today; writing highly performance sensitive code is largely a dance with the devil and you have to be working in tandem with the compiler constantly. On the other hand, "high level optimization" like choosing workload granularity is still understood rather poorly, I think. I don't think it's immediately clear if the current way we do things is better or not. Compilers make many, many individual decisions that are "locally optimal" without necessarily getting global optimums.

Much of this can be said of SQL optimizers, which have very similar problems and followed a similar history (complex, hand-written heuristic-based optimizers vs cost models combined with searching the problem space.) In a similar vein I suspect an approach like this could be very powerful when combined with designs like equality saturation, which would effectively make a modern compiler look like an advanced, global cost optimizer in a SQL database.

I suggest you try actually reading the paper. It's pretty interesting.

<comment><USER4> > Modern optimizing compilers are already effective black boxes

Not the way DL models are. You can step through a forest of switch / if statements. You can even step through something like a lex / yacc state table, as unpleasant as that prospect is. You cannot meaningfully step through an algorithm that passes your data through a series of multiplications with large floating point matrices.

> The paper in question also uses DL for two things that have nothing to do > with optimization, benchmark generation and fuzzing

I agree, those two applications seem unobjectionable.

> "Is representation A cheaper than representation B, in this context?" is a > very different problem than "Magically generate programs equivalent to A."

Agreed. I was more concerned about the latter application (and some other commenters in this discussion apparently had the same expectation).

> one tiny tweak to the source will magically tank your performance [...] But > this is already the case today

No the same way, I suspect. A DL model could, for instance, tank your performance because of the way a particular variable is _named_ because of some spurious correlation it learned from its training set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A github crawler I cobbled together back in '16 can be trivially modified to scrape compiler code that could be used to train such DL models.

[https://github.com/DataMeta/GithubSourceCrawler](https://github.com/DataMeta/GithubSourceCrawler)

</comment><comment><USER7> ML would certainly help compilers. Some problems like register allocation is NP-complete. ML with a large training data set could probably do a good job in optimization.

</comment><comment><USER8> Already being used at the chip level, e.g. for branch prediction.

</comment><comment><USER9> deep learning systems are evolving toward similar architectures as compilers (front/back ends, etc) too. Interesting edge to watch

</comment><comment><USER10> Where is the code?

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/chriscummins/phd](https://github.com/chriscummins/phd)

<comment><USER10> Starred. Will I ever return? Who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> wouldn't this affect reproducible builds ?

<comment><USER11> Author here. In the sense that a trained neural net produces the same output from the same input, this is deterministic. But I don't think that's what you're getting at. Where it gets interesting is if we inserted a feedback loop (such as FDO) so that the compiler could fine tune itself on past decisions. In that case, the build would still be deterministic, but the compiler would keep changing, invalidating the build cache.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Play Online Chess on the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.freechess.club/play <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

I made this web app to play online chess on FICS — one of the oldest internet chess server out there. FICS (the free alternative to ICC) has been around since 1995 and has a community of over 800,000 registered users. FICS offers a ton of invaluable chess resources including support for a wide variety of awesome desktop chess interfaces. What's been lacking for a while is a fast and sleek modern web interface (think Lichess or chess.com) to access FICS from within the browser, and The Free Chess Club steps in to fill that need.

</comment><comment><USER2> Seems like lichess.com is crushing FICS as in users are creating new accounts there and is only missing bughouse.</comment>


Elon Musk Wants to Clear Up a Few Things - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-clear-things/story?id=30978448

<comment><USER2> That doesn't really answer much. Is he claiming the email is out of context or simply fabricated? Either one sounds a bit bullshitty to me.</comment>


Googie Architecture, an Art Form Worth Saving (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://allthatsinteresting.com/googie-architecture <comment><USER3> There's a town in New Jersey called Wildwoods trying to keep the "doo-wop" culture alive in their 50s boardwalk area, which incorporates some of the Googie architecture. For example here's the local Wawa gas station: [https://goo.gl/maps/rue4PAJ5b8hdC1kW9](https://goo.gl/maps/rue4PAJ5b8hdC1kW9)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never heard of Googie architecture, I always thought it was just called space-age modern. I have always found it very interesting, now that I know what it is called I can appreciate it more. Sadly we recently lost a movie theatre that was built in this style, it was in disrepair and nobody that wanted to keep it had the means to preserve it.

<comment><USER5> I never had a name for it, I called it Jetsons architecture. Most often I'd see it in some car washes on the el Camino and the Boulevard Cafe[1] in Daly City, for example.

[1][https://theboulevardcafe.com/gallery/](https://theboulevardcafe.com/gallery/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a actually a pretty good self-guided tour for Googie architecture in and around Los Angeles, California:

[https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw- googie18-2008may18-sto...](https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw- googie18-2008may18-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Much of the architecture of this style is lost because at its peak, it was used for diners, roadside motels, and the like. When the land got too valuable, those sorts of businesses would just get plowed under.

</comment><comment><USER8> Related example: [https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/08/denver-historic- build...](https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/08/denver-historic-building- googie-architecture-diner-landmark/595786/)

<comment><USER9> I'm going to say something that I hate myself for even as I type it: maybe historic building status would actually be a _good_ place to use crowdfunding. If enough people want a building to be protected, then they should put their money where their mouths are and pool up enough to outbid the developer - <USER2> way the building owner doesn't get shafted _and_ the preservationists get their way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's moved to Asia. Changi airport, Singapore.

<comment><USER11> If you mean this building: [https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/jewel- changi-airpo...](https://www.safdiearchitects.com/projects/jewel-changi- airport) then I disagree. That structure couldn't have been achieved with the technology of the Googie era. It's a "high-tech" structure as far as stylistic categorization goes.

It _is_ a bit of a retro design, but it looks back to the scifi environments, megastructures and geodesic domes of the early 70s rather than the stiffer, simpler shapes of Googie.

You could argue that it's what futuristic architecture looks like now, which is probably fair. That doesn't make it a form of Googie.

<comment><USER10> The TWA Flight Center at JFK (1962) is considered "Googie", at least by Wikipedia.[1] That was achieved with the technology of the Googie era. So was the "Theme Building" at LAX (1961) [2]. Both are buildings with vast, swooping curves and exuberant design, like Changi's terminal.

Both had problems in the era of TSA. TWA failed, and JetBlue has the TWA terminal now. The huge wings are gone, but now it has 20 security lanes, a "monument to human throughput". The LAX Theme Building has never been very useful; it's had a restaurant inside, but few went there post 9/11, because it's outside security and you'd have to go through screening again.

By the late 1960s, big clear-span roofs like the Dulles terminal and the Astrodome were going up. The technical problems had been solved. A bit after the original Googie era, though.

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

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

<comment><USER11> The architecturally significant part of the TWA terminal is now a hotel: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Hotel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Hotel).

As Wikipedia says, it "straddles" various styles including Googie. I don't think a pure Googie building could be so prestigious. The typical Googie structure is low tech and relatively low cost, "flashy and vernacular" as Wikipedia says. Once you start dealing with an architect like Saarinen (TWA) or Pereira (Theme Building) there is something a bit more sophisticated and expensive going on. Those prestigious buildings don't really epitomize the style, even if we consider them to express some aspects of it in retrospect. Googie has more to do with diners, jukebokes and the fins on a car than with "serious" architecture.

The Changi building really couldn't have been built in the 60s. It's one of those load-bearing triangulated structures with a large number of glazing components of different dimensions. It is much simpler, without CAD, to make a smooth reinforced concrete dome/cantilever like the TWA building, or an arch like the Theme Building. Triangulated high-tech building skins like the one on the Gherkin in London (and Changi) are extremely expensive because of the complexity and the need to custom manufacture each component. There is a fetishization of that complexity (it's the main driver of it) in contrast to the more sculptural preoccupations that are evident in the TWA terminal. Saarinen was moulding concrete (not really a Googie concept) and Safdie is blowing bubbles of super high-tech geometry...

<comment><USER10> _There is a fetishization of that complexity (it 's the main driver of it) in contrast to the more sculptural preoccupations that are evident in the TWA terminal._

Yes. Fortunately, Frank Gehry's worst excesses seem to be behind him.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On the hunt for a mystery planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/on-the-hunt-for-a-mystery-planet-1.19565?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews <comment><USER2> The idea of another large planet in our solar system is exciting but could someone more knowledgable clear something up? Do astronomers expect that there might be more large undiscovered planets or is the prediction of this most recent one considered a fluke?

<comment><USER3> I'm not an astronomer, so don't take this as gospel, but I believe that large undiscovered planets are expected to be rare. Mainly because they would have had to form in the inner solar system (where all the matter was) and then somehow flung into the outer reaches of the solar system (perhaps via a major collision).

Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1633/](https://xkcd.com/1633/)</comment></comment>


What do you expect and want from the new macbook pros? - <AUTHOR> New macbook pros are long overdue. What do you expect from them and with what would you be satisfied? Here is my list : -14inch OLED 4k screen but not larger than current 13inch pro. -Quad core in smaller screen macbook pro -Descrete graphics as option in smaller screen macbook pro OR/AND option to work with externa graphic card housing like Razor Blade Stealth -Better wifi -Some USB3 compatible ports, no USB-C only -if they introduce that OLED touch function bar, I want to have f1-f12 keys working as before because I want to feel the click when I touch them and use them while programming. -no touch screen please <comment><USER2> \- 15.6" high-resolution OLED screen (but a 13.3" equivalent, due to a thinner bezel)

\- 32GB+ RAM

\- Best Intel multi-core processor

\- Mag-safe adapter (or wireless charging), rather than USB-C

\- 180+ degree swivel

\- __Fingerprint ( "Touch ID") sensor __

\- 24+ hour battery life (that is, I charge the laptop while I 'm sleeping, wake up, use it all day and all night, then set it to charge and go to bed. 9am wake up and 2am bedtime = 17 hours. That is, 17 hours of continued use, with lulls throughout at the end of which I will not get a "low battery" warning. So 18 hours to be safe, or at least 12 real hours if 18 is too much)

\- Something to make wireless headphones commonplace

\- Touchscreen (would give up for something better)

\- Continued presence of solid unibody design, backlit keyboard, great touchpad, etc

\- Not normally particular about GPU, but as it speeds up the training time of machine learning algorithms, I'm suddenly all for having a decent one (though not so much that I'd jump to getting a heavy, clunky, and ugly "gamer laptop")</comment>


They Shoot Browsers, Don't They? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/theyshootbrowsers <comment><USER2> IE's got a pretty big browser share, most of it from people who aren't savvy enough to understand why all of a sudden on Tuesday morning their favorite website looks broken when it was fine Monday night.

I don't think it's arrogance to look out for your userbase.</comment>


Bomb Details Emerge in Boston Inquiry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/us/officials-investigate-boston-explosions.html?hp

<comment><USER2> I hope justice is served soon. And more than that, those who were injured recover sooner. I really liked the atlantic news article, that terror is about being terrified, we need to keep calm, and stay tight. __ Prayers from a Indian Muslim

</comment><comment><USER3> How did they make the "pressure cookers" go off only 15 seconds apart?

</comment><comment><USER4> the use of the term "pressure cooker" seems somewhat unfortunate after i just finished reading this: <http://what-if.xkcd.com/40/>

<comment><USER5> That XKCD is creative, I guess, but you don't have to get creative for a steam boiler to be dangerous. This just happened 10 days ago [http://www.wmur.com/news/nh-news/3-UNH-students-burned- from-...](http://www.wmur.com/news/nh-news/3-UNH-students-burned-from-burst- boiler-pipe/-/9857858/19647770/-/11lujfl/-/index.html)</comment></comment>


Using loaded dice to cheat at Settlers of Catan, and p-values to avoid suspicion - <AUTHOR> https://izbicki.me/blog/how-to-cheat-at-settlers-of-catan-by-loading-the-dice-and-prove-it-with-p-values.html <comment><USER2> Very nice hack and analysis thereof.

I do take issue with this statement, though, in particular the part highlighted (by me):

> "it's impossible for your opponents to scientifically prove that you're > cheating. _This impossibility is due to methodological defects in the > current state of scientific practice_ , and we'll highlight some ongoing > work to fix these defects."

The impossibility is not due to methodological defects in the current state of scientific practice. It's intrinsic to the world. If you cheat only a bit, and only rarely, it might be impossible to detect it statistically.

Of course, there are problems with the current state of scientific practice and the mindless application of statistics (particularly the 5% significance level). The replicability crisis in psychology comes to mind.

However, I think statistics is unfairly maligned here. Statistics mostly delivers on its promise, it just promises less than what some people think.

The world is messy, and statistics can help us to make sense of it, but it can only do so much. In particular, it's not magic. You need many observations to make statistical statements, and more observations to make more precise statements (or statements at a higher significance level). That's intrinsic to how the world is. It's not a problem with "methodological defects in the current state of scientific practice". And there aren't simple solutions "to fix these defects".

(Having said that, the article is great. Many proposals (some of them mentioned in the article), such as a standard 0.5% significance level, more Bayes, awareness of power in addition to significance, avoiding p-hacking, etc., are important and useful steps. But they still won't allow your opponent to prove that you were cheating :-)

<comment><USER3> > The impossibility is not due to methodological defects in the current state > of scientific practice. It's intrinsic to the world. If you cheat only a > bit, and only rarely, it might be impossible to detect it statistically.

Not if you take enough samples. Just have to do it enough to reduce the noise.

But to your main point, yeah, in a game of Catan you can just get unlucky. And I think a fair amount of people claim that Catan dice aren't fair in the first place.

Also, did they test the unweighted dice? To understand if there was an inherent and unknown bias in their dice to start with? If they did, I missed that part, and they just assumed their dice were fair to begin with.

<comment><USER4> I don't think you are disagreeing with the person you are responding to. They are trying to say the problem isn't necessarily the 'scientific process', it is that if you cheat rarely enough you might not give your opponent enough samples to prove it. Your point that if you had enough samples you could prove it is actually agreeing with them.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'm definitely agreeing with the person. I was just being a little snarky at that one statement.

I am also trying to ask a question that is extremely relevant to the author's "study".

"Are the original dice fair?"

That was never asked, it was assumed. It is a pretty hefty assumption too. I think everyone that has played a game of Catan has, at some point, questioned the fairness of the dice. I'm not saying they are unfair, but because of manufacturing methods, it is quite possible to get a pair of dice with an ever so slight bias.

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS find the bias in the instruments you are using to perform an experiment. THEY ALL HAVE THEM. NEVER NEVER NEVER assume your instruments are accurate without first verifying.

<comment><USER5> > I think everyone that has played a game of Catan has, at some point, > questioned the fairness of the dice.

This is why a lot of people play with a set of 36 cards (one 2, two 3's, three 4's...one 12). There really aren't that many rolls in a game, and there's a lot of variation that may result in a 5 never coming up, which adds more chance to the game than I like. Cards mean that while the order is random, you get each number in the deck eventually.

<comment><USER3> I've never heard of anyone playing like that before actually. And it seems to completely mess with the statistical nature of the game. Even if you shuffled them each time, shuffling methods are bad and you probably wouldn't get a nice normal distribution. Which fair dice produce.

<comment><USER6> If you don't shuffle until you run out of cards, you mess with the instantaneous probability of any particular draw, but you hardcode the distribution. You are guaranteed to get the distribution you put in the deck, and I think that's a better measure of fairness than having a constant instantaneous probability.

As the deck becomes smaller, your ability to predict the next draw scales with your skill at counting cards. I think that's a good feature for a random number generator to have, as it's what allows games like poker and blackjack to be about more than simply getting lucky.

<comment><USER3> Well, I agree that a game needs to have more than luck. But something like blackjack is a horrible example because there's a lot of skill that can be applied even without counting cards. Not only that, but blackjack still has a large amount of luck involved with it even when you are highly skilled.

Personally, I find that the best games are ones that have a good balance of luck and skill. Too much luck and there is no skill, you might as well play a slot machine (some people enjoy games candy land). Too much skill, and winning distributions become too low. A highly skilled player will ALWAYS win, and creates too high of a barrier to entry (connect 4 or dots and squares are an example here). There are (a few) exceptions to the latter like Go, which has so many possible moves that you might as well have an element of randomness, but there is still a steep learning curve.

Catan is one of my favorite games introduction to Euro Games, because the learning curve is low, and there is enough luck that an intelligent novice can win. _I don 't actually believe the dice are unfair_, but the low number of rolls makes each game different. This means the skilled player needs to be highly adaptive to the changing environment.

Dice create a nice normal distribution that are independent. While over a large number of games, 6 and 8 are great choices, there will be games where you just don't do well (they are rare). By not shuffling the cards, you are creating a flat distribution and really removing the vast majority of luck in the game (you still have luck in the order of the cards, order of placement, and order of turn). You now have a dependent probability function, and I think you could make great arguments that you remove all the things that (I believe, and laid out above) make the game great. I think you could also make arguments that the setup is the most important part of the game (when your cards are dependent events). But it is a game, and these are just opinions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > To measure this bias, my wife and I spent the next 7 days rolling dice while > eating dinner.

Some people have very different relationships with their spouses than I do.

<comment><USER8> I thought that was weird as well. They only had to do like 100 rolls to have enough data to draw conclusions from.

<comment><USER9> 100 rolls is not enough. If you keep the same ratio, you can compute the p-value and I'm sure it will be way over 0.05.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The other clue players can use to detect cheating is your behaviour. They can notice that you are favouring the higher numbers. This is also what can catch people in gambling games. The betting patterns of card counters are noticeable - and the eudaemonic folks who found how to predict tilted roulette tables bet on sectors of the wheel - which again is a distinctive pattern.

So it's pretty much always those behavioural cues that other people will use to suspect cheating rather than the p-value.

<comment><USER11> If I'm playing with someone that is making AK47's into utensils, I would think twice about raising my concerns regarding the loaded dice.

Hmm the dice are behaving funny, but that's fine, everything is just fine...

[https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving- ladl...](https://izbicki.me/blog/turning-an-ak-47-into-a-serving-ladle.html)

<comment><USER12> Ah yes, the "let the Wookiee win" strategy. You lose all the games, but you do get to keep playing with both your arms.

I tried strategically throwing games a long time ago. It backfired after I conceded defeat, and rather than bask in victory, the "winning" player gave me a narrowed-eyes suspicious look and flipped over my hidden cards. They made it obvious that I would have won already if I had made the optimal play on my previous turn. She was _pissed_ , because even though she won the game, she didn't _beat me_ , because I wasn't even playing the same game as everyone else. We have some _seriously competitive_ people in my family, and we had a good argument about whether one was _required_ to make a guaranteed winning move if it was possible to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The dice should have been tested before changing them. They might haven't been perfect dice to begin with. Also the lack of automatization is disturbing. I find it shocking that no robot arm or pattern recognition was used to do the tests. Poor wife indeed! "If only my husband was a bigger geek" she must've thought.

<comment><USER14> He got his wife to do it. That's the original automation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> By this analysis, you can average between 5 and 15 more resources over the course of the game vs unloaded dice, and then goes on to show that there aren't enough dice rolls in a game to prove the dice are loaded.

The problem here is that you don't get the expected number of resources in every game, and there's no analysis of the variance. I suspect that the result of insignificance is correct, in that this "cheat" provides such a slight advantage that it won't materially affect a single game. By the time you've played enough games to reliably use the advantage, your opponents will have seen enough die rolls to show their bias.

<comment><USER16> > _By the time you 've played enough games to reliably use the advantage, your > opponents will have seen enough die rolls to show their bias._

I have a hard time believing that after 100 games someone would say "you know what, it appears to me that sixes have been rolled slightly more over the previous 100 games than I would expect" and an even harder time believing the next logical would be "you must have altered the dice!"

<comment><USER17> Looks like you only play boardgames with casuals.

<comment><USER12> If you're OP, you keep a running mental tally of other player's resource cards, so it is immediately obvious which rolls have been coming up more often than chance, and which ones have been coming up less.

There are 21 different ways to load 2 dice with one weighted face each. Here's a table showing which rolls are advantaged or disadvantaged, according to which faces are weighted.

           02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
      1,1   <  <  <  <  <  <  >  >  >  >  >
      1,2   <  <  <  <  <  =  >  >  >  >  >
      1,3   <  <  <  <  <  =  >  >  >  >  >
      1,4   <  <  <  <  <  =  >  >  <  >  >
      1,5   <  <  =  =  <  =  >  =  =  <  >
      1,6   <  =  =  =  =  >  =  =  =  =  <
      2,2   =  <  <  <  =  <  =  >  >  >  =
      2,3   =  <  <  <  <  =  <  >  >  >  =  <<< GOOD
      2,4   =  <  =  <  >  =  >  >  =  >  =
      2,5   =  =  <  =  =  >  =  =  <  =  =
      3,3   =  =  <  =  >  <  >  =  >  =  =
      3,4   =  =  =  =  <  >  <  =  =  =  =  <<< BEST
      4,4   =  =  >  =  >  <  >  =  <  =  =
      5,2*  =  =  <  =  =  >  =  =  <  =  =
      5,3   =  >  =  >  >  =  >  <  =  <  =
      5,4   =  >  >  >  <  =  <  <  <  <  =  <<< GOOD
      5,5   =  >  >  >  =  <  =  <  <  <  <
      6,1*  <  =  =  =  =  >  =  =  =  =  <
      6,2   >  <  =  =  >  =  <  =  =  <  <
      6,3   >  >  <  >  >  =  <  <  <  <  <
      6,4   >  >  >  >  >  =  <  <  <  <  <
      6,5   >  >  >  >  >  =  <  <  <  <  <
      6,6   >  >  >  >  >  <  <  <  <  <  <

* duplicated to show symmetry

So for this game, I'd probably weight 3 and 4, to advantage 7s over 6s and 8s, and build more on the 5s and 9s. Most players that have no knowledge of the load of the dice will prefer to have at least one settlement on a 6 or 8. The 2,3 and 5,4 pairs also disadvantage 6 and 8, with bias for higher or lower numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Note that if your _only_ goal was to test whether the dice was loaded, using a test against only one outcome (in this case, only 6s) is not the best way.

Use either a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test[1] or the Anderson-Darling test[2].

The intuition is that these tests are more powerful because they take the difference between the entire empirical distribution minus the expected probability mass distribution. You're using 'all the numbers' simultaneously to check for cheating.

Funnily enough, I first learned about these tests a nearly a decade ago, precisely because I wanted to know whether Settlers dice were loaded.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_tes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%E2%80%93Smirnov_test)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson%E2%80%93Darling_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson%E2%80%93Darling_test)

<comment><USER2> I think for this case (with 6 discrete outcomes) you could just use Pearson's Chi-Square test. What you describe is general enough for continuous distributions.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27s_chi- squared_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27s_chi-squared_test)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My old boss was into Settlers, and they stayed late to play some games a few times. I got invited once and weird stuff happened.

Somehow I ended up next to both 6's on the map.

As near as I can tell, one of the dice we used would not land on 4. Whatever was going on, the number of 6's and 9's rolled that night were abnormally high. By the time people figured out we were rolling as many 6's as we had 7's and 8's combined, I already had a town on the coast and pretty much steamrolled everybody with sheep and wheat.

Really the game wasn't that fun at that point, so I just tried to end it as fast as possible.

When you're playing an RPG, everybody seems to gravitate toward their 'lucky dice' which are most likely defective in the right way. But if you're playing a game with others you probably want the fairest dice you can find.

I remember years ago seeing a sales video from some retired aerospace engineer that was making geometrically perfect dice. He'd worked out the resins so they cured uniformly. He'd stack his dice next to some random set and point out how the other guy's stack curved to one side while his was perfectly straight.

Probably didn't sell a lot of those to DND players, except perhaps GMs.

<comment><USER20> > Probably didn't sell a lot of those to DND players, except perhaps GMs.

GM's don't have to show their dice rolls and can overrule the outcome if it fits their storyline better, so the rolling is mostly ceremonial anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be interested to see the results by loading the 1-2 edge of the die, or even the 1-2-3 corner. The former should result in more 5s and 6s, and the latter more 4s, 5s, and 6s. And since the weight would be not centered on a face, would make the die more likely to tumble over to a preferred face if the die had to shed its sideways momentum. The unbalanced die would prefer to tumble or skip when a non-preferred face shows, and slide or rock when a preferred face shows.

The problem, of course, is that there is no way to prevent your opponent from accidentally benefiting from your cheating. If you have biased the dice to favor 8s over 6s, they might just plop down on an 8 before you can place your settlements. You would have to use two sets of loaded dice, one biased high, and the other biased low, and swap them out after first settlements are placed.

Also, in my experience, the other players will still accuse you of cheating whether they can prove it scientifically or not, because they prefer to believe that you are better than they are at being sneaky and underhanded than better at honest strategy.

For instance, Clue (aka Cluedo) is a game where one skilled player can repeatedly curbstomp lesser skilled players. If you do, they then grab your player sheet to look at all the strange and indecipherable symbols you have on it that are not simple Xs, and they accuse you of cheating. You can either explain the mathematical advantage of the additional information you record, lose all future advantage against those players, and get accused of "breaking the game", or you can remain silent and still not be able to play it again because you're a "cheater".

Besides that, what self-respecting board gamer doesn't just leave the crappy wooden dice in the box, and use the good dice from their dice bag?

I like this analysis, though. It reminds me of the guy who designed a one- sided die.

</comment><comment><USER9> This post explains in a very simple way the scientific method (p-values) to prove that a result is significant or not, and the problems with it.

It's crazy that by using a p-value of 0.05, it means that 5% of all scientific results might be false.

<comment><USER21> > It's crazy that by using a p-value of 0.05, it means that 5% of all > scientific results might be false.

That would only be the case if scientists were robots who immediately published anything with a p-value up to 0.05. They're not, though. If they get clearly nonsensical results, they will obviously re-evaluate it. In other words, the p-value doesn't incorporate the fact that the experiment passed sanity checks in your own head (and the reviewers') before it was published. (And yes, there are bad actors in every field who game the system, but my point still stands.)

<comment><USER17> From what I've heard on HN, scientists are actually robots who massage their data until they get a p-value <0.05 and then immediately publish.

<comment><USER22> No, the publishing process takes a long time. Sometimes it could be years.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, but in Russia they use nine women to produce a baby in only one month.

<comment><USER22> This sounds like some kind of comment about divisibility of the work to publish something. I don't get it though.

After the bulk of the paper is written, I can easily proofread, typeset, etc everything myself in less than a week. Now get someone else to double check that. Lets say that is another week.

After that the only thing is to get someone worthwhile to spend some time on your paper and point out anything confusing or erroneous. Granted, this could take a month or so of study. However, I never really saw that happen in practice. In reality you would be lucky to get people to glance over it one evening.

So what is taking so long?

<comment><USER17> In my experience a significant fraction of the time it takes to publish a paper is spent waiting for the journal. During that time you can do other useful research. The long delay between submitting, getting through the reviewers and the actual publication is one of the reasons why for example in CS a lot of the interesting stuff happens in conference publications with fast turnarounds and the journal versions of the same paper appear a year or two later.

<comment><USER22> >"waiting for the journal"

Yes, what are they doing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a neat project! The statistical test used could be a lot more sensitive, by taking advantage of information about the physics of biased dice. They test whether 6 is rolled more often than it should be relative to the other 5 numbers, but they should instead look at whether it's rolled more often relative to 1. Since these are on opposite sides of the die, and unfairness in 6-sided dice comes from uneven distribution of weight, these go together; you get to combine the information from too-many 6s and too-few 1s and get a test that needs only about half as many rolls to reach a given confidence level.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author, and I totally agree!

Originally, I was going to point out other null hypotheses that we could try to reject. This has the advantage that some of them (like the one you propose) model the physics. And it also has the disadvantage that if we propose too many hypotheses to test, then we will be more likely to get false positives. But the article was already too long, and this is a HUGE can of worms to open.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really enjoy these fun thought experiments.

The only thing I didn't see clarified though is whether the die was loaded using the water only once, or whether they re-loaded the die every night during the week they were testing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. I loaded the dice only once. The weighed 0.65 ounces before hand, and 0.75 ounces afterward. They kept that weight the whole week.

<comment><USER22> So a suspicious player could detect the loaded dice simply by weighing them? That actually makes a lot of sense. If you look into actual dice/coin manufacturing they do not run tests like "roll a sample of dice a million times each, then check p-value". Instead they have a clever manufacturing process with stringent tolerances. If they run such tests at all it would be to find the upper bound on deviation from fairness over the lifetime of the dice (eg 100k rolls).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if there are any good, simple procedures that could be applied during a game to mitigate against biased dice (without giving up on physical dice)?

For games that only use one die, perhaps something like generating a random number in 1 <= r <= 6n[1], using some procedure that all the players have input to so they can all agree to trust the number, and then shifting all die roll results by that number? So if the number were 3 and the die came up 2, it would count as 5.

That would not remove the bias from the die, but it would move it to a different number. For games where some numbers are consistently good for you and some are consistently bad for you that would be enough to make it so that biasing the die does not work in the long run--some games it would end up in your favor and some it would end up against you.

For games with two dice, that might not work as well. If a single random number were picked and used to shift both die results, it would shift the bias just like with the single die game.

However, the dice will still be biased to come up matching, and in some games matching numbers on the two is significant.

One might try to address this by generating two random numbers at the start of the game, one for each die, for the shifts. That would have bias against getting a match on the two dice, so would provide an advantage in games where a match is bad.

[1] Generalizing to n-sided dice is left as an exercise for the reader.

<comment><USER26> Unbiasing a coin is easy (the Von Neuman technique): toss it twice, if the results are different then output the first toss. If the results are the same, forget both and start again.

You can use this technique to unbias a 4-die or 8-die by throwing a coin multiple times (apply the above technique for each digit in base 2).

To produce a fair 6-die from a biased coin, the following should work.

\- Using the Von-Neumann technique, creates 3 independent unbiased coin X, Y, Z. Then X= 1 + X + 2Y + 2Z is uniform in {1,...,8}, we basically randomize each digit in base 2.

\- Finally, throw the unbiased 8-die until you obtain a number different than 7,8. The result is unbiased in {1,...6}.

        import numpy as np

        def biased_coin():
            return np.random.choice([0,1], p=[0.1,0.9])

        def unbiased_coin():
            a = biased_coin()
            b = biased_coin()
            if a != b:
                return a
            else:
                return unbiased_coin()

        def unbiased_eight():
            return 1 + unbiased_coin() + 2*unbiased_coin() +4*unbiased_coin()

        def unbiased_six():
            d = unbiased_eight()
            if d < 7:
                return d
            else:
                return unbiased_six()

        np.bincount([unbiased_six() for i in range(6000)])

Edit: there was a mistake in the previous version of the comment because the digits in base 2 were not be independent. The last version is correct, I believe :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could it be that your dice was biased to begin with? Or have you already rolled them ~5000 times before you placed them in water?

<comment><USER28> I was wondering this; is a control unnecessary here as we assume an equal distribution, or is that assumption false?

<comment><USER27> I think it's false because every mechanical device have some variation, but is it so small it can don't "affect" the result?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Einstein: "God does not play dice."

Hawking: "God definitely plays dice, but He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen"

Izbicki: "And if the dice are loaded, we can't prove it."

There is some plain & profound truth in this article underlying some pretty cool math.

</comment><comment><USER30> I really like Settlers of Catan, but I have never found a nicely designed online site to play it. Does any of you know of anything?

Also surprised that there's no "free" \+ "open source" version of it, like FreeCiv or FreeCol or FreeOrion.

<comment><USER31> Tabletop Simulator is good, once you get used to it and learn a few keyboard shortcuts! Only downside is it's usually $30 and I am not 100 percent sure if the catan ports are safe to forever remain? If anyone has insight on the legalities of Tabletop Simulator I am curious.

<comment><USER32> In the US it's $20, with discounts to $10 (look for the upcoming Steam sale). I am not qualified to speak on legality but a cursory search suggests that the catan ports are technically not safe... still, there are many versions in the workshop as catan is such a popular game. It's hard to imagine that they all get pulled without replacement.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the reply. I hope they continue on there!

>In the US it's $20, with discounts to $10 (look for the upcoming Steam sale).

Thanks, looks like it will finally be time to gift it to a friend!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A hypothesis was presented: using higher numbers will give 5-15 more resource cards over the course of a game. Then, conclusions were drawn that standard statistical techniques are deficient for not being able to detect the bias.

Where are the results of the actual experiment, say of 10 games played using the biased strategy, against a control opponent? Perhaps, standard statistical techniques are correct.

Without empirical tests of the hypothesis, where is the science? Perhaps, the dice are only loaded for a short time, in which time all the skew occurred. Without testing of the hypothesis, it is impossible to know.

</comment><comment><USER34> A nice mitigation technique is for everyone to bring their own dice, put them into a hat and require random selection of two of them per turn.

Of course if you suspect your friends are cheating you have bigger problems.

<comment><USER35> This solves the problem by reducing it to a trusted random number generator (the hat). At that point you may as well skip a step and draw individual outcomes from the hat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't get this.

>It's impossible for your opponents to scientifically prove that you're cheating.

Then two paragraphs later you scientifically prove you were cheating (simply roll dice thousands of times).

<comment><USER37> > while playing a game.

Your opponents can't prove cheating based on the game alone.

<comment><USER3> Which is kind of a dumb thing to say. They even note that a typical Catan game only has 60 rolls. You could have many suspicious looking rolls that would result from fair dice. The fact is that 60 rolls isn't going to be enough even if you were cheating a lot more than what was shown in this post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What does the calculation of advantage mean there? The advantage per one nice and one naughty roll (a pair of rolls) is multiplied by the total number of single rolls in a 4-player game.

And I guess an honest player would pick the nice locations as often as naughty ones (there is no reason to actually prefer them). I don't know the rules, so I don't know if there are enough naughty locations to roll only on them without _that_ being suspicious.

</comment><comment><USER39> Cool analysis. Doesn't every player use the same die for a game like Catan?

<comment><USER40> Yes, but presumably only you would know the bias of the dice and would exploit it by preferentially building next to higher numbered spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > posted on 2018-12-14

OP cheats at time too, posting this a full year ahead of schedule. :)

</comment><comment><USER42> I can finally beat my in-laws at this game this holiday season!

<comment><USER12> Skilled players can beat unskilled players regardless of the bias of the dice. It doesn't matter if you get 5-15 more brick cards if it's an ore game. And how do you keep the other players from building on the bias-favored numbers?

If you're going to cheat, you're better off sleeving your most critical resource cards, to protect them from 7-rolls, soldiers, and monopoly cards taking them from your hand. You unsleeve and swap when you get a favorable resource roll, and hope nobody is OP enough to keep a running total of all opponent resources in their head.

<comment><USER43> The problem is, how do you know those numbers are bias-favored if your sample size is a few dice rolls? And if there is a bias in those few dice rolls, there's no guarantee it will continue. Sure, a more skilled player will always beat a much less skilled player, but the randomness of the dice certainly closes the skill gap.

It's much different than a game like Agricola or Dominion where you're playing 100% against what the other people do and not relying on the outcomes of 4 dice rolls to determine what you want to do on your turn.

<comment><USER12> The randomness of the board set up partially cancels the bias you introduce into the dice. There are 20 different possible numeric token layouts, and each of those has trillions of different possible tile combinations.

You really have no practical way of knowing in advance which resource tiles will be under the number tokens you have biased for by loading the dice. So cheating in this fashion doesn't really provide that much of an advantage over the other players. Since the intentional cheating is scientifically indistinguishable from randomness, all good players will already be able to compensate for unfavorable variations in die rolls.

<comment><USER12> It's actually ( 12864852000 * 20 ) possible board combinations. Not _quite_ trillions; more like a quarter of a trillion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Now I have something else to blame besides luck when I lose

</comment><comment><USER45> Great article! One nitpick however in the informal definition of a p-value: the p-value is the probability of getting results similar _or more extreme_ to the results we observed if the dice are not biased.

</comment><comment><USER46> Our set came with plastic dice. Crap!

<comment><USER47> FYI: [https://www.wikihow.com/Load-Dice](https://www.wikihow.com/Load-Dice)</comment></comment>


Django 1.2 alpha 1 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2010/jan/06/12-alpha-1/ <comment><USER2> The smart "if" template tag ([http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.2-alpha-1/#s...](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/releases/1.2-alpha-1/#smart- if-tag)) was quite the welcome surprise for me in the release notes! I swear I've written a dozen custom template tags all because it wasn't possible to perform simple comparisons in the if condition.

<comment><USER3> What would be really smart is if they just allowed Python code there.

<comment><USER4> That's just not what we're trying to do with Django's template language.

However, if you'd like a template language that's closer to pure Python, I'd suggest giving Cheetah (<http://cheetahtemplate.org/>) a try. I've used it in the past; quite nice.

<comment><USER5> also check out Jinja2 (<http://jinja.pocoo.org/2/>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent news. readonly_fields and the new messages framework will be quite handy. Not to mention improved {% if %}. Solid work.

</comment><comment><USER7> multiple database connections is going to be my favorite new feature: <http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/db/multi-db/></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best tools to manage an iPhone on Linux? - <AUTHOR> I currently have an Android and want to switch to iOS, but only use Linux. What are some good tools, tips, or work-arounds to mix iOS and Linux? <comment><USER2> Android with Linux works, so not sure why switch to iPhone....

A google search came up with:

[https://www.libimobiledevice.org](https://www.libimobiledevice.org)

[https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Rhythmbox](https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Rhythmbox) \--> Music</comment>