Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a "Windows" user-agent (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open-is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc <comment><USER2> Hi everyone, this is Edgar from the OneDrive team. We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tue, March 22nd 3pm PST.

We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office online apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight.

The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested on Linux and released.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

<comment><USER3> So for the "New Microsoft" releasing a bug fix for a "bug" affecting customers using Linux for more than 3 months it just required to be popular at Hacker News and Reddit.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes at a large company feedback from support and those customer forms doesn't make it all the way back to the engineers. The engineers read hacker news. As soon as they saw this it makes sense that they fixed it.

Seems like the pipeline for customer feedback could be improved.

<comment><USER3> So engineers at "New Microsoft" read Hacker News, but don't use "New Microsoft" products on Linux.

<comment><USER5> It may sound farfetched to you, but I assure you that some people who read Hacker News regularly don't actually use Linux on a day-to-day basis.

<comment><USER3> Sure. That was my point: the "New Microsoft" is not using Linux, or don't {care about | want} their customers using "New Microsoft" products on Linux.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have to admit, the whole exchange is pretty funny:

> Hello, Onedrive for Business open is very slow on Linux (Chrome/Firefox) but > with very fast with a "Windows" user-agent.

> Hi DL, As Office 365 for Business services(e.g. SharePoint Online, including > OneDrive for Business, Exchange Online) are not supported on Linux as shown > below, for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in > the article.

> Thank you, I go back to Google Apps suite.

> 12 people found this helpful

<comment><USER7> I found that interesting too. I'm not familiar with office 365, but isn't it web based? So why does it matter what browser or OS you use?

<comment><USER8> If the one creating a product also creates a OS, making that product run faster on your OS compared to others makes your OS look better I guess.

<comment><USER9> Kind of a corollary to "It ain't done 'til Lotus won't run."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding." \- Hanlon's razor

I worked as a Microsoft employee on the xbox.com website from 2007-2010. We didn't officially support any browsers on Linux because it represented <1% of our user base. It just didn't make business sense. We tested it on occasion anyway because we are decent people and, being part of the tech community, we were fans of Linux.

We supplied a list of officially supported browsers to the customer support team. Any bugs on non-supported browsers would never get reported back to our team, so we'd never hear about them. The support team did their job.

This is how pretty much every company in the history of ever works.

<comment><USER11> Well, Microsoft often doesn't get the benefit of the doubt because of their history of incredibly aggressive, borderline unethical behavior. Being a convicted monopolist tends to color people's attitudes to a company. Let alone something ridiculous like trying to destroy the open source movement in its nascent stages, stealing Google's search results, or running the completely insane Scroogled campaign. And all the other things Microsoft has done to erode good will.

<comment><USER12> Ironically, people seem to forgive Apple a lot of similar practices.

<comment><USER13> Can you provide an example, with a citation? :)

<comment><USER14> You used to (maybe still) couldn't watch Apple Keynote presentations on any other browser than Safari.

<comment><USER15> Microsoft Edge is supported now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was reported on /r/linux yesterday: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/)

This user did some experimentation with user agents to narrow down the bug: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_on...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/60nj67/office_365_onedrive_looks_at_useragent_to/df7wnk1/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Unhelpful catch-all responses that don't display a shred of effort or care are the bane of my customer support experiences. Nothing hurts my opinion of a company like being brushed off like a bug.

<comment><USER18> Whenever I google a problem with a microsoft product, and the search ends up on one of these answer.microsoft.com pages, I always click on the link with an enormous feeling of dread.

I don't think I've ever seen a usable answer on that site.

<comment><USER19> As a linux user since the 90s, googling for basic issues on Windows is an unmitigated disaster. For linux I have always got a correct answer.

<comment><USER20> <cough>Bullshit</cough> If you were a Linux user in the mid-90's, then about the only place to get "help" was #linux on EFnet. Collectively, I don't think I've suffered more abuse on the internet than in that forum. And, yes, I'm still bitter. It was NOT a noob-friendly place. The best place -- ever -- to get Linux help was, and will always have been, the Gentoo forums, but that didn't take off till the early 2000's.

<comment><USER21> Oh, it's quite easy to get help there, and has always been.

You just have to be tricky: People will not help you, but as pedantic as they are, they'll correct mistakes you make.

You go there, and say "I'm disappointed that you can't even use <device> with Linux" and you'll get hundreds of answers telling you exactly how to use it.

<comment><USER22> #linux, the notorious troll channel on EFnet, only provided help when counter- trolled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is not a new thing. Decades ago when Verizon contracted with Microsoft to "upgrade" their web portal, it was no longer usable from any browser other than IE. I had been using it from Netscape on various SPARC machines and from my mobile device (PalmOS). The web page html source had no exotic platform specific language elements. It was obviously a "business decision". I wrote the VP at Verizon a letter pointing out that they had just abandoned 5% of their user base. I also switched to AT&T.

<comment><USER24> Behold the "new" Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft's cash cow has always been Windows, and secondarily, Office. That directed their decisions then and it directs their decisions now.

The landscape may change such that Microsoft feels it is beneficial to release things like .NET Core as open-source, but this doesn't reflect a change in what Microsoft values ("A PC on every desk running Microsoft software" and the associated revenue streams), it reflects a change in what they believe is necessary to secure their goals.

<comment><USER26> Saying "its a business decision" doesn't justify unethical and potentially illegal behavior. This is either incompetence or malice. If it is malice it falls well on the wrong side antitrust behavior. If its incompetence, well it isn't much better is it?

<comment><USER25> Although I don't think it's unethical to intentionally make the experience slower for some users, I'm not trying to justify it.

I'm trying to explain that as long as Microsoft's incentives align with making Windows dominant, they're going to engage in behaviors to make it happen, including things like artificially slowing connections from non-Windows machines.

Instead of saying "MS is releasing stuff open-source, they must be having a change of heart", we should say "MS believes that opening this as open-source is the best way to ensure Windows' continued dominance". That's what I'm trying to highlight.

<comment><USER26> So why do you say anti-competitive behavior wouldn't be unethical?

Sorry for the double negatives, I am just trying to understand. It seems clear to me that potentially hurting paying customers to increase one's own wealth is obviously unethical. This of course presumes malice, which hasn't yet been proven.

<comment><USER25> IMO, most companies can't engage in anti-competitive behavior independently. You need a special status as a monopoly or a part of a cartel. For normal companies, normal behavior is "anti-competitive" because the point of business is to beat your competitors.

If we assign MS the role of a "typical business" instead of a monopoly (they have may been a monopoly 20 years ago, but it's hard to make that case now), Microsoft is under no ethical obligation a) to provide a client for other operating systems; or b) to ensure that performance parity exists between every client on every platform.

While it may not be super polite to release clients for other platforms and then subtly cripple them in order to drive users back to Windows, there's nothing below-the-belt about it IMO.

<comment><USER26> For desktop PCs they still have greater than 90% marketshare. In businesses its closer to 99% I think the title is "Monopoly" is appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?

<comment><USER28> I have no direct understanding but I have a hypothesis;

\- different generated html / js depending on user agent (UA)

\- bug fixes are rolled out on a UA by UA basis

\- bug fixes have been rolled out for Windows and Mac (supported)

      - but not for the "generic" HTML / JS output

If this is true it will mean that anything other than the supported platforms will fall further behind as time goes by.

<comment><USER29> That sounds highly likely. Intentional throttling doesn't help Microsoft in this case. I don't think they view Linux desktops (aside from Chromebooks) as a serious threat. Why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users?

<comment><USER30> This reminds me of the article about the OneDrive team being allowed to introduce ads into Explorer because they don't care at all about the experience of using Windows and they just want more OneDrive users.

(Supporting documentation of the position "why wouldn't they want more OneDrive users"...)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13903701)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> FWIW, I see this kind of thing regularly because I have the RandomAgentSpoofer extension installed on Firefox. Sometimes the page will look at the UserAgent and think it can't run X or Y so I will get an HTML-only version.

It's actually kinda interesting to see what the website does when it thinks my browser can't support certain stuff (which it can...I just like to avoid fingerprinting).

</comment><comment><USER32> Considering that there are places in the world where government employees must use Linux due to regulations, and Microsoft is moving ever closer to cloud delivered services, one would think that they want to support Linux as an OS. [0]

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/03/frenc...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/)

<comment><USER33> Maybe it's just expensive to support

<comment><USER34> It's running in a web browser. The OS doesn't make much of a difference.

<comment><USER35> Patent-encumbered media codecs are available in most Windows and Mac browsers thanks to the OS shipping codecs. On Linux?

On Windows you have a battle-tested Direct3D 9/11 backend for WebGL (ANGLE) used by Chrome and Firefox, while on other platforms you're subject to the whims of the GL implementation (and on Linux there are multiple drivers to choose from in some cases). Direct3D graphics are also thread-safe in a way that is not consistently true for OpenGL (just ask a driver developer) which means that certain operations could block the UI thread (or in the case of Chrome, GPU process) that can be performed asynchronously on Windows, resulting in a difference in application behavior.

On Windows there is one common software audio stack (they dropped hardware audio acceleration ages ago because it was a compatibility nightmare). On Linux in some circumstances there are multiple audio stacks which can produce differences in user experience and behavior. Recently Firefox has switched over to pulseaudio, which has caused some grief.

Windows and Mac and Linux all have different networking stacks that can result in behavioral differences between OSes if you're using WebSockets or WebRTC.

The GamePad API is also subject to OS differences depending on whether your gamepad has drivers and which underlying system API the browser uses. This even varies between browsers on the same machine.

<comment><USER36> I don't think changing the user agent string affects which codecs or device drivers are available on the client. If changing the user agent string "solves" the problem, then the problem is most likely with the site - especially if the same problem and solution exist between different browsers. They are probably assuming some capability is absent instead of testing and gracefully degrading.

I wonder what happens in Windows 10 with a user agent mimicking a Linux environment. Does the site slow down? If so, the support bot can't brush it off since it's a supported operating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Thank you I go back to Google Apps suite.

That reply is gold!

</comment><comment><USER38> The previous answer by Microsoft was already edited. Here's the original: [http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.mi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170322092445/https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open- is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc)

</comment><comment> can-onedrive Hi everyone, this is Can from the OneDrive team.

We know that some users may have experienced difficulty accessing OneDrive for Business on Linux. The issue was resolved as of Tuesday, March 22nd 3pm PST.

We identified that StaticLoad.aspx, a page that prefetches resources in the background for Office O nline apps was using the link prefetching browser mechanism only for certain platforms (iOS, Chrome OS, Mac, Windows), but for Linux it was falling back to a less efficient technique that was causing the issue. Rest assured that this was not intentional. It was an oversight.

The prefetching optimization was disabled, and it will be enabled again soon after an update for StaticLoad.aspx has been tested and released on Linux.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused.

</comment><comment><USER39> "This is certainly a bug. It is not a targeted attacked against Linux users. Report it to Microsoft. Microsoft is just doing really shitty feature detection using User Agent strings instead of, well actual feature detection. I was able to reproduce the same result by setting my User Agent to Firefox 52 on Windows 98. If I set it to a "more realistic" user agent like IE 7 on Windows XP, it would actually redirect me to a busted page to upgrade my browser instead of Word Online. It appears if Microsoft cannot figure out your User Agent (including your OS as part of it), it gives you a busted experience."

</comment><comment><USER40> Apparently someone took notice. A few minutes ago a reply was added by a Microsoft employee stating a fix has been deployed. Wish they would have provided more details, but glad they finally listened after. Only took 4 months.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt in my mind here but this is a tough one to explain away.

<comment><USER42> Maybe they're injecting a brazillion polyfills if it's not a known user-agent?

<comment><USER43> Yet, it works as expected without the polyfills.

<comment><USER44> Right. But he's suggesting that if they don't recognize the browser that they inject as much polyfills as they can so everything works no matter what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I was managing a Google Apps account when I had a problem with Google Groups I didn't know how to solve. Picked up the phone and called the support number, and within minutes I was talking to a super nice guy who helped me out. That was the best customer support I've ever experienced.

I have no affiliation with Google and I still think the original issue I had with Google Groups was due to some sloppy UI-work on their part, but that support call makes me happy just thinking about it.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, if you've ever used _paid_ support from Microsoft, you'd have gotten equal treatment. The couple times I had to call them back in the early 00's, I got super-technical, friendly people who got to the root of the problem right away.

One even taught me to catch a Windows error via remote debugging on a different machine. I leveled up because of a support call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> And this, along with MS' history, is why I still have a hard time using any of their technology. I appreciate some of their open source efforts, but for the most part they're still the same old. Embrace, extend, extinguish.

<comment><USER47> That and I use it for ten minutes and realize that myself and the designers/builders of the software live in different worlds.

Why? Why? Why? Who would do it like this? fuckit back to linux

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The guy who takes one hour to build an Electron app that acts as a "windows" browser will become a celebrity.

</comment><comment><USER49> Tangentially related, but Netflix also do some similar User-Agent sniffing logic for Linux users browsing with Firefox. Firefox does indeed support Widevine, but unless you pretend to be Chrome Netflix refuses to work.

I got brushed off in much the same way as this user did when I tried to discuss the matter with customer support. In the end I carpet bombed a bunch of executives by guessing the email address format, and only then did I get a response from someone who knew what they were talking about and understood my complaint.

I think front-line support being unhelpful like this (and furthermore being unwilling to escalate the issue to someone technically adept) is a widespread issue and I'd agree with some of the other posters here: I've encountered maybe 1 helpful post from answer.microsoft.com after numerous visits when troubleshooting Windows issues.

<comment><USER50> You're correct that Netflix was using the user-agent to handle which browser can watch on Linux as a first check.

However Netflix has updated their system to allow Firefox to stream on Linux, just so you know.

<comment><USER49> As of today, it seems! Interesting coincidence, thanks for the heads-up. Bit overdue in my opinion, but better late than never.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The business that Microsoft alienated in this exchange probably comprised around 3% of the people who were using OneDrive on purpose.

<comment><USER52> more like .3

<comment><USER53> What are you talking about? Next year is the year of Linux on the desktop, and here's Microsoft barely even ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> from the early 90s Microsoft: "The job isn't done until Lotus won't run"

</comment><comment><USER55> Looks like there are still some Ballmer-era holdovers on the OneDrive team.

</comment><comment><USER56> Has anyone tested this on a Chromebook (being Linux based)? I get that they might overlook Linux desktop due to market share, but the edu sector uses Chromebooks heavily, and this would be shooting themselves in the foot to degrade (intentionally or unintentionally) the 'first experience' a person might have with ms products.

</comment><comment><USER57> Could it be a very simplistic anti~bot system?

</comment><comment><USER58> Isn't Onedrive just Microsoft's cloud storage service? I haven't used it before, but is this implying that a _web file manager_ is slow? Feature detection or not, regardless of OS, I think an application of this nature just shouldn't be slow _at all_ on any computer 5 years old or less.

</comment><comment><USER59> Funny, I'm changing the user-agent to access web version of Skype from Android Firefox. It's also "not supported" but it works fine for occasionally checking the chat.

</comment><comment><USER60> The next step for the microsoft is to move the entire domain of this question [https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_onedrivefb-mso_o365brs/onedrive-for-business-open- is-very-slow-on-linux/3d33dc1b-3cc3-4c24-9998-9ab96bad31fc) to migrate to some other url to coverup from the search links and the future damage.

</comment><comment><USER39> Seriously lower your pitchforks. This was a bug and a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER61> And we hear all the time that the browser is the new OS, and that web apps are the only cross platform way to do software. I am wondering why is MS spending for the new Skype for Linux web app but not for One Drive, it would make more sense to be consistent on what platforms the web apps made by MS are supported. Now it looks like we support Skype on Linux(as alpha for now) but not One Drive(I do not know what other business apps they have)

</comment><comment><USER3> Any official explanation from the "New Microsoft"?

</comment><comment><USER62> Hahaha silly me starting to think Microsoft after all these years had changed. Reminds me of how the crushed Lotus 1-2-3 by making their software run deliberately crappy on Windows and how they made sure all the competitors RTF products was always behind the Windows variant by releasing the updated specs to everybody only once they themselves had made a finished version. And who forgets their dirty tactics against Netscape?

</comment><comment><USER63> Google is doing this with many of their products. And has been for many, many years. Limiting features, blocking services, etc... based solely on user agent.

<comment><USER64> Any source for that claim?

<comment><USER65> Try [https://meet.google.com](https://meet.google.com) in any browser other than Chrome and you'll get a message saying your browser isn't supported.

If you setup Firefox to use a newer version of Chrome user agent, the page will at least load. Seems like they are using user agent instead of feature detection to limit usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Microsoft did the same thing way back with CPUID .. when it was Intel, it worked well. Otherwise (AMD, Transmeta), they would use very inefficient operations instead of SSE (IIRC), slowing down benchmarks that used media (like players, etc) and Photoshop. This is from a distant life in the past, but I think it was not limited to use of SSE.

<comment><USER67> Are you sure you're talking about Microsoft, and not about Intel's C++ compiler?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's not just Onedrive, it's the entire Office 365, e.g., [https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx](https://office.live.com/start/Word.aspx) crashes Chrome (renders it unresponsive, closing the tab then takes forever).

Tested Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:11:09 +0000

</comment><comment><USER69> I don't know the intersection between SharePoint and OneDrive but when I use browse documents on SharePoint using linux/chrome my browser gets stuck eating 100% of a CPU while I don't have the same problem with linux/firefox or win10/chrome ...

</comment><comment><USER70> So basically just one bug and community goes bananas on conspiracy theories.

What is most plausible? Microsoft does vast majority of user testing on Microsoft Windows or that they added _sleep()_ for Linux? Do you know any software developer that works like that?

</comment><comment><USER71> MS giveth and MS taketh away.

<comment><USER72> MS giveth and I'd wish they'd take it away.

I can't turn Onedrive off because I'm on Windows 10 Home edition (thanks to the forced upgrade from Win 7). I don't use it but everytime I access a share on my linux box, it pops up and want to be configured.

<comment><USER73> [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or- uninsta...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-or-uninstall- OneDrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> But but I thought MS had changed and that now loves "open-source" ;)

</comment><comment><USER75> my 1$ hypothesis - partner company to which Onedrive UI project outsourced didn't had any Linux machine and all developers/QA working for this partner company were Windows users, to improve compatibility matrix they had kept few Mac machines in the office to run tests. Moreover this team might not received proper spec about the backend API at the initial stages of the project development, would have receive only at last stage of the development. So they try to get it working only in one or two platforms to make the release happen :)

<comment><USER76> I am pretty sure that they don't outsource development of such important functionality.

<comment><USER77> You'd be surprised of what things management chooses to outsource and later on insources because it's a steaming pile of shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> UserAgent switchers are a godsend. Have your Chrome or Firefox on Linux always send the Windows UA.

I even have a system on work that required Chrome (by UA), but only actually works on Firefox... :'(

</comment><comment><USER79> I can't stand how awful the UI is on Mac compared to Windows. Why have the sections and the page list waste a ton of space on the left and why can't I collapse sub-sections?

</comment><comment><USER80> Remember when I said "mark my words, MS hasn't changed!"?

Side note: in this thread, users who mention events of decades past (ie, they are experienced) tend to be more critical of MS.

<comment><USER39> glad you didn't actually read the analysis of the bug

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I'm a person that wanted to give them another chance and got my self a Lumia 930. They didn't deserve it. Sometimes I get the feeling they are incompetent.

</comment><comment><USER82> Onedrive is an embarrassingly subpar product for Msoft to be pushing anyway. I can't think of a single worthwhile use-case?

<comment><USER83> Use case: your company uses Office 365, and you want your cloud storage to be integrated with the rest of the Office 365 apps, and you don't otherwise care about the quality of the cloud storage app.

<comment><USER82> I'm going to basically cede my point to you because, honestly, Office 365 is not a bad product and even though I would not personally use it, I have to admit that this is a valid use-case, haha.

I do have to point out your note about "not otherwise caring about the quality of the cloud storage app" which is more towards my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> This explains why it takes forever to transfer files from my phone to my desktop on the same network. It's been so slow.

</comment><comment><USER85> Has anyone tries changing their windows user agent to Linux to see if it gas the same effect? Do reply to me if you try it.

</comment><comment><USER86> DOS Ain't Done 'til Lotus Won't Run.

Don't tell me it's a myth, same thing happened with DR-DOS as well.

</comment><comment><USER87> _> for the best experience, we recommend the operating system listed in the article._

Yeah, what a pile of junk.

</comment><comment><USER88> I was starting to think that Microsoft MIGHT change. Good to know it's still the same old fox...

</comment><comment><USER89> All hail the "new" Microsoft, still using the old anticompetitive tricks from the DOS era.

<comment><USER39> read the analysis of the bug. it wasn't malicious or intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Still amazes me that people support Microsoft in _anything_ in this day and age.

</comment><comment><USER91> Identified on 16th November 2016 and fix on ?

</comment><comment><USER92> Yay, it's the 90's again!

</comment><comment><USER93> What's "onedrive"?

</comment><comment><USER94> It is a feature, not a bug. :)

</comment><comment><USER95> Microsoft up to Microsoft antics again, eh?

Their open source friendliness only goes so far.

</comment><comment><USER96> With Microsoft Exchange, you get the simplified web interface on Linux, even though the browsers support everything required for the regular one.

Change the user agent and it works the same as on Windows...

</comment><comment><USER97> yeah, but why? lots of discussions about user-agent detection and how its not a malicious attack against linux users, but no discussion how and why it is slow.

is it protecting users from something further in the UX? is it stuck in an infinite loop trying to download silverlight? are they actually redirecting users to a staging server on the cheapest Azure instance?

</comment><comment><USER98> With the state of microsoft in mind, I wouldn't be the least surprised if this was done on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER99> I've noticed this too but never investigated....

seriously M$, what the F?

</comment><comment><USER100> Microsoft in 2000: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"

Microsoft in 2017: "Microsoft <3 Linux! It's totally not cancer, hehe. Please buy our products, we won't monopolize anymore we _promise_ "</comment>


Lewis Lapham's Antidote to the Age of BuzzFeed - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lewis-laphams-antidote-to-the-age-of-buzzfeed-82203134/?all?no-ist <comment><AUTHOR> If you haven't read an issue Lapham's Quarterly, I highly recommend it. Each issue is a melange of writing from various authors on a specific topic, like Disaster, Fashion, or Philanthropy. The recent Fashion issue was particularlly interesting to me, especially the story about the popularity of Ivy League fashion in post-war Japan. An excerpt:

 _Parents in the post-war era felt a particular anxiety about their children wearing fashionable clothing..._

 _The sensational "Oh, Mistake Incident" of 1950 solidified these associations. Hiroyuki Yamagiwa, a nineteen-year-old chauffeur at Nihon University, broke into a co-worker's car at knifepoint, slashed the driver, and drove off with 1.9 million yen in cash. Yamgiwa then took his girlfriend on a three-day joyride._

 _The minor crime made headlines after Yamagiwa screamed out in pidgin English "Oh, mistake!" upon being apprehended. During police interrogation Yamagiwa continued to drop random English words into his Japanese and revealed a tattoo that said "George."_

 _In just three days on the lam Yamagiwa spent 100,000 yen--ten times a university graduate 's starting salary - on clothing in high-end Ginza stores._

[http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/](http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/)</comment>


What's new with Scala Native? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scala-lang.org/blog/2017/05/26/whats-new-scala-native.html <comment><USER2> Looking forward to the video of the talk about the new garbage collector. How long does it usually take for the videos of Scala Days to be uploaded?

btw: since Kotlin also seems to go native, would there be a way to collaborate in some areas for the benefit of both projects?</comment>


Engineer says he quit Google after order to stop pro-diversity posts - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/engineer-says-he-quit-google-after-order-to-stop-pro-diversity-posts/ <comment><USER2> I think these two parts sum it up nicely:

> "Where Damore had argued that Google's diversity policies went too far, > Altheide argued that Google was doing too little to promote workplace > diversity."

> "I respectfully ask that everyone stop engaging on this thread," Ramaswamy > wrote. "Google is not a debate club or a philosophy class. We are a > workplace and we have an obligation to make sure our discussions remain > respectful."

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it seem bizarre to anyone else for a company to have an internal social network?

I thought the general concessions was that on social networks, people are more likely to treat each other as jerks than when face to face.

If your company has a social network, would you engage with it? If you run a company, would you make your social network more than just an auxiliary function for management?

<comment><USER4> > Does it seem bizarre to anyone else for a company to have an internal social > network?

It seems like a good way to engage employees and organize discussion and collaboration but how good probably depends on the company and its culture.

I work (low-tier FC drone) at Amazon, and they have an internal Twitter clone that I stumbled across while browsing the internal wiki one day. Nothing very interesting happens on it.. mostly managers and developers posting, but it seems to serve _some_ need that isn't being met by email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lots of people will suggest that Altheide was disruptive in the workplace, regardless of the merits of his arguments. And he will likely experience career consequences for his actions.

But things don't change without people like Cory Altheide.

<comment><USER6> Sure they do. Things change all the time, often for complex reasons that are emergent properties rather than the motivated action of individuals.

<comment><USER5> People like Cory Altheide are an emergent property of injustice. :)

(If you want to debate philosophy, I volunteer to take the position that freewill is an illusion, and that if it were possible to know everything about the past it would be possible to know everything about the future.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I pretty much only read the comments and far better than I would expect.

Lots of comments why are employees not focusing on actual work versus all of the politics.

One was from someone who indicated he has no idea who the guy in one cube over voted for and the way it should be at work.

All of this Google stuff of late with Damore and this one just stresses why that is how it should be today in the US.

Work is for work.

<comment><USER6> I count that as a +1 for Amazon, where in my experience it's far more work focused. At least compared to my buddies at Facebook or google, where these conversations seem to be somewhat common. (Could also be team specific. My team is mostly Chinese and foreign, where the politics separate from work norm seems more resolute)

But they also get meals and maybe a more chill atmosphere? I sometimes wonder if there are relations between these cultural styles</comment></comment>


Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-09-21/why-canadians-are-being-offered-cash-to-abandon-their-homes <comment><USER2> TL;DR — Fishing villages [...] sent into a tailspin by a fishery collapse, oil-price slump and mounting debt that left it with Canada's most severe fiscal and demographic crisis. The provincial government now is pushing to close places like Little Bay Islands altogether rather than service them, offering [...] at least C$250,000 ($189,000) each to leave—and spurring a bitter, three-year fight over whether to cash out or endure.

 _(Actually, the article is not that long, but the title is clickbait)_

I thought the reason was going to be related to the increment of sea levels, as villages near the coasts will surely be affected sooner than later by the constant floods in the coming years. Anyway, I agree with the sentiment of the people mentioned in the article, it is not clear when the Canadian government will pay that money, some people with houses near the coast are retired, they just want to live a peaceful life near the sea, they don't want to relocate, so it is logical to think that this strategy of the government to offer money to leave the place will not work, at least not very well.

<comment><USER3> > some people with houses near the coast are retired, they just want to live a > peaceful life near the sea, they don't want to relocate,

What about social services? We have public health care in Canada and seniors are the most expensive. Plus, with no industry where are they going to get medication and food? And it's not all seniors, the person in the article isn't leaving because he scared he won't be able to find work elsewhere.

So they also have a bunch of non-seniors they have to support as well. And no industry for them to participate in, whereas elsewhere in the province they could contribute to the economy and pay taxes. Instead of just being an economic drain on the state.

There is a reason the province decided it would be more economical to offer them money to leave than paying for the services for them to stay.

<comment><USER4> >What about social services?

This a pretty strong argument against social services. These people who have paid their share into society are now being to forced to move because it's convenient for the government.

<comment><USER5> Canada isn't the typical country when it comes to social services. While much of the population is concentrated in cities the rest of the country is vast, Mongolia or Siberia vast. Some areas, while not vast, are extremely rugged. The west coast of BC is thousands of islands and tiny inlets.

For perspective, draw a line between Vancouver BC and Alaska. 800km and you cross 2 connected roads, one of which being the highway to Whistler. Note all the unconnected little towns along the way. Those are the areas at issue.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-123.3765517,7z](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-123.3765517,7z)

Regardless of funding, there are practical limitations. Nobody could ever deliver something like 10-minute ambulance services to every resident. There probably aren't enough ambulances on the planet to station one within ten minutes of every Canadian. And a good number of those would have to be airborne. Roads are not the norm for much of the north.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The US still can't get the last people to leave Centralia, PA. Centralia has been on fire since 1962. So I think the answer is no. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania)

<comment><USER7> I've always been fascinated by these decades-long coal mine fires. Too bad they can't harness that energy somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > After appeals were settled, a total of 95 residents received ballots. Ninety > percent of them needed to approve the move for it to pass. That's 86 votes. > They got 85.

Seems kind of daft to make it all-or-nothing AND set such a high bar. Why weren't the 85 residents who wanted to leave allowed to participate on their own, taking the money and leaving those 10 trolls behind to enjoy living in Nowheresville?

<comment><USER9> If the point of the scheme is that the government wants to stop providing services to Nowheresville, then they basically have four options:

1\. status quo

2\. pay 85 people to relocate, keep paying to provide services for 10 people

3\. pay 95 people to relocate; 10 of them really strongly do not want to relocate, but force them to do so anyway

4\. pay 85 people to relocate, leave ten people to the wolves

None of these are very appealing.

<comment><USER10> What about stopping the services as well a stop taxing them? Then if it is viable they can stay.

<comment><USER11> I wish there was ANY government willing to do that in the entire world.

Most governments won't ever do that, because it effectively means allowing a independent nation in their lands.

For example: I am from Brazil, and I am most certainly paying in taxes much more than I get in services, police is unreliable (even simple calls to emergency number because I saw shady shit, never worked, sometimes it didn't even connected at all), fire department is also unreliable (more than once they REFUSED to come, and I had to figure on my own how to handle a fire, once this resulted in half of the trees in my yard getting killed after some asshole made a huge debris bonfire on a empty area outside my house), my family purcahsed our own telephone cables and lines (literally), we purchased our own asphalt, we rely on private security, I was 100% privately educated, my health insurance is "private" (it is a private business owned by the Roman Catholic Church), electricity belongs to a private company, our military suck (in fact, I wasn't allowed to join the military when I signed up when I was 18, with the official stated reason being: Lack of money to purchase basic training equipment).

So... what I am paying my taxes for? Taxes in Brazil are about 38% of someone income, on average (I actually pay more than that, according to my calculations my family pays about 60% of our income in taxes).

I would gadly move to a place with no public services + no taxes, to me this would be 100% profit, since right now I have no public services but still pay taxes.

<comment><USER10> I hear you. Panama and Belize are poor man's tax havens if you can work remotely with a foreign source of income. I live in Panama. I haven't seen a homeless person since leaving SF.

<comment><USER12> Err .. if you have foreign employment income in the US, you will be taxed at the source, no?

<comment><USER10> You need to be a contractor, not an employee, then a lawyer can sort it out so you're all good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So Newfoundland has been paying to relocate communities since the 1950s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_(Newfoundland)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettlement_\(Newfoundland\))

I'm looking through the government's publications to try to understand this better. Does anyone here know if the relocation assistance includes any help relocating the community intact to a new location, or are they simply being paid to dissolve the community and leave? It would be interesting to see these folks all given neighbouring properties in a city so they can hold onto their social capital together.

[http://www.ma.gov.nl.ca/faq/faq_relocation.html](http://www.ma.gov.nl.ca/faq/faq_relocation.html) [http://www.ma.gov.nl.ca/publications/relocation/Community%20...](http://www.ma.gov.nl.ca/publications/relocation/Community%20Relocation%20Policy.pdf)

<comment><USER14> My understanding is third hand at best, but certainly the stuff I've read / heard from the 80s talking about the first wave of resettlement was quite bitter.

"The Government Game": [http://www.wtv- zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/02/game.htm](http://www.wtv- zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/02/game.htm) "The Blow Below The Belt": [http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/07/blowbelow.htm](http://www.wtv- zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/07/blowbelow.htm) "West Moon": [http://www.wtv- zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/01/west.htm](http://www.wtv- zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/01/west.htm)

"To a place called Placentia, well, some of them went, And in finding a new home their allowances spent; So for jobs they went lookin' but they looked all in vain, For the roof had caved in on the government game."

"Now they're scattered like dried leaves from hell to high water..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You see this on a smaller scale elsewhere in Canada, too. The global economy is changing, and this has a huge effect on small towns across the country. I know of a few towns that are mostly desert now that their main economic engine (either a large manufacturing plant or a mine) has closed down.

A few of them are trying to re-center around tourism, but the most successful ones I know are attracting small tech companies. They offer a lot of support, and free / cheap office space, and it seems to work quite well.

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised it works much at all. The main draw such places have is lower cost-of-living, but in my experience and observation, the companies that locate there pay significantly lower salaries, so you end up not having any more after-rent pay than living in a metro area. Worse, you're tied to this job, so if the job doesn't work out for some reason, now you have to pack up and move. Also, finding places to rent in such towns can be hard, and buying a house is probably a bad idea because if the town is that much on the brink, you don't want to buy something that you won't be able to sell if the company folds and the town implodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If anybody wants to see some dramatic pictures of past resettlement programs in Newfoundland check google images ([https://www.google.ca/search?q=newfoundland+resettlement&sou...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=newfoundland+resettlement&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmlvLNzqPPAhVENSYKHYLyB6AQ_AUICCgB&biw=1369&bih=757)).

I wish I had seen many of these small towns when the fishing industry was thriving. They are beautiful places but they're just a shell of what they used to be. So many abandoned homes, businesses, stages. If you've got FU money there's plenty of cheap oceanview property.

</comment><comment><USER18> They tried this in the fifties too with the out-harbour communities in Newfoundland like Fogo. Many communities disappeared but Fogo and others stayed and developed something called the _Fogo Process_.

It's sad really. The Marconi Tower is there. Some of the earliest settlements in North America were founded in Newfoundland. It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth to boot.

If you visit you can still find traces of the abandoned communities. Most would just float their houses towards the main island. Some were left behind. It makes for an interesting hike.

Some people out there love it. Generations going back to the 1700's have made their life on those islands. I think some portion of the population will refuse no matter how much is offered.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually live in Toronto and I agree real estate here is expensive.

What I don't get is WAY more expensive in places like London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco but I don't hear as many complaints or alarms going off in those areas. Why? Is this just me being oblivious?

<comment><USER20> It's because Toronto is in a state of transition.

No one complains about NY, London, HK real-estate because it's already understood to be expensive in the mainstream.

But Toronto real-estate being expensive is relatively new such that you have people who grew up in Toronto not being able to afford it in adulthood.

People are slowly realizing that TO is now just another global city out of reach to the middle class unless you make heavy comprises. Give it some time, and soon people will stop complaining about being able to buy a house with a backyard here as well.

<comment><USER21> It's so cold there, who needs a backyard? You can only use it 2 weeks a year, and you'd be better off sailing.

<comment><USER22> Honestly, as a Canadian, this is what I find so dumb about our urban planning. People demand adequate house spacing, backyard space, etc... Only for it to be usable for 4 months of the year. Meanwhile, all that dead space makes our cities unwalkable in the other 8 months. I guess people are just so used to having to drive everywhere that they don't see how else it could be.

<comment><USER23> Where do you live in Canada? In southern ontario (where Toronto and most of the people are) there's no snow for 8 months out of the year. And backyards/sidewalks are really only impeded for maybe 2 months (if you're able-bodied). Meanwhile you can totally have a pool, a vegetable garden, a place for your kids to play, etc. the rest of the time.

I recently moved from an apartment to a house downtown with a tiny backyard, and it's a huge improvement. We didn't really use it in February/March. But the rest of the time it's awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What, no Newfie jokes?

On a more serious note: there's a tectonic shift going on in the US too, it's just not as stark. Young'uns are moving to the cities enmasse, resulting in skyrocketing rents in places like SF, Seattle. The old American Dream of having a McMansion out in the 'burbs has largely died out. Now people prefer the urban areas.

<comment><USER25> > Now people prefer the urban areas.

That's not new. What also isn't new is that when those same people get married and have kids, they'll be looking to move out of that urban environment.

And all of that is completely unrelated to what the article is about.

<comment><USER26> I think it is releated. The economic factors that have shifted jobs away from the land and into the cities are the same ones that attract young people to the cities.

<comment><USER25> The article is about the government wanting to close towns because it is too expensive to provide services that they must to citizens that live there. It's not about people moving from small towns to cities because they want different types of jobs.

<comment><USER26> You don't think those phenomena might be related?

<comment><USER25> No, the issue in Newfoundland is the collapse of the fisheries, not because more kids went to college. This isn't towns having an issue because more kids don't want to do fishing, this is because there are no fish to bring in.

<comment><USER24> Somewhere it's the collapse of the fisheries. Somewhere else it's shuttering of factories. And somewhere else it's consolidation of farming. Basically, it's the same thing: dwindling opportunities in the rural areas, and growth in the cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands One of my new favorite shows on Vice actually did a show about how abandoned Newfoundland is. They pointed out the over fishing of the area then the government banned fishing outright which started the collapse.

[https://video.vice.com/en_ca/video/Newfoundland- Coast/57bddb...](https://video.vice.com/en_ca/video/Newfoundland- Coast/57bddb99a39540ed4498faee)

<comment><USER27> The way your (brief) sentence is written it sounds as though the government is given a good deal of credit for imposing the moratorium, whereas there's a good deal of evidence to suggest that they consistenly mis-managed it. It looks as though a combination of poor ecological models, concentration on simple resource production statistics, consulting only with large capital holders instead of small, local stakeholders led to this avoidable collapse.

Over-fishing in the maritimes was mostly as a result of "free-trade" liberalisation including transferable/sellable fishing licenses which led to a decrease in small, family operations and an increase in massive, mortgaged industrial fishing operations.

The small family business typically engaged in long-lining (single lines with multiple hooks [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longline_fishing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longline_fishing) ) which did not require great capitalization/debt. These business became non- viable as larger operations flooded the market with fish caught by dragging -- a method which leads to the destruction of the seabed ecosystems which in turn decreases the catchable population.

This is one of the good references on the topic, pretty readable (Dean Bavington, _Managed Annihilation_, 2010 UBC Press): [http://www.ubcpress.ca/books/pdf/chapters/2010/ManagedAnnihi...](http://www.ubcpress.ca/books/pdf/chapters/2010/ManagedAnnihilation.pdf)

<comment> at-fates-hands Thanks for the link to the book, it looks like an excellent read. I'll be digging into that tonight.

Yes, the show points out exactly what you say. There was an increase in large scale, industrial fishing using huge trawling boats that quickly depleted the resources.

It seems this is an ongoing theme - as humans we just think natural resources will never run out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _While she's optimistic that the country can build a new economic base, she > said it'll happen only if Canadians "stop over-relying on the extraction of > resources or, even worse, selling off our land."_

This Canadian seems to believe that, in some real or legal sense, the land _belongs_ to her and Canadians in general.

But "Canadian land" truly belongs to anyone in the global real estate market with sufficient cash. This is also true in the US.

I think people would be better off if they clearly recognized this reality. It isn't "your" country. Let that notion go. It's hurting you. There's no "you" there. Fly. Be free.

<comment><USER29> Government is the guarantor of property rights. If the current government was overthrown do you think the new government would necessarily need to honor your deed?

<comment><USER30> Government guarantees property rights, full stop. It doesn't matter what the nationality of the owner is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> And then, there is this [http://www.offgrid-living.com/2016/09/canadian-town- will-giv...](http://www.offgrid-living.com/2016/09/canadian-town-will-give- you-lots-of.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER32> On the opposite end of Canada, in Vancouver, $250K CAD is enough of a down payment to get a parking spot where you can park a portable kids' play house from Home Depot or Rona, without having to pay mortgage loan insurance.

However, in the maritime provinces, with $250K CAD you can actually buy (completely pay for) a fully detached property with a decent house in an urban location.

I'd take the money and run while it's there for the taking. They are probably not going to up the offers for those who stubbornly wait it out.

</comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one to think "wow, those are some very scenic villages that would probably be great for tourism" ?

</comment><comment><USER34> What's with the GIGANTIC title and header fonts on this page. The one on the bottom even has some bouncing animation associated with it.

<comment><USER35> The page probably needed to "pop" more, so the designers added a little more zazz to it.

<comment><USER34> I could see that being in a management email, with "please advise" at the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "but the title is clickbait"

Almost every Bloomberg title is clickbait [1]. Probably Bloomberg should be flagged for title correction.

Perhaps: "Canadian government offering relocation to homeowners from some declining villages"

Financial news readers may enjoy Reuters, which has far less irritatingly misleading titles.

[1] source: Bloomberg.com

<comment><USER37> We've updated the title and detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12557290) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER38> The problem with doing it like this is that I was an inch away from replying to the _very top_ comment that still calls the title clickbait. I had to reach the very bottom of the page to realize that was talking about a different title.</comment></comment></comment>


Code evolution vs Intelligent design - <AUTHOR> http://appgrill.tumblr.com/post/14556489769/code-evolution-vs-intelligent-design

<comment><USER2> Every time I try to do this, I end up having to rip it all up anyway when the requirements change. As John Gall famously said:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work."

Over the years, I've gotten much better at writing components in such a way that I don't end up painting myself into a corner and can easily add/modify functionality later.

<comment><USER3> The important word in the the Gall quote is "complex". I still like to believe that a perfect non-complex system designed from scratch can spring forth from its creator's imagination. The "complex" threshold will vary by programmer.

The component strategy is like meeting the complexity dichotomy somewhere in the middle... limiting the scope of one component to a complexity that can be reasonably understood, while still taking part in a more complex whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "To implement the next step you are going to have to go back and dig up all that perfect code you have just finished writing..."

"This sounds nice, but nothing has really changed - we have just shifted the problem from the coding to the design stage."

Things have indeed changed.

\- If I spend 4 hours designing something and then have to throw it away due to realizing the next piece of functionality doesn't fit in with the design, then I have to throw away 4 hours work.

\- If I spend 2 weeks programming something, and the then have to throw it away due to realizing the next piece of functionality doesn't fit in with it, then I have wasted 2 weeks.

<comment><USER5> yeah but in practice you can't just design without at least writing test program to gather intelligence. I mean you can but it would be like living in a fiction world.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. Unless you are an inexperienced software developer, or it's a completely new domain or technology, or a very experimental problem, you can indeed design the software up-front. Why wouldn't you be able to?

And even if it's an experimental problem or algorithm that's not well understood, and you have to write some test programs, it's still better to spend a day writing test programs and 4 hours doing a design (then throw it away if you encounter a problem with it), than spending 2 weeks actually writing the real code, with documentation, error handling, performance testing, and so on (then throw that away if you encounter a problem.)

<comment><USER6> True, but besides this there are time constraints to any project where money is on the line. You need to get something out quickly that satisfies the market requirements (which usually start off pretty low when you're first entering said market).

So you build the minimum viable product, measure demand (one measure is how many people care enough to complain about your product being so crappy), and then iterate. If you have lots of unit tests, refactoring becomes a less risky proposition, even to the point of re-architecting large chunks of functionality to meet emergent requirements.

Is it slower than building the perfect product up front? In the long run, yes, but in the meantime, you've already tapped a paying market and have gained valuable insight into how people use your product, which guides your further design refinements in ways that cannot be anticipated up-front. And if it turns out the market is dry, you can fail quickly with less resources invested.

That's not to say you should eschew up-front design, but rather the up-front design should be done with the understanding that you're only going for "good enough" with some suppleness built into your architecture for the inevitable refactoring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is experimental evidence that computer programs are insteligently designed, as opposed to real lifeforms:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/05/03/linux- vers...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/05/03/linux-versus-e- coli/)

<comment><USER8> The problem with this analysis is that it seems to analyze the subject with the assumption that the intelligent designer does not have bounded rationality. If we want to use articles like this to truly reject declarations of intelligent design of lifeforms, we must then attack intelligent design's declaration that the designer does not suffer from bounded rationality. Otherwise, it's constructing a strawman to take down intelligent design. The debate needs to be more rigorous, if there is to be a debate.

<comment><USER7> The point of the article was to show that Linux works differently then a real life form. E Coli being a product of evolution is already a settled issue, as far as biology is concerned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All _systems_ evolve, if they can change at all. Systems with intelligent actors (software, language, economics, etc) involve more factors than biological evolution does. Biological evolution is mainly through variation and selection. Intelligent evolution _also_ involves borrowing (acquisition) from outside the "genome", planning of future changes, analogical reasoning between "lineages", and other means of generating and fixing variations.</comment>


AFP: French court convicts Google and boss of defamation - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gJsoDp_yA1FHODNVS7KbuG0I0fwQ <comment><USER2> A few context elements are missing from this short piece:

* "public records" are not public, and for instance, it is illegal for social workers to ask someone in jail what he is in for; the memory of Google Suggested search introduced something that the French people deem inappropriate;

* a similar trial, by a distinct court, allowed Google to Suggest "[Name of the company] scam" because it did so using an algorithmic relevance that was appropriate, summarising "common opinion" needed for "good business" (business courts treat differently companies who face many accusations, because too few consumers go to court);

* that decision was based on Google's testimony that they censor "inappropriate" associations ("naked", "sex tape") so exert enough editorial control.

Also missing to an American audience is that libel laws are more stringent, but you knew that.

</comment><comment><USER3> If Google was a French company, would the ruling have been the same?

<comment><USER4> On this kind of case, probably... Libel law are more stringent in France and as pointed by bertil Google does already censor inappropriate associations...

Also the damage awarded is mostly symbolic (5,001 euros is hardly a big sum for Google) and the aim seems to be mostly for google to add the relevant terms to their list of inappropriate associations...</comment></comment>


Undercover communication – Baal - <AUTHOR> https://dee.su/uploads/baal <comment><USER2> >Now, you might ask: "Just how secure is this setup?"

>You'd be surprised at just how effective it is -- it was enough to thwart a combined investigation by the FBI and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Queensland Police Service (QPS), Europol, Interpol, The Department of Internal affairs New Zealand, and the Toronto Police Service.

Hmm. I wonder how far they'd get if the NSA or GCHQ had a go at this.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you experience a crippling fear of "writing low quality software"? - <AUTHOR> For many years, I have found myself unable/unwilling to write software as a hobby. While I still do it as a profession, I'm barely able to write for leisure or for personal projects these days.
For some time, I just assumed it was something like burnout; I write code at work and don't wish to do it at home. But even when I do have a day off and I feel like writing something... I rarely get anything done.
However, yesterday, in my spare time, I started working on a small program. I had an idea that I wanted to explore, but very quickly I ran into some trouble writing unit tests for it. Eventually, I got overwhelmed with two unacceptable options:
1) Write this thing without tests.
2) Build an -insane- amount of scaffolding to make tests possible.
A whole day of struggling to do TDD and I have nothing to show for it. It has really ruined my mood, and I realize now how often that has happened when writing software. In a way, "ignorance is bliss" -- had I never learnt about software correctness, I'd be producing more. Though I fear it would be 'lower quality' in some way.
Has anyone else felt this? The solution can't be to abandon tests, static analysis, and so on. I did initially think perhaps tests should only be written when a bug is discovered - i.e. reproduce the bug with a failing test, then fix the software. That particular function's rewrite/repair can be guided by static analysis.
I guess so long as the code is written to be reasonably testable, that may work?
Even though I want to write good code, the pressure I put on myself to produce good work seems to drain my soul. <comment><USER2> I would say (ESPECIALLY for personal projects) that writing bad code that does something is better than writing no code that does nothing.

For personal projects I do really minimal testing if any at all. Again especially for "exploratory" projects.

There is a spot I think for personal projects where lots of tests make all kinds of sense. But just for playing around. Meh. Trust your abilities and embrace the dark side. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're starting with a blank slate, what insane amount of scaffolding is required to test? If you had a long-running hobby project that hadn't ever been tested, it could be daunting to add tests ( _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ is a great book for this, by the way), but getting started with testing on a greenfield project is trivial in most languages. If you're writing tests on code at work, did someone else do all the work setting it up for you?

I can relate to the general sentiment; I have little ideas all the time, and my desire to "do things right" leads me to go off on tangents configuring CI/CD pipelines and other tools, but I enjoy that too, so I don't feel like it's a waste of time. I just might not end up working on the thing I started out wanting to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Specifically, it was building a filesystem abstraction. The language I was working in didn't have a suitable one I could use.

I realized this morning I could have used a mock/test double -- at the time I was thinking I'd need to have some in-memory filesystem so I could later run assertions. I guess I needed to sleep on it.

Anyhow, I'm sure I have run into similar issues where I've felt some pressure to pick between getting some code out and getting some _good_ code out. That is more what this post is about. I was using that as a recent example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the problem here is tooling. There's a lot of bad tooling in use, it seems to be a universal problem across most if not all domains of software development. I can't really relate to not wanting to write software as a hobby, only doing it as a profession, if anything, for me it is the opposite. And the reason is the same: hating to deal with bad tooling. Fortunately, I get paid to do it when writing software professionally which makes it bearable. In my spare time, I don't, so I don't deal with bad tooling and use only good tools or make my own tools when there's not a good one to grab off the shelf.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess I haven't. I also don't write many tests, but I do write a testsuite when I get really stuck with something. For example, I couldn't trust my floating-point implementation in a RISC-V emulator, so I wrote a program that should run inside it that asserts on every operation and C-function that does floating-point calculations. I found so many bugs using that. But, I also don't particularly care, you know.

If you're doing something as a hobby, don't sweat about the tests. Just do it because it's fun - and the second it stops being fun do something else.</comment>


China's AI Awakening - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609038/chinas-ai-awakening/?set= <comment><USER2> Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace.

An objective measure is PISA results [1]. When comparing with even the best performing US state, Massachusetts, China has many more top performers in Math, as a proportion of population [2].

(In 2015 only four provinces of China participated, but their combined population was 230 million vs Massachusetts's 6.8 million. The math result of Shanghai (24 million pop.) alone would show an even larger gap.)

Since PISA results are scaled such that OECD country's mean is 500 and standard deviation is 100, China's 531 math score implies country mean at 0.3 SD above PISA mean, and US' math score at 470 implies 0.3 SD below mean. If people capable of doing AI research or proper AI implementation need to have math skills at, say, 2 SD above PISA mean, then there will be a tremendous difference in proportion between two populations with 0.6 SD difference.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in _potential_ numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. (Since other provinces may drag down China's mean, it could be a bit less. An opposite influence is increasing wealth and thus more resources devoted to education, both by parents and the state. We'll see soon since China as a whole will participate in PISA 2018.)

Moreover, the Chinese government is pushing AI and programming education into their education system, starting from the primary level [3].

The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or _potential_ talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#China)

[2] [http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/usa1?lg=en](http://www.compareyourcountry.org/pisa/country/usa1?lg=en)

[3] [http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0828/c90000-9261282.html](http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0828/c90000-9261282.html)

<comment><USER3> pardon my ignorance, but what is the specific correlation of math skills to dominance in AI ? yes, AI/ML/dnn uses substantial amounts of linear algebra, much the way accountancy uses large amounts of arithmetic. but we don't see mathematicians racing to be accountants. i have specifically written to several math departments in the US asking if they do any sort of AI/ML related graduate research. Even schools that offer courses like "math of deep learning" are happy to confess that this is just a bait - they are using that course title to hook more students to sign up, but the course content is plain old eigenvalues and matrix decompositions and what used to previously be called "advanced linear algebra". you aren't likely to get any AI breakthroughs from math folks - that is simply not the focus of math depts. i have correspondended with several COLT folks who deal with the theoretical end of sgd/neural nets/ statistical learning, and even there the correlation with math is expendable.

now if you are talking statistics, in particular applied statistics, most of those departments are retooling by hiring ml folks from csee departments. but the bread and butter courses required to get a stat phd remain the same as they were a decade ago - 2 core inference courses, 2 core math-stat measure theoretic courses, 2 courses on experimental stats. literally no stat dept mandates an ML course, though a few do allow ml as an elective. now, all of this can and will change over the next few years, but its very early days.

essentially, predicating ai dominance on raw math skills is a mistake. there's no significant correlation.

<comment><USER4> The PISA test (at least when I took it) measures math skills in calculation, i.e. the kind of applied mathematics that academic departments write off as too trivial. Nonetheless, those are the skills that are required for Deep Learning as well as accountancy.

You could make an argument that high performers on the PISA test would find AI and accountancy too boring and would go into pure mathematics instead; but I don't think those proportions would be different between countries, so a higher potential (schoolchildren with good math skills) should still translate into more AI researchers, on average.

<comment><USER5> > those are the skills that are required for Deep Learning

Why do you believe that?

<comment><USER4> Rereading that, I should have worded it as "those are skills that are required for Deep Learning research". There are of course a bunch of other skills you need to be successful, but you won't get far without being comfortable with linear algebra and calculus.

To answer your question, I believe that because I haven't yet seen a Deep Learning paper which did not couch its results in terms of those, even if it might not have been strictly necessary. If you do not understand the basics of current approaches, you'll have a hard time developing them further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Extremely relevant quote from the talented Mr Ng:

> "When the Chinese government announces a plan like this, it has significant > implications for the country and the economy," says Andrew Ng, a prominent > AI expert who previously oversaw AI technology and strategy at China's > biggest online search company, Baidu. "It's a very strong signal to everyone > that things will happen."

ie. There is going to be a tonne of money poured into this.

Will it make a difference, tangibly to economic transformation? Who knows...

...but anyone sitting here scoffing that China can't make itself a world leader in a field by simply pouring money and support onto the problem needs a serious history lesson.

They have before, and there is every indiction they will again, here with this.

More interesting: will it be as transformative as everyone is hoping?

<comment><USER7> > ...but anyone sitting here scoffing that China can't make itself a world > leader in a field by simply pouring money and support onto the problem needs > a serious history lesson. They have before, and there is every indiction > they will again, here with this.

What are they currently leading?

<comment><USER8> One example where they poured money and got ahead is the rail system and the high speed rail system.

<comment><USER9> Their maglev train was built by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp in Germany, the _real_ leader in high speed rail transportation.

<comment><USER10> Their high-speed rail train is not maglev. There is one built by Germany in Shanghai, but it was more of a demo than an actual infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm getting a bit of a flashback to the Japanese Fifth Gneeration Computing project (I wasn't around back then; I've read about it though).

Then, too, an East Asian country (Japan) known for excellence in one field (manufacturing) initiated a state-funded research project into a promising technology (AI). Then, too, the West reacted with alarm, fearing the Asians would leave them in the dust. Then, too, the project was about AI.

Except, back then, it didn't go too well [1]. But, perhaps this is just pattern matching failure on my part and nothing is even remotely the same today.

____________________

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

<comment><USER2> The current crop of AIs is already starting to make a big impact in commercial and other spheres. All of the major tech giants in the US and China are using AI in their offerings and behind the scenes. There are substantial differences between the two eras.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another competitive advantage of China is data. China has 1.4B population, and nearly everyone in the country owns a mobile phone. This will contribute data 3-4 times larger than US. Considering second-order interactions (network effect), the data could be an order of magnitude larger.

Chinese citizen also seems less concerned about their privacy. I've talked to one of the largest chat platforms in China, and they seems very open to share their conversation datasets with third-parties for dialogue research.

In high-value verticals like healthcare, there is also less regulation compared to U.S. For example, it's easy to start a AI + radiology company in China and have access to hospital patient data, without going through tedious approval process.

<comment><USER12> Excellent point. But you have to factor in american companies international reach. Chinese companies dominate china and that is extremely lucrative, but american tech companies dominate europe and the americas and the rest of the world.

Europe and at americas combined have a larger population than china and a geographical landmass 3X larger than china.

The real question is why europe ( 800 million people ) and latin america ceded their tech industry and data to the US.

If data is the oil of the 21st century, then the US, china and india are going to rule the nest. Europe has no future and neither does south america.

I under why china, russia, etc had protected their own internal industries to compete against FB, GOOGL, TWTR, AMZN, etc. I just don't understand why europe, south america, etc haven't.

All europe/south america have/had to do is invest a few billion to capture a few trillion in wealth. Instead, they've ceded all that wealth to predominately american tech companies. It's very strange when you think about it.

<comment><USER13> Is it though, your talking about a federation of democratic and culturally different nations to two locked down regimes with homogeneous societies.

I don't think Europe could do what China and Russia did even if they tried.

<comment><USER14> You're very mistaken if you think either Russia or China are homogeneous societies.

And I'm not sure Russia can be considered a locked down regime in recent years. Unless you mean specifically Putin's grasp on power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmmm. MIT Tech Review now behind cognito-only browser shield? Is that new?

What's really interesting is the continued trend of cashless WeChat Pay adoption in China versus say trickling Digital Payments penetration here in USA. I actually just had to order a new replacement set of paper checks. And its simply due to the fact that so many small merchants cite higher credit card fees as a reason for preferring cash or checks for payments.

Coupled with AI, I think this preference for instant, fee-less digital payments will translate into convenience stores without cashiers. Auto repair shops where you just drop off your faulty electric vehicle and hop into a loaner without actually interacting with a customer service agent. And thousands of other technology-mediated retail experiences.

It's Asian consumer adoption and demand driving AI solutions from the bottom up. And that makes it much more likely to result in first mover advantage and the potential for game-changing breakthroughs.

<comment><USER16> One advantage China has in payments is the lack of incumbent credit corporations. In the United States credit cards were widely deployed and trusted decades ago while in China tech companies have an open playing field where real innovation can happen fast.

<comment><USER17> That's a competitive advantage when it arises against competitors that you're willing to destroy. But in the years ahead, China's major competition will arise increasingly within China. That portends a lot of internal disruption of the status quo which the government is unlikely to anticipate (like the ongoing explosion of e-commerce there and its immeasurable disruption of the day-to-day lives of established retailers).

Despite China's outward enthusiasm for advancement, high speed change promises to destabilize the totalitarian gov't, which suggests that a bumpy ride lies ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am a Chinese born AI researcher and I've had most of my higher education in the US. The funny thing is that when I was a high schooler in China, I was not particularly good at math and basically hated anything quantitative. There are two points I want to make to counter some of the arguments people have brought up.

First, even though Chinese high schoolers are "better" at math and there are certainly many gifted kids, it does not necessarily mean that they are better at abstract thinking and will excel at higher levels. On the other hand, some of the most talented people I know did not have super impressive test scores. They are insatiably curious and think from first principles.

Second, if you look at the top researchers today, you'll find their strength comes from combining knowledge from different disciplines, e.g. computer science and neuroscience. The education system in China pretty much hones students in a single dimension, pushing them into a narrow corner. Also, the most important thing in research is not just understanding what has been done. It is thinking critically and challenging authority. Unfortunately, in my opinion, this really goes against the Chinese regime and Chinese culture to a large extent.

I wouldn't be surprised by a large number of future Chinese AI "engineers" who can quickly replicate the latest research. But I think China has a long way to go in order to create an environment that allows students to freely explore and think before a real AI breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER19> Another key trend to consider - China's labor costs are growing up to 2x per year: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/welcoming- our-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/23/welcoming-our-new- robot-overlords)

China's push for AI is a recognition that the loss of one advantage (cheap human labor) could be replaced by another (cheap machine labor).

<comment><USER20> They're not growing 2x every year. Even the article you linked says ""China's labor costs are increasing, or doubling, every few years,""

In any case, the advantage of cheap human labour has _already_ been replaced by what you call 'cheap machine labour'. China has been able to dominate manufacturing in large part by giving companies access to cheap capital, which allows them to invest in machines. Silicon chips aren't made by hand. PCBs aren't soldered by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Has China produced a single major AI breakthrough with all these cited papers? Just because they have a lot of papers written doesn't mean anything. Quality vs Quantity. You can take technology developed by others and copy it all you want, and assign all your grad students to write something publishable about it, but unless you innovate in it, I wouldn't say you are a world leader. At best you may see novel applications of AI tasking come out of China, and people will falsely equate this with "China is beating us at AI." I still think the General AI breakthrough will come from Western researchers out of the box thinking.

<comment><USER5> Yes, lots. StackGAN comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _The plan calls for homegrown AI to match that developed in the West within three years, for China's researchers to be making "major breakthroughs" by 2025, and for Chinese AI to be the envy of the world by 2030._

Really? Major breakthroughs can be mandated by a centralized government? Back in the 80s-90s, Americans were convinced that Japan was going to eat its lunch. It gives me some hope in knowing that we still suffer from this complex.

<comment><USER23> US government basically mandated the Moon landings, and they happened within 12 years from Sputnik. So I'd say yes, sometimes a government can just mandate progress.

<comment><USER24> Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record of successful projects?

Computers, nukes, ICs, space, internet, self-driving cars, etc.

They seem to be some of the most well used research money -- precisely the government mandating progress.

<comment><USER25> > Dont DARPA and other US gov research groups have a pretty long track record > of successful projects?

And many failures too. You can't just buy whatever innovation you want with money; if that were true we wouldn't still have energy problems and powerlines for distributing it.

<comment><USER23> If you don't allow for failures, you won't get successes either. That's the problem of today - research is increasingly being done in market-driven style, which strongly favors short-term work that the sales department can turn into perceived miracle over long-term, uncertain but possibly high-impact projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whenever I read articles like this I'm really looking for the million dollar idea. Solving Go is good. Solving Poker is better. Best would be solving a high-value business problem for which a solution using AI can be developed.

<comment><USER27> Arguably high-value business problems that are currently being solved by AI and ML methods: 1) serving personalized ads, 2) efficient stock and commodity trading 3) fraud detection

<comment><USER26> Sure, and I would add to the list recommendation (Amazon/Netflix)...

But I'm looking for things where the technology has yet to be applied.

<comment><USER28> >I would add to the list recommendation

You bought a 3000$ DSLR yesterday.. Why not buy a 1000$ one today?

<comment><USER26> I didn't say it was perfect, but at least when it is wrong, it is funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys I was reading the USNews CS ranking yesterday, got really surprised that apparently some Chinese universities are now considered as the best in CS.

top 20 list:

[https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global- universities/se...](https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global- universities/search?region=&subject=computer-science&name=)

[https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global- universities/co...](https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global- universities/computer-science?page=2)

<comment><USER29> Well, it's interesting to see that the USNews ranks Harvard ahead of UCBerkeley. Back when I used to work at a quant shop in NYC, Harvard wasn't even considered for hiring -- they only recruited from MIT, CMU, UIUC, Berkeley, Stanford and UToronto.

Also, not surprisingly, most quants were Chinese.

<comment> barry-cotter Trust your own expertise. I can't find the paper where I got this from but if you rank CS departments by where professors got their doctorates and where they end up teaching the basically equal top four were Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Berkeley and Stanford. Which four would round out the world Top 10? Georgia Tech?

Aren't a ton of quants French as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What I never understood, if China is so great, why then do large parts of their upper middle class/upper class buy property in foreign countries and send their kids to school their? It's not as if the American upper class are purchasing houses in Beijing for their kids.

<comment><USER31> The United States was once seen as uncultured, unrefined, and frankly quite weak by most of Western Europe until the late 1800's. And in many respects it was. Now the US is the richest country in the world, and is where wealthy non- Americans send their children and make land investments.

My point is that trajectory is more relevant to these discussions than current state of affairs. The quality of life of the average Chinese citizen (and more so the upper-middle class Chinese citizen) has increased DRAMATICALLY in the last 40 years. So when people talk about China's potential, they aren't talking about the situation in the next 5 or 10 years. They're talking about who is going exert massive international influence in the next 50 years. So you're right, most westerners aren't buying speculative property in Beijing (despite the fact that housing in central Beijing is nearly as expensive as New York City), but I'd wager there's a good chance of that changing in the next 50 years.

<comment><USER32> I think a missing piece of the puzzle is: It's not clear to me that my property rights would be respected, should I be able to buy property in China (which, as a foreigner, I can't do anyway, the government only leases it to you at best).

Western countries have a much better record in this regard.

<comment><USER31> While you're technically correct about the government leasing property, in practice buying the rights to land for residential use is in practice effectively the same as buying the land. There are a lot of things like that in China, where the system is nominally socialist, but in practice things are just as capitalistic (if not more so) as they are in western countries.

<comment><USER33> This hasn't been tested yet. There was a huge scandal in Wenzhou when the local government was going to charge market prices for renewing leases there (their property market started earlier with shorter leases before 70 years was settled on nationally). The central government had to step in and make the leases turn over automatically, because the precedent set in Wenzhou could tank markets nationwide.

I bet China eventually scraps the lease system and replaces it with a universal property tax, which would solve the other problem of keeping local governments funded long term (right now they just make money on sales), while naturally deprecating the property on a yearly basis, and also making pure speculation much more difficult.

But who can say. If china switches to a property tax system (not just the nominal one easily gamed in shanghai and chongqing today), it would break a lot of buying assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> there was a time when the U.S. had a leader who declared a bipartisan mission to do something great and worthy of the effort and the U.S. accomplished that mission: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuW4oGKzVKc) \-- fast forward to ~7:40minutes for most relevant

AI is the new moon shot of our time but its rally cries are emanating by leaders of U.S corporations for the maximization of profit of their shareholders where as in China they are emanating by the leaders of the state for reasons far exceeding short-term economic gains

</comment><comment><USER35> Sorry, my questions might reflect that I don't know much about China / Chinese culture. I'm curious about compensation. Can Chinese AI researchers earn equally well in China as abroad? Or are they going to suffer from brain drain eventually? How does the Communist Party / society deal with large pay gaps? Are Chinese companies with AI departments looking for international talent that's not at the uppermost level?

<comment><USER33> Yes. China pays well, not just for AI researchers, but specialized tech talent in general. They attract workers from Taiwan, Korea, Japan for the better paycheck accordingly, where tech workers aren't valued as much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pro tip for folks looking to take a job with a Chinese company: this will prevent you from jumping to some jobs in the US. The defense sector will want you to be not employed by the Chinese for at least a year before letting you work on defense-related jobs (yes, they will audit your employer).

<comment><USER33> Well, if you marry a Chinese, you can also kiss your security clearance goodbye. I don't think it matters to most of outside the DC/Virginia area.

<comment><USER36> There's a fair amount of DoD contract work being done all over the country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Scientists like Ng ought to consider the repercussions of their actions when they decide to aid Chinese companies, and by extension, the Chinese govt with cutting edge research. They are basically collaborating with the enemy that stands against pretty much everything that the west granted them (scientists like Ng who were born here and given the opportunities).

<comment><USER38> I believe that your pro-western nationalism is evil, because this dualism fails to see the nuance, that american corporatism is just as bad as Chinese state socialism. I up-voted you, however, because you stated your opinion in the open, rather than simply implying it. I'd far rather people like you be open in their belief that this is some sort of situation where one country wins and the other loses.

I, however, believe that whoever wins this battle will be wealthy and powerful. Who-ever wins the race is the enemy. Not just the Chinese, but anyone who attains singularity is the enemy of the rest of humanity.

Even if that AI is open-source, unless there is a clear way for every person to have some level of control over the hardware that it runs on, the AI becomes the enemy of all people who will be disenfranchised by it.

<comment><USER39> This phrasing was really blunt and came off a bit rude. But there is a point there that shouldn't be written off. As far as choosing who the biggest and most powerful entity on the planet is, would you rather have one with more or less respect for the rights of individuals?

Because, so far in human history, individual rights-based political formulations are the only ones that prevent arbitrary atrocities from being perpetrated on citizens. Yes, American corporatism is brutal. American corporatism bounded by American democracy, imperfect as it is, is still vast leagues better (read: safer for global population) than nationalist authoritarian dictatorship. No matter how technocratically efficient that dictatorship has been in recent decades.

In short, if you're worried about singularities, aren't you worried about the priorities and command structure of the entities most likely to achieve it? About what options they consider to be "on the table"?

<comment><USER38> Of course I am worried about the command structure of the entities most likely to acheive singularity, but this is all the more reason to fight against a nationalist, McCarthyist, "you traitor!" attitude which would lead America, in its competition with China, away from its liberal ideals and towards a more efficient command structure such as fascism or national corporatism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Thb, most of the interesting work I've seen has come out of Silicon Valley. What breakthroughs have come from China?

<comment><USER41> Most 'breakthroughs' in AI have come from Canada, not Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER42> Canada is definitely underappreciated, but you might be overstating it a bit...

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jpmorganchase/2017/10/04/chicag...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jpmorganchase/2017/10/04/chicago- collaborative-sets-sights-on-restoring-a-nearly-vacant-town/#300bcb3a55b4)</comment></comment></comment>