Einstein's Parable of Quantum Insanity - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150910-einstein-insanity/ <comment><USER3> Physicists, here is a related question:

We have a gun that shoots electrons one at a time due north. A little ahead of the gun and in the path of the electrons we have a _beam splitter_ , that is, a flat plate of material with horizontal normal along the line from south east to north west.

So, we fire the gun. The electron hits the beam splitter. The wave function splits with some going east and the rest passing through the beam splitter and going north.

One mile to the north of the beam splitter and in the line of the path of the wave function we have a very good electron detector. Similarly for one mile to the east.

So, we fire and some fraction of the time we get a detection from the north detector and the rest of the time, from the east detector.

Now, let's move some of the mass of the electron faster than the speed of light: A little ahead of each detector we have a very sensitive detector of gravity (or, maybe charge).

So, as the two parts of the wave function pass the gravity detectors, we get a signal from both. If the beam splitter sends 10% of the wave function north and the other 90% east, then from the north gravity detector we should get a signal of 10% of an electron, and from the east, 90% of an electron.

Then, soon, one of the electron detectors gives a signal, of 100% of the mass (and charge) of an electron. So, 90% or 10% of the mass (and charge) of the electron moved instantly, faster than the speed of light. along the line between the two detectors.

Is this wrong? Why?

In more detail, what about the electromagnetic field from the moving parts of the wave function? E.g., if the electron is detected at the east detector, is there an electromagnetic field still from the path of part of the wave function to the north?

<comment><USER4> My understanding is that the gravity detectors would not detect 10% or 90% of an electron. One would detect 0% and one would detect 100%. You cannot measure the wave function directly. Attempting to do so collapses it.

When that waveform collapse happens, everything about the quantum state collapses: electromagnetic field, gravity, etc.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

Sounds like when the wave function of the electron is moving, likely it is following the local geometry of space-time but otherwise is essentially _lost_ to the universe.

Then whenever we do detect a field, gravity, electro-magnetic, strong, weak, etc., necessarily we are detecting just collapsing wave functions, each of which happens at essentially just a point in time. Then after the point in time of the collapse, the electron is just a wave function again off on its way to another collapse.

E.g., when an electron accelerates going around a circle and radiates photons, each photon radiated is from a collapse of the wave function of the electron at which time the electron creates a new wave function and continues on? Sounds like that.

Hmm ... So, all we are seeing, feeling, detecting, observing, measuring, etc. are just high rate point processes of collapsing wave functions? Gads. Why didn't they tell me that back in high school?

Where am I going wrong?

<comment><USER4> You're getting closer.

Regarding your electron-emitting-photons example: I would describe the photons being emitted as themselves in a quantum superposition of having been emitted/not emitted/emitted at different times, etc. It is when we detect or observe the photon that the state of the whole system collapses! The electron and the photon are entangled. Continue this line of thinking and you arrive at the famous Schrodinger's cat... it's a cascading entanglement of larger and larger groups of particles until you open the box and the waveform of every particle in the whole cat collapses to either alive or dead.

The waveform is not really a physical object; I think of it as a probability distribution about the state of the system when observed. These probabilities can be highly correlated; in this case, the probability of observing the electron at one energy level or another is 100% correlated to the probability of observing or not observing the photon at all - which is the definition of entanglement.

Yes, you are constantly observing collapsing wave functions. It might be some solace that most of said wave functions have highly-degenerate probability distributions. By this I mean that 99.999...% of the "mass" of the distribution lies in something reasonable happening. For example, each particle in a tennis ball is so highly entangled to every other particle, that when you throw it against a wall, it's exceedingly likely that the ball will bounce back. A single unentangled atom may have been able to pass right through the wall, but the tennis ball's "waveform" is much more stable and localized such that it's better approximated by classical mechanics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the opposite take, some may like the article, "Clearing Up Mysteries - <USER2> Original Goal" by E.T. Jaynes:

[http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/cmystery.pdf](http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/cmystery.pdf)

>While it is easy to understand and agree with this on the epistemological level, the answer that I and many others would give is that we expect a physical theory to do more than merely predict experimental results in the manner of an empirical equation; we want to come down to Einstein's ontological level and understand what is happening when an atom emits light, when a spin enters a Stern-Gerlach magnet, etc. The Copenhagen theory, having no answer to any question of the form: What is really happening when - - - ?", forbids us to ask such questions and tries to persuade us that it is philosophically naive to want to know what is happening. But I do want to know, and I do not think this is naive; and so for me QM is not a physical theory at all, only an empty mathematical shell in which a future theory may, perhaps, be built.

...and maybe chapter 10 of his book, "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science".

>We are fortunate that the principles of Newtonian mechanics could be developed and verified to great accuracy by studying astronomical phenomena, where friction and turbulence do not complicate what we see. But suppose the Earth were, like Venus, enclosed perpetually in thick clouds. The very existence of an external universe would be unknown for a long time, and to develop the laws of mechanics we would be dependent on the observations we could make locally.

>Since tossing of small objects is nearly the first activity of every child, it would be observed very early that they do not always fall with the same side up, and that all one's efforts to control the outcome are in vain. The natural hypothesis would be that it is the volition of the object tossed, not the volition of the tosser, that determines the outcome; indeed, that is the hypothesis that small children make when questioned about this. Then it would be a major discovery, once coins had been fabricated, that they tend to show both sides about equally often; and the equality appears to get better as the number of tosses increases. The equality of heads and tails would be seen as a fundamental law of physics; symmetric objects have a symmetric volition in falling.

>With this beginning, we could develop the mathematical theory of object tossing, discovering the binomial distribution, the absence of time correlations, the limit theorems, the combinatorial frequency laws for tossing of several coins at once, the extension to more complicated symmetric objects like dice, etc. All the experimental confirmations of the theory would consist of more and more tossing experiments, measuring the frequencies in more and more elaborate scenarios. From such experiments, nothing would ever be found that called into question the existence of that volition of the object tossed; they only enable one to confirm that volition and measure it more and more accurately...

>Biologists have a mechanistic picture of the world because, being trained to believe in causes, they continue to search for them and find them. Quantum physicists have only probability laws because for two generations we have been indoctrinated not to believe in causes - and so we have stopped looking for them. Indeed, any attempt to search for the causes of microphenomena is met with scorn and a charge of professional incompetence and "obsolete mechanistic materialism." Therefore, to explain the indeterminacy in current quantum theory we need not suppose there is any indeterminacy in Nature; the mental attitude of quantum physicists is already sufficient to guarantee it.

[http://www.med.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/bios601/Gaussia...](http://www.med.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/bios601/GaussianModel/JaynesProbabilityTheory.pdf)

<comment><USER6> For being the top purveyor of maximum-entropy methods, Jaynes really should have been more willing to accept a probabilistic theory of fundamental physics.

<comment><USER7> Jaynes believed that the only kind of probability was that caused by uncertainty about the true state of the world. So he was advocating MAXENT as a way to summarise one's (lack of) knowledge about some system.

In fact, this point of view probably made him less likely to accept a probabilistic theory of fundamental physics. If you've discovered how a deterministic universe can appear random, and how probabilities can still be useful for measuring one's ignorance, then it's reasonable to suspect that these are the only kinds of probabilities and that the universe really is deterministic.

<comment><USER6> And how can states of knowledge be probabilistic if the mind isn't made out of something related to its function?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Charlton Einstein: "You'll pry my determinism from my cold dead hands"

<comment><USER9> Determinism is dead. Long live an in-deterministic (and free) universe!

But seriously, why many scientists are so attached to wanting a deterministic universe is beyond me. Even at the highest levels, I'm amazed that physicists have an near moral repugnance to the idea that there's randomness inherent in the universe. They even go through such lengths as inventing the many worlds theories to try and recapture determinism.

<comment><USER10> If you accept that all effects have causes, you accept determinism.

Also, determinism will be resurrected. Look at Pilot Wave theory. It explains quantum weirdness with a deterministic worldview, but everyone would prefer to hype voodoo theories.

<comment><USER8> Well..not really.

"But pilot wave theory could still be important, because it has a different conceptual formulation, so if you set out to modify the theory, you get different modifications. In that sense, it is a good new idea. I personally think that you can produce a truncation of pilot-wave which doesn't coincide with ordinary quantum mechanics, but which is mostly the same as quantum mechanics when you are dealing with only a few particles only slightly entangled. In this case, you need the wavefunction to be a complicated function of the hidden-variables (the particle positions) which only obeys the Schrodinger equation approximately. This type of thing is a true modification of quantum mechanics, but I was never 100% sure that it works. I described the idea roughly in my answer to one of 'tHoofts questions on physics stackexchange."

Source: [http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-more-physicists-subscribe- to-p...](http://www.quora.com/Why-dont-more-physicists-subscribe-to-pilot- wave-theory)

<comment><USER10> The predictions of pilot wave theory are the same as any other interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the theory isn't new it's been around 80 years

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wild guessing from someone who has no background in physics:

1\. Simulating QM-level events is NP-complete.

2.Assuming P=/=NP, a machine that simulates a volume of size X in QM-correct terms must be exponentially larger than X.

3\. This includes X itself.

4\. Therefore, the universe is taking sweeping shortcuts that look like classical mechanics at large scale. These are not 'our' computational shortcuts, they're actually how things work at a fundamental level.

5\. ...maybe if we build a big enough quantum computer we can overflow the universe's buffer.

<comment><USER12> You're missing step 0, which is assuming that our universe is a simulation. Also, you're making a lot of assumptions about the laws of physics and what is computationally feasible in the universe that that computer is running in.

<comment><USER11> I'm not assuming simulation. It's more of "if the universe can pack something that can predict the outcome of an NP-complete system (that is, the universe itself) in real-time into a relatively very tiny space, then either it's cheating or P=NP."

As for the assumptions, I agree. Hence it's wild guessing.

<comment><USER12> Then I misunderstood originally.

If you're not assuming the universe is simulated and is instead "fundamental" (whatever that means), then who are you to put limits on its processing power?'

I think you have a level-confusion here - the universe isn't packing computational machinery into itself. Remember that space-time is a part of this universe. If something is computing our universe, it has to hold the representation of space-time, too. The computation machinery isn't in here with us.

<comment><USER11> If 'fundamental' stuff gets to break P=/= NP, then I don't see why we can't do it in a computer, if only by aping the design. But then P=NP and things get weird.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure why you keep mentioning NP and P. A problem being exponential doesn't mean it can't be computed. Maybe the universe does the calculations the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Physics is a game best played by madmen.

</comment><comment><USER12> Einstein had amazingly good intuition for the character of physical laws, i.e. what shape the laws of physics must necessarily take. And in this case he was right, too. God doesn't play dice; the universe _is_ deterministic. Unfortunately, he didn't stumble upon the right answer, Many Worlds. I sometimes wonder how much longer it will take popular science writers to stumble upon it, too.

<comment><USER14> >he didn't stumble upon the right answer, Many Worlds.

i hope you're joking. Many Worlds to treat the alleged indeterminisity is like cutting the head off to treat an acne.

<comment><USER12> Haha, no, not joking.

Many worlds is by far the best hypothesis to date.

<comment><USER15> I have known about MW for 25 years or more, thanks to popular science writers. I don't see it getting more traction than it already has absent some way to falsify it. It's stylish from a distance, but like imaginary numbers, you should tidy up your multiverse when you are done playing with it.

<comment><USER12> That's a common criticism, but many-worlds is a consequence of a theory, not a theory itself. Plus all the other candidates are worse. (And Copenhagen isn't really a theory at all since it never gets around to defining what a 'measurement' is.)

<comment><USER16> Many worlds requires postulates (Everett's word!) that are not a consequence of theory, in particular that the wavefunction is an objective property of a particle. This is very much in dispute, and is rejected by the ensemble interpretation, consistent histories, etc.

I don't agree that those interpretations are inferior to MWI. In particular those theories postulate that the world is essentially probabilistic, and so do not have MWI's trouble with predicting probabilities.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visualizing turbulence with a home demo [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoTTq651dE <comment><USER2> Fluid dynamicist here. This is a fairly nice video, though there are a few flaws.

I was waiting for a derivation of the 5/3rds law, but it's not in the video. This is a shame as it can be derived very simply: [http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/kolmogorovs-53-law...](http://micromath.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/kolmogorovs-53-law/)

I don't buy the estimate of the limits of the inertial subrange given. That might be true for a particular velocity, but I imagine the limits of the inertial subrange vary greatly.

Unfortunately 3blue1brown falls into a common trap when defining turbulence. Turbulent flows are chaotic... but laminar flows can be chaotic too. They are both solutions to the same non-linear equations.

I think it would be better to describe turbulence as seemingly random or more precisely, probabilistic. The governing equations are not stochastic, but practically speaking you can treat the velocity field as a random variable. The uncertainty for laminar flows is much smaller. This is the basis for a lot of turbulence theory. This is not to say that there is not order in turbulence; there is both order and disorder.

The Navier-Stokes millennium prize problem is also not as valuable as it seems to outsiders. The solutions most likely exist and are unique, etc. Your prior on the solutions existing should be high as Newtonian physics problems typically have solutions. If the solutions are not unique, add an extra condition to obtain unique solutions. That's already often needed for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. I'd be much more interested in proofs of various forms of the ergodic hypothesis for turbulence.

<comment><USER2> Another pet peeve of mine is the absence of a discussion of why turbulence is a hard problem to solve. The reason is actually quite simple: the computational cost for directly solving the Navier-Stokes equations is far too high. They could have shown this in the video; the estimate is actually rather straightforward. (Estimate the "Kolmogorov scale", the scale of the smallest eddies that need to be resolved, and combine that with the CFL condition to get an upper bound on the stable time step, etc., as I recall.) So in practice people typically solve lower cost (but less accurate) equations derived from the Navier-Stokes equations. They could have briefly described the "closure problem" for this, and maybe some basic turbulence models. Well, they could hypothetically do all this in a future video...</comment></comment>


Thousands of QNAP NAS devices have been infected with the QSnatch malware - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/thousands-of-qnap-nas-devices-have-been-infected-with-the-qsnatch-malware/ <comment><USER2> details on QSnatch: [https://www.kyberturvallisuuskeskus.fi/en/news/qsnatch- malwa...](https://www.kyberturvallisuuskeskus.fi/en/news/qsnatch-malware- designed-qnap-nas-devices)</comment>


Apple reveals long-rumored Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/09/apple-reveals-long-rumored-apple-watch/

<comment><USER2> This might be one of Apple's worst products in recent history (past 10 years or so). It brings pretty much nothing new to the market, that wasn't already there.

<comment><USER3> >No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or is this name kind of poor? "I'll check my Apple Watch" just doesn't sound as good as "I'll check my iWatch."

What's next, the Apple Phone?

</comment><comment><USER5> Its...an Apple product. Very well made, but its more of a branding exercise than a technology launch.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe it will grow on me but first impressions are that this is really not a looker.</comment>


Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 4) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fiplab.com/70617419

<comment><USER2> Really enjoyed these posts/discussion. Here are the HN discussions to the first three parts of this series:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214> (Part 1)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965929> (Part 2)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978598> (Part 3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good for these guys for having hustle, working hard, and making a product people want.

Still, I can't help but think these "Facetab for Facebook" apps are kind of scammy; it's basically squatting on Facebook's name on the App Store. Try taking "Facebook" out of the app's title (leaving it in the description) and see how sales do. Overall, I'm conflicted.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

Actually, when the app was No.1 overall on the App Store, it was just called 'FaceTab' - as evident in the screenshots on the blog post itself. We only added 'for Facebook' to the name in version 2.0 in response to competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I listened to the App Teardown[1] podcast the Fiplab team started with Colin Plamondon (of "Free Books" app and HN fame), and it drills down on some of the basics of App store marketing. Good supplement to this series!

[1]<http://www.appteardown.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> The new age street market merchants. If you don't hustle, you don't make it. My favorite quote of the post:

"The App Store is a most vicious yet glorious technological battlefield, where your apps are your soldiers. One can either moan, shut shop and disappear when their soldiers are hit, or one can ruthlessly battle it out till the end with every last one of them."

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to hear more about the development of these applications. Any chance you'll provide an interview with your developer?

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you have any advice/insight into picking a category for your app? I've noticed that some of the rarer categories are pretty dead... is the easier path to the top-10 more advantageous than a 'properly' categorized app? How much leeway does Apple give you in picking a category?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all about visibility so try to pick a related category that is popular. Apple are pretty flexible with what category you place your app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting what a huge difference the category makes. In the US-music category it's enough to sell ~15 copies/day to enter the top 5.

<comment><USER9> That's not true.

The #5 paid app in US Music right now is I Am T-Pain, which is the 116th most popular paid app overall.

<comment><USER4> And at this point in the app stores evolution, that ranking is worth at least 500 sales a day and that's going on older sales-to-rank data.

<comment><AUTHOR> pretty sure Leon_ is talking about the Mac App Store, not iOS.

<comment><USER8> Yes. I forgot to mention that as the original submission is about the Mac App Store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great read. As somebody else said: yay for hustle.

What I wonder is if these guys have a contingency plan for when this particular app fad dies out. With consumer-facing apps especially, this seems like a huge danger.</comment>


The Flash Web Server - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~vivek/flash/

<comment><USER2> " _This software, "Flash", is distributed to individuals for personal non- commercial use and to non-profit entities for non-commercial purposes only. It is licensed on a non-exclusive basis, free of charge for these uses. All parties interested in any other use of the software should contact the Rice University Office of Technology Transfer...._ "</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Donates $990 Million To Charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3023886/fast-feed/zuckerberg-sells-some-facebook-shares-gives-nearly-a-billion-dollars-to-charity

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if this is equivalent to his tax liability for the $2.3 Billion he just earned selling facebook stock?

<comment><USER3> It should most likely cover easily cover his tax liability (capital gains) also worth noting that it went to his own charitable foundation.

Though, it still a great deed.</comment></comment>


Google blew a 10 years lead – Because they only seek to hit competitors - <AUTHOR> https://snir.dev/blog/google-10-years-lead <comment><USER2> Also if your a monopoly you have to be careful about winning other markets.</comment>


Evolution's Random Paths Lead to One Place - <AUTHOR> http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140911-evolutions-random-paths-all-lead-to-the-same-place/ <comment><USER3> There's an oversimplification going on here, I think (in the article I mean-- the experiment is simplified for a good reason). The "one place" that all of these strains reach is that they are more fit for the environment than the starting point of each. This is not a new idea. This was the thesis of "On the Origin of Species".

As for the level of fitness of each strain... after sufficient generations, basic statistics would tell tell us to expect this result. The combination of random mutations influenced by one constant factor (natural selection in a fixed environment) over a large number of generations _implies_ this result.

But the article appears to assert that this means that evolution's course is predictable. But what's not addressed is _how_ each strain is succeeding. They know that the variations in the genes from strain to strain vary quite a bit. Yes, the result measured from one statistic (growth rate) is the same, but future evolution and other traits of the yeast will be influenced by the particular paths taken.

Finally, once you put this mechanism in an environment filled with millions of other competing gene pools and a varying environment not bound by natural selection which means there's an actual threat of extinction, then that's where the true variability of the process emerges.

<comment><USER4> The "one place" that they reach is the same level of fitness. This is surprising because they expected some strains to take different evolutionary paths and evolve different traits, and therefore have different levels of fitness in the end. Some would be better than others just by chance. The probability of the same mutations happening in all the samples is very small.

Instead they all seem to converge on the same fitness. Even though they have different mutations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Per Bak's "How Nature Works" [1] he describes an simulation he did in which he tried to replicate the series of evolutionary discontinuities and mass extinctions we see in Earth's history. The reason this article brought that to mind was that Bak was not able to get the complex behavior by selecting only the fittest to survive. Instead, he ended up having to kill off the _least_ fit of the species and leave the rest to proliferate and develop interdependencies.

His result doing that was some very interesting behavior in which extinctions of all sizes happened in the population of species in a way evocative of natural history on Earth. His idea was that in order for an evolutionary system to reach the self-organized critical state in which big changes happen, the species had to develop interdependencies so that the success or failure of one could affect that of the others.

It would probably be a much more difficult experimental procedure because he would have to keep the yeast strains in a community and somehow eliminate rather than select a variety, but it would be really interesting to see if the result of a common convergence point would survive with the model of "death of the least-fit" rather than survival of the fittest.

1\. [http://amzn.com/038798738X](http://amzn.com/038798738X)

<comment><USER6> > ...not able to get the complex behavior by selecting only the fittest to > survive. Instead, he ended up having to kill off the least fit of the > species and leave the rest to proliferate and develop interdependencies.

How is "selecting only the fittest to survive" aka killing the least fit different from "kill off the least fit of the species" aka selecting only the fittest to survive they sound like exactly the same thing thing.

<comment><USER5> I probably could have stated it more clearly like this: "selecting only the fittest ONE to survive," and "killing off the least fit ONE."

The difference was in what the composition of the surviving population was - in the extreme case where only the fittest one survives, there's only one species that makes it to the next round. In the case where the least fit one is killed off, there are n-1 species still in the mix with their relationships intact. You can of course extend it to keeping more than one of the fittest, or killing more than one of the least fit.

I was just re-reading that section of the book to try to give you a better answer and I think I must have mis-remembered his original experiment a bit (sorry about that). The original evolution model that failed to exhibit the behavior was more complex than just a survival of the fittest (he was playing with mutations and connections between species in a kind of complicated way). The part about killing off the least-fit species really was the key to getting complex behavior though, so at least that part of my original comment was right.

The eventual solution was to simplify the model so that the least-fit single species would go extinct and be replaced by a new randomly generated one each round. The fitness of a species was related to its connections, so if one species was to go extinct it could trigger others to cross the fitness threshold and go extinct as well. This led to cascades of extinctions with a power law distribution (like the pattern observed in real extinctions on Earth). The mass extinctions would eventually stabilize at a point where all species were above the fitness threshold, but the "gene pool" had been seeded with lots of new randomly generated species at that time, so there were periods of rapid mutation punctuating long stable periods where not much changed.

His book is pretty interesting, although it's sometimes a little over the top with self-congratulation. I'm reading another one now called "Self-Organized Criticality"[1] which is a much more rigorous treatment of the idea that I think will be a bit less sensational and more applicable to real problems. Bak's book is excellent if you want to get excited about making simple models do complex things though.

1\. [http://amzn.com/0521483719](http://amzn.com/0521483719)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very well written article that allowed a non-biologist but engineer like me to follow. Systems Biology is quickly becoming one of the most interesting fields, IMO.

The observations about organisms catching up and slowing down is consistent with (the regression to the mean)[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean)]. Although it's something I only recently read about in Daniel Kahnemnan's Thinking Fast and Slow, it's applicability is widespread; so much so that I was not surprised seeing it in action here.

One thing that I do not fully agree with (or maybe that I do not fully understand) is the final evolutionary endpoint was measured simply by it's ability to grow in specific lab conditions. While this is a necessary condition for equality of endpoints, it is in no way a sufficient one. It is very possible, and even highly likely that while that goal of fitness is optimized for, evolution changes the final organism's way of reacting to other phenomena. I'm not sure if there is a better way to quantify equality (or some notion of edit distance) though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm a fan of the view that evolution should be viewed as an information transfer process. It transfers information about the fitness landscape into the genome.

Similar environments will give rise then to similar information. There will be variance, of course, but it's going to be a lot narrower than the random walk interpretation of evolution would predict.

There is evidence for this from several places:

* Convergent evolution on Earth at many scales

* Digital evolution experiments showing similar endpoints in similar environments and against similar fitness landscapes

* ... and now this series of experiments showing convergent evolution in the lab even down to the genetic level

There's a lot of interesting implications here. For example: can we really say that another planet very similar to Earth that is of similar age might not harbor another bipedal warm blooded sentient species physically similar to ourselves? I'd be really surprised if we found Star Trek levels of similarity (e.g. biological and sexual compatibility), but some level of similarity in areas like basic anatomical structure would not shock me. Perhaps the anthropomorphic alien depictions in sci-fi (Giger's alien, the "greys," etc.) are not terribly implausible.

Of course a radically different world harboring life might yield something radically different for similar reasons.

<comment><USER9> I think a lot of it boils down to what the evolutionary pressures (defn: [1]) on another planet might look like. If we discover life on another planet, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the organisms we find resemble organisms in some branches of the "tree of life" on Earth, but I think it would be unlikely that there would be so many similar evolutionary pressures that we would see something particularly similar to ourselves.

For example, life has been around for at least 3.5 billion years on this planet[2]. At this point in time, there is no evidence that any other species on this planet has ever had a technological civilization that would be of particular interest to us in the way that is often envisioned for hypothetical alien visitors. This isn't for lack of different species[3] or for insufficient genomic complexity[4] in other species. In other words, there's nothing about the human genome that represents a "pinnacle" of evolution, as much as we tend to hold ourselves in pretty high regard among other species.

As another example, let's walk the tree of life ([http://tolweb.org/Life_on_Earth/1](http://tolweb.org/Life_on_Earth/1)) to get a ballpark idea of how many different features we run into before encountering homo sapiens:

1\. Eukaryotes (organisms with nucleated cells) [http://tolweb.org/Eukaryotes/3](http://tolweb.org/Eukaryotes/3)

2\. Animals (multicellular, heterotrophic, lack rigid cell walls, motile, most have embryonic blastula stage) [http://tolweb.org/Animals/2374](http://tolweb.org/Animals/2374)

3\. Bilateria (bilateral symmetry with three germ layers) [http://tolweb.org/Bilateria/2459](http://tolweb.org/Bilateria/2459)

4\. Deuterostomes (blastopore becomes the anus during development) [http://tolweb.org/Deuterostomia/2466](http://tolweb.org/Deuterostomia/2466)

5\. Chordates (animals possessing a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail for at least some period of their life cycles) [http://tolweb.org/Chordata/2499](http://tolweb.org/Chordata/2499)

6\. Craniata (have hard bone or cartilage skull) [http://tolweb.org/Craniata/14826](http://tolweb.org/Craniata/14826)

7\. Vertebrata (have backbones) [http://tolweb.org/Vertebrata/14829](http://tolweb.org/Vertebrata/14829)

8\. Gnathostomata (have jaws) [http://tolweb.org/Gnathostomata/14843](http://tolweb.org/Gnathostomata/14843)

9\. Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish & terrestrial vertebrates. I am not an evolutionary biologist but it seems like this roughly corresponds to the evolution of limb-like structures) [http://tolweb.org/Sarcopterygii/14922](http://tolweb.org/Sarcopterygii/14922)

10\. Tetrapods (more properly terrestrial vertebrates, but to simplify things a little. Basically 4 limbs) [http://tolweb.org/Terrestrial_Vertebrates/14952](http://tolweb.org/Terrestrial_Vertebrates/14952)

11\. Amniota (have eggs equipped with an amnios) [http://tolweb.org/Amniota/14990](http://tolweb.org/Amniota/14990)

12\. Synapsids (have a temporal fenestra) [http://tolweb.org/Synapsida/14845](http://tolweb.org/Synapsida/14845)

13\. Therapsids (have particular skeletal and muscular structures) [http://tolweb.org/Therapsida/14973](http://tolweb.org/Therapsida/14973)

14\. Mammals (hair, three middle ear bones, mammary glands, and a neocortex) [http://tolweb.org/Mammalia/15040](http://tolweb.org/Mammalia/15040)

15\. Eutheria (have particular skeletal structures--not strictly placental) [http://tolweb.org/Eutheria/15997](http://tolweb.org/Eutheria/15997)

16\. Primates [http://tolweb.org/Primates/15963](http://tolweb.org/Primates/15963)

There are several more branches before getting to homo sapiens.

I think the big remaining questions are:

1\. What features of an organism are necessary for that species to develop a technological spacefaring civilization?

2\. Are evolutionary pressures that support the development of those features likely to appear eventually on life-bearing planets similar to Earth? (I think this assumes that abiogenesis on other planets would be likely to produce simple cellular structures with similar capacities for evolution.)

3\. Are we in a simulation created by another species in a "real" universe to answer similar questions? :)

I'd guess...

1\. Limbs (and the supporting underlying physical structures) with significant capacity for manipulating objects, terrestrial-dwelling (as opposed to living in the sea), a advanced neocortex, and way too much free time, along with very difficult-to-impress mating prospects.

2\. Depends on how similar to earth (a waterworld would be unlikely to have any species developing advanced technology, I think... maybe I'm not being imaginative enough). Also depends on how many of the evolutionary pressures that got us to this point were more or less inevitable as opposed to random. It seems that even if it's relatively likely that a species similar to humans will evolve on planets similar to Earth, there are still numerous additional hurdles in the development of different kinds of societies that could make or break the whole spacefaring thing. Even now, humans are not a spacefaring species, and the odds that we nuke ourselves out of existence or create a genetically engineered superbug that wipes us all out are relatively high considering we have absolutely no backup plan as a species for either of those events (or any number of other catastrophic global events). So maybe my answer to #1 is insufficient because we're not really a spacefaring species yet.

3\. If they have that kind of computing power, I would've expected something more interesting. Maybe they're trying to predict the odds of encountering other species like themselves during a galactic collision? :) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision)

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

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

[3]: There are approximately 10 million species currently alive on Earth (more or less a minimum bound, the actual number may be much higher). [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/30species.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/science/30species.html?_r=0) At least 99% of all species to have ever lived are extinct now: [http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9h.html](http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9h.html)

[4]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome#Genome_size)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article's "one place" claim will confuse those who don't understand evolution. It's like saying that all algebraic equations are the same because they all have equals signs. It's true, but it misses the point that the equations surrounding the equals signs are all different.

The "one place" being described is "fitness", but to any number of environments in constant change. It's like saying that all women are alike -- they aren't men. It's a meaningless claim masquerading as meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is an interesting, readable report on an automated procedure for experimenting on evolution of microorganisms that will be good to try out with microorganisms other than yeast. Figuring out the different gene interactions over many generations of random mutations will eventually develop a deeper understanding of how these one-celled organisms work. And that, as an expert interviewed for the article suggested, will help deepen understanding of evolution as a process. "'I think many people think about one gene for one trait, a deterministic way of evolution solving problems,' said David Reznick, a biologist at the University of California, Riverside. 'This says that's not true; you can evolve to be better suited to the environment in many ways.'"

Scaling up this approach to study multicellular organisms with longer generation times than yeast will of course take a lot of time and effort. Sometimes (as here) experiments on simple model organisms produce surprising findings. There will be even more surprising findings, I think, as evolution is studied in more detail in multicellular organisms at the molecular genetic level with strict experimental controls of developmental environments.

EDIT TO REPLY TO ANOTHER COMMENT:

Another participant asked,

 _I feel like a CS education should prepare one for this kind of field. What 's a good way to get started learning more about evolution?_

It will indeed take a lot of hard work by experienced computer scientists to solve some problems in evolutionary theory. A quite good way to start learning about evolution is to read the book _Why Evolution Is True_ , which talks not only about evidence for evolution but also about implications of the theory. Then read the book's website[1] frequently for the latest news.

Other good things to read are the books by biologist Sean Carroll (not to be confused with physicist Sean Carroll) such as _Endless Forms Most Beautiful._ [2]

[1] [http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/](http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Most-Beautiful- Science/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Endless-Forms-Most-Beautiful- Science/dp/0393327795)

<comment><USER12> The public perception of evolution misses out on the depth of scientific work being done these days. Two more books that make modern evolutionary research accessible to the public:

1\. Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life - Covers the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, why it's such insanely chance event, why multicellular life depends on it, almost as an aside making a great argument that complex multicellular life is extremely rare in the universe. Also has a couple of fascinating chapters on how the interaction of the mitochondrial genome with the nuclear genome influenced development of sexes and sex.

[http://amzn.com/0199205647](http://amzn.com/0199205647)

2\. Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution - <USER2> very different material and again all fucking fascinating. It's amazing to see how things like sight have evolved over and over and over because they're so fucking useful, and the genetic analysis that allows us to pick out each separate emergence of a feature.

[http://amzn.com/0393338665](http://amzn.com/0393338665)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty cool! One thing to think about (and its raised in the last two paragraphs of the article) is how this might change in a dynamic environment, and with the addition of other simultaneously evolving agents.

I think its pretty clear that given some static environment, there will be some maxima of fitness - everything is limited by physics and thermodynamics at some point. Aside from the question of 'how close can we get to this maxima', another question is, if we have a bunch of different sets of mutations that together generate an organism that is at or near the current environmental maxima, what happens as the environment changes?

By the way, here's a preprint of the paper in question: [http://sergeykryazhimskiy.webs.com/1519.full.pdf](http://sergeykryazhimskiy.webs.com/1519.full.pdf)

The e. coli studies cited can be found: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461117/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461117/) and [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430337/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430337/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Biological evolution isn't the only kind of evolution that can be dreamed up. "Self-arised change over time" can be applied to all sorts of domains, it would be interesting to have a mathematical definition of evolution that can handle all the things. This appears to be a step in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be interesting to know if inventing an internet is a natural outcome of evolving life on a somewhat-stable planet. Regardless of the aesthetic differences among life forms developing from different initial conditions, will a planetary ecosystem arrive at similar milestones along the way? Mobility, eyesight, language, society, etc.

I think this research is very exciting because it actually is narrowing in on the limitations of evolution, or the "search-space" of possible life forms. This points to the idea that life on other planets may be similar to us, if not only in milestones, but possibly aesthetics as well. Maybe we can even get to the point where if we know the current and past environmental conditions of a planet, we can make educated guesses as to what life would look like on its surface.

<comment><USER16> Specifically human intelligence of the kind that builds internets and spaceships has evolved exactly once on all of Earth's history, in contrast to things like eyes and wings, which have evolved dozens of times. And it evolved very recently, and appears to be due to run-away sexual selection of the kind that produced the peacock's tail.

All of this suggests that specifically human intelligence--not dolphin or bird or any other kind of intelligence that does not build internets and spaceships --has an unusually narrow bottleneck to get through compared to most other capabilities, despite the ridiculous benefits available once a species gets through it.

As such, I'm betting that we'll find life pretty much everywhere in the universe, and intelligence almost no-where. When intelligence does arise, it will likely be wildly different from us due to the essentially random nature of the sexual selection process that takes it through the bottleneck. The precursor species will almost certainly be tool-using and social, but tool use and social behaviour are both extremely common, so we could find anything from intelligent birds to octopuses.

With regard to the "surprise" that evolution can produce convergent morphology, this isn't really that surprising: genetic studies have shown that such things occur in nature. For example there are two species of coastal lizard in the Yucatan both of which have evolved an extra vertebra in their neck which were thought to come from a common ancestral population, but thanks to genetic analysis in the '90's were found to be due to convergent adaptations to coastal conditions by different inland species. Furthermore, while gene selection does occur, the basic unit of selection is the whole organism, which in most cases either reproduces, or does not.

Evolution happens at multiple levels (a topic it is fun to speculate on: [http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe- ebook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe- ebook/dp/B00KBH5O8K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410468328&sr=8-1&keywords=darwin%27s+theorem)) and the competition between them is likely to be a focus of increasing study in coming years.

<comment><USER17> > despite the ridiculous benefits available once a species gets through it

From an evolutionary perspective, the benefits are far from proven. On an evolutionary timescale, civilization hasn't been around that long and has had a disproportionate number of existential risks over its timescale. In the nearer term, there is also evidence for large scale dysgenetic fertility in many countries with respect to genotypic IQ. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Under identical conditions."

In other words - not in reality.

</comment><comment><USER19> I feel like a CS education should prepare one for this kind of field. What's a good way to get started learning more about evolution?

<comment><USER20> The Selfish Gene is a great and insightful book that I would recommend.

<comment><USER21> Great book, yes, but don't stop there. There is a lot more to evolution than Dawkins suggests; selection, no matter the mechanism, is, after all, determined by phenotype (the "realised organism", if you will) rather than genotype. And there are a lot of models of selection (and of modification) that make accurate predictions but don't have the Dawkins seal of approval. You'd be missing a lot if you allow yourself to become stuck in the notions of 1976, no matter what their merits at the time.</comment></comment></comment>


Playstation 3 hypervisor hack in a nutshell - <AUTHOR> http://pastie.org/795944 <comment><USER2> This is a pretty short but to the point summary of such a sweet hack!</comment>


Why Zoom Doesn't Have Product/Market Fit - <AUTHOR> https://usefyi.com/zoom-product-market-fit/ <comment><USER2> This article is evidence of the insidious effect of Google Search.

The methodology is silly and would be met with ridicule if presented in an academic or professional context. The author came up with an eyebrow-raising hypothesis that is sure to drive clicks, conducted a Twitter poll, and then twisted the results of the poll to fit the hypothesis.

The web has slowly become a wasteland of junk content written primarily for search crawler software to consume. I don't blame the author of this article or others like it. A fledgling SaaS company has little chance of survival unless they build out a content farm and spew links to it all over the web.

The problem is that the content doesn't need to make sense or have any intellectual value. It just needs to a) attract as many clicks as possible, b) mention as many relevant keywords as possible, and c) not be plagiarized.

<comment><USER3> I am the author. I would 100% agree with you IF the article was indeed based on a single Twitter poll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> everything looks great but the fact that people found Skype to be a possible alternative is questionable. Has anyone used Skype recently for conference calls? My experience was atrocious - everything was so slow, video quality was horrible, and the UX was confusing.</comment>


Somevid: Fast, fun, anonymous video sharing - <AUTHOR> http://somevid.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Any feedback you can provide on this video sharing website. I'm struggling with the promotion of it.</comment>


Oculus Quest Review - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/oculus-quest-review-2019s-best-new-gaming-system-is-wireless-affordable-vr/ <comment><USER2> > My biggest issue with Oculus Quest is its weight and fit.

They should move more stuff off the front of the headset, it would help relieve the pressure on the face and make it more balanced. Like in this mod from Palmer Luckey where he removed the battery and attaches a bigger one to the strap [https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your- ocu...](https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-oculus-go- better/)</comment>


Amazon Rekognition updates face detection, analysis and recognition capabilities - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/amazon-rekognition-announces-updates-to-its-face-detection-analysis-and-recognition-capabilities/ <comment><USER2> I went to a concert the other night, and they where scanning driver licenses and running facial recognition on everyone entering. It was very disconcerting. It is clear to me that we need new laws to protect against the misuse of this technology. Laws that apply to everyone without exceptions for law enforcement. If we don't I fear we are headed towards a 1984 type of future.

<comment><USER3> That's... actually a reasonable way to combat ticket scalping.

<comment><USER4> Oh, absolutely. Great way to ensure sure the door staff are actually checking the ID against the ticket sales records 100% of the time.

The problem is, night clubs ain't developing this stuff in-house. And whoever develops this stuff and sells it to nightclubs will discover they can make more money if they sell the machines to nightclubs _and_ the data to the adtech industry.

<comment><USER5> They already have the data from the ticket sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I played around with Rekognition a few months ago and frankly wasn't that impressed with what it could do. As far as I can remember it could sort of compare if the same person was in two photos (definitely false negatives with various photos of myself I compared), basic OCR of text off images, and not very accurate recognition of certain things/objects.

<comment><USER7> Based on OP's incident and your expereience, I think that AWS Rekognition is currently in its consumption/learning stage. Give it a few months to adequately digest that data and then try!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everybody should be able to copyright their likeness in images and file for monetary damages if they believe their copyright is being infringed.

Legally, this is the only way to destroy these big brother obsessions that creepy companies like Amazon have.

<comment><USER9> That's not what copyright is for.

<comment><USER10> [http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness- anoth...](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another)

<comment><USER11> Not sure if you meant to refute the parent, but the linked article describes two means of protecting the use of a name or likeness which are not related to copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Woo, better facial recognition for all kinds of nefarious purposes!

Edit: Dead serious, how will Rekognition positively affect the common person? All I see is a myriad of possible ways government, corporations and individuals have abused camera footage today, and emboldened with better technology these problems are likely to get much worse.

<comment><USER13> There are tons of benign/helpful use cases for face ID. Your car can recognize you and automatically set your preferred radio stations, seat position etc. Your computer can log you in without a password. Border control can be "scan your passport here and keep walking". An airplane boarding card can be "take a picture with your webcam during check-in and just walk on the plane." Your phone can automatically "press the shutter" for a family picture when everyone is smiling, instead of guessing at that timer thingie. Your makeup mirror can turn on special lights when a face is in front of it. You can pre-set mood lighting for your apartment for when you bring a new date home vs football night. Your front door can unlock itself for a handful of trusted people, even when you're out of town and forgot to feed the cat. Or it can set an alarm when your mother in law comes over. You can search your entire media library for just the right picture: "with Phil, but not Gina, where we're having fun and in cat costumes."

Face identification has become the lightest weight authentication method available. So anywhere you would otherwise use something you know (password) or something you have (a transit pass), you could consider using something you are (your face) instead. It's not right for EVERY authentication scenario, but it should be considered for many of them.

Not everything AI is creepy or privacy invading. Especially when you consider running it locally.

That said, Rekognition as a product specifically targets law enforcement and federal agencies, and most of their use cases are NOT good IMO. We do need a strong product preference for open source, or products with AI ethics oversight.

Bias: I work for Microsoft helping big companies implement latest edge tech like this. MS has an ethics board filtering all its AI work, the Azure face ID product doesn't keep user data, and we often implement local-only face id in what I consider non-creepy scenarios. So that defines a lot of how I think "responsible implementation" looks.

<comment> yc-kraln There are tons of benign/helpful use cases for guns, for knives and for explosives. This attitude is purposefully ignorant.

When developing new technologies, you need to ask not just "what good can this do" but most importantly "how can this be misused". Sometimes the bad stuff that you can do is way, way, way worse than the good.

Great that Microsoft has an ethics board. Facebook has an ethics board. How's that working out for the ethnically cleansed people in Asia?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo It is not like that if Amazon didn't build it, other government agencies will stay there in vain.

Facial recognition service is very easy to build these days, provided that sufficient data is presented, and government has plenty of such data.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the governments using these these sorts of technologies are democratic, responsive, self regulating, have an informed populace, and lack of incentive problems. This is fine, but that's a long chain of ifs.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder why would anyone pay for the cloud services when they can build it locally? Is it more economical?

<comment><USER16> Is this something that is considered easy to build locally? When I last looked at the open source options a few years ago it was basically all researchware grade stuff. Amazon is offering this is a production service with SLAs.

<comment><USER17> I've never built any such system, but I've done some image recognition work, and my intuition is that if you're the kind of organization that needs this service building it yourself will not be a technological challenge.

<comment><USER11> I was able to use Rekognition to build a custom family photo album for a wealthy family. It allowed them to upload event photos and automatically tag them with the names of relevant family members as well as keywords related to objects in the photo for easy searching. It was mostly a database for building slideshows and selecting publicity photos. Very wealthy family but not such that they would have funded building the technology from scratch. The service made it just about an 80 hour consulting project and most of that was just UI and image gathering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here is a comparison we did between APIs from Microsoft Vs Amazon Vs Kairos for face detection. Kairos came out to be much better overall.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15903490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15903490)</comment>


NSA Official Warned About Threat 17 Years Before Snowden - T-A http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/nsa-official-warned-about-threat-17-years-before-snowden.html <comment><AUTHOR> Oh Gawd...

It's not "NSA Official Warned About ... the threat to freedom that is the NSA"

It's "NSA Official Warned ... that a low level employee might warn the world _about_ the threat to freedom that is the NSA"

<comment><USER2> It's still an interesting point he makes. One sysadmin in any powerful organization can likely gain access to that organization's deepest, darkest secrets, and abuse that access for anything they like, whether good or bad.

<comment><USER3> Unless you have good processes involving mandatory access controls (like the NSA added to Linux), multiple eyes on everything, and audit. Crazy overkill for most situations, but more or less what I'd _expected_ from the NSA. Key management is comparatively easy inside a military style hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is silly. The title suggests that if they had only listened to some guy stating the obvious 17 years ago all this could have been prevented as if "don't let your sys admin steal all your sensitive files" is some deep insight. The problem is more likely that their IT staff is woefully inept and either weren't bothering to look or didn't notice what was going on right under their noses.

<comment><USER5> Not even that. If the problem didn't eventuate for 17 years, then it was hardly an insipient problem. _A lot_ changed for the internal structure of these organizations over 17 years, particularly due to 9/11.

<comment> at-fates-hands Agreed.

It was the same thing with 9/11\. There was a senator (Alan J. Dixon) in 1986 who wrote an article in Playboy called, "The Terror Next Time. The cochairman of the senate antiterrorism caucus argues that a major attack in the U.S. is inevitable."

Although he points out the lack of information sharing between intelligence agencies, he was sure it would be a US based group like the KKK or Aryan Nation then some terrorist group from the Middle East. It's an interesting article either way as hindsight is always 20/20, right?

<comment><USER6> He was right about domestic terrorists in a way.

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

[1] [http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/timothy-m...](http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/timothy- mcveigh/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes laziness beneficial for the world. Maybe not for the agency.

</comment><comment><USER8> Features will always be prioritized over security.

<comment><USER9> For an agency with "Security" in their name, they really prioritized security very low.

I loved the part about printers. They have printers?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> in other news: Some random official warned about threat decades before Fukushima, Chernobyl.

Government agencies, by their very nature, might have never entered the realm of common sense and proper risk management. There are a lot of good hypotheses for reasons for that.

One better realized the fact and dealt with it instead of crying "I/He told you so".

</comment><comment><USER11> i'm with you, nsa. very sad indeed.</comment>


Google – My Activity - <AUTHOR> https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity <comment><USER2> Is this anything new? Just looks like a different view for the Control Your Content panel that's been around for a while.</comment>


Photos: Life inside of China's massive and remote Bitcoin mines - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1026605/photos-chinas-bitcoin-mines-and-miners/ <comment><USER2> If you have even the slightest concern about global warming or the environment overall, you should consider Bitcoin a horrible mistake we should be trying to eradicate.

It's a currency backed by willingness to waste electricity doing useless work. And worse, as it gets more popular, the willingness and price will continue to drive higher.

Hopefully China recognizes that this is in odds with their efforts to clean up their environment, and crushes Bitcoin fast before the damage is too catastrophic.

<comment><USER3> How does your categorical criticism not also apply to things like barbie-doll manufacturing facilities?

Also, it does not take into account the potential for value being removed from dollars (denominator and subsidizing currency of big oil, big war, big agra, etc.) and being given irrevocably to the proletariat who are actually concerned about climate change.

<comment><USER4> > irrevocably to the proletariat

Yes, a currency that is so hard to understand that even seasoned technocrats can't figure it out is perfect for the proletariat.

Cryptocurrencies are yet another example of wealth transfer from educated elite to another educated elite. There is nothing "democratic" about it.

It requires a tech expertise which 95% of the planet doesn't have to even accept/make a payment. Forget about "mining" it - 99.5% of the world's population doesn't have the knowledge or the resources for it.

<comment><USER5> Computers at some point was technology that 95% of the planet doesn't understand.

<comment><USER6> Do you consider accessing Facebook as 'understanding computers'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much...

<comment><USER7> Do you consider having a wallet as 'understanding bitcoin'? If not, this number hasn't changed that much...

We can do this all day. You don't need to understand anything other than downloading a wallet, storing your coins there, and being able to send them anywhere instantly.

<comment><USER8> Except bitcoins are not instant, and aren't even guaranteed to go through.

The transactions are also non-refundable and pseudo anonymous, unlike the payment methods in your wallet. This is not a feature.

Making analogies with computers and smart phones and wallets doesn't mean Bitcoin is guaranteed to be successful or mass adopted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The original piece in _ChinaFile_ has more pictures from Liu and a similar amount of context.

[http://www.chinafile.com/multimedia/photo-gallery/inside- wor...](http://www.chinafile.com/multimedia/photo-gallery/inside-world-of- chinese-bitcoin-mining)

<comment><USER10> I am unable to identify where the photos are in this page. Have they been taken down? I've tried multiple browsers.

<comment><USER11> They are still right there, front and center. Do you have a work filter that might be blocking them?

<comment><USER10> Interesting. I am using my home network, and after connecting with a VPN, I am able to see the images.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that's certainly weird.

My work has websense and I've seen it before that it silently doesn't load some content on a page when that content was loaded from another domain (which was blocked) which can be confusing, which is why I suggested that. But upon further investigation it looks like this page is loading images from it's own domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Vice produced a video called "Life Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine" which complements these photos with a bit of an eerie audio/visual experience.

The noise of these machines is incredibly loud and annoying even in the edited video and the people running these things essentially live in squalor.

[https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/life-inside-a-chinese- bit...](https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/life-inside-a-chinese-bitcoin- mine/55b910f39820ecc47f68c306)

Non-Flash: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8kua5B5K3I)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the first article I've read that really made me feel that we live in a dystopia, instead of it being something on the horizon.

These photos are straight out of a cyberpunk comic.

<comment><USER14> You should see how most of the rest of China lives

<comment><USER15> I think it's the combination of high-end tech with third-world everything else that gives off that Blade Runner vide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Such an incredible waste of power and hardware, for a payment system that does something like 3 transactions per second globally.

Off the top of my head idea:

What about a system that uses a bit of real-world, legal responsibility to generate consensus. Something a bit like ICANN and the domain name system.

Take 10 or so trusted people or organistions worldwide, get them to each run a node, each of which coordinate via the Raft protocol or whatever. A distributed ledger is agreed on by each of those 10 nodes.

This should use far less power and be able to handle more transactions per sec than bitcoin.

<comment><USER16> Or we could all switch to Ethereum, which will have Proof of Stake (low electricity costs) instead of Proof of Work (insanely high electricity costs) mining soon.

<comment><USER17> POS networks already exist. No need to way 3+ years while the Ethereum team reinvents the wheel.

<comment><USER18> See PeerCoin ( [https://peercoin.net/](https://peercoin.net/) ) which has been around for quite some time and has a POS/POW combination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I understand the need for a distributed ledger, but it still seems absurd to me. All of this power is just getting put into a slow append-only database.

<comment><USER20> It's definitely a huge waste and a major impetus for moving to a Proof of Stake, Useful Proof of Work, or other model for cryptocurrency security.

<comment><USER21> It's a bit of a tragedy of the commons, not sure who will be the third party to impose a cost onto cryptocurrencies that consume excess energy. So far bitcoin has maintained it's lead as the largest cryptocurrency essentially entirely due to network effect. For most major complaints against bitcoin there is an example of a crypto currency that doesn't have those 'failings'.

E.g.

Deflationary good: siacoin

Long tx times: Ethereum

Proof of work consumes needless energy: Peercoin

ASICs shift the power balance: Primecoin

Not anonymous enough: Monero

A singular append only blockchain is not enough: Byteball (it's simply a DAG of transactions)

The problem is that there is no centralized player that is currently exerting a cost, above mining costs, on the individuals to move them to a crypto currency that doesn't have whatever negative property is being rallyed around at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you read about this in a science fiction book 20 years ago you'd think the author didn't know anything about computers or programming.

<comment><USER23> I was thinking something along those lines but struggling to put it into words. This sounds right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just, picking my jaw back up off the floor. The conditions there are shockingly unsafe (pun intended) -- all that standing water on the floor? And it's a firetrap -- all that trash lying around, no fire supression. In fact the opposite -- those box fans that will very effectively oxygenate the flames. Disaster there is almost certain.

<comment><USER25> Funny. I thought it was actually pretty organised and neat considering this is rural China and an operation aimed at doing things @ least cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the quest for cheap power & better density, you'd think they would run direct DC to everything, instead of a bunch of ATX power supplies

<comment><USER27> Thick copper wires for DC probably cost more than energy converted to heat on that power supplies.

<comment><USER28> That's up for debate. Facebook and Google use DC in their datacenters to save costs. Azure has a requirement for optional DC power from their vendors and might be using it actively. I think AWS has looked into using DC power as well but isn't using it afaik.

<comment><USER29> Do they use higher voltage DC and buck it down, or is it all 12V, 5V, etc. ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good god this is so cyberpunk

<comment><USER31> Crazier than neuromancer

<comment><USER32> Truth is stranger than fiction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anybody know why the bitcoin mine has customers? If you can mine bitcoin, why do you need to sell it to anybody other than on the open market? I could see needing investment to build the infrastructure, but those would be investors not customers.

Is there value in buying direct from the miner or selling direct to a customer and not on an exchange? Maybe avoiding transaction fees?

<comment><USER34> Exchange transaction fees might be one thing (cut out the middle man) but if you buy directly from a miner it won't influence the price as it would if you buy on a public exchange.

If you buy a big amount this is significant.

Such OTC (over the counter) transactions are also anonymous compared to exchange buys.

<comment><USER33> Can you say more about how buying at an exchange influeces the price and why that's bad?

<comment><USER34> The price we usually see for any traded asset is a weighted average of public exchanges. It's a somewhat artificial number insofar as it only tells you that somebody in the past was willing to pay that much for the asset. There's no guarantee that you'll find a seller in the future for that price.

Consider if you wanted to buy a large amount of Bitcoins, like 10000. If you look at exchanges, you will see that the sell and buy offers are public and you can only buy as much Bitcoin right now as are offered on the orderbook.

If there are more than 10000 BTC for selling, you can just drop your money on it. But those Bitcoins will be with different price tags. The cheapest offer will sell 1000 for $2400, the next 1000 for $2450, etc. If you blindly buy, your average buy price might be much more than the average price was!

Now that you cleared a portion of the orderbook, you have cause a price imbalance. On this exchange A, the cheapest sell offer might be now $3000 but on other exchanges B, it is still around $2400. Now bots and people will scramble to take advantage of that price imbalance. You've create a volatility wave that affects all public exchanges. And you never know how people will react to that. Will the price keep increasing as people think "the price is skyrocketing" or will people start selling massively because "oh, better cash out before the price drops again".

So, you bought an asset which you payed more for than the market thought it was worth before you bought it and you are uncertain what price it will settle on afterwards.

Also, you might want to buy more in the future, so you don't want to let people know that you are interested in acquiring it. If you buy publicly, people will notice.

If you do an OTC, that is much more hidden and you don't create volatility, especially if your OTC agents get them from miners directly and are not accumulating them from exchanges in small amounts themselves.

<comment><USER33> Thank you! Great reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why not move to proof of stake? Proof of Work mining used in bitcon to secure the network as originally proposed in Nakomoto's paper has huge energy requirements. The result is large energy hungry mines as shown by the article. In addition, there is a centralization of governance by the miners.

One such example of a long running proof of stake is Peercoin. Peercoin is a legit energy-efficient contender to Bitcoin. It's one of the first publicly known implementations of proof of stake has been around for close to 5 years now.

Peercoin is energy-efficient and runs on raspberry pis. It's been running successfully for years now.

[https://peercoin.net/](https://peercoin.net/)

There are also academic proof of stake chains which virtually eliminate the chance of forks, such as algorand.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341)

<comment><USER36> > Why not move to proof of stake?

Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself.

> Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article.

Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary.

<comment><USER35> > Why not move to proof of stake?

>> Because it doesn't make sense. If a chain, on which a token exists, needs securing, you can't use that chain's token to secure itself.

I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on? In addition to existing proof of stake systems which have been running for years now, there exist several papers with rigorous formal proofs. Including Turing Award winner Silvio Micali's algorand.

Refute his paper. You will became very famous overnight.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01341)

> Mining has huge energy requirements as shown by the article.

>> Mining has no requirements at all. People just follow the best chain, and miners can sell the bitcoins they earn by extending the best chain. It's entirely voluntary.

I assume this is trolling or extreme nitpicking. Securing the network in proof of work requires that the majority of computing power is held by honest miners.

<comment><USER36> > I mean I'm not entirely sure what this argument is based on?

Proof-of-stake (PoS) doesn't solve the fundamental problem that we need to reach consensus on one, single history of transactions. All PoS does is enable us to say whether a new block is _valid_ , but that's not important. The important part is that _everyone else in the network agree that this is the new block_ (and not some other valid block). Valid blockchains are easy to create, _the_ valid blockchain isn't.

Defining a valid block as a function of some preceding blocks is simple. The challenge is to incentivize a decentralized network to come to complete agreement on one, single version of all people's balances. Collusion is a huge risk factor here (rewrite blockchain to assign the balance of the five most wealthiest accounts to everyone else), and PoS does nothing to mitigate that.

In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money.

<comment><USER35> >> In the worst case scenario -- where an exploit spreads through a security hole in the reference implementation, and replaces the blockchain with its own copy, silently assigning the balance of an old, rarely used account to the attacker -- PoS falls on the floor, and proves unsuitable as a base for digital money.

Replace exploit with malicious miner and it's not clear why proof of work is better than proof of stake.

<comment><USER36> An honest mining majority is a hard requirement of Bitcoin. But proof-of-stake doesn't solve the problem of collusion -- it's even more susceptible to it since it's so easy to recreate valid-looking chains. With Bitcoin, two or more competing chains will at least be visible (two distinct chains with a lot of work), whereas they're everywhere in PoS and the main chain is qualitatively no different from any other valid chain (of which we can create thousands quickly).

<comment><USER35> >An honest mining majority is a hard requirement of Bitcoin. But proof-of- stake doesn't solve the problem of collusion -- it's even more susceptible to it since it's so easy to recreate valid-looking chains. With Bitcoin, two or more competing chains will at least be visible (two distinct chains with a lot of work), whereas they're everywhere in PoS and the main chain is qualitatively no different from any other valid chain (of which we can create thousands quickly).

I'm not sure what math you are using to base this assumption on. A formal argument by algorand is that the probability of a fork would be the age of the universe. It is NOT straightforward or cheap to recreate valid looking chains and generate the next block creating a fork.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01341.pdf)

<comment><USER36> A fork is not just created by the next block, but can be created by rewriting any number of blocks (including from the very beginning, which must be valid or it wouldn't be possible to begin a chain). Starting a new chain from scratch -- with all valid blocks -- is easy with PoS, and it would look no different from the right, valid chain. Again, the challenge is to come to agreement on the correct history, not just any valid chain. The inherent problem is that any valid chain of blocks can be produced quickly (just start from scratch), and there's no way to know you have the right chain except through majority vote, since there's nothing qualitatively separarating all the valid chains.

PoS seems simple if we assume that everyone will gladly stay on the same old chain, and only accept blocks that extend this, rather than attempt to get a new chain accepted on which they have 10x as many coins. But why would they? Why not switch to an entirely new chain, with the coins of the wealthiest 1% assigned to the remaining addresses? Surely, the person who owned those coins will protest, but no one will hear 1% in a network where majority vote is the only solution to consensus (and the 1% would have no actual proof that the chain, on which they own 1% of coins, is the right one).

<comment><USER35> At this point this is just trolling.

The proof of stake you are describing is of your own invention and doesn't address how systems like Peercoin or algorand actually function.

Starting from scratch with a new genesis block? Sure go ahead.

Rewriting any number of blocks is not straightforward due to the use of digital signatures and the cryptographic guarantees that go along with generating and choosing who gets to sign and generate the next block.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Russia: [http://englishrussia.com/2017/06/26/russian-biggest- bitcoin-...](http://englishrussia.com/2017/06/26/russian-biggest-bitcoin- mining-farm/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've heard that some actually mine at a loss, since the real purpose is to get money out of China and they can charge fees for that service that compensate.

</comment><comment> dis-sys For me, the really sad fact here is that they picked that place to run their bitcoin mine because the electricity there is cheap, but what that poor place can benefit from those mines after providing them with such more affordable energy? I just saw pollution and greedy there.

<comment><USER39> If that mine wasn't there, the energy would just be shipped off onto the grid, never to be seen again.

That town does look depressing, but that's what like 90% of little western Chinese towns look like.

<comment> dis-sys if that mine wasn't there -

people, actually poor people, living next to those mines won't hear those noise 24/7\. they don't need to witness the greedy saw in those photos/videos. the depressing town is still going to be depressing, but at least with less electronics junks.

the issue is pretty simple here - what is the benefit for this little depressing town or the society? nothing. it is just a cancer.

<comment><USER39> The hydro plant, which predates the bitcoin mining operation, creates far more noise than some electronics churning out hashes.

Why don't you let the residents decide what they want? Maybe they want access to the internet and cell phones, which the mining operation helped provide.

<comment> dis-sys what a joke. the "hydro plant" generates electricity, noisy or not, at least there is some benefit.

Internet and cell phone network is available in like 99% of Chinese towns. Do you have any evidence showing it was the mining of bitcoin that brought those thing to such small towns? If you don't, how about stop using your imagination as proof?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is it safe to assume that this isn't quite what Satoshi had in mind back in 2009 ?

<comment><USER41> It seems that no, he expected exactly this:

 _At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware._

[https://webonanza.com/2015/10/02/did-satoshi-predict- pooled-...](https://webonanza.com/2015/10/02/did-satoshi-predict-pooled- mining-big-farms-and-asics/)

<comment><USER42> So... We're centralizing the production of the currency that's supposed to decentralize everything?

<comment><USER29> There's a meaningful difference between centralized, decentralized, and distributed. I think you may be confusing the latter two.

Decentralized systems can still form groups and have various hubs. In such a case, the security of the network depends on how large these hubs get, not whether they exist at all.

Distributed systems ensure that most nodes are similarly sized and have similar connectivity to the network. In the case of cryptocurrency, many people imagine this as every user of the currency having a roughly equal stake in maintaining and securing the network.

Distributed systems may be ideal for some applications, but they are (likely and thus-far) not required for Bitcoin.

First, the degree of centralization is still relatively low. Individual miners remain small fractions of the network. Some mining pools have gotten quite large in the past, but miners can join and leave pools as they see fit. The risk they present is fairly limited as their network power is not controlled by a single entity.

There's also the issue of geographical centralization. This may be largely the result of ASIC development. Right now, mining profitability relies on rapidly adopting new, more efficient miners as quickly as possible. It strongly favors cheap power and short timelines. As the ASIC market matures and runs into the same hard limits that CPU manufacturing is faced with, the economics change such that more capital investment can make sense. In these cases, mining may be profitable in more geographically diverse areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Iceland has very cheap geothermal electricity and a very cold climate to cool the servers. How does China compete with Iceland?

<comment><USER29> I think the rapid development of ASICs is a large part of the issue. The capital lifecycle of Bitcoin mining is currently on the order of months to perhaps a couple years. That, combined with the volatility of Bitcoin price, makes the Chinese approach ideal.

As the ASIC market matures, and perhaps as the price becomes more stable, I think we'll see mining begin to occur in more areas as planning for 2+ years begins to make sense. Iceland would be one attractive area, as would some desert areas with low costs and solar energy.

Certainly difficult to predict, though.

</comment></comment><comment> m-j-fox Wow. So damp. Someone's going to get electrocuted. Where's Chinese OSHA?

<comment><USER44> Its not just the appalling dangers of water and electricity in close proximity but water on the floor indicates high humidity along with the heat causing premature failures in all the equipment. I guess those costs aren't a factor, however, when you're paying your workers pennies a day.

<comment><USER39> I'm 100% sure their workers aren't getting paid pennies per day. Why say something that's just patently untrue?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> What about "Bitcoin-Mining-Water-Power Plant" :) Would be cool!

</comment><comment><USER46> Thanks China for wasting resources and being extremely pollutive mining coins for tiny profits. Anybody who complains about the Paris Agreement needs to be informed and look at the real climate offender China.

<comment><USER47> It's not china's government, it's the Governments of the world that put a premium on anonymous value. Most of the demand for that comes from the US. If you feel strongly about it, petition the USG to allow alphabay to take credit cards.

<comment><USER46> So China cannot be held responsible because their citizens are poor and economically disadvantaged? Must be the US's fault. Big bad USA. Typical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> That page has some sort of funky scrolljacking, -1 for usability. Yet another reason to disable JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER49> These images are even more proof that a bitcoin is worthless and the market is manipulated.

</comment><comment><USER50> The life of a bitcoin miner worker doesn't look that much different from the coal miners ones.. at least in this case in particular..

</comment><comment><USER51> OT/Rant: In my browser, all pictures except the hero image are extremely blurred to the point that I can't even tell what's in the image. It could be because Privacy Badger is blocking some script or stuff like that but honestly I don't have the energy to find out why right now (it's 00:45 here in NSW), I believe users should be able to see a picture without going through executing some JS, accessibility is important. This is almost as annoying as those scripts that mess with your scrolling. It is also completely unnecessary since every modern mainstream browser since probably 5 years ago implements some form of lazy loading.

<comment><USER52> It does look like they're copying Medium's fade-in code, but these fallbacks should let the page degrade gracefully. Two examples:

      <noscript>
        <img itemprop="image" src="https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_002-e1499795756538.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=320" alt="Inside the World of Chinese Bitcoin 'Mining'" title="">
      </noscript>

      <img data-srcset="https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=320 320w,
      https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=640 640w,
      https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=940 940w,
      https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600 1600w,
      https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=3200 3200w"
      data-src="https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/china_bitcoin_010.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600"
      sizes="(max-width: 320px) 320px, (max-width: 1024px) 640px, 940px"
      class="progressive-image-large"
      alt="Inside the World of Chinese Bitcoin 'Mining'">

<comment><USER51> AFAIK that degrades gracefully only if you have JS disabled but there are many other reasons why the progressive loading script may not work as expected.</comment></comment></comment>


Alameda County orders Tesla's Fremont plant to stop production - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Alameda-County-orders-Tesla-s-Fremont-plant-to-15264761.php <comment><USER2> Key Points:

* Tesla is suing Alameda County in federal court

* Tesla is following California state guidelines, Alameda County is attempting to impose more strict guidelines

* Tesla's playbook to address COVID concerns are public on their website

* Workers who choose to remain at home will not be penalized

<comment><USER3> The California state government has said that counties may impose stricter rules than the state. The statewide rules are a baseline, not an upper bound.</comment></comment>


Chrome-Extension That Permit to Navigate Through Websites Without Opening Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/url-render/flhclpkhoiajoikkabbfbinnjapaflog <comment><AUTHOR> UrlRender allows you to browse websites without opening new tabs.

You can now search with Google Engine and browse sites without opening hundreds of tabs. Just mouse over the desired link, a frame opens and display the website. You will be able to browse and interact with the site.

I hope you'll enjoy!</comment>


HN: What's the coolest new tech that isn't popular now but will be in a year? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Firefox's mobile OS for making decent, fast smartphones affordable in the developing world. I think this is going to have a big impact and it's going to be the catalyst for html5 as a serious gaming and application platform.

Ubuntu's mobile version for being the next big step in making the PC obsolete, I don't think this will have a huge commercial impact but it's got some great potential and we're going to learn a lot from it.

<comment><USER3> +1 for Firefox OS.

Hope they can take advantage of learnings from Androids mistakes primarily fragmentation. I'll be rooting for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what it will be, but it most certainly won't be Google Glass. Until now, I've loved pretty much all of Google's projects, but I can't imagine ever wanting one until the technology is small enough to fit inside a normal pair of glasses and remain completely out of sight.

I also don't really get the whole smart-watch phenomenon. My smartphone easily replaced my wristwatch. The only time that it isn't more convenient is when I'm going for a run.

I'm cautiously optomistic about Ubuntu's shot at convergence. If they succeed, it would be amazing. I'm also pretty excited about Firefox OS, but I don't really know if it has a real shot.

<comment><USER5> No offense, but I have the opposite opinion on every point you mentioned.

Well, google glass will catalyze something interesting, but it won't be in the next year, or maybe next 5 years. But I do think that ergonomic wearable technology is a meaningful and reasonable extension of the smart phone revolution.

This is why I think the smart watch (while not great yet) is a good step forward. The ergonomics of taking my fragile and slippery phone out of a pocket to check the time or to check my message count isn't ideal. Putting that notification display on my body is better.

I have a low confidence in Ubuntu accomplishing anything given the quality of the software they have produced. Their NIH sentiments of late (MIR vs Wayland, Unity vs Gnome-shell) are troubling. Historically, Ubuntu has produced relatively little software on their own, building instead on Debian and the rest of the open source community (which is awesome!) but now they are migrating towards a desktop & mobile platform where they build all of the software in-house. Further, they require copyright assignment from contributors who want to work on their software, which has to limit willing contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Decentralized financial settlement systems (ala Bitcoin, Ripple).

<comment><USER7> I think Bitcoin was considered cool circa early 2011. It can almost be considered mainstream, if not for that little fact that Fox News, et al define what is commonly known as "mainstream".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Natural User Interfaces and multi-sensor arrays. The next Kinect will revolutionize NUI in the home.

</comment><comment><USER9> If Ellsworth and Johnson are on track, CastAR augmented reality goggles could be a fun little thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> 3D printing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Parallel design (CUDA, cluster-targeted applications, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER10> web apps

<comment><USER11> I think web apps are slightly starting to become cool again, lots of people are realising that they don't need individual platform apps when the web can reach them all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wetware to hardware interfaces, no joke.

There is many a company working on what will inevitably result in very rudimentary mind-reading machines within the next few years, and the early stages of these techs will surely be "cool" next year.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. This time next year: LISP IDE based on subtle brain wave manipulations! Hehehehe.</comment></comment>