Why the new guy can't code - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/why-the-new-guy-cant-code/

<comment><USER2>
      > Smart and Gets Things Done. (Academia is teeming with
      > people who are the former but not the latter.

Tired stereotype. Academics at the top of their game know how to get shit done, very much so even. But it's different shit.

<comment><USER3> Agree. I've had professors that were uber hackers, prolific authors, grant magnets, inspiring educators and thorough gentlemen to boot. That's a lot of 'getting things done'.

<comment><USER4> The Techcrunch definition of getting something done is being on their blog: you've announced a (fill buzzword here) product, gotten cash, made a presentation that shows you had potential, said something about an IPO or otherwise drawn their attention. Hard core academics are in the business or startup space: they're starting their research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The following are some of the main misconceptions of what's floating around between the blog, TC comments and HN comments.

Misconception 1: answering programming questions tells if the developer is awesome

No it doesn't. When an interviewer asks you a programming language-specific question, they are wanting to know how awesome you are at the language to see if you can hit the ground running on your first day. These sorts of questions only tell you one thing though, that the person you are interviewing has spent a lot of hours in front of the one programming language. I personally do not rate these types of questions for an interview because anyone can learn syntax, data structures and best ways to implement language-dependent code.

Misconception 2: brain-teasers don't tell you anything

This couldn't be more wrong... The reasons why an interviewer throws you a brain teaser or design question is to understand your thought logic and problem solving skills. While you talk through how you would solve your problem, they are assessing your communication skills, your process in solving a problem and also what knowledge you have as part of your experience.

Misconception 3: degrees don't tell anything

There is a lot of "show us your projects" being thrown around. While this is a fair call, one should not dismiss the degree. Simply being, that the degree is a project. It means that the candidate has had to spend three to five years juggling multiple subjects (read as 'projects'), while working part-time (read as 'projects') and managing their social life (read as 'drinking beer' and 'tuning hot people'). A degree is a testament of the students ability to see something through from start to finish... it's an example of their dedication.

Misconception 4: degrees aren't teaching students how to code, so how are they expected to code

Again, this is a fallacy. The degree is teaching students how to collaborate through group projects. How to work unsupervised and be resourceful while working unsupervised. It teaches the fundamentals so they can pick up any programming language (just another tool) and apply the fundamentals they have been taught.

I strongly agree with @marcamillion's statement about "developers being better over time". This is why I disagree with Misconception 1, as all this is doing is showing how much experience the interviewer has with the language they are quizzing someone on.

Overall, give the new coder a break. They most likely got hired because they: \- fit into the work culture \- possess strong problem solving abilities \- can work unsupervised \- can work within a team environment \- have imagination

And if the new guy is asking you a question, it's because they're wanting to learn, so respect that as they're trying to be awesome like you.

Disclaimer: Sometimes people make mistakes though, and a dud ends up being 'that' coder that can't code ;)

<comment><USER6>
        Misconception 2: brain-teasers don't tell you anything

        This couldn't be more wrong... The reasons why an interviewer throws you
        a brain teaser or design question is to understand your thought logic
        and problem solving skills. While you talk through how you would solve
        your problem, they are assessing your communication skills, your process
        in solving a problem and also what knowledge you have as part of your
        experience.

The problem here is that a lot of the brain-teasers I've seen bandied about for interviews are the kind of problems where you either get them via an a-ha insight, or you don't get them at all. That's kind of what makes them good brain-teasers.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I've never really understood how you can "talk through your thought process" for a question like "Why is a man-hole cover round?" It seems like you'd either come up with a reason or you wouldn't be able to come up with anything at all.

Perhaps you can say things like "Well, let's see...you need to be able to pick the man-hole cover up out of it's hole, then put it down somewhere, then maybe move it, ..." but I really think these types of ramblings are just stalling for time rather than an actual English narration of what I believe is an inexplicable thought process that would go into coming up with an actual answer to such a question.

<comment><USER5> I'd hire you if you kept on going with your answer... you've shown the following traits already:

\- ability to analyse the problem

\- talk about possibilities, thus displaying communication skills

I have probably misled my comment by using the phrase "brain-teaser" when I really meant "design question".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "degrees are not accomplishments"

Is this really true? Will I be wasting at least five years of my life by taking various CS degrees? I have some professional experience (web dev for a startup) but that's really everything beside school I have time for, and I'm not the only one in this situation.

Some parts of the article were spot-on, but certain assertions seem rather drastic and biased.

<comment><USER9> No you won't. Academia thought me how to be a better programmer, about compiler construction, functional programming the theory behind OO programming, prolog, how databases actually work (IE not just some random subset of the sql language) how 3D graphics work (including how to compute light and how you go from a mesh of triangles to an image on a screen), Haskell, SVN and how to work on large projects with others (including many of the issues that are not just technical, etc). While there were a few classes that was a waste of time (how to design enterprise systems and usability comes to mind, since the first is just a matter of ticking of enough boxes and the second is do what the user expect) most of them wasn't.

There is a real bias against CS degrees in certain circles, which I suspect is fueled in part by a couple of bad experiences with no-good hires (which exist in all professions) and in part by a feeling of inadequacy some who never got a degree might feel.

<comment><USER10> As a hiring manager, my 'bias' against CS degrees, such as it exists, is that they don't actually tell me much of anything.

Individuals have the capability to learn "compiler construction, functional programming the theory behind OO programming, prolog, how databases actually work", et al, independently of a degree, and yet, having that degree doesn't seem to actually guarantee that a potential hire understands any of the above.

<comment><USER11> Then you shouldn't have a _bias_ against CS degrees; you should simply see them as zero-information attributes.

(Which, I think, is correct in a general sense: a resume should get a candidate to an interview, not earn the job on its own.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had to write a binary search a few weeks ago in the course of Real Work.

I agree technical interviews aren't the only way of assessing a candidate's qualifications. Their open source projects, their writing on technical topics, and just having a geeky conversation with them are all good indicators of cluefulness.

Jon Evans is clueless. No hire.

<comment><USER13> Collections.binarySearch() ? std::binary_search() ?

Not saying I don't believe you, as there are times when it does come up but IMO even if you do have to write something search-like, it's usually better to do a linear search for the sake of having more readable code.

<comment><USER12> You have no idea what I was doing (or even what language I was using), so don't presume.

I benchmarked my binary search, a hand-rolled linear search, and the search function that was built into the container I was using.

      binary 0.019003 ms
      linear 3.402408 ms
      builtin 9.007484 ms

> it's usually better to do a linear search for the sake of having more > readable code

For small inputs, maybe. But a binary search takes only marginally more time to test and write than a hand-rolled linear search. And anyone halfway competent should be able to recognize one when reading code. When you have more than a dozen elements or so, a linear search is simply Doing It Wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree with a lot of this article, but the slam on Charles Simonyi was fairly random to the point of making me wonder if the author is just ignorant of software development history or straight out trolling.

I've never liked Hungarian Notation either, but that doesn't change the fact that during his years at Xerox PARC and Microsoft Simonyi exemplified "Smart and Gets Things Done".

<comment><USER15> The author also seems unaware that Joel Spolsky, who he speaks approvingly of otherwise, has explained/defended that using a sane version of Hungarian notation can make perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In a few years of experience, I have come across 2 rather bad developers where one of them outpaced the other by a mile in the race of 'Suck'. Both were fairly recent hires and I can't bring myself to think how shortcoming of such magnitude can go unseen.

I imagine that a person can get very far with BS and co-workers usually are the back-stop to those antics. If they are not, they should have absolute permission to call on the manager to verify someone else's competency.

In addition, I find it rather offensive for a person to have to learn on the job after it becomes evident that the resume, linked in profile or any other point of reference was embellished.

Le sigh,- without painting a group with a broad brush, but I see PHP as a gateway language as more folks try to pivot into applying for programming jobs. I've seen enough this year alone to turn me into a skeptic.

</comment><comment><USER17> This post is obviously overly-biased against technical interviews. Steve Yegge said it best: "It's a bit easier to tell if someone's in great shape physically than if they're in great shape mentally. You can't just stare at their brain and hope to find a six-pack in all those folds." - [http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/practicing- programm...](http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/practicing-programming)

Reading this did remind me an old thread on StackOverflow though about some CS grad who still didn't feel like she knew how to code: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im- grad...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/43528/im-graduating- with-a-computer-science-degree-but-i-dont-feel-like-i-know-how-to)

</comment><comment><USER18> I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions in our industry. Software developers, REALLLY, need to get over ourselves.

Bad development practices and bad coding, has not (as far as I have ever heard) killed any company.

I would like to be shown at least one example, where bad software killed the software company ?

For crying out loud, Windows was 'bad' until Win 2000+. Don't forget WinME.

The first version of Netscape was horrible. Internet Explorer was absolutely, horrendous.

Norton Anti-virus became more horrible with every release until they slimmed it down recently.

I was recently reading questions asked by Larry Page on Java's forums, and it is CLEAR that he was NOT an 'A-grade' Java programmer.

Twitter's early versions kept dying - under what could conceivably be argued is bad software development - yet they still thrive today.

I am pretty sure that the first versions of Facebook sucked ass too. Developers get better over time...you know how ? By sucking, making mistakes, learning and improving. Not by being awesome all the time.

So we, as developers, need to get over ourselves and realize that we are just one tool in the tool belt for company success. You can build the best product on the planet, if you have no sales (assuming that the market is rational) and no VC financing you are dead. Finito. Kaput. Gone.

Kapish ?

Edit: Sorry if this comes off as belligerent, I am just tired of the stereotypes. If developers don't start off as bad, how do they become good ? Plus, having the most efficient sorting algorithm will not let one software company win over the other - unless you are selling sorting algorithms, of course.

<comment><USER19> Bad development practices can and do kill companies, although in those cases the cause of death is usually considered "failed to innovate" or something similar. Accumulate enough technical debt and you'll be unable to move very quickly for fear of breaking things. After code starts breaking expect to add processes on top of processes, which may stop the breakage but only slow things down even further.

That's not to say that bad programming is the only reason companies fail to innovate, but if the code gets bad enough things will show down and newer competitors will overtake you.

<comment><USER18> As I asked in my response, Please provide examples.

Bad coding does not mean 'failed to innovate'. Digg.com innovated with the Digg button, but according to Kevin they had a bunch of 'bad coders' doing 'bad coding'.

<comment><USER19> Bad coding does not mean "failed to innovate" but bad coding will certainly lead to failure to innovate.

There are many, many companies that fall into that category but if you want a direct example of bad coding -> failure then look at Friendster:

"But the board also lost sight of the task at hand, according to Kent Lindstrom, an early investor in Friendster and one of its first employees. As Friendster became more popular, its overwhelmed Web site became slower. Things would become so bad that a Friendster Web page took as long as 40 seconds to download. Yet, from where Mr. Lindstrom sat, technical difficulties proved too pedestrian for a board of this pedigree."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15frien...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?pagewanted=2)

There is hardly ever a single reason why a company fails, but site performance and the inability/unwillingness to address it played a large part in Friendster's decline.

<comment><USER18> We really are arguing in circles here, because there could be many reasons for the slowness at Friendster. Didn't have to be bad coding. It could have been insufficient hardware. No matter how good the developers were, if their hardware can only manage X number of concurrent users with max optimizations, when growth brought in X^2, no amount of 'good development' would solve that issue.

However, I do agree with your point that there isn't just one thing that kills a company. That was my original point.

The TC article made it sound as if 'bad coders' killed companies. That is very delusional and it flatters developers too much. They are important, but not THAT important. That's my point.

Please don't flame me, as a developer myself, I am fully aware of where my expertise (and value-add) stops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's interesting to see an article like this on TC, I was rather surprised at first.

Not sure if I like it or not, it just doesn't seem like their 'core competency'.

<comment><USER21> This writing has a few awesome hum-dingers: "Like many of the hangovers that haunt modern software engineering, this is ultimately mostly Microsoft's fault," "Yes, I am being deliberately sexist here, because in my experience those women who write code are consistently good at it," and "So what should a real interview consist of? Let me offer a humble proposal: don't interview anyone who hasn't accomplished anything. Ever."

When I read his work, I feel like this author writes in a binary way: Either an entity's right, or they're wrong. Period. (Jon Evans or the highway!)

<comment><USER3> Yes. Same for his dissing of Simonyi. Almost seems personal. He might have invented the Hungarian notation, but he also oversaw the development of the most successful enterprise software ever shipped. Most of us are not exactly MS fans, but lets acknowledge 'getting things done' where due.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given a problem and access to a search engine, see if he/she can break the problem down and find the most accurate solution and tailor it to the problem.

This should be a reasonable measure of a programmers aptitude.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a completely different approach. I hire people who have worked with a particular technology or ecosystem for a while, because I think that builds the relevant experience and habits. If they are good at things similar to what we are doing, they should be able to pick it up and integrate quickly, and learn more stuff.

And don't underestimate the value of good documentation.

But of course, one prerequisite is absolutely necessary: the ability to approach problems logically. That is what one should look for on top of the domain knowledge.

Besides interview questions, give an interview ASSIGNMENT. Meaning, before you are hired, you have to complete some task. This shows a) commitment to wanting to work here, and b) shows that you can sole the kinds of problems we had to face before.

You know your version control, where someone had to go in and fix some bugs? Well, encapsulate these things as minimum examples (with e.g. javascript errors, maybe a stray comma or something in JSON) and then tell the guy "it doesn't work on IE, please fix it". You know it can be done because it WAS done. That's the kind of stuff they'll need to do at work.

<comment><USER9> >Besides interview questions, give an interview ASSIGNMENT. Meaning, before you are hired, you have to complete some task. This shows a) commitment to wanting to work here, and b) shows that you can sole the kinds of problems we had to face before.

Are you hirering for Facebook? Because if not you will miss the developers who aren't desperate to work for anyone.

<comment><USER23> I'm not worried about random developers I'm going to miss. I'm worried about developers we'm going to be stuck with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hmm: Poster vineet's account was created 1120 days ago, has 112 karma, and average karma of 1.12. Hacked, a coincidence, or am I missing something? Is 112 part of some number like pi or e?</comment>


Apple TV: The Soon-To-Be #1 Gaming Console? - <AUTHOR> http://parislemon.com/post/27949484317/apple-tv-xbox <comment><USER2> I don't know who Paris Lemon is, but he must be high.

>If they added them tomorrow, the Apple TV would instantly be the number one gaming console. Think about that for a second.

Think about this for a second, there have been over 65 million Xbox360's sold worldwide since its debut in 2005. Numbers are sketchy but analysts seem to estimate there have been about 10 million Apple TV's sold if you count ALL three generations, the first of which debuted in 2007.

If you compare the 360's sales numbers to the Wii (over 90 million) or the PS3 (over 60 million), you realize that the Apple TV is no where competing with these other TV connected products, despite the fact that it costs significantly less.

Let's not even get started on sales of games. I don't need to look up the sales numbers for Xbox360 because the Apple TV has sold (and has) 0 games that run on it...

Think about what you are saying before just posting needless linkbait.

</comment><comment><USER3> mg, you have a brilliant grasp of strategy.</comment>


Few of 2020 US presidential candidates are using a basic email security feature - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/27/presidential-candidates-email-security/ <comment><USER2> This is just absurd - this is not a complex thing to implement and you'd think that folks would be hyper vigilant this time around. I guess most people never learn.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see som stats on dmarc adoptation in genreral</comment>


Ask HN: Review Refynr.com: de-clutter Twitter - <AUTHOR>

I'm at the Beta stage where I'm testing charging a one-time for Refynr, but want to find out if a) anyone is really interesting in filtering Twitter & Facebook, and b) if they're interested, why aren't they willing to pay a one-time $5 fee?
What's Refynr.com?
It's a Twitter + FB client that filters out the clutter from your feeds, and then saves them for you to read later.
You may ask... Why not just unfollow? Or create Lists?
No individual posts interesting stuff 100% of the time, but that doesn't mean I don't want to follow them. I don't want to miss the cool things they tweet, etc. Lists are too hard to maintain, and can only contain up to 500 users. I want to simly refine my feeds with a lot of filter options (and foursquare & FF stuff should be filtered out by default!)
Why don't I put ads on Refynr.com instead of charging $5?
1) I'm solo and bootstrapping, so need more revenue than that 2) Don't you think ads would be kind of inconsistent with the concept of Refynr: keeping the clutter out?
Finally, is there something wrong with the site design or text that would keep you from paying a mere $5 for lifetime access to Refynr.com?
Do I not sell the idea well?
Is something off-putting?
Does it need a 30-day Trial?
TIA! <comment><USER2> kind of nit-picky, but your logo looks very similar to stumbleupon's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, I could always change the logo I guess...

But any other feedback for the questions I posed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> clickable link: <http://refynr.com/></comment>


Show HN: Socialscan – Check email address and username usage on online platforms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iojw/socialscan <comment><USER2> FYI there is a tool (Spiderfoot) that has this capability specifically targeting the OSINT space. You may be able to leverage the same method they use to add more capabilities to this tool.

Spiderfoot - [https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/blob/master/modules/...](https://github.com/smicallef/spiderfoot/blob/master/modules/sfp_accounts.py)

Resource used by Spiderfoot to do account lookups - [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WebBreacher/WhatsMyName/ma...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WebBreacher/WhatsMyName/master/web_accounts_list.json)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a slight difference in approach between the Spiderfoot tool and socialscan:

The linked tool uses a common approach which involves retrieving the account page in question and looking at the HTTP status code and text on the page, determine whether the username is in use. This makes it easy to expand it to a large number of sites as long as they have web-based profile pages, but the approach is error prone and not fully accurate (false positives and negatives occur).

socialscan uses a different method of checking (mimicking verification calls) that has to be implemented manually for each platform, but the accuracy of results is guaranteed. Of course this doesn't work on all sites, but it isn't dependent on platforms having public profile pages and can be expanded to email addresses as well.</comment></comment>


Applying to graduate school, after working in industry for a few years.   - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently in my last quarter of college at UCSD, studying computer science.  I've been thinking about pursuing a graduate education in computer science the past few quarters, but it was too late to apply for the next coming year.  Thus my plans are now to work a few years in industry before returning to graduate school.  The problem is, I don't have many connections with my current professors, so I can't exactly get letter of recommendations from them.  I was wondering how would I be able to have a strong graduate application later on, if I would even be able to apply at all.  I know they much prefer recommendations from people in academia versus industry.  How should I prepare? <comment><USER2> To some degree, it depends on luck. I know some professors who weight letters of recommendation heavily, and others who consider them irrelevant. Figure out what you are interested in academically, then do some work that can be presented as part of your application.

CS is big. Do you have a narrower interest?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not exactly sure yet, but I do find interesting in computer networking or computer security. I was under the impression that a graduate admission committee would be looking at your applications instead of the actual professors of the departments?

<comment><USER2> I suppose it depends on the school. My experience is that academia handles the _administrative_ issues with a lot of diversity. At the admission level, there is a lot of noise. Undergrad is very different from graduate work.

Masters or Ph.D?

<comment><AUTHOR> Planning on a masters. I'm not sure if I want to pursue a Ph.D.

<comment><USER2> I know less about the masters realm. Ironically, I think Ph.D. programs care less because they can use the candidacy qualifying exams to weed people out _after_ they've been in the program. I still believe your best bet is to do something you can present to them, effectively starting your masters before you get there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Defining the '90s Music Canon - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2020/07/song-decay <comment><USER2> How do you try to make a 90s music canon without grunge/alternative? There are a plethora of other genres that developed or emerged into relative popularity in the 90s that were hugely influential on music going forward.

Taking the most popular songs at the time is not a recipe for finding the best songs/songs that will be remembered in the future. A good percentage of the songs listed were crap then and not worth remembering now.

<comment><USER3> There are very deep limitations in a) chart toppers vs. otherwise popular and b) ethnicity i.e. White/African American/Latino have quite a different slot of pop culture references in the US, much less pronounced for example in UK or Canada.

The other 'big thing' to consider is that Gen Z are still quite young, and sometimes it takes time to pick up on a lot of music. We hear tracks in films, living in other conditions.

Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall! But probably due to being the 'right age' for having been able to listen to a lot of stuff.

Finally, dismayed by the 90's top-charters. I couldn't fathom listening to most of that even back then.

<comment><USER4> > _b) ethnicity i.e. White /African American/Latino have quite a different > slot of pop culture references in the US, much less pronounced for example > in UK or Canada._

I wonder if UK and canada might be more similar to europe, where disco (as a popular culture which belonged to all those ethnicities) never really died in the same way it did in the states, killed by spontaneous popular uprising?

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

<comment><USER5> In Spain, specially in the East Coast, disco was replaced by techno/makina: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mákina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mákina)

<comment><USER4> TIL about "X-Ta Si, X-Ta No". (and, in a cousin thread, that "mall pop" is a genre name. Does it mean music played in malls, or music performed in malls? Do malls even still exist?)

Maybe HN'ers with young children should try and convince them that the world really was low-rez back then and only achieved current resolution this century?

[https://i.imgur.com/4rPGp.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/4rPGp.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting concept, but I think the researcher put too much personal bias in their choice of songs. For example, there are some very conspicuous omissions from the list: no Nirvana, no Foo Fighters, no Linkin Park, no Jay Z, no No Doubt. These are some of the most iconic musicians from the 90s.

I still see young kids walking around with the same Nirvana t-shirt with the yellow smiley face that I wore in middle school. So I imagine Smells Like Teens Spirit is recognized by teenagers today. I've heard a lot of people say that's the song that started the 90s.

Also, it would be interesting to normalize this by noting whether or not the song appeared on Glee. I'm fairly certain that's the reason for the Losing My Religion being so recognizable, I wonder how it compares to a song like It's the End of the World.

<comment><USER7> Linkin Park was not an iconic '90s band at any time in the 1990s —- why would they be a glaring omission when their debut came out in 2000?

<comment><USER6> Fair enough, I thought Hybrid Theory, which was all over the radio when it was released, came out in 99.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pudding makes beautiful articles, but this is specifically 90's Pop Mall Music Canon. I think it'll be more interesting to analyze the top 1000 popular 90's songs still being streamed today and work backwards to measure the influence and delta of their past popularity.

<comment><USER9> Good thought - this can be quickly searched for too:

[https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html](https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html)

Nirvana are waaay out in front.

<comment><USER4> ¿Por qué no los dos?

"The Final Teen Spirit Mashup (Nirvana vs Europe)" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr06IyWMf4Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr06IyWMf4Y)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The list feels like the equivalent of an 80s canon that includes Rick Astley but omits Depeche Mode.

The approach of taking what was most popular at the time and intersecting it with what is most recognizable now doesn't seem like the right way to define a canon. A canon in art is usually meant to identify those works that, with the benefit of hindsight, were the most important or influential on the development of the art form. This list is heavily weighted towards R&B & pop- rap that has had virtually no lasting impact on subsequent works and I suspect many of these songs are only listened to today either out of personal nostalgia or in humorous contexts.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is pretty interesting. I'm astonished there is no Nirvana or U2 in the canon.

I am wondering if looking at sales one year after the song came out, or radio transmission after a while, would be a stronger predictor of staying power than what peaked at a given time.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm gonna go out on a limb here and posit that the respondents of this quiz aren't a random sampling of normal people. At 31 I'm square in millennial territory but was familiar with exactly zero of the "millennial all know these songs" examples.

<comment><USER13> I'm a Gen Xer. I'm not from the U.S. but I had to look up "No Diggity" in disbelief that someone would think it a "90's standard". I had literally never heard of it.

There's also plenty on the list that I recognise but I can guess why they've faded. Most obvious are followup singles that charted well despite being pretty bland (it was some _previous_ song by the artist that was good). There's also a couple movie tie-ins that were only popular alongside the movie. Some, like Bryan Adams' "All for Love", manage to tick both those boxes (I don't think I'd heard that song in 25 years).

And Winds of Change by the Scorpions was gigantic in Europe in the early 1990s but it is literally a song about perestroika. It's about as entrenched in a specific era as a song can get.

Edit: wow, same website has an article discussing why "No Diggity" is the most timeless song. Shows what I know?

[https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html](https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html)

<comment><USER14> It seems very USA-centric to this European, too. Classic case of an American mistaking the USA for the entire world.

<comment><USER15> yup, black/R&B/hiphop/rap musis was very small in Europe, while I don't see mainstream eurohouse/trance hits like Robert Miles's Children, ATB's Till I come, Rhythm is a dancer, What Is Love from Haddaway, all even recognizable by my boomer father, let alone myself, none of them amde it into chart while they must be recognized for sure at least by 50% of Millennials

<comment><USER16> Children is the bomb,the melody just sticks to your brain even when I haven't listened to it for years I instantly recognize it and I'm a bit late to that movement so it wasn't much on the radio when I was a teen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Had this discussion quite a bit lately, and I have a theory.

When we grew up (I'm 36 and at the tail end of this) we couldn't easily find the music we liked and exclusively listen to it (unless you had rich parents who bought you all MCs and later CDs you wanted), we kinda had to listen to the radio and experience the whole spectrum.

This is even more true of people in the 35-50 age bracket.

But people who grew up with Napster or even later with streaming on demand don't even have to dig a lot. If they like one artist, they can just listen to them and the (very closely related, surprise) recommendations. No more begging your friends to make you a tape copy of some songs on CDs.

Also afaik the amount of music published goes up every year. So if I actively remember, say 100 songs from the year 1994 that is a much more meaningful representation than 100 songs that came out in 2019.

<comment><USER18> There was a kind of serendipity, though, to what _good_ radio DJs/playlists could introduce you to. I also spent a lot of money on compilations, some of which were curated quite well by labels (like Subpop and SST), record stores (Newbury Comics in Boston), and fanzines (Flipside).

Other sources for discovering good music included friends' record/CD collections, live shows, publications of varying quality, and (I hate to say it) MTV.

Some of these sources were controlled by the music industry, but there were ways for some really interesting and great music from unknowns to float to the surface.

<comment><USER19> Music stores were a primary source of discovery for me as well. I was introduced to my favorite band after my friend heard their CD playing at a music store.

Bigger stores often had listening stations where they would feature CDs with headphones so you could hear them before you buy. I got introduced to some amazing albums via that process.

<comment><USER18> I lived overseas in the 90s and radio there was pretty bad, but those listening stations at the local Tower Records kept me connected to English- language music and introduced me to some fantastic albums and artists, including NAS, The Verve, DJ Guru, and The Presidents of the United States of America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The findings are mind-boggling to me. Though none of these songs are representative of my preferred style of music, I knew every single one of them so well that I feel like I still know every word. I was born in '93. I'm surprised that so few people from my age group seemed to recognize some of them.

<comment><USER3> As a GenX-er it's also mind boggling to me how some very 'ingrained' songs might not be recognized by younger folks. Quite a lot of good pop tracks, not my style, but they are played literally at the grocery store, I don't fathom how people don't know them.

Something has definitely changed in music (a few things) - at hockey games they are playing strictly rock up until 2000. Part of it is demographics, but there's just nothing to replace 'Welcome To The Jungle' by Guns and Roses that has enough widespread acclaim.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, it's almost uncanny. I wonder what it's going to do with for instance movie tracks with popular appeal. Will we continue to play what people know? Will the canon of the 20th century be with us for a _long_ time?

<comment> core-questions Sure, why not? Musical innovation seems to have slowed or fractured due to only pop music still having sufficient institutional backing to really retain large segments of listeners; meanwhile, music - like most communally- experienced art forms - thrives best when large groups of people know about them.

In other words: there's probably plenty of great stuff to replace/supplant 20th century hits, but unless you continually skulk random soundcloud pages you won't find it. All you get access to is undifferentiated pablum pop by default, which is amazingly less brave than it has ever been, musically.

<comment><USER3> Pop is now 'extreme pop' i.e. Taylor Swift - bangers by the same production teams, they are products. So they lack a lot of soul.

The rest of music is very exploratory - production tricks, sounds, styles.

It seems that most basic melody and rhythm stuff is just to boring - but that is what sticks over the long haul.

So I think a lot of music today is too specific, and due to what big-pop is ... never sees the light of day anyhow.

We may in fact see a lot of 20-century music linger for a while.

That said, we don't listen to a lot of 1st half 20th century today ... though still tons from the 60's-80's. Top selling albums are consistently Queen, Metallica, Eagles.

<comment><USER22> Those pop production teams have been around for a while - eg. Stock Aitken Waterman, Cheiron Studios.

<comment><USER14> Indeed, the notorious Max Martin's been doing his thing since about 1997, and seems to show no signs of decline.

<comment><USER21> Akshuly he has had fewer mega hits lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No Metallica? No Offspring? No Nirvana? No U2? No R.E.M.?

Without these bands in radio 90s I remember would be silent half the time :)

<comment><USER15> it's chart for Americans only, hardly any validity for Europe, also no mainstream trance/house hits like Robert Miles, Sash, Haddaway etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's up with the songs which have more recognition by later than contemporary generations?

        Wind of Change
        She Ain't Worth It
        Romantic
        Diamonds and Pearls

(only the first means anything to me, but this decade isn't really my 'zik)

I'd guess songs which get covered, parodied, or sampled are more likely to last?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CF1vXmtrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9CF1vXmtrQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfZLb33uCg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H3Sv2zad6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H3Sv2zad6s)

<comment><USER24> They seem to be on the lower end of recognition in general so that might have something to do with it (statistical variation)

Side note but I'm surprised that Diamonds and Pearls rather than any other 90's Prince song charted in the Top 5, especially compared to other singles from that album.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I desperately wish I was part of the 11% of millennials unfamiliar with _Ironic_ (don't you think?)

Meanwhile, _Wind of Change_ seems to only be known by Europeans, but may have been written by the CIA?! [https://www.vulture.com/article/patrick-radden- keefe-wind-of...](https://www.vulture.com/article/patrick-radden-keefe-wind- of-change-interview.html)

Also, 38 years old. Born in 1982.

<comment><USER26> I clicked that link. Absolutely no evidence it was written by the CIA, of any kind, by the sound of it. "May have been" is a fair but misleading summary. "No evidence it was" wouldn't've got me to click.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone interested in a different 90's[1] might try tracking down the originals from the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzdXS_KvLVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzdXS_KvLVM) megamix[2].

I was amused by: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2fNVztaC58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2fNVztaC58) in which the conceit is a near future in which stars of the 90's moscow scene are living in the old folks' home[3].

[1] Is it wallowing in nostalgia if one hears many of the songs for the first time?

[2] Yes, this one includes Nirvana, as well as Mario.

[3] They're still popping pills at the bar, but presumably this time they have prescriptions.

</comment><comment><USER27> Goddamn, thanks for reminding me that my dim view of the general population didn't start with the introduction of facebook and discovering that the most most popular youtube videos/channels are. Is it any wonder so many western nations can't handle even the basics of a pandemic or voting in non-populist idiots? Just look at their taste in music.

</comment><comment> mark-r I must be doing something right. My kids are constantly surprising me by being familiar with songs that are older than they are.

On the other hand, I didn't know that "Wild Wild West" was by Will Smith! It was in constant rotation at the roller rink I used to go to so I've heard it a million times, but never knew where it came from.

<comment><USER28> >On the other hand, I didn't know that "Wild Wild West" was by Will Smith!

It was from the Wild Wild West remake movie he starred in as well. I think they were trying to recreate the success of the Men in Black formula[0] but that song wound up being the only part of it that anyone remembered.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBLgEx6svA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiBLgEx6svA)

<comment> mark-r And now I realize why I didn't remember it being Will Smith, because it wasn't. The song I remember is an earlier one with the same name, by Escape Club.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like this is biased towards American listeners and export of American music abroad

As European Xennial (more narrowed Millennial) I went through the chart in the end of article and I think this is first time I heard Baby Got Back (recognized by 84% millennials), No scrubs (89%), No Diggity (79%) and can guarantee recognitionr ate among my perrs would be way below 50% if I don't recognize it who was listening radio and going to cloubs all the time

also can't believe only 68% of Millennials would recognize Ice ice baby, that's completely insane, it was impossible to miss it as it was global hit in 90s, same with extremely popular rock ballad Always from JBJ with only 49% recognition among Millennials

also I don't see any mainstream eurohouse/trance hits like Robert Miles's Children, ATB's Till I come, Rhythm is a dancer, What Is Love from Haddaway, all even recognizable by my boomer father, let alone myself, none of them made it into chart while they must be recognized for sure at least by 50% of Millennials, which just again proves it's just chart for Americans who were not listening to house/trance in mainstream radio

</comment><comment><USER29> I have to say I am still super confused how Gen Z could recognize the Scorpions more than Millennials.

</comment><comment><USER30> No Aphex Twin, or Daft Punk ... ? Ha

<comment><USER31> When you check the charts, this music wasn't anywhere near as popular as you think it was.

Daft Punk never had any impact on the popular charts in the 90s. Top 4 in Belgium is the best they did according to Wikipedia.

Everyone's just projecting their own personal tastes!

<comment><USER32> > never had any impact on the popular charts in the 90s

...in the US.

They did somewhat better in the UK: [https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/25579/daft- punk/](https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/25579/daft-punk/)

<comment><USER31> That's still a single song scraping into the top five. Doesn't seem like a notable result to be seen as a major omission?

I'm sure _you_ listened to it, but doesn't seem to have made a dent at the time.

And the context of the article is the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Playing clips is broken for me (Firefox). Works only for first time, requires page refresh to work again.

<comment><USER15> works fine for me in newest FF on W10, I hope you are not masochist using horrible FF experience on Android where are much better browsers like Kiwi, Bromite or even Edge or Samsung internet available

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Most of the graphs aren't showing up (Firefox on android?)

</comment><comment><USER35> Underrated: Fishbone.</comment>


Robots Can't Dance: Why the singularity is greatly exaggerated - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/robots-cant-dance <comment><USER2> Misleading title, robots can actually be great dancers[1]. The problem with AI is that it's a moving target, as soon as there's an advance we tend to go "well that's still pretty mechanical", forgetting that we're also just mechanical systems (probably). Granted, AI and AGI isn't really the same thing, but it seems like we always make the assumption that an AGI has to work like a human internally. To me that seems like a good source of inspiration, but it's probably not a requirement. In the end, I think we'll figure out that for all our "creative genius", we're still just monkeys who see and do, and sometimes we do something new.

[1] = [http://youtu.be/ww9ClmCWBr0](http://youtu.be/ww9ClmCWBr0)

<comment><USER3> You touched the core of the discussion, imo, that is there are two schools of thaught involved.

One sees the universe and anything else as a machine -> determinism

The others are seeing the universe as a discrete continuum -> indeterminism

That is also my fundamental criticism at the current approach, it is not even considering the possibility that the whole approach could be wrong.

I think intelligent machines are possible, but not without much more fundamental understanding. Hyping, cheering deep learning and all this stuff, is just irrational and illogical.

<comment><USER4> Surely the more relevant dichotomy here is monism(materialism) vs dualism?

For those who find determinism unsatifying, I doubt indeterminism feels like much of an improvement.

<comment><USER3> Dualism is a part of it, but dualism is more an ethical question.

Indeterminism is more about emergence, quantum fields and such things. How the universe works.

My impression is that a lot of science that is applied to intelligent machines is based on a deterministic physical model based on Newton and LaPlace. The Bayesian networks was pioneered 200 years ago by LaPlace for example. But how is Einsteins relativity theory applied? Or quantum fields?

There are two different models of the universe involved the "old" deterministic model and the "new" indeterministic model (see Karl Popper -> Open Universe -> [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/288137.The_Open_Universe](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/288137.The_Open_Universe)).

May be it make sense to bring some newer approaches into the game, instead of reapplying again and again the same approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is it that we give humans a lot of time doing trial and error and acknowledge them as masters of some art but then when a machine process fails to deliver _on it 's first baby steps_ declare that the endeavor is impossible?

Creativity is experimentation coupled with the insight of previous work. Computers can do the experimentation, they just need longer horizons of insight to be able to moderate.

On the other hand thou: AGI is a far way off. I'm not expecting anything HAL- like within my lifetime. Unless my lifespan will be artificially prolonged.

<comment><USER6> There's another aspect to consider:

When people express themselves in a creative way, they do so so that other people (and themselves!) can appreciate it. We create art for other people - we don't create for animals or plants or robots. Other people can appreciate our art because it may express an emotional and/or psychological state that resonates with them.

Now if we avoid the question of whether or not an AI can be considered creative if it does not express itself voluntarily, how can we judge the "quality" of its art? If it's doing so because it evokes a favourable internal state whenever it observes it, could that not be considered art?

(When you listen to a piece of music and it makes you feel good, would you not consider that a good piece music?)

<comment><USER5> I consider music that makes me feel anguish to be a good piece of music too (given the right circumstances).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ignoring the singularity talk because I think it's become meaningless, but Jürgen Schmidhuber would disagree with the conclusion that machines can't be creative, or at least that it's beyond algorithms.

He has a formal theory of creativity [0] which claims to explain, among other things, music, humour, beauty [1] and fun. It centres around compression and Kolmogorov complexity.

There's a great video in the first link.

These are hard problems, but it's shortsighted to consider it impossible for us to build machines with approximate behaviour. Often with this class of criticism you'll have arguments along the lines of "sure the submarine moves through the water, but is it swimming?" Apologies to Dijkstra.

[0] [http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html) [1] [http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/beauty.html](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/beauty.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> "But generating is fairly easy and testing pretty hard."

This is the reason he thinks computers won't be creatives. But testing theories in science or math can be automated(in most cases). So technological creativity is possible ,and that what's the singularity talks about(although the testing can be quite lengthy and expensive ,which might really slow the singularity maybe to the point of no singularity at all).

And as for artistic creativity - that depends on if we can build some model on how humans evaluate art in general. Who knows, maybe we can build a good model of that. We've certainly improved from say 100-200 years ago where most artists we're considered geniuses, to today ,where a large percent of commercial art is at least is generated or least guided by knowledge on how to create good stories, etc.

<comment><USER9> > _But testing theories in science or math can be automated(in most cases). > [...] (although the testing can be quite lengthy and expensive ,which might > really slow the singularity maybe to the point of no singularity at all)._

So we would be back to the problem being raw computing power.

> _And as for artistic creativity - that depends on if we can build some model > on how humans evaluate art in general._

I'm pretty sure that's culture and social experience in general that allow us to evaluate art. Not sure robots will be able to do that soon, as it seems to be a product of our intricate biological structure.

> _[...] to today ,where a large percent of commercial art is at least is > generated or least guided by knowledge on how to create good stories, etc._

So maybe robots are not as much becoming humans as we're becoming robots.

<comment><USER10> "seems to be a product of our intricate biological structure"

How do you know?

<comment><USER9> "seems". I guess that's the most resonable assumption. What else ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Robots don't actually need to be creative; robots only need to approximate creativity well enough that humans can't tell. After that point robots will always look creative even if they're not. The weight of a little randomness and a lot of brute force will do the rest.

<comment><USER12> We're kind of on the edge of this with algorithmically-optimised clickbait headlines. There's still a human in the loop at the moment, but the more metrics-driven the process is the more likely parts of it are to be automated.

<comment><USER13> That's actually a nice idea for a satire (and what can be more satirical than real life?). Do you know of any artificial headline generators? If not, it's high time we built one. I bet we could make cartloads of money with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Consider the following definition for a Technological Singularity (TS):

 _A TS is an event that occurs when AI advances to the point where its humans can 't keep up with understanding and/or predicting it's decision-making process and/or the results thereof._

Using this definition, it would appear that, like physical singularities (black holes) TS can occur on a large or small scale (micro black holes can pop in and out of existence, with little to no effect on the macro world). So, let's say we develop an AI that can teach itself to play Go. After a while, not even the smartest humans can beat it. Indeed, the smartest humans can't even understand* why it plays in the way that it does. If this counts as a TS, where does creativity come into play?

*(Something similar has happened before, but it was discovered that the neural network was using physical electrical effects that occurred in the actual hardware when certain pieces of code was run. When a human tried to analyse the actual code, it made no sense.)

<comment><USER14> You've selected the phrase "a Technological Singularity" and stretched the metaphor to create your definition.

"The Singularity" is what most people are discussing when this phrase is used. That requires something more encompassing than small occurrences, and would have society-wide impact.

Personally, I don't think it will actually occur. By "it" I mean the point where individual humans are eclipsed by a technological gestalt beyond ordinary human comprehension. This is my opinion, but I believe economic factors will retard technological progress enough that "The Singularity" cannot occur. Our society will either tear itself apart, or the disparate technologies will be so fragmented and incompatible as to not come together as a whole.

For examples, I'd cite the space program and the current state of computer operating systems.

<comment><USER6> > You've selected the phrase "a Technological Singularity" and stretched the > metaphor to create your definition.

If you consider the example I gave and expand it to other fields, it's the same thing. As I said, it's analogous to black holes.

My point is, how does creativity fit into all of this?

<comment><USER14> It isn't the same thing. But that's just argument.

Let's go with the new subject of how creativity fits in. Creativity allows the expansion of a system of axioms through perceiving possibilities not permitted within the system. This allows escape from "incompleteness" [1].

Of course that is not all creativity does, but it is fairly big deal as it leads to what we tend to call "understanding" or "comprehension". Knowing how to calculate the next number in a sequence, and comprehending that the next number will always be the same as the previous (divide 1 by 3 and express as a decimal number) requires multiple levels of observation.

We've been able "teach" machines discoveries of that nature that we've already made, but we haven't really been able to generate the capability. Take the case of those evolved neural net solutions that took advantage of the physical nature of the hardware to optimize a detection circuit. The optimization could only occur because there was a suitable system-external test to drive optimization. While it is feasible to allow the combination of the physical world and a definition of "survival" to serve as a suitable test for machines, the result would merely be machines that "survive". This would not be "The Singularity" of machines that out-think us, this would be the "gray goo" scenario of machines that devastate our civilization and merely replace us on the top of the food chain.

My point is that there needs to be a way for the machine to generate its own tests. This, in large part, is comprehension, driven by creativity. Granted, I say all of this firmly embedded among the laity.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Excuse me, this is headdesk-worthy clickbait material.

 _wham_ Cognition! _wham_ Is! _wham_ Lawful!

If you can scientifically characterize human creativity, then you can program an algorithm to behave creatively. If you believe you cannot program an algorithm to behave creatively, then this is because you don't understand creativity as a cognitive function.

Why is it that as soon as someone says "AI" everyone turns off their normal scientific/naturalist worldview and starts going yippity-skip-de-doo in fairyland!?

<comment><USER16> >Why is it that as soon as someone says "AI" everyone turns off their normal scientific/naturalist worldview and starts going yippity-skip-de-doo in fairyland!?

Despite claiming to be rational, people are still uncomfortable with the idea that they're meat machines.

<comment><USER15> Well _what else_ do they expect to be? If non-physical souls existed, they would have to work on some principle _too_. Reality always bottoms out somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > We can build a classifier that would look at lots of pairs of successful > movies and do some kind of inference on it so that it could learn what would > be successful again. But it would be looking for patterns that are already > existent. It wouldn't be able to find that new thing that was totally out of > left field.

Just a baseless assertion without any evidence.

There is no reason to assume you couldn't build a system that emulates whatever the human brain is doing there.

<comment><USER18> I can think of one: you can't simulate an atom.

If you read too much into supercomputing and think that they can simulate atoms, then go tell CERN to stop searching for sub-particles and simulate them instead.

Otherwise, I think you know what I mean. Besides, a real system depends on initial conditions. You can't simulate those.

<comment><USER19> You are confused about the order in which these things happen:

1\. We form a hypothesis about how something works.

2\. We do experiments to try to falsify said hypothesis.

3\. If a certain amount of experimentation fails to falsify the hypothesis, we conclude tentatively that the hypothesis is a correct model of reality, namely, we promote it to a theory.

4\. We use that theory to simulate the real thing computationally.

(4) is the whole point of doing steps (1) to (3) - and all VMG is saying is that there is no reason to assume that (1) to (3) couldn't lead to (4) with regards to the brain, just as there is no reason to do so with regards to atoms, which in turn is why we do operate CERN instead of just asserting that atoms cannot be understood.

<comment><USER18> Yes you are correct in 1-4 but I think that your hypothesis is wrong wrt to simulation:

You don't know the initial conditions which are a _huge_ part in determining the outcome of the simulation. Maybe you will limit your precision to Plank constant. Can you measure with that precision?

<comment><USER19> I don't know the initial conditions of what?

<comment><USER18> Now this question clarifies why you think too much into simulating reality:

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

look for nonlinearity

EDIT: You can't simulate a brain without considering the quantum effects at atomic levels. You can't simulate quantum effects. QED.

<comment><USER20> > You can't simulate a brain without considering the quantum effects at atomic > levels.

That's wild speculation. At the very finest level of detail, we can simulate a brain in this way. At the very coarsest level of detail, we can simulate it as a thermodynamic heat bath. The correct level of detail for the emergence of intelligent behaviour is likely somewhere in-between.

> You can't simulate quantum effects.

What? Of course you can! Classical computers take an exponential amount of time, but it's still a finite problem. The whole field of Computational Chemistry is based on simulating quantum effects!

<comment><USER18> "The correct level of detail for the emergence of intelligent behaviour is likely somewhere in-between."

I think this is your speculation. :)

"Classical computers take an exponential amount of time"

It is not a matter of time it takes to simulate, but of the details. You don't know which details matter and which don't. You don't know if you need infinite precision or you can stop at Plank's level. Thus, since you don't know a lot of things, you can't be sure that what you simulated was indeed the real thing or something that you imagined/theorized to be the real thing.

<comment><USER19> "Thus, since you don't know a lot of things, you can't be sure that what you simulated was indeed the real thing or something that you imagined/theorized to be the real thing."

That's a useless distinction as there is nothing where you could "know the real thing", you _always_ work with theories, without exceptions. When you take your first step out of bed in the morning, you don't know the _real_ behaviour of the floor (it's made of atoms, after all), you "only" use a relatively high-level theory of solid materials to predict that it will support you before you step onto it. There is no guarantee that that will work out, but there is fundamentally no way to do better than that, all of science works that way, _everything_ we know about the world is "a theory", even the atom theory is a theory, and the quantum theory is a theory, it's all about modeling as best as we can, none of it is "proven to be the real thing", and no scientist ever even tries to prove something to be "the ultimate reality", all that matters to science is to make models more precise, and to figure out what those models seem to be sufficiently precise to use for - and then use them, which we do very successfully indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You humans can't appreciate the dance of robots.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think at least one side of creativity can be summed up as _" producing new combinations of things we already know"_. In this context art would be more than creativity : means of suggesting new unexpected combinations of ideas in the minds of others. There is a social sharing side to this equation. This in my opinion is what AI won't get soon, as it requires embodiment, and more specifically human embodiment. It is already difficult to communicate with other animal species that share many biological structures with us and thus ways to experience the world. How could it be easy to make a machine that produces _meaning_ , as in _combinations of ideas that make sense in the context of human experience_ ?

What will save us is the building of machines that will collect, store, process and repurpose meaning in a meaningful way (no pun). Like, linking pieces of data to emotional states. Yet they won't get it.

</comment><comment><USER22> On a related topic - I can recommend the new movie _Ex Machina_ :

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_%28film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_%28film%29)

About the only thing I feel safe commenting on without fear of spoilers is where the outdoor scenes were filmed - Norway - which looked stunning.

</comment><comment><USER23> Computers have already passed a domain specific Turing Test by composing music that is as good as human composed music [1]. The phrase "robots can't [do X]" should always be suffixed with a "yet". There was a paper a few years back demonstrating a system that could compose an image based on text by finding images of the desired objects and composing them together. It's just a step away from creating a system that can generate paintings in the same style as great artists based purely on a text description.

[1] [http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/triumph-of-the- cyborg...](http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/triumph-of-the-cyborg- composer-8507)

<comment><USER24> Have blind tests been performed, where musicians could't distinguish between music composed by computers and music composed by humans?

<comment><USER25> yes, and the software did quite well, but see my post above for caveats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> " _It would instantly generate all possible combinations of movies and there will be some good ones. But recognizing them, that's the hard part._ "

By his definition, the vast majority of people are not intelligent.

</comment><comment><USER27> >> "No, you're missing that a fundamental aspect of intelligence is experience and that requires embodiment." He knew that to understand the world you needed to be inside the world, you needed to experience its behaviors and responses to you. Well, he was right. We may be making progress in being able to do things like recognize a cat in a photograph. But there's a huge gulf between that and doing something creative.

I'm not sure if I agree with this, but it is a compelling argument. Could experience be simulated the first time, hence bootstrapping the AI's?

<comment><USER28> There are tons of people working on giving robots the ability of collecting experience through embodiment in robots.

It may be a compelling argument for why the various timelines thrown around for the singularity will be off, but it's a speed bump, not a road block.

<comment><USER3> So goes the argumentation since 1960.

<comment><USER29> By the standards of 1960 we already have AI. After all, computers can beat the best humans at chess.

<comment><USER3> A chess board is a closed system with fixed rules, as far as I know you only need a lot of computing power to apply the min-max algorithm to solve any chess game.

In a chess game there are no probalities, AI is about to independently recognizing patterns in noise and develop assumptions out of it. The trick human brains are applying here is called intuition.

<comment><USER29> That wasn't what people said in 1960 - as soon as AIs solve a particular problem we redefine intelligence to mean something different. Modern AIs (e.g. hypothesis generation toolkits) can be better at recognizing patterns in noise than humans. I bet in 20 years' time we'll see that - and we'll be having this same conversation about how pattern recognition isn't really intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The singularity is a linear projection of computing power, in this projection anything that is questioning the singularity is pro-actively ignored. What puzzles me most, is why it is ignored. For me it does not make sense to hope that just the amount of simulated neuronal complexity will be enough, that suddenly out of the complexity something intelligent emerges. The whole approach is flawed. Something very essential is missing, that is a proven model how brains work and why they work, down to the last quantum state.

<comment><USER30> Is it really necessary? As far as I know, the theories about generating lift were still being heavily debated long after the Wright brothers flew. People often simply try things until they work, then go back and try to understand why they work.

Having a decent theory helps, but I'm skeptical that a complete understanding of the issue is required to make it work.

<comment><USER3> The difference is the plane did fly without the understanding after little research, but we are trying to make the machines intelligent since decades.

Something is missing, imo.

<comment><USER30> Little research? We had been trying to make heavier-than-air machines for centuries, if not millennia. Even the specific concept of the modern airplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control was put forward in 1799, more than a century before the Wright brothers flight. If we talk about flying machines in general, the Bamboo- copter[1] is 2400 years old.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo- copter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo-copter)

<comment><USER3> It was in my best intend to ignore all attempts before the Wright brothers to try to fly.

It is the same here, we have the wish to make intelligent machines, but we may lack an engine to do that. Besides the airplane design it was also the availability of powerful engines and other features to go the skies.

(I did read the Wikipedia article): in that sense I afraid we are more at stadium of Da Vincis concepts than an aeroplane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The whole point of the Singularity is that the technology will progress to a point where AI techniques will advance to produce something that is creative and intelligent enough to advance itself.

Obviously, we haven't hit that point yet - so we don't know what those advances are.

Before penicillin was discovered, doctors couldn't conceive of curing many serious and deadly infections.

<comment><USER32> Quite. I have no time for exaggerated singularitarian nonsense about strong AI being inevitable in a few decades. We don't even have the primitive fundamental concepts required to even begin to outline the actual design of such a thing. Therefore any attempt to estimate a timeline for its development is a blind guess.

On the other hand, just because we can't design or build one now doesn't mean we never will. Lord Kelvin was clearly wrong that heavier than air craft were impossible because birds. They are physical, mechanical systems that are heavier than air and yet fly. Therefore such systems are self evidently possible. So it is with strong AI. Physical systems that exhibit human intelligence or exist - us. Therefore physical systems like us are possible.

Here again the example of birds is instructive. Birds fly, but constructing a machine that flies I. The same way as birds is incredibly hard. Far, far harder than building rockets, propeller driven planes and even jets. There's no law of he usiverse that says our first strong AI will be designed along the same architectural lines as the human brain or that itse performance envelope will be similar to ours. At this stage, as the OP says, we don't know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Joke: may be you need a quantum singularity to get the intelligent machine singularity...

No I do not think that we do have black holes in our brains, and no we are not connected by worm holes...but it is nice idea. Likeminded people are connected by tiny worm holes.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nothing about the singularity specifically requires creative AI; indeed, a large part of it is _enhancing the existing potential of humans_ ; replacing them outright is not necessarily the case. As it is, an article titled about AI and creativity without the gratuitous "singularity won't happen" would be more accurate, but so much less sensational and clickbait-y that it might not even be able to justify its own publishing, I guess.

Also, had to laugh at gratuitous misuse of "supercomputers".

Yet another layman grasping at concepts they don't understand... _yawn_. Such an interesting coincidence that someone who says "AI can't be creative" also happens to be an artist... Reminds me of Roger Ebert dismissing the potential of games vs. movies as he felt threatened by them. As it is, that is one of the most gross and ignorant misunderstandings of singularity, that people will be somehow marginalised or not valued rather than the main point being the next logical step of tools (post-)humans use for their own benefit.

Edit: Oh, look, that whole "...the greatest scientists are also artists." canard again. Why am I not surprised? There have been maybe two or three who were exceptional or even widely appreciated in both, which is indicative of a "renaissance man" who is proficient in many fields and not an overall tendency/requirement. While many _are_ skilled in nonscientific fields too, I would hardly call Hawking, Feynman or Dawkins an artist just because they were good at speeches, lectures or books, for example.

I would also remind everyone that predictions of the future are so often pessimistic...

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." \-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." \-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." \-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

(Apocryphal; thanks for pointing this out to me as I was not aware; left in for completeness' sake) "Everything that can be invented has been invented." \-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris." \-- Orville Wright.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." \-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

<comment><USER30> _" Everything that can be invented has been invented." \-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899._

Poor man, constantly libeled due to lazy book writers: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell)

<comment><USER33> Thanks; have added a disclaimer on that quote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My singularity is certainly not exaggerated, but I, being a 100% non-robotic entity, can assure all of you that I can't dance at all.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, to address the title of the article, robot motion usually doesn't look very good for a known reason. The motion control systems used are usually positional. Most robotic control systems have a processor or PLC for each joint, and that processor usually accepts position goals, not force goals. Then there's some central coordinator issuing positional commands. This is simple to code, and many robotics frameworks have that hierarchical approach more or less nailed into them.

That hierarchical approach is not very good for dynamic motion. For that, you need force control and coordination in force space. I used to work on this; here's the first anti-slip control for legged robots, from 1995: ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5n0iTw- NU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5n0iTw-NU)). That was picked up by a grad student at McGill, who put it into their running quadruped Scout II. Then his professor, Martin Buehler, left McGill for Boston Dynamics and became the head engineer on BigDog.

All the actuators on BigDog are run by one CPU, which is a Pentium 4 class machine running QNX. The balance servoloop runs at 100Hz, and the hydraulic valve control loop runs at 1KHz. This allows for coordinated force control across all actuators, which is why BigDog is so agile. The Atlas robot version 1 is basically a modified BigDog, although version 2 seems to have been redesigned above the hips, with onboard power.

The motion in the DARPA Humanoid Challenge looked so bad last time because most of the participants using the Atlas robot were using a Windows DLL provided by Boston Dynamics. That DLL was just intended to provide some basic functionality to get participants started. Functions provided included "walk slowly" and "stand stably while arms do something". They didn't have the running, balance recovery, or slip control capabilities Boston Dynamics put into Big Dog. Expect much better performance in round 2 next winter.

Until recently, most robotics simulators were hopeless about force accuracy or friction. Most of them used physics engines borrowed from video game technology, where nobody cares about force accuracy or friction as long as things blow up prettily. This was recognized as a problem by DARPA, and they funded Dr. Mike Sherman at Stanford to put a serious dynamics simulator into Gazebo. Sherman previously had a commercial company, Symbolic Dynamics, building dynamics simulators for industry, and did know how to get the dynamics right. So now you can simulate force-controlled robots in Gazebo.

(Unfortunately, it took two decades to get this right, so I've moved on to other things, after a detour through physics engines for animation.)

Anyway, that's why robots can't dance very well yet. That problem is being fixed.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would human creativity pass turing test?

</comment><comment><USER36> forget dancing. Even simple human tasks like tying shoelaces is borderline impossible for machines.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with being well paid while having nothing to do at work? - <AUTHOR> This might come as a strange question to some, but I've been recently wondering a lot about it. I've been working for the past ~5 years at a fortune 500 company, and have switched my positions a few times (generally advancing my tech skills, so think tech support -> QE -> software engineer type of a thing).
It has happened to me multiple times that I came to work and if I simply read a book the whole time, nobody would notice. So, I'd desperately try to find some work for me in each of my positions. Paradoxically, that would make me stand out, because I'd be extremely receptive to PR reviews and collaborative processes, which would be a huge factor in the promotion process. At the same time, I dislike this feeling of 'all jiras done, what now?', and so the fact that a position had prolonged periods of it was the major, deciding factor in me abandoning it.
I thought, until recently, that this was mainly a 'me' thing, i.e. I'm too green to actively look for work even when none is given. You know, these people that always have a ton of ideas, and the only thing you have to do is manage their priority. I'm not that, and so I've been kind of hard on myself for not being creative enough to see what needs to be done without being explicitly told.
That said, my wife recently joined a new company, and was complaining at home that she had 0 things to do. They hired her, and now, she's sitting there re-reading documentation, managers scrambling to give her some tasks. She's also at a fortune 500 company. She also mentioned that her fellow new hires said the same thing.
I'm now beginning to wonder, is this a common thing? How do you deal with these periods? What is the correct, productive way to deal with it?
For me, these are mostly 'time to train' and 'is there really nothing that could use my attention' kind of periods, but I can't do that for a long time and not feel down about it. <comment><USER2> 3 years, one of the biggest O+G companies in the world, seconded into a function that 90% of the time was 5 or 10% busy, also away from home on 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.

Everyone else thought it was a dream. I went from doing complex h/w and s/w systems design and troubleshooting to adding little to no value every day, plus 2000km away from home.

I started to lose my mind, mostly manifested as internet shopping and pranking/teasing the juniors, followed by a fairly long period of over a year with some kind of pseudo narcolepsy I could not control. Photos abound of me asleep at the desk...

Did Comp TIA+ and a few other courses, but somehow it is hard to keep the apathy at bay and focus on something you are just doing without a specific purpose.

Some days I ran out of internet to browse, which is saying something.

I agreed to go because we were a little quiet for work in the office and pay was pretty high, but in retrospect it wasn't worth it and I should have just gone back and taken what projects came up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I go through the Jira backlog and find something. If can't find something I'll refactor a code smell and open a pull request for it. Even if it gets lost or not accepted I'll have something to show for.</comment>


HappyEdit - an HTML5 Remake of Vim - <AUTHOR> http://www.vimninjas.com/2012/10/03/happyedit-an-html5-remake-of-vim/

<comment><USER2> Why not just use Vim, that we all know is powerful and has already all it needs?</comment>


Economics Needs a Post-Crash Revolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-27/economics-revolution-needed-to-fix-great-stagnation <comment><USER2> Here is why "too little spending" occurs: Smartphone Revolution. Here is why:

1) No more need to buy a dedicated device for photography and video recording

2) No more need to buy a Speech Recognition specialized software

3) No more need to buy a specialized remote control

4) No more need to buy a flashlight

5) No more need to buy a landline wired phone

6) No more need to buy a sound recorder

7) No more need to buy a physical storage (CD, DVD, etc)

8) No more need to buy a ... you can continue

All this affects a lot of companies. Just think how many of them will either run out of business or will stay in a niche consumer mode.

There are only two smartphone operating systems controlled by basically two companies.

There are only few hardware for smartphones companies, like silicon fabs, and several fabless design companies.

Anyway, most of the needs of a typical consumer are satisfied with only one device: The Smartphone

<comment><USER3> In Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, your position in society is reflected in part by the uniqueness of the goods you own.

Poor people have lots of flashy, brand-name merchandise. Wealthy people, on the other hand, own things that are hand-crafted out of natural materials, often bespoke to them. News for the masses is flashy, digital, and tailored to the individual; news for the elites, the top of the top, comes printed on real paper, just like they did in the old days.

It's not that the elites are Luddites, eschewing technology. Rather, it's a very subtle part of their lives, a hint of fennel as opposed to a tablespoon of cayenne.

I suspect this is not unlike where we are going.

Smartphones, tablets, and laptops have swallowed almost every other electronic device, and you don't really even need to upgrade that often. I pick up a new iPhone every four years or so, and mostly just for the camera upgrades (and a fresh battery).

I suspect the trend for desiring high-quality, locally-produced craft goods will accelerate. Raw materials may come from everywhere, but fast fashion is being replaced with sustainable clothing, and I don't see Generation Z being invested in the high-bling party lifestyle that my generation desired.

Interesting times, indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So many intellectuals are thinking about the wrong ideas.

Return to the basics of trade and charity then focus on the flow of real goods and services as abstracted by the velocity of money from agent to agent.

Fundamentally, economic crashes are caused by dead money that represents concentrated, slow one-way trade patterns. Ideally, money flows across the people with perfect inclusion and closed-loops.

<comment><USER5> Charity isn't charity if I'm benefiting from it in any way. It's a business deal at that point, though likely asymmetrical.

<comment><USER3> I strongly disagree. Economic transactions are rarely zero-sum.

If I spend $100, I expect to get something back for that. If I spend it on a charity, then I'm supporting something I value -- helping homeless veterans, supporting national parks, promoting gun safety education, whatever it may be -- then I'm benefitting.

As long as I've got the rest taken care of -- food, shelter, internet, and the power bill for my gigantic neon sign of Freddie Mercury -- then practically speaking, that $100 was doing nothing in my pocket, and now, it's actively doing work on my behalf towards doing good in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Too much borrowing" "too little spending" versus productive investment is the problem with Keynesian economics caused over supply / under pricing of money. Keynes said debt doesn't matter because it's someone else's asset and it self- amortises: Yes, but it creates mal-investment and uneven inflation in favour of those with access to credit e.g. giant financial asset bubbles of 20/21st centuries.

<comment><USER7> FYI, Keynes is still of course important and influential, but ... it's also very outdated if you want to use models to gain policy insight: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Keynesian_economics#2000s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Keynesian_economics#2000s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm no expert in economics but it seems whenever the idea of capitalism without growth is mentioned, most people prefer to stick their heads in the sand. If, in my naive view, we have cyclic crises because of growth, shouldn't it be natural to focus on an alternative? Is this alternative too hard to implement?

<comment><USER9> People ignore the idea "let's not have growth" because it's a bad idea. Here's a quick two-question quiz to determine whether you're in favor of economic growth:

\- Do you believe wealth and income should be distributed equitably around the world?

\- Do you want to live on more than USD 17.3k per annum?

If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, then congratulations! You're in favor of economic growth. The average global income per capita is USD 17.3k per annum. If that number goes up, we call that "growth". That is the _definition_ of growth.

Of course you can get into population control, but if the alternative to growth is China-style population control -- necessarily more severe than just handing out birth control -- then bring on the economic crises, I say.

<comment><USER10> > \- Do you want to live on more than USD 17.3k per annum?

By itself this is meaningless. What does it buy where you are? Most places that's more than enough to live comfortably.

Anyway, money is only useful to decide who starves.

<comment><USER9> >Most places that's more than enough to live comfortably.

"Comfortably" is certainly a matter of opinion. But that 17.3k is a purchasing-power parity average, targeted at HN's largely rich-country leadership. The _nominal_ average income per person in the world is 11.4k.

[http://m.statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-gdp- capita...](http://m.statisticstimes.com/economy/countries-by-gdp-capita.php)

So we have taken the usual cost of living adjustments into account, and the question is, do you want to live on the equivalent of 17.3k per capita US relative to the cost of living in most of the US — somewhere like, say, Pittsburgh?

<comment><USER11> It's difficult to try and frame this. The price of any goods with constrained supply (higher education, housing and land) tend to increase to meet people's ability to pay.

It might make more sense to think in terms of a carbon budget if we are thinking about sustainability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Imagine a doctor stating "a healthy patient's heart rate is 70 bpm" and prescribing ever escalating medication and surgery to try and keep the heart rate at 70 bpm, regardless of age or whether the patient is sleeping or sprinting or recovering from previous surgery. Welcome to the world of central banking.

<comment><USER7> Central banking - especially in the US - tries to keep inflation and unemployment low. In accordance with Real Business Cycle theory.

The theory says that the central bank should help speed up the economy when it's too slow, and apply the brakes when it's getting too hot.

The problem is that when a recession (inevitably) hits, it'd be good if people had savings, social security, etc. If there were structured ways to unravel over-leveraged investments, and so on, without hurting the people.

<comment><USER13> > Central banking - especially in the US - tries to keep inflation and > unemployment low.

Fiat money (central banking) is the cause of endemic inflation, not the cure. There was no net inflation in the US money from 1800-1914, and pretty much continual inflation since.

The whole point of central banking is to inflate the currency to provide money for the government to spend without needing to raise taxes.

<comment><USER14> What's the problem with inflation? It seems to me that it is a very effective wealth tax. Almost trivial to collect, and it greatly benefits those with debt including governments.

<comment><USER13> > it greatly benefits those with debt

Since the interest rate is increased to account for inflation, it doesn't benefit debtors who can't just print more money to cover it (like the government does).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What does "too much borrowing & too little spending" even mean?

Borrowing/growing debt is a negative balance after spending & earning are added up.

<comment><USER7> It might mean that aggregate demand (consumption, investment) is low, yet that is still mostly debt fueled.

It could indicate that households wealth (capital) is too low.

<comment><USER16> This piece and the book it refers to talk a bit about that idea: Essentially that the diminishing marginal utility of wealth and its growing concentration is creating a problem of inadequate aggregate demand:

[http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/jonathan- kirshner-w...](http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/jonathan-kirshner- whistling-past-graveyard)

<comment><USER17> By diminishing marginal utility of wealth, I presume you mean there is less incentive to spend money, the more of it you have. Because wealth is increasingly concentrated, less of it gets spent. Monetary velocity never recovered since the financial crisis. In fact, from 2011 onwards, monetary velocity has been at its lowest levels ever recorded.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Austrian school of economics has been advocating for an alternative form of monetary thinking since the 1920s, and despite predicting with astonishing accuracy the mechanics of almost every recession since then nobody takes them seriously because the teachings goes against establishment economists at the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and other central planners (probably related to the fact that they show with logic that recessions and the "business cycle" are to a large extent created by interference by central banks and not a natural consequence of the free market).

What needs to happen after the coming recession is the total abandonment of the notion that centrally planning the price and quantity of money to induce inflation is somehow a necessary policy to ensure that the economic machine functions, and with that the complete abolishment of central banking and a return to either a gold standard or, with recent developments in mind, the adoption of a crypto-backed money supply that cannot be manipulated by governments.

Inflationary monetary policy is the root cause of many of the issues we see today (widespread inequalities, political tension, erosion of purchasing power and, yes, ridiculous startup valuations) we see today, and it is about time that we abandon it.

<comment><USER19> Economist here!

Austrian economics hasn't been totally ignored. However, the school of thought's aversion to econometrics makes their policy advice self-limiting compared to mainstream/mainline economic theory. This means Austrian methods can occasionally diagnose a potential cause to a given economic malaise, but the methods can't quantify impact nor fully assess hypotheses regarding causal factors.

The second issue with the Austrian school is in the quest for ideological purity, extreme workarounds substitute for what the mainline has already worked through in the decades or centuries prior (e.g. Rothbard vs. utility). I recommend reading over Bryan Caplan's piece on why he is not an Austrian despite working in the famous US Austrian-supporting school, George Mason University.[0]

As for your specific points, that the large central financial institutions are, according to Austrian theory, causing recessions, even Austrian RBC doesn't completely agree.[1] Economic busts will happen with or without central banks -- being able to bail out key financial platforms is a _good thing_ if it prevents the unnecessary misery of millions or billions. As every economics student should learn in the second half of economics 101, the free market does not always perfectly allocate resources, either immediately or over time (see discussions on externalities).

[0] [https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm](https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm)

[1] [https://mises.org/wire/economic-busts-can-happen-free- market...](https://mises.org/wire/economic-busts-can-happen-free-market- central-banks-make-things-much-worse)

<comment><USER20> Why is econometrics important? I went to UChicago during 2007 and econometrics was a major bane of all Econ majors. There was something so anti-pragmatic about reducing irrational economic actors into mere equations.

Meanwhile, did all of that sophisticated math improve the economy or predict the recession or help us out during recovery? It's nice to have hidden mathematical knowledge but is it actually providing benefits or is it just arcana?

<comment><USER21> Econometrics (aka stats for economists) is how we test models on real data. It seems to often be confused with the idea of using math in econ however ("reducing irrational economic actors into mere equations" seems to me to be economic theory, not something specific about econometrics).

This has two purposes:

\- we would like to know which of our models are true, or at least good enough, and which ones are not.

\- we would like to know the actual magnitude of things. For instance, if we increase tax rate by 1%, how large will the taxable income reaction be? Decrease by 0%? .25%? 1%? 10%? That's useful information for policy making.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What bugs you about your day? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN. Taking a week off and I haven't written code in awhile (run a team now). I miss it.
Anything bugging you all about your day I could code up in <3-4 days?
Can be full stack. Although if a native app I'd have to use electron since I don't know swift/java well enough to crank something out in that short of a time span.
Just looking for some cool small project to keep my chops. <comment><USER2> There is an iOS app for FOSDEM (at [https://github.com/johanhenselmans/fosdem/](https://github.com/johanhenselmans/fosdem/)) where you can look at the schedule and mark talks you plan to attend.

It has an annoying bug that results in losing all favs whenever the app is restarted. Could you look into it? It's super annoying and FOSDEM 2019 is around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you write a Chrome extension that ungreys downvoted Hacker News comments for me?

<comment><USER4> You can do that in a few minutes using an extension which allows you to inject custom JavaScript code (e.g. TamperMonkey for Chrome.)

This line should do the trick:

for (const node of document.querySelectorAll('.commtext')) {node.className = 'commtext c00'}

<comment><USER5> Great idea, thanks!!

That didn't work for me (because I have old computer?) so I made a bookmarklet[0]:

      javascript:(function(){var i,x=document.querySelectorAll(".commtext");for (i=0;i<x.length;i++) x[i].className='commtext c00'})();

\- which works fine. I never knew an easy way of doing that, much obliged. No more straining to read super-light grey. (Maybe better to change them to some other colour instead, like red.)

[0] i.e. I made a browser bookmark named 'ungrey' with that javascript as the 'URL', and dragged it to bookmark bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> systemd updates breaking my system. udev 240-4 is broken. Would be nice if a real developer could fix it. We had amateurs all over it for years.

</comment><comment><USER7> P = NP</comment>


Adding Real-Time to Rails With Socket.IO, Node.js and Backbone.js (With Demo) - <AUTHOR> http://liamkaufman.com/blog/2012/02/25/adding_real-time_to_rails_with_socket.IO_nodejs_and_backbonejs_with_demo/

<comment><AUTHOR> (Author here) I'd certainly appreciate feedback from those who have used pub/sub in large client-side JavaScript applications.</comment>


Green New Deal: How much does fixing climate change cost the US? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/otherlab-news/green-new-deal-how-much-does-fixing-climate-change-cost-the-us-d542bb9e67c8 <comment><AUTHOR> Saul Griffith: "what, then, is a reasonable and defensible cost estimate for a GND that focuses specifically on solving climate change and decarbonizing the economy? ... the price tag for complete decarbonization is reasonable, and doesn't rely on a miracle cure. It is doable starting now, and most likely will not cost us money but in fact, save us money. We'll see it is a capital cost challenge in the short term with a long-term payback as we won't have to supply expensive fossil fuels to the system in the future."</comment>


Trying to reach Hacker News readers located in Mexico City. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be nice to meet likeminded people in Mexico City, you can call for programmers/web devs/web entrepeneurs/whatever, but my guess is if youre a HN reader, youre covered; so, if youre in Mexico, drop a line to losdosplebitos at gmail.

<comment><USER2> Hi i read this every day and dream of starting some sort of internet company someday but am still learning some programming, tell us more about you, do you have a web page, blog, etc? mine is justthinkit.blogspot.com, not about programming though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not have a high web profile, just watching stuff, trying to figure out wheres my place in all of these (if any); besides that, little experience in programming, web dev (django lately). Your website its quite interesting; drop me a line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't help your case (no one listen in Mexico City), but anyways worth checking out: <http://www.hackrtrackr.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Theres one now! thanks, I was thinkin, I spent all day reading about tech/entrepeneur/hacker stuff, but I dont know much people to talk about it here in Mexico, so, thanks again.</comment></comment>