How Pure Is This Cup of Joe? - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2017/11/06/how-pure-is-this-cup-of-joe-coffee-conspiracy-and-citizen-science/ <comment><USER2> > Finally, I used LibreOffice to tabulate and graph the data, and perform > t-tests. T-tests are simple statistical tests used to determine the > probability that a null hypothesis (H0) is correct. If it is less than 5% > probable that the null hypothesis is correct given our data, we will reject > the null hypothesis and consider our alternate hypothesis (HA) to be > correct.

Obligatory stats nerd: that's not what a p-value means, that reverses it.

<comment><USER3> Reverse isn't the right word here, either. Better to restate the definition: the p-value is the probability of observing the data (as represented by its aggregate statistics), under the condition of the null hypothesis.

<comment><USER2> I say 'reverse' because that's what it is formally: confusing P(data|null) with P(null|data). It reverses the conditional probability.

<comment><USER3> Reversing the arguments of the conditional probability, yes, but just saying "it's the reverse" is a bit ambiguous.

> If it is less than 5% probable that the null hypothesis is correct given our > data, we will reject the null hypothesis and consider our alternate > hypothesis (HA) to be correct.

You could be reversing the 5% to 95%, could be reversing null hypothesis to alternate hypothesis, could be reversing reject to accept, etc. Too many moving parts. P-values are so often misinterpreted, it's best to err on the side of specificity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know what the fish oil additive is used for?

I was recently researching how Trader Joe's coffee is so inexpensive and found some reviews noting a "fish sauce" flavor and a "fishy" flavor in two TJs coffee products.

[https://www.thrillist.com/culture/best-trader-joe-s- coffee-t...](https://www.thrillist.com/culture/best-trader-joe-s-coffee- tasted-and-ranked-by-toby-s-estate-experts)

</comment><comment><USER5> [edit] Here's a photo of the back of a bag of his "reference" Trung Nguyen S blend. It explicitly says that it has flavorings in it, including "coffee flavor". Omfg.

[https://imgur.com/a/KeSYq](https://imgur.com/a/KeSYq)

\---

I guess the guy had fun, but the conclusion is a few giant leaps away from the actual results. Many of his decisions and assumptions were entirely arbitrary, not well substantiated, and lacking just about anything approaching rigor.

His _reference coffee_ is "A blend of Arabica, Robusta, Chari (Excelsa) and Catimor beans"[1], roasted in a special style, and brewed in one particular way with no mention of temperatures involved or any other variable that alters the outcome of brewing coffee.

Trung Nguyen coffees are as far as I know usually adulterated with chocolate and other flavoring either during or after roasting. This is not a bad thing. It smells and tastes goddamn fantastic and they are my favorite coffees in the world. But it's not exactly a good reference.

His _reference chart_ includes only two of those bean types and specifically references green beans, not roasted beans, not butter roasted beans, and not beans roasted at any particular range of temperatures or durations.

He doesn't indicate that a _reference coffee_ was chosen based on lowest wholesale cost, which might have been a reasonable decision factor for a street vendor, but rather just that it seems to be commonly available on the consumer market without regard for composition or lack of monopoly.

His _reference not-coffee_ is only one of plausibly dozens of different not- coffee substances.

His _reference not-coffee solution_ is based on approximately tasting like terrible coffee. Whaaaaaat.

And even if you choose to ignore any or all of the above, nothing about his method tests for _coffee_. Coffee is generically an extremely complex blend of varying volatile compounds, but specifically it is an infinity of different complex blends of varying volatile compounds. And his process doesn't actually test for any of them. It tests for some secondary characteristic that one mixture possesses, ability to change the color of iodine, but that one arbitrarily different other chemical does not possess to the same degree under the assumption that all real coffee changes the color of iodine the same and that all non-coffee also changes the color of iodine the same. These are exceptionally ridiculous assumptions.

[1] [http://www.trung-nguyen-online.com/trung-nguyen-coffee- order...](http://www.trung-nguyen-online.com/trung-nguyen-coffee-order.php)

> _Overall it sounds like a reasonable test for the amount of coffee in > something_

No, it really does not.

This is what happens when people think that "science" is synonymous with measuring shit.

<comment><USER6> Why stomp all over somebody's fun? I enjoyed reading it.

<comment><USER5> Because awareness of the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important thing in the world, and people and governments fail spectacularly at it all the time with significant lasting effects on society.

<comment><USER6> > the gap between measurement and conclusion might just be the most important > thing in the world

What happened to love, compassion and humility?

<comment><USER7> Trying to get to the factually right conclusion is an expression of humility, because it allows admitting that our initial expectations were wrong.

Using the right conclusion to properly guide our actions is necessary for compassion and love -- if you truly with to benefit others, then your actions must be correct and guided by the right answers.

The challenge is updating other people's beliefs without being seen as an attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought the rumour here says that the fake coffee is made of roasted soybean (to add bulk), quinine (bitter), gelatin (thickness), not ready made artificial flavourings as was tested in the article. Although I highly doubt that there is no coffee content in street vendor shop, as it doesn't make sense financially (Vietnam is the 2nd largest coffee producer), so the rumour is the same as "Chinese plastic rice" or "Chinese fake eggs" IMO.

</comment><comment><USER9> Need to read the article, but after recent occasional experiences with an associate's, I've been wondering whether the flavor profiles I experience with K-cup coffee servings are due to flavoring agents. The flavors have that kind of uniformity and intensity. And I am rather suspicious of their coming from a package of pre-ground coffee with a shelf life of months or years and manufactured/sold at the price point their are finding.

</comment><comment><USER10> You should test the major chain coffees

<comment><USER11> I wonder what McDonald's uses to flavor their coffee. In Canada it has a very distinct taste unlike any coffee I've had. It can not be pure coffee in my opinion.

It claims it is 100% Arabica beans but it is so consistent and distinct. I wonder I fit does the 100% pure orange juice "trick" by processing parts of the Arabica beans into flavor chemicals and reading it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Technical founder startup share - <AUTHOR>

I've been presented with an opportunity to help an aspiring entrepreneur take his idea from the idea stage to (a) demo and then (b) foundation code-base and initial launch system.  For (a) the cash strapped founder is offering an effectively insignificant sum that I may as well wave, and a somewhat more realistic sum (pending his successful demo-based vc funding search) for the initial code base + a 3% share.
Given my NDA obligations I'm not at liberty to delve deeply into the idea, but its possible to say that it is a non-trivial (but not rocket science) cross between a social system and a ubiquitous domain X, and that technology will necessarily play a key role in the operation and success of the enterprise.  The system will require a sophisticated backend and it is clear that market price for contract development of the system is substantially higher than what is on offer.  In sum, while there are other aspects to the business such as 3rd party affiliations and data acquisition costs, technology costs will be a significant chunk of this venture's operational costs.  (Marketing, should a non-viral path be chosen, is the only other immediate potential cost.  Company can be virtually operated.)
The original founder is entirely non-tech.  He seems intelligent but I'm not 100% sure if he is really up to the game of an internet startup (he apparently has been shopping a cost structure where 10% of his costs were for software ...), and that most likely his potential competitors (n.b. nobody seems to be doing what he is proposing!) will be techies.  In any event, in the course of the our ongoing conversations I have been giving him critical feedback outside of the mere technical aspects of his proposal, so I certainly think I would be making contributions beyond providing software.
Currently I am in a situation where I can minimize my expenses and go in Ramen mode for a few months and I think the idea is compelling enough.  So I am considering a counter proposal to join forces as the tech co-founder and bootstrap this venture, and seek outside investment at a subsequent stage where we have a functioning system and a founder team that covers the bases for the required expertise in running this business.
So.  There is a founder with a compelling and fairly unique idea.  He does not have funding as of yet.  He has worked out the process to some degree but I've been also giving him feedback on that front as well, but lets just say he has the idea snd processed worked out for the sake of the argument.  If a tech founder were to join, what should he reasonably look for in terms of percentages?
(Thanks in advance for your feedback and advice.) <comment><USER2> This has been asked and answered frequently on HN.

Some summaries:

1) There is no standard answer. 1% might be perfectly appropriate in this scenario, and 80% might be perfectly appropriate. You should probably be looking more at ratios of His Stock:Your Stock vs. finite percentage numbers (which are basically data in a vacuum).

2) You will generally find that the "approacher" will maintain a higher stock percentage than the "approachee". Not always, but frequently. In this scenario (and the limited information provided) it appears that the "idea" guy has (at least in theory) many "tech guys" to choose from. You, based on the post here, have a single "idea guy" in front of you to partner with. Hopefully the rest of the supply and demand concept is obvious enough here that I don't have to type it all out.

3) These scenarios somewhat follow the "if you have to ask, you can't afford it" principle. If you don't know what you're worth, or how to handle this, you are probably relatively inexperienced in this particular realm of business. The _experience_ in this case is most likely worth 10x long-term what any delta in equity between what he offers and what you think you deserve would be equal to. Track-record and experience is a very valuable thing long-term. Opportunities to get involved in a founder-type role are somewhat rare and also valuable. This is also assuming that he has at least some experience or talent pool to draw from that leads you to believe that partnering with him offers you some probably of success above and beyond any random guy with a cocktail napkin.

4) EVERYTHING is ALWAYS renegotiable. Sometimes the best way to get to where you want to be is to get on-board, prove your value, and then renegotiate at the next funding round.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the summary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Coming from the non-technical perspective, I see little value that a non- techie can offer to a company for <=97% of the shares. Someone making you this kind of proposal surely does not understand how a web startup works because the value is in the development team and their resulting product.

In every endeavor I (try) to embark on, I always offer 50-60% of equity to the technical person, to show that im not a control freak and value their expertise.

</comment><comment><USER4> lucifer - I'd turn the tables on this deal. What is the value proposition of the non-technical co-founder? What is he bringing to the table? Money, ideas, customers, investors, partnerships, IP, co-founders? He generated the idea: yipee. Biz guys and idea generators are over-rated. There is no marketplace for ideas, and business plans are worth less than the price of the paper they're printed on. He cannot execute, and needs someone to do his bidding. There is no business at this point - just a compelling, unique idea and chicken scratches on napkins. All this talk about signing NDAs, pricing shares, and seeking VC $ is a waste of time. Focus on (1) building a team, (2) coding a basic v.1.0, and (3) finding users. If you can get past the prototype stage, then some more serious conversations can begin.

<comment><AUTHOR> That pretty much sums up my thoughts. Not quite sure what you mean by "get past the prototype stage, then some more serious conversations can begin." Do you mean build it on my own and retain code ownership?

<comment><USER4> I'd ask myself a blunt question: why do I need this guy? Why am I so attracted to this compelling idea? If you're a smart engineer, you can be the idea generator and the coder. That way you can retain full ownership, and then recruit the business guy. I'd reasses your approach to this potential partnership. Ideas and code are property of the business. Your compensation comes with equity and % ownership. I'd state clearly what each of you plans to contribute to the future of this venture, and how the two of you will work together to make this succeed. Ex. I will focus on engineering; he will be the biz guy who focuses on fundraising, handling investors, doing sales, crafting product vision, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 3% pre-funding or fully-diluted? 3% before a seed or angel round is minuscule.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty sure that's pre-funding. But even after funding, I thought that was unrealistic on his part, but needed sanity check and thus my Q to HN.

<comment><USER5> Yes, crazy either way. Happy that HN was able to provide a sanity check.</comment></comment></comment>


The End of Babies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/capitalism-children.html <comment><USER2> > But the trickling up of reproductive injustice could potentially give it > broader traction. "White America is now feeling the effects of neoliberalism > capitalism that the rest of America has always felt," Ms. Ross said.

I'm not sure what they're trying to say - whites have the 2nd lowest fertility rate in the US, only slightly higher than Asians: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility- rate...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/226292/us-fertility-rates-by- race-and-ethnicity/)</comment>


Ask HN :"Does Quarantines for Health care works seem reasonable? - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/26/ebola-quarantine_n_6049936.html

<comment><USER2> I don't think any of us are qualified to make that decision, really (unless you're an expert in epidemics). The people spending their entire lives studying these kinds of outbreaks are saying that quarantine is unnecessary, so I'm inclined to agree. If the data and situation change, so be it.

I certainly wouldn't ask Dr. Fauci what kind of programming language to start a project in.</comment>


Show HN: JackDB — Database development in your web browser - <AUTHOR>

JackDB was created to solve a personal itch of mine for better, web-based database developer tools. We'd love your feedback, questions and comments here. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.jackdb.com/></comment>


Arch Linux – News: Phasing out i686 support - <AUTHOR> https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/ <comment><USER2> dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13493636](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13493636)</comment>


Going from zero-install to instant-install  - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/buzz/zboogs/T3cumksXHam/Going-from-zero-install-to-instant-install-Its <comment><USER2> The only thing I miss about installations, as a developer, is the ability to drop an icon on the desktop. I still get purchases from software installed in 2007, biding its time on a desktop, waiting to be clicked on. On the other hand, many of my users cannot find my website again after they close the browser.

 _Bringing back a lightweight notion of installation offers an interesting way out of these constraints. If an author uses APIs like window.open() and desktop notifications in an annoying way, his app will be uninstalled. The UA can make it easy for the user to discover the uninstall button, so there's a strong incentive for authors to not be assholes._

The author has more confidence in the ability of regular users to identify the cause of a novel behavior on their computer than I do. For example, I sell downloadable software. My users largely understand that downloadable software is dangerous and Google is safe. When Google went down last year, three people did the following math: "Google was up, I installed Patrick's software, Google went down, clearly Patrick has broken the Google and needs to give it back or I will tell my husband."

<comment><USER3> > The only thing I miss about installations, as a developer, is the ability to > drop an icon on the desktop.

The thing I love about web apps is not having to worry about an installation dialog where I must be on the lookout for the program trying to place icons on my desktop, start menu, or elsewhere.

<comment><USER2> Have no fear, mine doesn't bother you with deciding on those details. _grin_

Seriously though, I understand developers react to someone changing a setting on their computer like a dragon who had a copper piece fondled by an unwelcome hobbit. However, normal people don't care, _need_ those boxes checked or they will be unable to run the software again, and everything in an installer might as well be magic spells written in ancient Aramaic (though the cleverer ones have learned that the button on the bottom right casts "continue").

<comment><USER4> _However, normal people don't care, need those boxes checked or they will be unable to run the software again_

All I can think of now is "our website was at the very tip of the penis" and "my salesforce.com was on the right testicle". <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_Kfjo3VjU>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The arguments for install seem a bit weak and/or incorrect.

> Web apps can't open popup windows

Popupblocker allow

> Web browsers cannot offer permanent storage

<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Storage>

> Web apps can't put things on the clipboard

Go to any github repo and there is a nice copy to clipboard button.

> Web apps can't know when the system is idle (eg to turn the chat icon from > green to yellow)

Google chat has being do this for a long time already.

<comment><USER6> \- Copy to Clipboard uses Flash.

\- Google chat doesn't use _true_ system idle time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google code, "What are installable web apps?" <http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/>

Also, it looks like google is trying to make an app store for the browser: <https://chrome.google.com/webstore>

<comment><USER8> The author works on that :)</comment></comment>


AVE Mizar - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE_Mizar <comment><USER2> See it in action - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5moG_bYPQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5moG_bYPQk)

</comment><comment><USER3> The whole story smacks of simply not taking aviation seriously. The use of a Ford Pinto is laughable on its own, but that bad welds caused the airframe to fail reeks of a sloppy attitude.

To look at it, you can see that the car's shape is going to fight the airflow it flies through, and that the distribution of weight is being dealt with as an afterthought by the very nature of the design.

If it failed at weld points, you have to figure the the stress and fatigue of modifying the flight to deal with turbulent buffeting probably played a role.</comment>


Hater News – Now for Twitter and Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://haternews.herokuapp.com/?network=twitter <comment><USER2> We took "Show HN" out of the title. That's for when you're introducing a project, not adding new features. Please read [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops sorry! Didn't realize that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. My Mr. Rogers result is reassuring I suppose. I like my most insulting comment:

 _" Very useful. Can you add links to amazon/hulu/torrents?"_

Sounds like someone tried to build a sarcasm detector.*

*Will this be my new most insulting comment?

<comment><USER4> Yes, my worst comment surprised me:

"That sounds like a good approach; reimplementing an existing API like EC2 or DO makes it easier to integrate your software with tools like Vagrant and Terraform."

Maybe the words "reimplementing" or "existing" triggered it? For you, maybe it was "torrents"?

<comment><USER5> It might be assuming Vagrant in the "homeless person" sense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool, but it doesn't take retweets, @replies, and quoted replies into account. My worst comments over on Reddit are where I quote someone else who said something mean, and the same goes for Twitter.

And the results for HN are truly head-scratching. Use of the word "fucking" regardless of context is apparently enough to elevate a comment to "worst" status. (Watch me get a few points just for this comment alone!)

Don't get me wrong, this is a neat tool, but it's going to be misused in character assassinations on others, especially with its current presentation, where phrases are used like "troll score", "most insulting" and so on.

I'd really suggest toning that presentation down and emphasizing the fact that this is imperfect until the algorithm has been tweaked further.

</comment><comment><USER7> My worst comment on Reddit :

"Are you stupid?"

Sounds about right. Edit : Damn now I'm worrying this will become my worst HN comment too.

Double Edit : Just ran it again and now it's my worst comment on HN.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apparently, I'm not a real person ... :(

<comment><USER9> I have the same problem when looking for my username on Twitter.

<comment><USER10> Putting an @ before my twitter handle made it work for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there an upper limit to the number of characters this will analyze? I've gotten into arguments here & on reddit that, while civil, are certainly more vitriolic than what the script found. All I can think is that longer diatribes are ignored?

From HN: "I've researched the "why" and a couple years ago had the opportunity to discuss some of the broader ideas in the history & anthropology of locks. It was actually titled "Why do you lock your door?" -emhart

From reddit: "Very glad you dropped in. Nice to have someone with first hand experience offer this up, thanks." -schuylertowne

From twitter: "Here is the US patent filing for that taiwanese lock, so you can see the illustrations: [https://t.co/K7F3aY6RTD"](https://t.co/K7F3aY6RTD") -shoebox

</comment><comment><USER12> Concept is nice, landing page and the website are nice. What needs more work is the algorithm for determining hate. Almost all the comments that Hater News chewed out of my Reddit username were __not at all* trolling. Indeed some statements were even contributing to the discussion.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting. However, my most insulting comment doesn't appear to be that insulting: (it's not like I've been very active on HN)

"Either your CPU is too fast or too slow. I can't really fix anything since I don't have a Mac to test with. It works fine on Windows."

<comment><USER14> Seems as though it's a recursive troll attempt.

Me on Reddit: "The first step is to stop hating yourself, you are your foundation for your own success..."

Clear troll comment. I've said much, much, worse on Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Broken for network = HackerNews. All usernames including the suggested one and my own return the "Hmm That's probably not a real username." etc. And then some random youtube video plays in the background. And there's a "Still crunching numbers" animation (when I modify the css on the page to hide the overlay). And then "Something broke, sorry :(" and then back to home.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops! Sorry about that... It is fixed now, thanks for the heads up. :) I just ran your name and it's now working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> IPython Notebook is here: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/kevinmcalear/hater_news/b...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/kevinmcalear/hater_news/blob/master/haterz_classification.ipynb) (to author: maybe this link instead of link to its source? accessibility...).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I'll update the README :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Only Twitter worked for me, but it was kind of cool to read some long forgotten tweets.

I don't really understand the periodic table concept. My first thought was that it grouped your insults into types, like logical fallacies versus outright insults. I feel like that would be more useful for introspection.

</comment><comment><USER18> a lot of the links to reddit comments are broken, if the title of the page in reddit has a slash in it, the slash is not being ommited/escaped in the URL and so reddit can't find it.

Sample: [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6dnve/Top%20Comedi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6dnve/Top%20Comedian%20Believes%20In%209/11%20Conspiracy/c03k7tl) is broken because it has a slash in the title (9/11)

Killing that slash fixes it: [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6dnve/Top%20Comedi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6dnve/Top%20Comedian%20Believes%20In%20911%20Conspiracy/c03k7tl)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll fix this ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My worst comment on reddit is insulting a Canadian for not liking hockey and insinuating that they don't have an appreciation for maple syrup.

I'm interested in how it manages to calculate this, because I'm a complete asshole on reddit sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER20> Apparently, this is a negative comment: "What do you with a bunch of books and an empty pod? A racing track of course! [http://bit.ly/1wThvTK](http://bit.ly/1wThvTK) " -pmelendezu "

<comment><USER21> My worst HN comment was "Freaking Hilarious. You made my day, sir."

I guess I'm back in Catholic grade school where "freak" was a strong word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My worst comment: "Yep, working less than 30 hrs really gives you a chance to live life. I take less pay and only have to work a half week."

Pretty much all of my "hater" comments were like this. Many were helpful answers to problem.

<comment><USER20> He is probably just making a corpus of negative words, where "less" and "only" probably have negative connotations. This is the problem with this kind of analysis, extracting it properly from context is really hard

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My worst tweet is insulting myself. (To be fair I rarely use twitter anyway). I wonder if self insults are weighted any different than regular ones.

"I feel dumb for never thinking of using %2π"

</comment><comment><USER24> I find the algorithm very funny because this tweet:

>Spike Lee produced a Bernie Mac, Cedric the Entertainer, and Steve Harvey comedy special?

Was apparently one of my worst.

<comment><USER25> My worst one was a quotation: "Every moron can pick up CSS and PHP; apparently, every moron did pick them up."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure how my tweet of "Nothing encourages you to finally fix your backups like a kernel panic during a OS update."

qualifies as hate?

<comment><USER27> This has now become your most hateful comment..

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "didn't your teacher question why you were using a calculator for english class?" I'm naughty on Reddit :D

</comment><comment><USER29> My theoretically worst recent tweet:

Someone on this bus has lost "Don't Shit Your Pants".

</comment><comment><USER30> The Worst Comment*

"How many languages you know - that many times you are a human."

<comment><USER31> One of mine was (truncated) "What an amazing fucking museum! ... Fat man and Little Boy earrings" which was in reference to the Atomic Bomb Museum in Las Vegas.

I guess I hit the key words of calling something "fat," and dropping the f-bomb.

The "troll rate" across all my accounts is 3.X.. which is interesting. Because I'm definitely a little more.. "lively" on some accounts than others (for instance HN compared to Reddit). I would have expected one to be much higher than the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Click on a box to see the comment in Reddit.

This appears also when using Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER33> My worst phrase

"This looks nice... Are you open to H1B or remote?"

</comment><comment><USER34> love it! Would like to see some stats. How much hater is the average user?

</comment><comment><USER35> I hatez Hater News

</comment><comment><USER36> it's unable find my twitter un.

</comment><comment><USER37> Funny that almost all your submissions/post here have to do with _hater_ news.</comment>


Facebook implementing new picture viewer? - <AUTHOR>

I notice that Facebook has changed the way you can view pictures. They now popup in a way lightbox  works.<p>Anyone else notice this change? Or seen a press release about this? <comment><USER2> Announced last year, I guess they finally got around to rolling it out site- wide.

[http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/09/30/improvements- photos...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/09/30/improvements-photos-high- resolution/)

I am seeing the new functionality as of today.

</comment><comment><USER3> It has been there for quite some time.</comment>


Don't launch the perfect product - <AUTHOR> http://randomfoundersmemories.co/post/59610662643/dont-launch-the-perfect-product

<comment><USER2> interesting perspective : "entire team can become stacked with developers, pushing your energy and attention slowly but inexorably away from what you should care most about: marketing."

</comment><comment><USER3> Great advice for entrepreneurs!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice article! Very useful!</comment>


Companies are on the hook if their hiring algorithms are biased - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1427621/companies-are-on-the-hook-if-their-hiring-algorithms-are-biased/ <comment><USER2> Seems that such algorithms would be better used finding biases in hiring. The implications are interesting from various perspectives.</comment>


Inauguration Photosynth - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still impressed that photosynth works, I think the ui could be improved so that you can navigate as if you were in 3d world, but otherwise its damn impressive.</comment>


Open Source Toolkits for Speech Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://www.svds.com/open-source-toolkits-speech-recognition/ <comment><USER2> Has anyone here compared the deep learning capabilities of Kaldi to that of Tensorflow, Torch or the other DL frameworks?</comment>


Income Growth by Income and President Party Affiliation for United States - <AUTHOR> http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/american-politi.html

<comment><USER2> >Bartels shows in his book that this difference is not a statistical artifact or a fluke.

With sample sizes of 5 and 6 (for dem/rep), Bartels shows that his results are not a statistical fluke. Sounds plausible.

>(It turns out that the same pattern prevails even when a Republican president is succeeded by another Republican.)

I take that back, sample size 2.

I'd be really curious to see the leave one out error for his statistics (i.e., throw away Nixon and Clinton, and see if the result persists).

Look, I hate Bush and McCain as much as most people (I liked Paul, however). But this book is just propaganda.

<comment><USER3> I really doubt most people hate McCain.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am suspect of the data (but thought it interesting). I would like to see more analysis of this type for comparison, for example, the impact of partisan versus bipartisan legislation on the economy. I think an approach using methods like this is required to implement objective government policy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Correlation does not imply causation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)</comment>


Krypton Abandons Ethereum-Based Blockchain After 51% Attack - <AUTHOR> http://krypton.rocks/2016/09/05/krypton-abandons-ethereum-based-blockchain-after-51-attack/ <comment><USER2> Its scary how little the founder understands about proof of work, golang, or Ethereum. The geth issue that was patched 4 months ago had nothing to do with being 51% attacked.

There's no hashing power dedicated to the altcoin so it got attacked, and this is something that's been happing to POW altcoins for 6 years now. Its not clear how she ever expected the POW consensus to survive a 51% attack, and has not described how the Ethereum protocol has anything to do with the failure of her consensus algorithm. If she was on a bitcoin-based POW chain she would have had the same issues.

<comment><USER3> Language has nothing to do with it, bitcoin isn't pos, and she invested her life savings, wtf..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author seems confused about the nature of this attack. It has nothing to do with using the go language or any other, it's purely about the choice of consensus algorithm and the vulnerabilities of a small ecosystem. In a small blockchain, it's much easier for bad actors to gain enough hashing power to control proof of work. I do see they are moving to a proof of stake algorithm, I hope that works out.

Still unclear to me why some of these smaller coins exist, except perhaps for rampant speculation. From the krypton site: "$KR is my vision for an ultra- fast blockchain that can realize all of the features of Ethereum with fewer initial coins, faster speed and lower inflation." That sounds ok, but right now none of those things are the primary problem with Eth.

<comment><USER5> _Still unclear to me why some of these smaller coins exist, except perhaps for rampant speculation._

I don't play in this space, but I bet it is because some traders have methods of using differential exchange rates between exchanges to make money. The values may be large(ish), but they are probably hedged by bets the other way on other alt-coins.

There is a strategy in betting called Dutching[1], and I suspect that people are doing similar things trading between alt-coins.

Of course, there are also fools who put their life savings into some random coin. Good luck to them.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Know this: Krypton is more than just a blockchain or another cryptocurrency. > We will survive these attacks, even if it means staying on the POS chain, in > order to protect KR investments, _until we do the complete rewrite of our > client platform in a more secure language, like C._

What could possibly go wrong?

<comment><USER7> C can be secure if you follow best practices (yes, big if). Are BSD, Linux and Postgres secure?

<comment><USER8> Postgres isn't written in standard C. It's written in a derivative of C where signed integer overflow is defined as two's-complement and the strict aliasing rule is removed. Most standard C compilers also support this variant language with the compile options -fwrapv -fno-strict-aliasing.

[https://www.postgresql.org/message- firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.postgresql.org/message- email@example.com)

If you're going to use Postgres as an example of writing secure code in a language, that's fine, but make sure you're advocating for this C variant and not for standard C. Standard C, where signed integer overflow is undefined and the strict aliasing rule exists, is _extremely_ hard to write secure code in.

[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1307](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1307)

(There's also the separate issue that most of the input paths into Postgres are trusted in some way: you don't expect malformed database files, and you often don't expect hostile queries. It's primarily the auth code that needs to be rock-solid, which is a relatively small piece of the software.)

<comment><USER9> Yea, postgres certainly assumes a lot more than the standard guarantees. Besides the above, if you look at it formally, it's pretty much impossible to have a multi-process program, connected over shared memory, that's actually fully standard compliant. Especially not when using a pre C11 environment (postgres requires C89).

I think we really should have "official" variants of C that are a bit more predictable. But I guess that's not happening.

<comment><USER9> Oh, and whoever designed the strict aliasing specs: To me they seem widely impractical. The fact that there's essentially no way to explicitly alias, without memcpy'ing, is just absurd. The standard's language is also so cryptic, that well versed people (like Regehr you linked to) can't agree with each other what the exact requirements are. The union aliasing trick isn't, to my knowledge, actually precisely standards conforming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I had never heard of Krypton before, but the decisions and the message in that article make it abundantly clear that I won't need to bother. Moving from golang to C and switching to a completely different blockchain in 'a single sleepless night', and then asking the community to bail you out? Zero confidence.

</comment><comment><USER11> > _My lead developer, Krypton-Dev, remains anonymous. I have known him and yet > not known him for over two years now. Ironically, he is one of my best > friends and the person whom I trust the most, by often placing the entire > success or failure of Krypton in his very capable hands._

> _Just two days ago, I did this very thing, trust this anonymous friend with > not only my business and entire life savings (don't get me started about > using personal funds to found a startup!) but, also with the investments of > everyone holding Krypton's blockchain coin, KR._

> _In a single sleepless night, Krypton-Dev coded this POS blockchain and > Windows and Mac wallets for KR to be moved to. Can you understand why I > trust this man with my business and KR holder's investments? My admiration > for his tireless dedication to Krypton knows no bounds._

Holy shit this is hilarious. My understanding from this article is that the founder is not a programmer, barely understands the technology, gave her life savings to someone she knows only as an online alias, who then used it to develop their own crypto currency, and thinks that a client rewrite in C will solve all of their problems. This is truly amazing.

Also, she considers this online persona her best friend. The founder is so far out of her depth, so naive, it hurts me to even consider that someone like this exists. The blog post is painful.

<comment><USER12> She's crazy, but like a fox. What is the reason for any of these smaller coins to exist? To get on the ground floor and let speculation drive your investment up massively. Imagine if you had 10,000 bitcoins during the early days, you'd be sitting on $6m right now. In fact, there are early miners and investors who had that many coins and are quietly cashing out. So she followed their lead, and used the cheapest darknet-sourced coder out there.

She just wanted some of the action. She probably paid next to nothing for some kid in Ukraine to whip up a garbage blockchain and client and knows full well this thing would come crashing down. The question that matters is did it crash before she cashed out or not? Also, the Ukranian kid isn't stupid either. He's probably sitting on a treasure chest of these coins and is double-dipping by recommending a lengthy C re-write.

The problem with cryptocurrency is that it attracts a lot of shitty people. Its pretty easy to read between the lines here. It no different than the early days of the App store where regular Joes would spend their entire life savings for a "genius" app idea and there would be no shortage of shady devs ready to milk them dry. Oh, they'd deliver the work, but it would be shoddy and the devs would know going in that the idea was garbage and how to drag out development to drain every penny.

My new cryptocurrency are the new 'my app idea.'

<comment><USER13> > The problem with cryptocurrency is that it attracts a lot of shitty people.

I think it's fairly well accepted that that's a problem with _currency in general_. There's a reason we have the perception that wall street is populated entirely by douche bags, and that's because while even though not all of them are, a sizable portion are.

<comment><USER12> Yet modern finance has hundreds of years of regulations on its back. Obviously, with differing outcomes/quality, but it is there.

Cryptocurrency is still wholly unregulated for the most part and any person can start a currency. I suspect this draws in a certain type of person. See the various 'hacked bitcoin exchanges' that were just founders running away with the money, for example. There's no FDIC here or even any law enforcement options, especially if the hosting was off-shore.

<comment><USER13> Sure. I just see cryptocurrency more as an esoteric investment vehicle than a currency, because I don't use it so I often forget it's capabilities as an actual currency. In that respect, it's not all that different to my eyes than complex derivatives in the early 2000s. In both cases we have overly complex systems that very few people truly understand, backed by real money through people investing.

I think people that are interested in just making money, over most/all other considerations (such as having a fulfilling career, or serving some need), gravitate towards industries where they are closer to direct money. Finance is one of those areas, so we get more people in that area that aren't as adverse to breaking a few rules or screwing some people over.

I agree regulation would solve some of the problems of cryptocurrency, but the cost would be to lose a lot of the benefits of a cryptocurrency, to the point where I'm not sure the use case of it anymore. What does a regulated cryptocurrency get you that you can't achieve through a more traditional, centralized currency system? I think people just need more education on what to expect, which is something that's fundamentally a little different than centralized currency, and part of that education needs to be about risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been working in the permissioned blockchain space for a couple years now, even OSed a POC of a raft based system we tested out at JPM in march. It is truly scary how little most people focused on blockchain understand about consensus. Some get it, but most don't.

When I was doing vendor vetting the talk usually revolved around the "blockchain revolution" but glossed over over the consensus issues. In the permissioned blockchain space, mining is really not an option (how do the incentives for mining work when there are no coins involved?). Luckily, we have a lot more flexibility in the consensus system we can pick.

Moreover, the term "blockchain" itself is ill-defined/overloaded. If all blockchains use mining then the 51% issue is ever present (though if I remember correctly problems arise at 30-ish%). If the broader "BFT consensus" definition is used then no, you can use PBFT/SmartBFT and a host of others to come to consensus without ever needing to touch crypto let alone mining. The issue, of course, is that Mining-based consensus is the only system that works for truly public blockchains, as it allows for anonymous participation at all levels and can also scale flat.

If anyone else is a consensus nerd, I wrote a technical-biz-persone level white paper on permissioned blockchains that goes into more depth and covers the issues associated with using TLS vs PPK sigs [1].

[0]: [http://github.com/kadena-io/juno](http://github.com/kadena-io/juno)

[1]: [http://kadena.io/docs/Kadena-ConsensusWhitePaper- Aug2016.pdf](http://kadena.io/docs/Kadena-ConsensusWhitePaper-Aug2016.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> _until we do the complete rewrite of our client platform in a more secure language, like C._

I love cryptocurrency so much.

</comment><comment><USER16> The thing that's always bugged me about proof of work systems is that there's no reason to assume mining power won't become concentrated into the hands of a few actors. In fact, if (1) there are economies of scale in mining and (2) miners are rational and only work when they expect a positive return from mining, it seems like you'd _expect_ mining power to become concentrated. (Of course today most miners operate at a loss, but I see no reason to depend on that.)

I'm kind of a Bitcoin skeptic because I don't think you can build a trusted currency on top of a system with flawed economics like this.

</comment><comment><USER17> All the more reason not to trust cryptocurrencies as a store of value.

The 51% flaw is a glaring, fundamental problem with all current cryptocurrencies. We once thought "oh, the risks are low and it would be obvious if anyone did it". It's still obvious, but the risks are not low (and in fact, seem to be pretty easily exploited with cloud computing).

Not that they won't get there, but I don't think that blockchain solutions work in the absence of legal contracts between the parties involved. Blockchain has a lot of potential as a public, secure, distributed ledger system between competitors who can be trusted to play fair, but as the backing of an anonymous cryptocurrency the risks of a malicious actor are too great. As with anything, you need real-world penalties for breaking the rules -- and a key limitation of blockchains is that it's impossible to prevent out-of-band coordination between 'anonymous' actors without them.

<comment><USER18> The 51% attack is a big flaw with blockchains, but it goes away when the network becomes sufficiently large, with enough hash power distributed to different actors. If you can trust that it would be near impossible for a single actor (or group) to gain 51%, then there is no need to trust any individual actor.

The issue, as demonstrated by this event, is that it is difficult for a new coin to get enough momentum going at the beginning. There is a lot of research going into figuring out the best way to bootstrap new blockchains. Personally, I think this problem will be solved sooner or later.

<comment><USER19> Bitcoin is coming close to having a 51% problem (3 mining groups could join together to get 51%). At recent points in the past 2 groups have been able to hit 51%. If bitcoin isn't big enough for 51% to be a serious possibility, who is?

<comment><USER18> Right, mining pools are an issue. If the hash power isn't sufficiently distributed then your guarantees go away. That is why some people are doing research in that area to discourage or eliminate mining pools. I read about most of this from the following draft textbook from Princeton

[https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2016/02/09/the-princeton- bitco...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2016/02/09/the-princeton-bitcoin- textbook-is-now-freely-available/)

<comment><USER17> Ah; but the way that mining is incentivized makes mining pools almost required to spread out the risk sufficiently as the amount of discoverable blocks shrink over time.

IMO this is the critical flaw in any cryptocurrency. Hell, it's the entire reason we don't elect our politicians directly: sometimes a thin majority has intentions that directly endanger the whole. You need some out-of-band checks and balances to protect against bad actors and moral hazard or else people will never adopt the system in large numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >I expect every community member's voluntary contribution to help amend this theft and move forward.

</comment><comment><USER21> Excerpts from the article:

      Just two days ago, I did this very thing, trust this anonymous
      friend with not only my business and entire life savings ..

      So, with a heavy heart, I ask the Krypton Community, to please,
      open your wallets and help us all to move forward from this
      attack. 21,465 KR were stolen. 1.5 BTC is required by Bittrex
      to execute the swap.

      Real lives. Real jobs. Real investments. The world of crypto
      has just become all too real.

Speechless.

</comment><comment><USER22> With this "blockchain revolution" hype, I've been waiting for these 51% attacks. Maybe people will realize that this is not a foolproof solution and that it can "easily" (you only need computing power, a.k.a money) be beaten.

<comment><USER23> good luck getting the computer power to do a 51% on Bitcoin or Ethereum. The hashpower used in Bitcoin is mind-boggling.

<comment><USER24> You only need to spend as much as the miners already are doing. With proof of work, if it is feasible to run, it is feasible to attack. And vice versa, if it is not feasible to attack, it is probably not cost effective to run.

Bitcoin may be wasting enough electricity to put it out of reach of small-time attackers, but a nation adversary could outspend it for as long as necessary.

<comment><USER25> But what does the attack get you? Sure you could mine empty blocks and double spend, but that would hardly be worth the investment. Besides, if payment processors detect the hashing rate doubling overnight they can simply require more confirmations.

If a nation state invested in permanently disabling bitcoin that would require a big investment in ASIC's, at which point I imagine a bitcoin fork would be introduced with a slightly different PoW, but that's just speculation.

<comment><USER24> > a bitcoin fork would be introduced with a slightly different PoW

And then what? Either you're falling back to mining on CPUs or GPUs, which the attacker would presumably have a large amount of, or you're manufacturing a new batch of ASICs, which is just as expensive for you as for an attacker. The point remains that an attacker can win by spending only slightly more money than the defender.

Whether that's "worth the investment" is up to each individual actor, apparently it hasn't been yet.

<comment><USER26> "The point remains that an attacker can win by spending only slightly more money than the defender."

It's actually only slightly more than the _sum_ of the defenders (assuming as we are for the sake of argument that everyone is buying efficiently). If what you said was true BitCoin wouldn't even have gotten to where it is now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > 1.5 BTC is required by Bittrex to execute the swap.

Does this imply that the "operators" of those cryptocurrencies pay the exchanges to list them?

</comment><comment><USER28> Looked through their website with a fine-toothed comb & wasn't able to tell why I should use them v.s. plain vanilla ethtereum.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is why I don't implement crypto myself.</comment>


The Water Wars of Arizona (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/magazine/the-water-wars-of-arizona.html <comment><USER2> I live in Arizona. The people commenting here suggesting anyone living in a desert should be 'punished' and forced to live without toilets are completely out of touch with reality. Golf courses, lawns, and toilets are not the issue.

Rural Arizona, in the middle of nowhere in a cotton field? Yeah, you might not have well water. And that's definitely an issue.

But Arizona is not going to run out of water anytime soon. We're likely in a far better water-diverse situation than CA is already, because we've been thinking about water for a _long_ time and have some of the best water infrastructure in the U.S.

Where does it go? Arizona has 26 _million_ acres of farms and ranches, that is where:

\- 70% of our water is directed towards agriculture.

\- We produce 90% of the USA's leafy greens.

\- Our cattle industry alone produces 8 _million_ meals annually (pop. 7.1 million).

\- 360 million eggs annually

\- Our agriculture industry is $23.3bn, supporting 162,000 workers (40% of which are women, and 18k indigenous farmers/ranchers),

We aren't conserving water, we're spending it because it is a valuable industry for the (unfortunately) extremely poor immigrants and others here.

But there aren't signs in our bathrooms to use less water washing our hands. You don't have to ask for a glass of water at restaurants -- because these things _don't matter_.

Want to conserve water in Arizona? You'd be talking about gutting the entire state's agriculture industry and destroying millions of people's lives.

We can diversify our water supply, and we do. It's not stupidity and lax regulation, it's a calculated risk and choice by the people living here whose lives are built on agriculture.

<comment><USER3> This is an incredibly shortsighted outlook on Arizona's reckless water usage. The bulk of our water comes from the Colorado River which is a lifeline for not just us, but for over 40 million people across six different rapidly growing states. Snowpack for the river is at its lowest level in 30+ years and is projected to decrease an additional 30% due to climate change over the next two decades. As a lower-basin state, we are "investing" water which we don't actually own. Sooner or later lake Mead is going to hit an elevation of 1,075ft and the federal government will mandate that lower-basin states such as our own face the music. Will it be our blood or the state's billions that suffer? To avoid this future, all we must do is work together to scale-down our agricultural industry in favor of other economic avenues. This pointless "calculated risk" which threatens the future of America's fifth largest city and its surrounding neighbors can be undone. Sadly, I fear that the current administration under Doug Ducey cares more about leafy greens than our children's future.

<comment><USER2> The bulk of our water usage does _not_ come from the Colorado River. 36% does.

The bulk, 64% of our water (2018), comes from our groundwater aquifers and in- state rivers (and 3% reclaimed) according to ADWR [1]

Yes, it's still important and I agree we should diversify our economy away from agriculture, but that is not something you can just do immediately especially when the citizens that industry is supporting are under-supported by both the community and the U.S. government as a whole.

I will not blame people immigrating to the U.S. for relying on one of the only jobs they can get to put food on their tables while our government actively tries to persecute and deport them, and our citizens inactively support them. These people need our agricultural industry to live, and until we give them a replacement somehow we are SOL.

[1] [http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your- facts](http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts)

<comment><USER3> You're misrepresenting the facts. In-state rivers (21% of our supply) face the same existential threat of climate change. Furthermore, groundwater aquifers (currently 40%) are not renewable. The Colorado River is Arizona's largest _renewable_ water supply [1]. The second the Colorado gets slapped with federal restrictions industry and citizens alike will accelerate the depletion of our aquifers and before you know it the Colorado River will be the De facto majority again. No one is suggesting we immediately shut down all agriculture, though we could with the stroke of a pen subsidize hydroponic alternatives, mandate drip irrigation, enforce water reclamation, and cap and trade further agricultural development. I do not blame immigrants either, not sure how that relates to this? I simply do not deny the fact that our current path is unsustainable. Allowing agriculture to continue to grow at this rate will only backfire on those communities and cause them to face even worse economic destruction. Showing restraint now could avoid catastrophe for everyone.

[1] [http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your- facts](http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two notes.

1\. This is from 2018.

2\. If this interests you, read "The Water Knife", a fantastic science fiction novel about water wars in the near future.

<comment><USER5> There was an idea to build a water pipe from Wisconsin to Vegas because...reasons

Apparently they needed water for fountains and golf courses.

<comment><USER6> That's not from _The Water Knife_; it's in an earlier Bacigalupi short story, "The Tamarisk Hunter".

<comment><USER5> I thought it was tangentially related. This happened in reality but thanks for incorrecting me

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Meanwhile, it seems the southeast is drowning in floods.

</comment><comment><USER8> From the title, I thought it was going to be about Tombstone vs. the Forest Service.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've long had the idea for a waterless toilet — think a cat's litter box but for people — that would be required for use in desert cities.

Think it could really be a game changer.

<comment><USER10> Why would you bother to hold such an absurd little idea for so long without caring to look into the actual water usage in desert regions?

Is it a lack of concern for the idea, or the people?

<comment><USER9> That's the same thing they said to Einstein and look at him.

Edit: To clarify, I meant the bagel chain founder, not the physician.

<comment><USER11> physicist rather than physician ?

<comment><USER9> Apologies for the confusion, I meant Bob Einstein my pediatrician growing up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Postbin – What do you guys think? - <AUTHOR> http://s.sailors.io/private/57d05455da37b41009c83135 <comment><AUTHOR> Oops, I should mention that the pen icon opens up the editor.</comment>


I'm answering questions from the 'hardest exam in the world' - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nabeelqu.com/2012/05/all-souls-questions-are-there-objective.html <comment><USER2> Intuition 1 is incorrect.

The probability of the marble being under the box during that period of time was 1 because its state never changed. It was merely your incomplete knowledge that encouraged you to (incorrectly) assign a probability of 0.5. You've become confused over WHAT is the subject of your test.

If, however, you were to change the experiment such that there were two boxes, one with a marble and one without, you now have the ability to engage in real probability. The probability that a marble is present under each box is either 1 or 0. However, the probability that you will CHOOSE TO LIFT the box containing the marble is 0.5. This is not a probability of presence or absence of a marble; it's the probability that YOU will choose to look under a particular box.

Probability requires the possibility of change, and the probability of change in a marble's presence under a box (such as by teleporting from one box to another) is small indeed.

<comment><USER3> You're making assumptions when you say that "the probability that you will CHOOSE TO LIFT the box containing the marble is 0.5".

Consider that there may be 3 boxes, and the person setting up the experiment flipped a coin for each box. If the coin landed heads up, a marble was placed in the box. If the coin landed tails up, no marble was placed. This means there may be 0 - 3 marbles total. Until you know the actual state of the box, the probability remains 0.5.

<comment><USER2> Probability is temporal. You need to specify timeframe.

If you are talking about before the coins were flipped to decide whether a marble was to be placed into the box, then at that time BEFORE the coin was flipped, the probability would be 0.5 per box.

If you are talking about AFTER the coin has been flipped, the probability for each box goes to either 0 or 1. This is regardless of whether an outside observer is aware of the state or not.

If you were to now enter the room, having no knowledge of what boxes (if any) have had a marble placed in them, the probability of a marble being in a particular box has not changed. It is STILL either 1 or 0. There are only two ways to induce probability at this point: Pick a single, random box to open, in which case you are measuring the probability that you will choose a box with a marble in it (you are measuring yourself, not the marbles). The other is to guess whether a particular box has a marble in it, and then open it, in which case you are measuring whether your guess is correct or not (once again, measuring yourself, not the marble).

Most people go wrong here because they think they are measuring one thing but are actually measuring something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand the question quite differently. The question of objective probabilities is a question of whether the world is deterministic.

If you believe the world is governed by physical laws and you further believe you understand those laws (physics), you consequently must believe that with sufficient information about the past you can predict the future (determinism). So if I was to throw a dart at a dartboard, with sufficient information about arm speed, humidity, wind etc you could perfectly predict where on the dartboard it would land. The problem is that the mathematical / computational complexity necessary to achieve that is still beyond our means. Enter Probability, which we use to reduce the computational burden of predicting the future. As probability will always be model dependant (ie subject to someone's view of the world and necessarily wrong some % of the time) - it follows that an objective probability cannot be consistent with a deterministic world.

So is the world deterministic?

<comment><USER5> Your premises are wrong: you can believe in physics, but the laws of physics could not deterministic.

To the best of our knowledge this is the case[1], and we have strong indications [2] that this is a fundamental feature of nature: the non deterministic aspects do not come from our lack of understanding and knowledge.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox>

<comment><USER4> Certain irony about saying that a LAW of physics is not deterministic. Conceded though that determinism does not hold up at the quantum level.

Disagree though that quantum non-determinism translates to non-determinism at the scale we experience [1]. Have never seen a Feynman diagram for a soccer ball. Which is why I feel comfortable saying that if you believe the macro world is deterministic then you cannot also believe there are objective probabilities (unless, as you indicated you are talking about the subatomic world).

<comment><USER6> Determinism does hold up at the quantum level. Quantum mechanics is completely deterministic. Collapsing the wave function to a classic state, is the probabilistic aspect, if any.

<comment><USER7> I think that quantom mechanics makes us think differently about probability and determinism by giving the mathematical (human created) concept of probability a physical meaning. Similar to the example in intuition 2, a coin toss could be considered determinstic even if we do not try to predict the result. It is pre-determined that given a large enough number of coin tosses, very close to 50% of them would come out heads. Qunatom mechanics makes us consider probability as a physical property inherent in all physical objects. This way of thinking helps reasoning about genetic predisposition as well (which is always probabilistic). Just like any coin is "free" to make a choice, and yet it is certain that they would (almost) precisely split down the middle, so too can genetic predisposition can be said to be both constraining and not constraining at all at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >To sum up: probabilities are (a) true or false, (b) regardless of what I believe about this probabilities. Estimated probabilities (c) depend on the prior knowledge of the mind in question. Moreover, (d) the fact that the probability is X is a fact about my mind.

I'm not sure why you then go on to say that probability is neither objective nor subjective, and that probability has traits of both (which seems somewhat like a contradiction), rather than conclude that there are two different kinds of probability: objective probability and subjective probability ('probabilities' and 'Estimated probabilities' as you even differentiate yourself). (And then there is the other interpretation of the question of whether objective probability even exists at all or wether the world is deterministic.)

</comment><comment><USER9> On "Intuition 2":

> At time t, if it is true that the probability of the marble being under a > given box is 0.5, then if I guessed randomly, I would be correct one out of > two times on average.

> The fact that the probability is 0.5 is completely independent of whether or > not any particular mind believes that it is 0.5. But this is the definition > of an objective truth. Therefore, probability must be objective.

This is begging the question. The two things combined is like saying "At time t, if it is true that probability is objective... therefore probability must be objective."

<comment><AUTHOR> Saying p=0.5 necessarily implies the 1/2 thing. Neither implies any stance on whether it's subjective/objective so far. The 'objective' conclusion there requires the further fact of mind-independence, which is based on 'you can't change the odds that a fair coin comes up heads just by thinking about it' type arguments. So it's not circular/question-begging, IMO.

<comment><USER4> When a fair coin is tossed it will either come up heads or it wont. Put another way, the probability of getting heads is 1 or 0, unless you believe that something magical happens to the coin while it is in mid-air that somehow makes it impossible to predict what will happen when it lands (given a complete set of data).

So the outcome of the coin-toss is knowable, it just happens to be complex enough that it is not known (to us). To bridge the gap between the knowable and the not known we introduce a margin of error in our calculations, called Probability. Probability then, only exists as man-made mathematical spackle - and is by definition subjective.

To prove me wrong find an event that has an outcome that cannot be known in advance. That's why this question is on a philosophy exam.

<comment><USER10> Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the entire field of quantum mechanics?

<comment><USER4> Well played and conceded. So do we need two sets of rules? One for 'our world' and one for the subatomic world?

<comment><USER10> Just because relativity showed Newtonian physics to be wrong about how the universe worked doesn't mean we can't use the latter as a decent approximation under appropriate constraints. Similarly, we don't really need to calculate the probability of the Sun teleporting over Wall Street when valuing Facebook's IPO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Upvote, because I didn't know the 'hardes exam in the world' existed, and I now think it's awesome. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Did you check out the link to the general paper? One of my favourite questions from there: "Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants are wearing Nazi uniforms?"

<comment><USER12> Engaging in an orgy while clothed is certainly more perverted than doing so while naked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The question is inherently crippled, because there have to be objective probabilities, otherwise quantum mechanics wouldn't work.

I guess the question really is "if the universe operated according to classical principles, would there be objective probabilities?" And that is an interesting question, but it's a hypothetical alternate-universe one.

</comment><comment><USER14> I parse this question differently. Most commenters seem to be answering 'can ALL priors be objective' when the question is only asking if any exist.

For people not sitting this exam, the probability of passing it is zero.

<comment><USER15> The goal of the exam is not to determine what knowledge you have assimilated, but how likely you are to generate new knowledge. Hence the very open nature of the question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scanning the exam's questions, I really can't see them as "hard" in the conventional sense.

Hard would be a question in math, physics or some other field which has a very difficult to discover objective answer. There's no limit to hard here but these essay questions are different. "Should wealth be inheritable?" just doesn't have an objective answer and one's answer could only be judged based on whatever the exam grader thinks is a good answer (well written, clever, whatever). In fact, considering one can choose three out of twenty seven, the exam doesn't seem much harder than some essay exams I've taken that were supposed to be extremely easy (CBest, for example). Some of the essays would be require to marshal facts in a given field (classics or economics) but we can hope the writers have some expertise in something.

I think the only way the questions could be considered hard would be if someone taking it thought they needed to settle one or another of these debatable questions. There you have might the situation where geeks and humanities majors each think the other has "really hard exams"...

Edit: And that's "are there objective probabilities" - an English major could take half an hour to answer without worrying about whether they'd really objectively established their answer. We geeks will stop and aim for an "objective" answer. But while one can establish whatever model one wants in the realm of math, one isn't going to pin down the concept of "objective" and "probability" as used by English speaking humans today.

<comment><USER15> Some of the most pressing problems in society don't have answers that fit into the mindset of the more mathematically-minded among us.

They are problems nonetheless, for example: should free speech exist? You can't answer that question using science, yet we need people to think about that kind of thing.

For what it's worth, the reputation of All Souls College (which _does not have students_ ) is strongest in the humanities.

<comment><USER16> Saying the exam wasn't "hard" as such wasn't intended to slight All Souls College or the humanities.

It seems like what makes a question part of the humanities is that many if not most humans have some sort of answer to the question. For that reason, I imagine the humanities might be better served not conjuring up images of super-hard exams only a few can pass.

<comment><USER15> From the perspective of All Souls, they do want exams that only a few can pass. The goal of this kind of exam is to identify original and insightful thinkers.

I presume that it is hoped that those who enter All Souls will make original and long-lasting contributions to their field of endeavor.

In the natural sciences, a similar effort is supported by the Howard Hughes Foundation at Janelia Farms, as described here: [http://www.nature.com/news/research-at-janelia-life-on- the-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/research-at-janelia-life-on-the- farm-1.9373)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Borrowing from the physics nomenclature, I guess you'd say Probability has "Subjective Objective Duality"

</comment><comment><USER18> I would say yes, there are objective probabilities. For instance a path integral in quantum mechanics sums all possible paths for a particle along with each path's probability; if the calculations are done correctly, the numbers for a particular calculation will come out the same every time, even if different people perform the calculations. Since the facts and outcomes are observably equal for different people, I would say this fits the definition of objective knowledge. It is what makes quantum mechanics testable and useful.

There are plenty of other examples, like the Monty Hall problem, where many different people have confirmed the objective truth of a probability through direct testing.

The problem I see with this question is that it is couched as a philosophy question, not math or physics. That's what makes it "hard".</comment>


Ember.js 3.1 and 3.2 Beta Released - <AUTHOR> https://emberjs.com/blog/2018/03/26/ember-3-1-released.html <comment><USER2> I lead an internal development team. We're constant building new apps and enhancing old ones.

Ember has been a big win for us. Upgrading old apps is a breeze. Every app has a consistent structure and the conventions make it easy for developers to move between projects. We don't need to worry about the individual pieces - routing, data, etc - we trust the core devs so that we only worry about business logic. We're experimenting with Ember Engines right now and I'm not sure how we'd replicate it if we were using React or Angular. All in all, I think it has made us incredibly productive.

Outside of the code, the Ember team's communication skills are top notch. I feel like every time I tell my team that "XYZ is coming down the pipe", there's a clear plan of attack and any impact is minimal. In the last 3 years, I've never had to tell my boss that development will be paused to focus on a refactor/upgrade/maintenance.

The biggest downside is in hiring, unfortunately. I don't look for Ember experience, but I have had to adjust my expectations when it comes to the learning curve.

<comment><USER3> Actually, learning Ember.js is quite easy nowadays. There are great free options, where you can go far in a few days: [http://yoember.com](http://yoember.com) | [https://guides.emberjs.com/v3.0.0/tutorial/ember- cli/](https://guides.emberjs.com/v3.0.0/tutorial/ember-cli/)

<comment><USER4> Also [https://medium.com/ember-ish](https://medium.com/ember-ish) is incredibly useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The thing that has most impressed me about Ember is the way the teams on a project at giant corp will not do things correctly (honestly, some days it feels like they are doing weird crap on purpose to try to get it to fail) and Ember still works.

For a tiny glimpse of context- we have globally distributed teams who all work on different (isolated) parts of the project using ember-engines. All of these parts can either be stood up as a standalone app or become part of one host app. And every single one of these is consuming a single UI Addon that has components, minimal services, and themes.

Think about all of the moving pieces there, all of the parts where teams can disagree or do weird stuff, and yet somehow when it all comes together, we have so many things that could colossally fail, yet nothing does. We have a few bugs that are hard to reproduce but that's because we do weird stuff, not because Ember does. It's really epic when I sit back and think through all of it.

If you haven't tried Ember in ages, or ever- this is definitely the time to try...and I mean really _try_. Some of it will be a paradigm shift, but a worthy one.

</comment><comment><USER5> (as someone who doesn't use ember) This release looks cool, and I like the general vibe of careful development and clear messaging.

Is anyone here using Ember on big projects? How's it working out?

I tried ember, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, and was turned off by some weird magical behaviour, but I'm curious about how ember is doing these days, and particularly the glimmer engine.

<comment><USER6> Ember is an incredible framework that's been carefully thought out by a team of super sharp people with loads of experience, and I'm constantly amazed by how quickly I can get real projects built using it. I've used it for many projects since ember-cli came out a few years ago. I feel about Ember for client-side projects how I felt about Rails for server-side projects—it made it fun for me again.

But Ember gets a bad wrap from the internet because (admittedly) their marketing materials with the gooofy chipmunks make it look like a toy while React's make it look like you're learning quantum physics. And then there's the timeless "convention over configuration" divide where Ember people are generally on the left side, and React people just love the thought of fiddling around and hand rolling their own custom ungoogleable bespoke artisan framework before actually getting to the meat of the work.

I highly recommend using Ember for any size project if you like getting shit done.

This is a good talk kinda about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWH3UNIKFeg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWH3UNIKFeg)

<comment><USER7> > But Ember gets a bad wrap from the internet because (admittedly) their > marketing materials with the gooofy chipmunks make it look like a toy

Ember.js is best technology that I've ever dropped, but let me assure you, the Tomster had nothing to do with my decision.

Ember got into the spotlight when Atwood and Co. have launched the Discourse. Back then it looked super impressive - first open source forum software and arguably one of first open source apps following "JS fronted and API backend" architecture. And it was all done with Ember.js, js FW marketing itself as the modern way to build JS apps!

A lot of people wanted to try it out (myself included), some moving from Angular, other from Backbone, and others coming from backend development. If Ember ever had the cool factor, it was that time. Ember.js was the next big thing, a framework for creating ambitious web applications, and all the people came to it to build their ambitious applications, looking up to Discourse as example of such application.

And then those people have hit the roadblock. Ember.js's pitch was building applications, but it's documentation has never moved past explaining individual parts of technology, and into the field of how those should be put together in final application. Angular had millions of easily googleable tutorials like "this is best practice for setting page title when user enters the route" or "this is how you can configure framework to authenticate with your backend technology".

I also clearly remember the "calling set on destroyed object" error that happened when you tried to update the state of object that was already destroyed that was impossible to debug, because the error was literally "Error: calling set on destroyed object" and it put world to stop. For comparision, in React.js that was "Warning: calling setState with X, Y and Z on unmounted component ComponentName". That one error was absolute productivity killer when debugging Ember.js apps from day one, and it was years before somebody from Ember.js core actually went to Ember's source code and changed "assert !obj._is_destroyed 'calling set on destroyed object'" to "assert !obj._is_destroyed 'calling set on destroyed object'". There was always bigger fish to fry for Ember.js core team, who were so bussy making blogpost after blogpost of new great features or API changes happening, while being oblivious to comments below those same blogposts asking "can I now do partial updates on models because they are super costful to update?" or "is calling set on destroyed object fixed yet?". And then guys from their ambassador product, Discourse, started writing blog posts following the pattern of "Here's how we've replaced Ember.js's feature with our one because framework's didnt work", and those involved things like `Ember-Data` or Ember views.

<comment><USER8> EmberJS was the first front-end framework I learned as a web developer, shortly after learning Django. This was before Ember 1.0 . It was cool at first - but once I started developing real projects I ran head first into unreadable or cryptic internal stack traces and APIs that forced me to adapt my back-end to fit the needs of the front-end app. A short time later I picked up angular 1.x and was off to the races because anytime I ran into a problem with a feature or design decision I could easily find the hack that would keep my momentum going.

I always felt like EmberJS meant well but chose rigidness where it should have been flexible, and flexibility where it should have been rigid. It's probably changed and solved many of these early problems. I want to go back and re- evaluate, but nowadays so many different technologies, frameworks, languages, and tools, are pulling at my time that I don't think I will be able to.

FWIW my current stack of choice (and at work) is Golang and Vue (w/Typescript) - which might identify where some of my biases and predilections are.

<comment><USER9> MAN....ember before v 1.0 ???...I'd suggest taking a revisit. Version 2.0 was a different universe let alone 3.1

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similar to @s_kilk I tried ember years ago and while I liked some of their concepts, the hard learning curve and the oversized results made me search alternatives.

Anybody knows what size (js bundle file size) a basic PWA in ember.js has nowadays?

I am asking for file size here, as transmitting and parsing that data is usually what defers an instant user interaction.

<comment><USER9> Keep in mind. Ember is built for LARGE applications. No such thing as a "basic PWA" in ember.js. Think of it more like...we've built this huge app for tons of users in library XYZ and our development team of over 20 persons is feeling pain points in transitioning to the updated more secure version of XYZ.

<comment><USER4> I really enjoyed the EmberConf talk about movie studios using it for movie promo sites because they needed to be able to get them up quickly. I think if you took that concept and maybe a blog post about doing an Ember PWA ([https://madhatted.com/2017/6/16/building-a-progressive- web-a...](https://madhatted.com/2017/6/16/building-a-progressive-web-app-with- ember) for example) then maybe the large part doesn't matter so much...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My team is actually in the process of de-Reacting our code base. These frameworks are full of hacks underneath the covers, and their abstractions are mostly ill-specified.

<comment><USER12> Explain that bold claim?

Apart from the very annoying Event compatibility layer with its event pooling and central handling that breaks the usual DOM event bubbling, I never saw something bad enough that would make someone consider de-Reacting.

As much as I dislike magic, JS libs working with the DOM will always have code that isn't as clean as your application code.</comment></comment>