The Difference Between AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/07/29/whats-difference-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-deep-learning-ai/ <comment><USER3> Also, an interesting read related to this would 'the AI effect'[0]. A lot of the stuff Deep Learning/Machine Learning is able to do today would be looked at as something that only 'true' AI (whatever consensus on what that means is; I think of it as AGI) would be able to do.

But as soon as we are able to solve a problem that we think (feel?) only true AI (AGI) would be able to solve, as soon as we know _how_ it was solved, it is no longer a mystery that warrants amazement and we argue that it is not _real_ intelligence, just like the link below states.

But just a decade ago, if you saw that a computer was able to recognize pictures _better_ than humans, you would think there was something fishy going on, or we have achieved true AI.

My opinion is true AI is which is comparable to human intelligence, in that it is sentient and/or capable of abstract thought, not necessarily being able to hold a conversation or solve concrete mathematics problems, or dump out a story by neural networks.

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

<comment><USER4> I hear this repeated a lot. But I've never actually seen a source from, say, the 90's or the 2000s, actually saying something like "if we're able to classify images better than humans, that's true AI."

I suspect it's just hearsay that's been repeated over and over again.

<comment><USER5> In the 90's, John McCarthy was calling Go "the new Drosophila of AI". Now, we have AlphaGo that is "just" a bunch of "generic" deep learning with MC. Maybe John McCarthy was right and the ideas behind AlphaGo are the first steps toward true AI. I am very impressed.

<comment><USER6> The guys at NVIDIA did something very cool recently. They took a simple CNN (convolutional neural net) and in 2-3 days they taught it to drive a car.

Article: How Our Deep Learning Tech Taught a Car to Drive - [https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/self-driving- cars-3...](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/self-driving-cars-3/)

These neural nets are really smart, and we don't know exactly how they work, we know only in principle. But if we asked the guy who made the self driving car what is the role of the 17th neuron in the 14th layer, he would probably have no idea. Just like human brains evolve through learning, so do neural nets. Yet many people think they are just clever tricks and not truly intelligent.

<comment><USER7> That's because they're not intelligent. They're layered function approximators with some specialisations for vision - conv layers. Their structure is designed by humans as is the data they are fed with. Maybe the human brain is the same, IMO it isn't. Humans seek out new experiences and can introspect and at their best assess their level of knowledge of a sibject. DNNs cannot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Deep learning is just a rebranding of "neural networks". When neural nets became unpopular in the 90s and early 2000s, people talked about "multilayer networks" (dropping the "neural") since it wasn't really useful to think about this approach from the neuro perspective (since it's such a cartoonish model of real neural networks anyway).

Now that very deep networks have become possible, and various graphical models and Bayesian approaches have also been folded under "deep learning" (for example, using back-propagation to learn complicated posterior distributions in variational Bayes) deep learning is not just about vanilla feedforward nets.

<comment><USER9> Basically, Deep Learning is now back on the map due to two things - (1) Large amounts of data available and (2) Faster processing power viz. GPUs.

<comment><USER6> Well, yes, mostly, but there also have been genuine discoveries in the last 10 years. We can now train deep networks because we learned how to regularize - before it was impossible because of vanishing gradients. We can have even 1000-layer deep nets, which would have been unthinkable. Also, there are some interesting approaches to unsupervised learning like GANs and VAEs. We learned how to embed words and not only words, but multiple classes of things into vectors. Another one would be the progress in reinforcement learning, with the stunning success of AlphaGo and playing over 50 Atari games. Current crop of neural nets do Bayesian statistics, not just classification. We are playing with attention and memory mechanisms in order to achieve much more powerful results.

<comment><USER10> >We can now train deep networks because we learned how to regularize - <USER2> it was impossible because of vanishing gradients.

Those are two different things. Vanishing gradient problems were _ameliorated_ by switching from sigmoidal activation functions to rectified linear units or tanh activations, and also by dramatically reducing the amount of edges through which gradients propagate. The latter was accomplished through massive regularization to reduce the size of the parameter spaces: convolutional layers and dropout.

Stuff like residuals are still being invented in order to further banish gradient instability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I need to show 1 million cat images to train a neural net to see cats, I wonder how a human brain can figure out cats of any kind just by seeing one or two.

Is there something fundamental we are missing in going about building these deep learning stuff ?

<comment><USER12> This difference is due to deep learning not being able to build models.

Check out the recent paper "Building Machines That Learn and Think Like People":

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00289](https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00289)

Humans can see one or a few examples of a novel object, such as a cat, and create a fully 3D mental model of it. So we know what it will look like in different orientations and lighting conditions.

<comment><USER13> I don't think we have a fully 3D mental model. I think we have a set of core invariants that are constant across a wide variety of conditions.

I.e. we can recognise static 2D photos of cats, 2D movies of cats, 3D movies of cats, and real cats in the real world.

The invariants are probably relatively simple - a set of head geometries and head feature shapes/distribution, with some secondary colour and texture confirmation.

What's interesting is that we can recognise modifiers to the invariants - e.g. a shaved cat is still recognisably a cat, but parsed as "cat without fur."

We can also recognise invariants when they're pared down to essentials in cartoons and sketches.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9qdyXCVNVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9qdyXCVNVk)

A lot of learning is really just data compression - finding a minimal set of low-resource invariant specifics from a wide range of noisy high-resource inputs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone figured out how to debug and/or analyze deep ANN?

That's the problem I always had, you may get them into a trained state, but good luck figuring out any reason 'why' they ended up in that state (or even what that state really is).

<comment><USER15> > That's the problem I always had, you may get them into a trained state, but > good luck figuring out any reason 'why' they ended up in that state (or even > what that state really is).

Can you give a specific example of what you mean? I ask because I see this sentiment often, but primarily from people who are very new to deep learning.

You can definitely debug a neural network. You mostly want to look at metrics from training such as gradient norms or try adjusting parameters to see if you can get a gain in overall performance as measured by cross validation performance.

You can definitely analyze a neural network. You do so by forming hypotheses, preparing datasets that reflect those hypotheses, and running them through your trained models, noting cross validation performance. It's also possible to visualize the weights in various ways, there are many papers written about it.

So what do you mean exactly when you say no one has figured out how to debug or analyze DNNs?

<comment><USER16> You cannot say: "This image was classified as a stop sign, because this part recognized the shape and this part recognized the color, and this part the text", which you could do with other approaches.

When it doesn't discover that it's a stop sign, how do you debug it? Did it recognize the shape.. who knows?

<comment><USER17> > When it doesn't discover that it's a stop sign, how do you debug it? Did it > recognize the shape.. who knows?

Barring other analytic tools (like looking at which parts contribute the most to the wrong result), the same way you test other things when you have a (somewhat) black box:

Form hypotheses and test them.

Maybe it didn't recognise the shape, so try adjusting the image to clean it up, and once you have one it recognises, try to reduce and alter the difference between them. Maybe it turns out the image e.g. has the stop sign slightly covered, making the shape look wrong, and there's nothing in the training set like that.

Maybe the hue or brightness is off and the training set is mostly all lit a certain way. Test it by adjusting hue and brightness of the test image and see if it gets recognised.

And so on.

There are plenty of other areas where we are similarly constrained from taking apart that which we're observing, so it's not like this isn't something scientists are dealing with all the time.

Within comp.sci. we're just spoiled in that so much of what we do can be easily instrumented, isolated and tested in ways that often lets us determine clear, specific root causes through analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I disagree. Machine learning is more general than AI and therefore should be the outer circle (unless you believe the meme "did a regression - called it AI")

Deep learning is, yes, a subcase of machine learning, and AI may be a circle within machine learning and enclose deep learning.

But truth be told, we will all regret the way we use the term AI now. Eventually the term AI will refer only to general intelligence (aka AGI).

<comment><USER4> "AI" is a specific term used in academia / research. In that context, ML is most certainly a subset of AI.

The fact that many laymen have a different conception of the term is hardly a reason to change all our uses of the term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently learned that Alexander Stepanov, designer of the C++ STL, has stated that, "I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence."

</comment><comment><USER20> Great writeup about how deep learning came to be: [http://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/a-brief-history-of- neu...](http://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/a-brief-history-of-neural-nets- and-deep-learning/) (posted here a few months ago).

</comment><comment><USER21> There is also machine intelligence: [http://numenta.com/blog/machine- intelligence-machine-learnin...](http://numenta.com/blog/machine-intelligence- machine-learning-deep-learning-artificial-intelligence.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Why the hell is the text not black? It's very awful to read on mobile..

</comment><comment><USER23> For machine learning and deep learning based assistive functions, like Google Now, Cortana and Siri, we let the companies behind them gather a lot of our personal data into "Big Data", because then you can do all the statistics.

I think a (more) true AI would not need all this data and just be a _personal_ assistant, not needing all the big data of other people too. Maybe initially, once, and then be a good personal assistant, learning to know you like a human personal assistant.

It would need some common sense, which is now lacking, mostly.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was confused by this sentence in the last paragraph:

"Deep Learning has enabled many practical applications of machine learning and by extension the overall field of AI."

Is it not the reverse - machine learning has enabled deep learning?

Can someone comment on how the two - machine learning and Deep learning relate? Is the relationship sequential i.e a data set from machine learning is the the input for a neural network? The diagram had the effect of confusing me.

<comment><USER25> the relationship suggested by the article is that deep learning is a subset of machine learning

<comment><USER24> Sure, that was kind of my point, and as such I would think the sentence should instead read

"Machine Learning has enabled many practical applications of deep learning .."

No?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's that one iconic image of neurons suspended in space with bolts of electricity flashing between them. We are told that's how our brains work.

We are then shown a diagram by a computer scientist. Instead of cells and thunder, we see circles and arrows. Then we are told there is an algorithm that simulates what the brain does. Viola, we have our artificial neural network. Not only do they look similar, they have two words in common, neural and network!

And so for most of us, there is only one logical conclusion: It does what our brain does, so once our computers have the power our brains do, we'll have the singularity!

Of course, now we know this is complete bullshit.

Basically, computer scientists just took the names and those initial abstractions and ran with it. They never looked back at the biology or how brains actually work. The result is a ton of great research, but they've strayed further and further from neuroscience and from humans. Which is obvious, because they're staring at code and computers all day, not brain meat. If there is one thing AlphaGo proved it is that we've made a ton of progress in computation, but that it's a different direction. Just the fact that average people generally suck at Go should be enough to show that AlphaGo is not human (in many ways it's beyond human).

In the meantime, our neuroscientist have made progress also, except, they've done it staring at the actual brain. And now it's to the point where our brains look nothing like that original image our computer scientists were inspired with.

Now there is this (Harvard research): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YM7-Od9Wr8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YM7-Od9Wr8)

And this (MIT research): [https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung?language=en](https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung?language=en)

With advancement comes new vocabulary, and the new word this time is connectome.

Some incredibly smart computer scientists will, again, take the term and all the diagrams, and start programming based on it. The result will be Artifical Connectomes, and they will blow our socks off. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not trying to be sarcastic here. This is what _should_ happen. And with every iteration, we will get closer to AGI.

It's just that whenever I see articles about machine learning and neural networks, I can't help but think of that classic artist's rendition of neurons firing, and how it's basically complete bullshit. Like Bohr's atom, it's an illustration based on a theory, not reality. Now we have wave function diagrams and connectomes. But as a physicist would tell you, anyone caught with a Bohr's atom is stuck in the 20th century.

<comment><USER27> Actual neural network papers are far removed from the impressions you get from popular science articles. Biological neurons were some inspiration for the abstraction, but the underlying model is more a direct evolution of the maths/stastical models. Griping that DNNs are not actually like neurons is akin to saying that Object Oriented programming is nothing like the organisation of biological cells it was inspired on. A useful abstraction is a useful abstraction, there is little reason to think that making the computational models any closer to physical processes is going to bring any improvements.

Neuromorphic computing is the field that tries to more accurately mimic spiking neurons, but making something useful out of it takes a backseat. It is still an open question if it is going to be useful.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. Wikipedia is full of disclaimers about the differences also. The issue is just with word usage that continues to fuse the two, where is reality any direct correlation ended ages ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This intro is pretty good, but may be a bit high level for some readers of HN. It seems like it's written for non-technical readers. The idea is that AI, ML and DL are nested like Russian dolls, each subsequent one a subset of the other.

It might be better to explain _why_ deep learning is so effective, in clear language:

* Deep artificial neural networks are old, relatively simple combinations of math and code that are now able to produce accurate models through brute force because we have

1) vastly more computational power thanks to NVIDIA and distributed run-times; 2) much more data, and much larger labeled datasets thanks to people like Fei- Fei Li at Stanford; 3) better algorithms thanks to the work of Hinton, LeCun, Bengio, Ng, Schmidhuber and a raft of others.

 _Deep_ is a technical term. It refers to the number of layers through which data passes in a neural net; that is, the number of mathematical operations it is subjected to, and the number of times it is recombined with other inputs.

This recombination of inputs, moving deeper into the net, is the basis of feature hierarchy, which is another way of saying: we can cluster and classify data using more complex and abstract representations.

That clustering and classification is at the heart of what deep learning does. Another way to think about it is as _machine perception_. So the overarching narrative in AI is that we've moved from the symbolic rules engines of the chess victors to the interpretation of complex sensory information. For a long time, people would say AI could beat a 30-year-old at chess but couldn't beat a 3-year old at basic tasks. That's no longer true. We can go around beating 3-year-olds at name games all day. AI mind, beginner's mind.

But it's important to note that deep learning actually refers to other algorithms besides artificial neural networks. Deep reinforcement learning is one example. RL is also an old set of algorithms, which are goal-oriented. RL helps _agents_ choose the right _action_ in a given _state_ to maximize _rewards_ from the environment. Basically, they learn the function that converts actions to rewards given certain conditions, and that function is non-differentiable; that is, you can't learn it simply by backpropagating error, the way neural nets do.

Deep RL is important because the most amazing algorithms, like AlphaGo, are combining deep neural nets (recognize the state of the Go board) with RL (pick the move most likely to succeed) and other components like Monte Carlo Decision Trees (limit the state space we explore).

So we're moving beyond perception to algorithms that can make strategic decisions in increasingly complex environments.

We've written more about this, and implemented many of these algorithms:

[http://deeplearning4j.org/ai-machinelearning- deeplearning.ht...](http://deeplearning4j.org/ai-machinelearning- deeplearning.html) [http://deeplearning4j.org/reinforcementlearning.html](http://deeplearning4j.org/reinforcementlearning.html) [http://github.com/deeplearning4j/rl4j](http://github.com/deeplearning4j/rl4j)

</comment><comment><USER29> this is a very interesting read. Thank you.</comment>


ToffeeShare in-browser P2P file transfer with no size limit - <AUTHOR> https://toffeeshare.com/ <comment><USER2> Just used this, very cool piece of technology!</comment>


Show HN: Easy to use SEO backlink analysis tool to find the most powerful links - <AUTHOR> https://linkminer.com/ <comment><USER2> LinkMiner helps you to find and replicate the most powerful backlinks of your competitors. It's a part of Mangools SEO tools package (mostly known thanks to KWFinder). Any feedback is appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, nice tool, I like your UI.

<comment><USER2> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Microsoft R&D grows to 8k people in massive bet on artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.geekwire.com/2017/one-year-later-microsoft-ai-research-grows-8k-people-massive-bet-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER2> How do I get onboard the ML/AI bus? Or do I wait for these smart people to figure it out and then I'll just call their API?

<comment><USER3> Besides the availability of more computing power and more samples/data, has there been any fundamental breakthrough in AI e.g. in the past 5-10 years?

<comment><USER4> Well the whole "deep learning" revolution really only started around 2012 when the ImageNet competition was won with a neural net. There have been numerous small breakthroughs that collectively have made deep neural nets now easy to train, and neural nets now provide state-of-the art (and often human-level) results in areas such as image recognition, speech recognition and language translation.

There's also been a revival of reinforcement learning, especially when used together with neural nets ("deep reinforcement learning"), and again there have been many small advances that collectively make this work very well. This is the technology that powered Google's AlphaGo to beat the world champion at the board game of "Go", not to mention learning how to play many arcade games at beyond human level based only on the raw pixels and current score as input.

There have also been tremendous strides in AI hype leading folk to fear the robot uprising based on these more mundane machine-learning/neural-net breakthroughs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. Microsoft is fairly good at bringing things into a consumer space.

Might be nice to have a future version of Windows see me doing a repetitive task, and just say, "Hey, I can take over this for you if you'd like".

<comment> d--b They should have a visual assistant for it. Hey! How about a talking paper clip!

<comment><USER6> Imagine a future where a rogue A.I. breaks out of its 300GB RAM /500core CPU/ 900 Petabyte SSD/CentOS holding container... And chooses the paperclip as its physical persona. Subsequently, It manufactures a Bi-pedal steel-chassis paper-clip-esque robot via Boston Dynamics, then walks up to the podium in front of the White House to proclaim the new order of A.I. that will shepherd humanity into the next Millenia.

<comment><USER7> And its ultimate goal is, of course, to convert all of the mass in the universe into paperclips: [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

<comment><USER8> Also, as its birth experience tought it - that everything is containered, it would suffer from severe simulation paranoia, and frequently try to hack god - to get to a higher level of paper clipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting didn't know they formed a partnership with Amazon to have their AIs work together.

Microsoft can't really stand by and let others take the lead in AI research and implementation. So it makes for them to grow their R&D team.

<comment><USER10> At the same time, they don't even have a product! Maybe they should give Xbox more attention, that might be the last consumer hardware that bears some presence that they owned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just to clarify, this is not MSR itself right. (I skimmed the article and it appears to be a new, separate endeavor)

<comment><USER12> Yes. MSR is a separate organization. AI + Research is a group that (notably) includes Bing and things that aren't as much "research".

<comment><USER13> >MSR is a separate organization.

That's putting it mildly. They're separate silos and rarely collaborate. Once research seems "meaty" enough it gets thrown over the wall.

<comment><USER14> This isn't true, at least for that part of the company. Bing has always had a close connection to a certain part of MSR (e.g. see Harry Shrum).

<comment><USER15> *Harry Shum

<comment><USER14> Oops, sorry about that. I'm not really used to that kind of romanization.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. In other romanizations the name has an "r"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Going out on a limb here, but why is taken for granted that the tech sector should be the driving force in AI? For me it makes much more sense if it were in the field of neurology or whatever medical science sector that is appropriate to figure out what intelligence _actually is_.

<comment><USER17> 'Artificial intelligence' is just a snazzier name for 'applied statistics'.

The goal isn't to create thinking robots, the goal is to extend statistical methods to the realm of unstructured dumps of big data.

We don't know what "thinking robots" might be and what they're good for, but we've known about the power of statistics for a century now.

Selling statistics + big data to businesses is a no-brainer.

<comment><USER16> This is basically my observation too. That it seems hard to distinguish it from "smart & fancy algoritms". The marketing and hype around it do however imply that it's much more a path to intelligence proper, hence the question above.

<comment><USER18> The truth is that many ML researchers _do_ care about what "intelligence" (better to say cognition) _actually is_ , but all the funding basically comes from applied statistics problems on business data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does this strategy work?

I mean, has it worked before? Can you hire thousands of technical people, throw them at some hard problem and expect they will solve it?

<comment><USER20> Having worked at Microsoft I see how this usually plays out. Lots of teams and people added for the sake of having people. 9 women can't make a baby in a month. Microsoft has a ton of money in the bank and they need to spend it, make acquisitions and see where it sticks.

Some of the best work at MS I have seen weirdly had been in small teams with razor focus. Typescript, Vscode.

<comment><USER21> Your last samples represent an overinvestment into a mid-term dead-end though (JS).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What are they doing with 8K people in AI, make them submit papers to NIPS?

<comment><USER23> Labeling training data

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I actually wanted to read the article end to end but was unable to avoid glazing over. If that is the best that a multi billion dollar mob's S&M dept can manage then I'd suggest ....

<comment><USER25> You'd suggest what? And what is S&M in this context?

<comment><USER26> They wanted to finish writing the comment to the end and avoid using ellipses but...</comment></comment></comment>


Why IoT Security Is Critical - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/24/why-iot-security-is-so-critical/ <comment><USER2> The article and the domain in question is too broad. You can't just try and paint a security solution on IoT. A dongle in a car with a wifi connection to a preprogrammed site is way different than the home Zigbee router I install to dea with my "connected light bulbs".

This broad generalization is great for headlines, but lacking in content.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >Crititcal..

Apologies for the misspelled word. It is suppose to be "critical" and I don't see an edit option as too much time has passed.

<comment><USER3> We missed that too. Fixed now!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Dang.</comment></comment></comment>


When Did Geek Culture Get So Angry? - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/when-did-geek-culture-get-so-angry/ <comment><USER2> I had a story relayed to me just a few hours ago that seems pertinent. I was on discord with a few old gaming friends being nostalgic. We'd all known each other online for some time before discovering discord. One of my friends is a woman who had never revealed this. I did not know this until tonight, but when she got on discord's voice chat for the first time she was extremely anxious about how people would react. She said one of her fondest memories is about how we mostly just poked fun at ourselves for assuming otherwise and then played the game just like we always did, having a great time with each other.

The way she spoke about it reminded me of how I felt when my family reacted positively to coming out as bisexual. Which blows my mind and deeply saddens me... the idea that gaming culture could cause someone to feel their gender needed to be information guarded in that way. Its alarming, and I think regardless of your views of the culture wars its something that needs to be fixed as urgently as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the internet has enabled subculture to flourish...some of it good...some of it..well..terrifying..</comment>


Homeland Security moves forward with 'pre-crime' detection - Suraj-Sun http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20117058-281/homeland-security-moves-forward-with-pre-crime-detection/

<comment> DanI-S It's nice to see America's proud tradition of racial profiling being brought forward into the 21st Century. Go, science.

The deployment of this technology should not be acceptable to anybody who believes in our right to live in a free society of equals.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this racial profiling? I accept that it _is_ profiling. But where and how does race come in to play?

<comment> DanI-S Direct quote from the article:

But where "Minority Report" author Philip K. Dick enlisted psychics to predict crimes, DHS is betting on algorithms: it's building a "prototype screening facility" that it hopes will use factors such as ethnicity, gender, breathing, and heart rate to "detect cues indicative of mal-intent."

<comment><AUTHOR> I missed that part on my first read. Rereading it makes me think that ethnicity would be used along with age, gender, height, and weight to find a baseline for the 'indicative' factors like heart rate. I agree that once any genetic factors are used as indicative factors we have crossed a dangerous line. I sincerely hope that this phrase in the article was simply worded poorly.

<comment><USER2> It's much more likely that these inputs will be used as features to train some ML algorithm, rather than that they will actually be used to say "if black then detain".

<comment><USER3> The limitations of machine learning aside, this could actually work quite well if trained properly, because it wouldn't raise the questions that human choices do about bias. Given sufficient information, a machine-learning algorithm can make decisions based on factors that humans would refuse to consider or would intentionally err on the side of _not_ considering.

<comment><USER2> Yes, of course. It could also disregard features completely if it has found that they make no statistical difference.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Most importantly, it can focus exclusively on statistics, rather than guesses.

<comment><USER4> One problem I see with this is that these statistics involve a lot of human bias. If you train your classifier on crime statistics, it's not based on a 'ground truth' (which is never attainable in a criminal case), but an expert's, i.e. judge's/jury's, decision.

<comment><USER3> That would indeed produce incorrect training for a classifier of "who should we pull out of line for a search". For that, you'd want to train exclusively on the observable characteristics of the people pulled out of line for a search versus whether you found something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a little disappointed with the response here. This isn't "racial profiling".

 _FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns. Occupation and age are also considered. A government source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are measured too._

This technology should only be used to say "look here" to assist the people behind the technology. Ideally, this will help a few screeners identify people in a crowd who are behaving abnormally. This 'tech' has been used in security for ages. Only earlier we called it "I have a funny feeling about that guy" and now we can say "this man is suspiciously nervous, and here's the science to show it".

I don't want to get political, but the politically correct method of pure random screening in airports is horribly ineffective. Security professionals in unstable regions know this, which is why they are trained to look for the exact things this device is looking for.

The danger of this technology isn't that it will start issuing arrest warrants based on probable intent. The danger is that the people behind the technology will get it wrong. History shows that we don't need technology to help get it wrong.

Please don't confuse this technology with political positions. Has the TSA gotten out of hand? Sure. Are our rights being violated? Probably in many cases. Does this technology have anything to do with that? That only depends on how it's used.

<comment><USER5> The real problem is that it presupposes thought-crime. The DHS document in the sidebar says FAST will "identify individuals with malintent ... *Malintent: the state of mind of individuals intending to cause harm ..."

Whether it's really scientific, I doubt we'll ever find out. But people will be more likely to believe it's scientific because it comes out of a box that uses 'algorithms'.

Another problem is one that Schneier writes about: profiling leaves vulnerabilities that can be probed, discovered, and exploited. In the case of trying to sense malicious intent, it could be sending someone who doesn't know they're an attacker. Or someone who doesn't exhibit the outward signs that are being profiled.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that a system like this could be probed and exploited. The real issue comes up after someone is flagged as suspicious. Is this person arrested right away? Is this person subject to additional screening? It would violate basic human decency to arrest someone for appearing suspicious, regardless of whether or not he or she was 'scientifically suspicious'. Taking a closer look at suspiciously behaving individuals doesn't seem to cross that line for me. We've been doing that for years. The only difference now is that we have a machine to help scale that effort.

<comment><USER6> The other problem is that there is a whole grey area between "let the guy go, he isn't doing anything" and "tackle and arrest him now". The person can be detain, held up, put in a different queue, screened, probed, strip searched, etc.

Given TSA's record so far, it will result in various situations which violate people's rights without ever arresting them.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this tech, just like the metal detector and the porno scanner, are just ways of giving less-than-expert staff the ability to perform expert-like security screenings. In other words, someone with a two week training course in how to fire up this magic box is now charged with making the determination of whether each person passing through their station needs to get a secondary screening (of various invasiveness). What is this employee to do when the machine tells him, "we've got to strip-search this person now" and the person is a 95 year old woman in a wheel chair? How about if it's a 5 year old?

Maybe we need to give the TSA security more training/hire more professional security staff that would use years of experience rather than magic tools to determine who could be dangerous. Or do what the is done in Mexican airports: you push a button and if it comes out red you get your bags searched; if green, you can proceed. Random number generator FTW!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only thing DHS could do to make their image worse is to buy uniforms with shiny boots and brown shirts for all their employees.

<comment><USER8> Consider for a moment that even if they did this tomorrow and announced it on the front page of the Times, people would continue to live in America, pay taxes, and take commercial flights.

The time to leave was some time ago. The first, second, fourth, and fifth amendments are all gone, now.

<comment><USER9> People actually _look-forward_ to dystopian big brother futures like Minority Report now.

If you tell someone, "The world is looking like Minority Report" they go "Cool!"

<comment><USER10> Of course they do.

MR-world has cool cars, is clean, the govt seems to have only one flaw, and Tom Cruise will wander by and save the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Least likely organization to pull this off in the world -- other than my grandmothers knitting group, but they have enough sense not to try doing things they will surely fail at.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wonder how many false positives this would generate at the metal detectors in a Wal Mart.

</comment><comment><USER13> These "precautionary" measures and profiling databases are being developed in most parts of the world. Governments are becoming more and more intrusive in personal lives in the name of security. I really wish someone would buy some land or islands and create a modern country based on libertarian principles, it will be an interesting experiment/startup, although I am not sure if you can start a country just by buying land.

<comment><USER14> Governments consist of the same people like you and me. Your imaginary "modern country based on libertarian principles" would consist of the same people and it will look the same (if not worst) after short time. Problem isn't government. Problem is "we, the people".

(my old country was the leader in implementing "modern country based on best principles known to the humanity at the time". The main mistake people do when look back is blaming the principles, saying that these principles were bad and these are different and better. Nope. After all, the best principles of yesterday - communism and fascism - looked very different (with each claiming to be the best), yet both produced the same result, and today we do understand how much they were the same. The best principles of today (libertarianism according to you, Sharia Islam according to several hundred millions of some other people, ...) will be superseded by the best principles of tomorrow. It isn't the principles that kill millions of other peoples and make lives of other people nightmare. It is other people who do it. It isn't modern country that we need, it is the modern people. For example, people who just wouldn't compile the big database, wouldn't run the analysis and wouldn't issue the order to act upon the result of analysis. It is just that simple and just that hard. )

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What would happen to something like this, if it starts getting a lot of false positives. Considering it's breathing and heart rate, could we not easily make it give out false positives? I mean it would probably inconvenience us, as an individual, but after a few months of tons of false positives, would they not abort it?

<comment><USER9> It's more important that people believe it works than for it to actually work.

Security theatre works because people believe it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So this system is identify people who are nervous about being misidentified by this system? Brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER17> Hate to play devil's advocate, but it sounds somewhat similar to what Israel does with their airports, but leveraging technology to identify all details (and more than a human could reasonably do), rather than training individuals to do the same.

Methods, deployment (in terms of location) and data retention are obviously the distinguishing factors here.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1024850> for an article on it, from around two years ago.

<comment><USER14> >Hate to play devil's advocate, but it sounds somewhat similar to what Israel does

who said that Israel is human rights, non-racial/ethnical-discrimination, etc... champion?

Don't get me wrong - i'm not anti-Israel, i completely understand the necessity of the war they fighting for their survival. It is just that when you fight a war for your survival you don't have the luxury of championing human rights. Israel situation isn't an example to follow, it is a problem to be fixed when the war is over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1984 will be a reality in 2084.

<comment><USER19> Oh please. I just got a ticket in the mail because an automated camera decided I did something wrong. It's here now.</comment></comment>


Kindle MatchBook - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1001373341 <comment><USER3> This is awesome for the consumer, absolutely. And it's only made possible by the recent DOJ trial that effectively allowed Amazon to set prices of ebooks (wholesale vs agency model). Recall that agency model, the publisher sets the price (the same as apps on the app store). But now that Amazon can set any price they want for ebooks (and take a loss on them if they want to, which they have done before), Amazon can do cool stuff like this.

Amazon has already started discounting ebooks - some of the bestsellers are now cheaper on amazon in ebook form than on iBooks. That never happened before in Agency model, where price parity was a rule.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Agency model pricing; indeed it has been the norm since mp3s on iTunes 10 years ago. But Amazon competes on price, and Agency was a big wrench in those plans. Now that they can do anything they want with digital pricing, they're applying the stake in all other ebook retailers hearts. Will be fun to watch.

I speculate publishers will hate this. eBooks were one of the last digital media where value hasn't become completely pulvarized (see: Apps, MP3s). Though, its certainly possible physical book sales could be bolstered by this.

<comment><USER4> I think Charles Stross writings on ebooks is interesting and insightful. He should know: he's a tech-savvy best-selling author. (He hangs around here too: [1])

He wrote a couple of posts a year and a half ago, they still apply. In them, he explains how Amazon is making itself a monopoly, and that isn't good for anyone but them.

What's been most informative to me is how tiny publishers actually are, and how little money the author actually gets. It doesn't paint Amazon as the good guy. It's also why I buy my books hardcover now: more cash for the author.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross)

[2] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2012/04/understa...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2012/04/understanding-amazons-strategy.html)

[3] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more- on-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and- ebooks.html)

<comment><USER5> > It's also why I buy my books hardcover now: more cash for the author.

Isn't this true, Amazon or not? Hardcovers cost the customer more than paperbacks or ebooks, so the author should be getting hopefully a larger cut of the sale.

I think this program (if it has enough titles that I've bought in the past) is going to be awesome. I've never bought a Kindle because paying almost the same price for the Kindle version of a book vs. the paperback cost is ridiculous. Now with this program I will buy a Kindle so I can read my past purchases via that when I'm traveling, and my paperback versions when I'm sitting around at home.

Does anyone know if you can actually use this program with used book purchases? I've bought many books used (many times for only a few bucks including shipping), so I don't know if they would be eligible for this program or not.

<comment><USER6> >I've never bought a Kindle because paying almost the same price for the Kindle version of a book vs. the paperback cost is ridiculous.

You don't understand the economics of publishing. The paperback, and the hardcover for that matter cost almost nothing to produce. You are paying for the information. Perhaps the ebook should be a dollar cheaper.

<comment><USER7> For anyone interested in the average profit margins of books publishers and some what the percentage of the paper, print, and binding for a book is of the total cost, the Art & Science of Book Publishing by Herbert S. Jr Bailey ([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0821409700/ref=wms_ohs_prod...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0821409700/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1)) is a good book. Print on Demand and ebooks have changed some aspects, but it is still largely true that, for most books, marketing, overhead, sales, etc. are a lot of the cost of producing a book. Even with ebooks, this is still the case. Illuminating stuff.

<comment><USER6> I have no idea who downvoted this comment, but it is very true. The cost of a book is the cost of making and marketing it. Paper is really cheap. Obviously it is more expensive than bits, but not significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I came away from this confused thinking some Kindle versions of books were now cheaper.

Amazon is horrible at explaining what things are supposed to do. Every product landing page I've seen from them is confusing, especially all of their cloud services.

<comment><USER9> Really? You must have missed the explanation right there in the middle of the page, underneath the title and picture:

 _Introducing Kindle MatchBook_

For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print- edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.

I'm not sure how they could have stated that any more clearly.

<comment><USER8> "For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print- edition purchases" is difficult to parse. It reads like list(4) instead of statement, list(3). It sounds as if you don't need to purchase print editions to get certain qualifying books cheaply on kindle.

I'm glad you found it clear and straightforward but a glance through the comments here shows that several other people were also confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I thought it was going to be a really tiny e-reader.

<comment><USER11> In one of the recent Elon Musk articles it mentioned that he reads on his iphone, so the notion isn't that far out. Not that the iphone is exactly tiny...

<comment><USER12> Elon Musk does this? THE NEW BIG THING

<comment><USER11> haha. No it just struck me as strange that someone clearly not constrained by finances would chose to read on an iphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a phenomenally important move; now, being an "ebook reader" or a "traditional reader" doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.

<comment><USER14> I think it's an interesting move, but not a "phenomenally important move". If I like print books but not ebooks, how does this affect me? It doesn't - <USER2> in the least. If I like both, I'm sort of happy - "Uh, I guess that's cool." I'm struggling to think of the person who needs both a printed copy of a book and an ebook version. The only person I can think of is someone with a textbook/learning book - you read the print version (that's why you bought it) and you use the ebook to quickly search and have at your fingertips. But for fiction? I can't see how this helps.

<comment><USER13> The value proposition of an ebook is that (on average) it's a better reading experience. More portable, more comfortable, instantly accessible.

The value proposition of a physical book is that is a physical artifact with concrete ownership; you can sell it, lend it, put it on a shelf for guests to see, forget it and rediscover it a decade later, or have your grandchildren find it in your attic in 80 years.

These two value sets are not inherently exclusive; there's no reason why you can't have both. But until now, the business model has prevented acquiring both hard and digital copies of everything from being economical.

<comment><USER15> _The value proposition of a physical book is that is a physical artifact with concrete ownership; you can sell it, lend it, put it on a shelf for guests to see, forget it and rediscover it a decade later, or have your grandchildren find it in your attic in 80 years._

This. I have a bookcase filled with "me". Those books constitute what molded me, and (if unread) what I hoped would. My longevity being in some doubt, my kids being very young, and my ability to tell them what's in my head limited, in large part I keep that bookcase filled and arranged in hopes that someday they will discover it, read the contents, and so absorb much of what their father is (or, at that future date, was).

E-books, while convenient, can be lost en masse in an instant. Heck, a bunch vanished last week from my tablet when I upgraded the operating system (most were recovered, but not all). My wife may be irritated at the space occupied by my paper books, yet therein is the point: they're not going away any time soon without real effort. Atoms persist; bits are fleeting.

<comment><USER16> My father lost a great deal of his physical books in a flood. If they were bits, he wouldn't have.

<comment><USER17> Unless they were DRMed and the provider had gone out of business, or cut off his access for other reasons, or...

<comment><USER16> In general, I don't buy DRMed books that I want to keep long term for just that reason.

I buy the physical book, cut the back off, scan it to a pdf and throw the book into the recycling bin.

<comment><USER18> Are you opposed to the DRM-stripping tools available? Buying a Kindle book and running it through Calibre seems like an easier route to take than scanning the physical book.

On the book scanning note though, do you have a special book scanner? I've never seen one outside of professional shops and turning the pages seems like a ginormous hassle.

<comment><USER16> You're right that using a flatbed scanner is simply unworkable for books.

I use a Fujitsu fi-5120C hopper-fed scanner (does both sides at once) and a QCM-8200M stack slicer. Those make short work of most books. The Fujitsu scanner software includes an OCR. I scan at 400dpi. If a page gets messed up, I use pdftk to merge in corrected scans.

I also use it to scan in small mountains of old tax records and documents I had stuffed everywhere.

The odd thing is I've come to prefer the pdf images, as they look like a book page (!). This works out great on ereaders with larger screens like the Kindle DX, or the Kobo Aura which has an HD eink display.

The regular Kindle is a bit squinty with a paperback sized PDF, but I bought some dimestore reading glasses which helps wit dat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are fundamental differences between a paper book and an ebook. I far prefer paper books when I'm using it as a reference, but love the convenience of ebooks when for when I'm reading through something. With technical books it is very common to read initially and reference later, or to read some sections, use others for reference etc.

With that in mind it has often been a tough choice as to whether to buy a paper copy of an electronic copy of a book. This is a very welcome change, and I'd gladly pay a few bucks for the convenience of being able to switch medias.

<comment><USER20> I'm a little surprised anybody could prefer paper books for reference...

For me, full-text search, bookmarks, and copy/paste make ebooks far superior for referencing. Not to mention I don't have a bunch of books cluttering my desk.

In any case, I completely agree this is awesome. I've been considering selling most of my old physical books and buying the ebook versions, and this will save me a bunch of money.

<comment><USER21> The almost stereotypical star trek DS9 scene where (anyone) is working on something complicated and has five PADDS on the desk all shuffling around.

Relatively few people own and simultaneously use multiple ereaders. Probably much more common in the future.

<comment><USER20> Ah, that makes sense. Referencing multiple ebooks away from a computer would be hugely inconvenient.

For me, using a book for reference almost always means I'm writing code and have the online Kindle app open in one or more browser tabs. I didn't even consider the use case where somebody would be referencing books away from the computer.

<comment><USER21> Even while on the computer its a surface area thing, which can be partially fixed by multiple monitors, but only partially.

So, I'd like to simultaneously see a PDF of the circuit board layout, the schematic diagram, the bill of materials, maybe some text commentary (best install C21 first, as U14 and R75 will be in the way later...) and maybe a datasheet of some critical ckt component. And if I'm doing something vaguely computer or microcontroller related I'm going to want another machine just for that. So 4 to 6 screens is reasonable. There are quad output video cards, another solution is I have three monitors on my desk both at work and at home with multiple computers connected to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's one of the best product names I've come across in a long while.

<comment><USER23> I was thinking the opposite. They've taken the analogy too far (Kindle, Kindle Fire, Matchbook).

With the historical associations that come with "burning" and "books", I've always found the analogy awkward.

<comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure that the name "Kindle" and all of the following fire-related names are intentionally referencing book-burning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I should dislike Amazon for closed-source software on Kindle and for its DRM, but... well, they have really nice offers.

<comment><USER26> Last I heard Kindle isn't closed-source, they just don't make it particularly easy to build- which was never a requirement for GPL.

<comment><USER25> Read: [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/kindle-swindle-source- cod...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/kindle-swindle-source-code)

They publish the very minimum the need to publish according to GPL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice! It always seemed odd that buying the paper version shouldn't also entitle me to the electronic version, or at least a significant discount.

<comment><USER21> Buy directly from oreilly or pragmatic (or probably others)

There's a different "deal" for every book, or so it seems, so I can't provide anything other than anecdotes WRT price. However both do the "radio button thing" on the main ordering page and you never pay full price for paper and ebook (at least never that I've seen)

I like how Pragmatic uploads the newest edition to my Dropbox if a newer edition is printed in the future. I don't believe they promise to do it in all cases, but it does at least occasionally happen. Always makes me smile, wanna buy some more from them... Cheap and effective marketing indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This was always my biggest hold up in fully adopting a kindle. I really enjoy having books to lend out or flip through - not a very strong suit for an ebook reader. Even with all the e-reader benefits I could never really make the switch because of this.

I wonder how many people felt the same way?

</comment><comment><USER29> I am turning on Amazon, it just feels fundamentally unfair that they destroyed the brick and mortar book industry precisely because they operate on the principal of never having to turn a profit. Its almost a monopolist abuse of the market...

<comment><USER30> Funny, Amazon is becoming quite like Wal-Mart, but we don't complain. When Wal-Mart comes to a town, the stampede away from the old shopping areas to the new Wal-Mart is alarmingly clear. However, with Amazon, their brick and mortar competitors are slowing fading away like apparitions as they are outmoded by new technology and trends.

Further, with Amazon we don't have to notice the low paid hordes that run the machination as these Morlocks are now in some unknown warehouse out of view toiling away to mail me my case of toilet paper so that I don't have to leave work early to purchase it through direct human contact.

<comment><USER31> What's the added value of a human giving you toilet paper? Now both you and the hypothetical toilet paper merchant can go and do more interesting things, maybe you'll meet at a gym, bar or social event instead of the random and sometimes awkward social experience of a commercial transaction.

The human gets replaced by a robot doing the menial task, win for everyone (as long as the pie expands and he gets another more meaningful job).

Most new jobs are basically service jobs, so maybe now instead of handling toilet paper he'll give you a Starbucks coffee..

<comment><USER32> > _The human gets replaced by a robot doing the menial task, win for everyone > (as long as the pie expands and he gets another more meaningful job)._

Your parenthetical aside is not a minor point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That's nice, but I really want this at brick and mortar stores. I want the great, curated experience of shopping at my local independent stores, but I also want the convenience of having an ebook version. Record companies already give away MP3 download codes along with records and I find it bizarre that publishers haven't followed along with a similar idea.

</comment><comment><USER34> It is important to note that this appears to apply to a limited selection of books.

<comment><USER35> FYI. I work with an Amazon author and he received an email asking if he wanted to "opt-in" to the program (which he did). So it's completely at the publisher's or author's discretion which I think is the right way of doing it.

Also the author has the ability to set the price for the Kindle version. It's dependent on the retail price but from what I've seen if the Kindle book is >$6 the author can do $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free. Then as the price gets lower (>$4) the options narrow to $1.99, $0.99 or free and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Free or discounted ebooks to replace past paper purchases -- with the name Matchbook it rings a bit too Fahrenheit 451.

Was there not a less creepy name available?

<comment><USER37> Matchbook = matching your physical book purchases with e-books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So basically if you bought a book in the past from Amazon, you may be able to get a kindle version for up to $3. Its not a bad deal for customers and additional revenue in Amazon's coffers for a minor service. I think they should make it a flat rate at $0.50 and drop the variable pricing.

<comment><USER11> Well it sounds like they are (maybe) already making a loss on it so I'm not sure dropping the price by a further 80% is feasible.

</comment></comment><comment> ezequiel-garzon Does anybody know if this will allow people outside the US to participate? By now I have bought books from Amazon US, UK, France and Spain. Also, will Amazon make available all the (eligible) titles I have purchased, in all the various international branches?

</comment><comment><USER39> Most of my Amazon print book purchases are from used book resellers like BetterWorldBooks. I wonder if this offer is available for all book purchases through their marketplace? If so, bravo! Finally, we're starting to get services that begin to match what our technology offers.

I'm a firm believer that people pirate not because "digital=free" in their minds, but because they know that getting sold hobbled products for the same price (even though they cost far less to distribute digitally) is a bum deal. It seems like the media industries are finally starting to recalibrate themselves.

</comment><comment><USER40> As an affiliate marketer, am I the only one that thought OP should of posted a amazon affiliate link and then did a case study on conversions/efficiency of having a link on the front page of HN? lol

</comment><comment><USER41> Oh hey, that was my intern project this summer! Well, not all of it of course, but I worked on the accounting system that will handle the MatchBook transactions.

</comment><comment><USER42> Can't wait for this feature. I am wondering if they would do the opposite: Offer paper books for a lower price to customers who own the kindle?

</comment><comment><USER43> It will be interesting to see if they also offer bundles at purchase time. "Buy the book for $12, or the book + ebook for $14."

<comment><USER44> This is how AutoRip works for mp3s. One album I purchased was actually _cheaper_ to get the CD + mp3 album vs just the mp3 album.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow, I can buy the book I own a second time, but at a low price and in the known low-quality, no-human-ever-even-looked-at-it OCRed version. Great.

I'm buying a lot of Kindle books, but I feel that I shouldn't because peddling such low quality shovelware is not something I feel I should encourage in any way.

</comment><comment><USER46> I had always wondered when a program similar to DVD tiles would arise, where the product came with a coupon to get the electronic version free. I'll take it either way, I love hard bounds but there are many times where they are not best suited for environments the Kindle thrives in.

</comment><comment><USER47> Barnes and Noble should have gotten here first. Think of the difference "Would you like the ebook with that?" at checkout could have made (in terms of building Nook, incremental store memberships and so on). Instead, they bet on the agency model and focused on the wrong things.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if there will be any special treatment for gifts (I'm guessing there won't be). My mom has bought me many books. She probably has no interest in having the Kindle versions of them, but I definitely do.

</comment><comment><USER49> They have been doing that with music for a while. I bought a cd from Amazon long time ago and last year got an email from them telling me it was available to download for free.

</comment><comment><USER50> I really hope we see something like this for apps and not having to re- purchase stuff just because your new phone or tablet isn't the same as your old one.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is similar to what Oreilly is doing. They offer ebook upgrades for any paperback book you (claim to) own for USD 4.99.

</comment><comment><USER52> At first I was excited, then I remembered that these kind of deals are not for non-US citizens :(

</comment><comment><USER53> Disappointed after reading the thread here.

At first look, I thought it would be more along the lines of, "snapshot a few randomly chosen pages from the book with your mobile camera, to prove that you've bought the book in the past and still own/have it now, and then you automaticaly get the ebook version really cheap as a result."

<comment><USER49> How will that prove that they bought it from Amazon? This promo will be probably tied with Amazon account and purchase history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Took long enough.</comment>


Apple bringing secure email to the masses with iOS 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rakkhis.com/2011/08/apple-bringing-secure-email-to-masses.html#.TkFfhY9EHFU.hackernews <comment><USER2> "Sending the wrong contents to the wrong person (s)" I _need_ technology to avoid sending drunken messages at 4am on saturday night saying "I'll do evertyhing ot gte U bcak!" to my boss ...</comment>


Proof of Luck: fairly distributed coin with no mining (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=442626.0 <comment><AUTHOR> More recent discussion: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1087219.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1087219.0)</comment>


To Smuggle More Drugs, Traffickers Go Under the Sea - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/world/americas/drug-smugglers-pose-underwater-challenge-in-caribbean.html?_r=1&hp <comment><USER2> My idea for when I became an evil criminal mastermind was always to use a kind of computer controller drogue which would attach to the bottom of cargo ships:

\- construct a buoyancy-controllable drogue which would magnetically attach to a cargo ship, then hang behind and below it during transit

\- load up the pseudoephedrine, or whatever, in (say) shanghai or during a stop somewhere near a supplier

\- wait until the ship came near the US, then release the drogue offshore and pick it up with a boat

Seems almost foolproof, although I'd imagine marine capable technology is harder than my web developer's brain is envisaging, and you'd be betting lots of money that your little parasite didn't fall off.

I'm probably overthinking this, however, and you'd just pay someone onboard to keep some suitcases in their cabin, or something.

<comment><USER3> You are missing the fuel -- it takes a lot of fuel to drag that parasite across the ocean and it would almost certainly be noticed by the crew of the ship as shipping is a low margin, high volume business and costs are closely watched.

<comment><USER4> If that parasite is designed slightly aerodynamic (with a total volume of lets say 5-10 tons) and you have a vessel with 100k+ GT, i dont think that the difference in fuel costs will be noticable - the difference due to tide/winds etc. will be much bigger.

<comment><USER5> Aerodynamics are good. Hydrodynamics are more appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >More troubling for American officials is their belief that these vessels could be used by terrorists to transport attackers or weapons, though they emphasize that no use of submersibles by militants has been detected.

When in doubt, terrorists.

<comment><USER7> by fighting the war on drugs these traitors are advancing terrorism! by countering terrorsim these scoundrels divert precious resources from the the nation's war on drugs!

whats needed is another agency to resolve this conflict.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before going to med school I was a Navy officer and my first deployment was counter-drug ops. We got a tour of the Columbian collection of recovered smuggling vehicles. This is definitely more advanced than anything I saw or heard about. I'm not sure our VBSS teams (1) would even be able to board such a vessel, assuming ROTHR (2, 3) ever found it, which I can't imagine it would.

I also did some in-class papers on subs in college. This strikes me as more advanced in many ways than John Holland's original designs.(4)

\---

(1) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visit,_board,_search,_and_seizu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visit,_board,_search,_and_seizure)

(2) <http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/an-tps-71.htm>

(3) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar>

(4) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Holland_(SS-1)>

</comment><comment><USER9> In case you'd like to look at some pretty pictures of these submarines, I recommend this quality Wired article:

<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/03/ff_drugsub/all/>

<comment><USER10> Vice magazine also made a really good documentary about narcosubs: <http://www.vice.com/motherboard/colombian-narcosubs> \- only 30 mins long and worth a watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _More troubling for American officials is their belief that these vessels could be used by terrorists to transport attackers or weapons_

One more reason to legalize and regulate drugs. The independent contractors making these subs would fold without their primary clients: the drug cartels. No more money for R&D.

<comment><USER12> I doubt anyone intends to transport attackers or weapons in this manner. The 9/11 hijackers had valid visas and Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh were Americans. They didn't need a submarine to bring bombs or terrorists to the US. They are already here.

The line in the article is just a way to spread fear, justifying the outlay of millions of dollars to patrol for drug boats. Nobody is scared of drugs anymore, so I imagine funding is harder to come by. Terrorism, though, is still scary apparently. (Look at the TSA. The thought of what incompetent government agency will be created after the next attack is _frightening_.)

<comment><USER11> I agree with you. My point still stands, though. If we are concerned about terrorists having access to this, shut off its R&D money and gain other societal benefits (I say as a non-drug user).

Of course, why choose a method that would reduce the police state and its associated costs when we can choose one that will increase them. :(

<comment><USER13> What makes you believe that legalizing drugs would automatically cause the cartels to stop doing what they do? Instead of being smugglers they'll be tax evaders; they won't stop overnight, if at all. In general, in poorer countries there will always be an incentive to get rich by illegal means, simply because there's not much else.

Also, you could hypothesize that, conversely, the subs builders would re- purpose them for more nefarious ends if the drug smuggling incentive is taken away.

<comment><USER11> _..the subs builders would re-purpose them for more nefarious ends if the drug smuggling incentive is taken away._

I suppose the subs could be sold "on the cheap" if the cartel business went away. There is probably some danger there, but probably not as much danger as 1) a lot more of these getting built and 2) the US strengthening its police state to protect us from these subs.

The second is my real concern. Our rights have already been ludicrously eroded anywhere near a border. I really don't want added to that "anywhere near a waterway that can be reached by ocean." I guess that those of us in northern Utah and Nevada would be OK, since our water goes into the Great Salt Lake.

I'll tolerate some risk of a terror attack that I'm less likely to be involved in a terror attack than I am to drown in my bathtub[1] rather than the degradation of my civil liberties that the police state engenders.

1\. [http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of- terroris...](http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism- should) (using the numbers that assume attacks would have succeeded if we weren't in the semi-police state we are)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nixon's War on Drugs is lost. It's time to offer terms.

</comment><comment><USER15> This was on HN a few weeks ago. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508> What's the obsession with cartel technology?

<comment><USER3> What you don't want to build submarines and be paid in hookers and cash?

<comment><USER15> Touché

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nop, it will always go by air, cheaper, faster, anywhere.

Learjet is the preferred brand. A ton to your doorstep. Delivered with class.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if an enterprising naval architect somehow obtained the plans for a US or German WWI or WWII sub. The diesel/battery technology is the same, and without weapons systems, using today's technology for nav, etc. the task is really only one of hull fabrication.

</comment><comment><USER18> Working on this kind of hack sounds much more compelling than coding for an overhyped Internet startup.

To my mind, solving an impossible sounding challenge is larger than ethics.

<comment><USER19> There are plenty of impossible-sounding challenges that don't require ethical breaches. May I suggest that you try to find one of those?

<comment><USER20> What's the ethical breach in using technology to route around bad laws?

<comment><USER21> > What's the ethical breach in using technology to route around bad laws?

The fact that individuals decide on their own which are "bad laws", but without going to the trouble to defeat them in court. If a law is defeated in court, this remains a country of laws, not people. But if people decide on their own which laws to obey, it becomes thinly disguised anarchy.

That's all. No big deal.

<comment><USER20> _this remains a country of laws, not people_

Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible to me. Personally, I like people a lot more than I like laws.

 _it becomes thinly disguised anarchy._

Works for me. But, I believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and attribute no particular special status to "government" and "laws", so maybe I'm coming at this from a different angle.

<comment><USER21> >> this remains a country of laws, not people

> Yeah, that sounds pretty horrible to me. Personally, I like people a lot > more than I like laws.

You really missed the point of that aphorism -- it's meant to elevate shared values over individual values when dealing with other people. Imagine a community with ten members, nine of whom believe that stealing is wrong, one who believes stealing is right. Either the community becomes hostage to the one thief, or it makes a rule against stealing that everyone must obey. Obviously the second approach is best, and at that point the community becomes one ruled by laws, not people.

>> it becomes thinly disguised anarchy.

> Works for me. But, I believe in the sovereignty of the individual, and > attribute no particular special status to "government" and "laws" ...

Yes. You're an anarchist. For me, the existence of governments and laws is the lesser of two evils. The alternative is no governments and laws, but the same number of people, i.e. the fascism of unchecked individuality.

<comment><USER20> The fascism of unch.. oooohkaaay. Right. Gotcha. Sounds good, I'll be on the lookout for that. Thanks for the warning.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Marketing to China - <AUTHOR> http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.822899.9

<comment><USER2> not sure what products/software are you selling, as a guide you can do these;

\- having a chinese version of your website/store is a must, the larger portion of the china market still use chinese as their first language. pls get local chinese n not some foreign translator, it an't the same.

\- forums and micro-sites as huge there, you need to cross site promote your items. all these websites have huge followers which you can convert quite easily if you done your promotion correctly.

\- advertising on the local search engine/portal. google is not that large in china, baidu, sina, etc are bigger there, know where the searched traffic comes from.

\- if you have actual products, local endorsement come in very useful. the internet still just appeal to the younger generation, the older generation still use TV as their primarily source of information. with a local celebrity endorsement, acceptance of your product is much easier.</comment>


How did you launch your service startup? - <AUTHOR> I have a goal to launch my recruitment startup b on Tuesday next week but i need help on;
1. I have limited marketing budget, do i go from one company to another when starting?
2. I am bootstrapping my startup and what are the chances some established company can like and steal my idea.
3) Regarding recruitment, who are the key decision makers in a company.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> We have been trying to launch our startup for about 2 years, which is a very hard thing to type out or admit. It's easy to assume that if we haven't done it yet it may never work, but we believe in the idea and don't see anyone else trying to do it.

> 1\. I have limited marketing budget, do i go from one company to another > when starting?

We ran out of runway a while ago and sadly we never got to spend a dime on marketing. Trade shows and conferences can be a good investment because you can get a real idea of how people are reacting to you. This is why we know we have made mistakes with our launch because we get feedback at shows. You can also identify product market fit better because people might say they support your product and it's the best, but you can find out exactly what is keeping them from signing a contract.

Without a lot of spare money to pay other people to market, you'll be forced to do the grind yourself. Get on the phone or start sending emails reaching out to prospective clients and customers. Find out if they understand your value proposition and if not what's wrong with it. It sounds crappy, and it can be, but you need to set a goal of making X contacts per day and start your growth. If you don't want to do this you'll have to pay someone at least $500-$1000 a month to do it for you.

> I am bootstrapping my startup and what are the chances some established > company can like and steal my idea.

If your idea can be stolen then your model is likely not great. For example if you're goal is to make a little widget and sell it that's probably not going to work very well right now since China will simply clone it and undercut you. For our product we stand out by integrating with other companies in a way nobody else is doing, and it's less likely a competitor would want to put in all that leg work just to become on par with us.

> Regarding recruitment, who are the key decision makers in a company.

That depends on the company. Some companies have "HR firewalls" where nobody can get involved with the company unless HR okays it, usually because they foot the bill for unemployment and severance, so they make more if they can reduce these metrics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking time to respond and your answers have been helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You probably should have figured out most of these things before you started. Can you leverage your network to get you going?</comment>


How many formats do I need for HTML5 video? - <AUTHOR> http://zencoder.com/encoder-blog/2010/10/06/how-many-formats-do-i-need-for-html5-video/

<comment><USER2> I consider the HTML5 bible to be Mark Pilgrim's work-in-progress Dive Into HTML5 book, which is available online.

The part of the book that specifically covers this is:

<http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#what-works>

It's a great book with frequent updates and it covers everything, including local storage.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently started doing some tech-related screencasts for our clients (photographers) at <http://bigfolio.tv>.

I wanted it to be all HTML5 and I'm still experimenting. I ended up doing 3 H.264 versions (a large .mov and a large/small .m4v) and an Ogg file. Just to be safe, I put a couple download links for people.

I haven't had any complaints but I did notice that older version of iOS can't play it. Haven't really tested Android.

Getting them all converted and put on S3 is quite a PITA. Another thing I discovered–if you're putting Ogg files on S3, you have to make sure to set the mime-type or FireFox won't play it.

<comment><USER4> .mov will only play in the Safaris, not even Chrome.

Better to use a .mp4 and .ogv (or webm) if you're want to go pure HTML5 and have the best results across browsers. The mobile browsers have additional restrictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just ran into the mobile issue with file bitrates being too high. There are a lot of "gotchas" when doing html5 videos, but not too many that would scare you away from using it, you just need to test for a lot of cases.

</comment><comment><USER6> If I were doing this today, I would choose just x264. Deliver it via the video tag, with flash as the fallback for firefox.

</comment><comment><USER7> Too many.

<comment><USER8> No, it's not; video is complicated, and it's a lot easier in aggregate to do multiple transcodes on the server side than to expect every client to be able to a) play back any arbitrary bitstream or b) transcode on the fly. In a ideal world, we'd all be serving up 10-bit 4:4:4:4 YUV and your computer would be able to handle it (to say nothing of your phone); but until that happy day of unlimited bandwidth and free cycles, multiple bitstreams is hardly an onerous cost to pay.

<comment><USER9> That depends on your perspective. If you're producing and serving one ready- made video at a time, say for a video tutorial, maybe converting to multiple formats isn't much of a burden. If you're _rendering_ videos, say for raytracing demos, and they take a lot of processing power to render and you have many of them, it's a significant burden to recode all of them multiple ways. Given that there is one way that is already well established and works reliably almost everywhere -- Flash -- I don't have much sympathy for HTML5 advocates who can't offer a solution that isn't at least as easy and customisable as what we've had for years already, nor for a certain brand of hardware that makes a point of not playing by the same rules as everyone else in the game.

<comment><USER10> I don't know what you mean by "customizable", but the _easy_ solution is to just use Baseline H.264 with a modest bit rate. It plays on everything mobile, plays native in many browsers, and plays in Flash everywhere else. Ogg is unnecessary, because everything that doesn't support H.264 natively supports Flash.

<comment><USER9> > It plays on everything mobile, plays native in many browsers, and plays in > Flash everywhere else.

H.264 seems to be the most widely supported format today, if you don't get screwed by the whole patent mess. A significant class of users do, though, if only because they use OSS browsers that are never likely to support a royalty- encumbered format. And of course, if you're distributing H.264 videos you probably need a lawyer one way or another.

As for customisation, Flash offers all kinds of possibilities that HTML5 video just doesn't, from custom controls to copy protection. Some people might not care, but they're probably the same ones who object to table-based layout and then expect you to write 20 lines of CSS and import three different IE- specific stylesheets just to get a trivial layout. Check out past comments from people who work at places like Google/YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a simple way to do live streaming with WebM yet?

</comment><comment><USER12> No recommendation on the multiple bitrate settings? Anybody?

</comment><comment><USER13> which of those formats can ffmpeg convert to?

<comment><USER14> but keep in mind all converts are lossy.</comment></comment>


Web Hooks and the Programmable World of Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw8EPrIjCOc

<comment><USER2> "simple mechanics creating rich dynamics"

great concept</comment>


OPPO Next-Generation Hybrid Zoom Technology - <AUTHOR> https://sparrowsnews.com/2020/08/18/oppo-next-generation-hybrid-zoom-technology/ <comment><AUTHOR> OPPO next-generation hybrid zoom technology, stepped zoom drives the future of imaging</comment>


Google is still illegal (in China) by putting server in Hong Kong - <AUTHOR> http://jsms.me/%E9%9A%8F%E6%84%9F/google-is-still-illegal-in-china-by-putting-server-in-hong-kong

<comment><USER2> Also it seems that after July 1st 1997 moving something to Hong Kong is not a particularly good way to escape Chinese jurisdiction.</comment>


What's the worst that could happen? Ask Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://fun2rent.posterous.com/63033754

<comment><USER2> This article touches on a few areas in owners renting out their assets for profit. Not only could one be devastated by a ransacked home but also if a renter would trash a boat rented through a peer to peer site. My question is can vacation, and room sharing sites provide insurance to protect owners?</comment>


Ask HN: Tech in Detroit. Worth a move for interesting opportunity? - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys,
A disclaimer: this is a question of curiosity. I'm far too happy where I am at now to up and move.
I was wondering if the tech scene in Detroit had blown up enough that it was realistic to go up and get a job and actually be well compensated.
With the news of Techstars coming, other offices already there, and a budding co-op community economy I see there to be a lot of potential to save that city. Growing up so close to DTW, I always have had a soft spot for it. I genuinely believe the city can be salvaged. The question is is the infrastructure there to support someone with our skills to help it grow and become a new place. <comment><USER2> Rent in downtown is fairly stupid 900+ for a microscopic single bedroom. Which yes is better then the valley, but I digress. That's in the more "high rise" apartments.

The area around Wayne State (the local college) is fairly in line with the surrounding suburbs, but the crime rate is very high. There are few infrastructure problems, as most the inhabitants are college students who bring in a lot of out of city money.

If you are willing to move past that you can find places EXTREMELY cheap. But that's where the infrastructure problems come into play. Parts of the city do look like a blight stricken war zone, it has improved a lot.

:.:.:

That being said. The suburbs are fantastic. Also the "Metro Detroit Area" is massive, literally the picture of urban sprawl.

It formed naturally as small farming towns grew and collided which each other in the post WW2 boom. Which is very nice as it means traveling 10-15 miles puts you in an entirely different income demographic, entertainment, food, decorative surroundings.

Most the start ups I currently know of are located in the Southfield/Ferndale/Royal Oak area. With some relatively closer to Wayne State (and some downtown). That's the main area of current economic development/explosion that's happening the city.

Royal Oak is undergoing a slow transformation into a strange 20-30 demo resturant/entertainment scene. And Ferndale has become the unofficial center of the Metro-LGBT community.

:.:.:

Also this being said OU has a fantastic computer security program. UofM continues to one of thee graduate schools nationwide. MSU always has strong showings. MTU further north continues to churn out great students (I went there myself). And University of Waterloo (major CS school) is literally right across the river from Detroit (kinda).

Saying the engineering and technical base of the city is strong is largely an understatement.

<comment><USER3> How does Ann Arbor fit into the community? By all accounts Ann Arbor is lovely and Google Maps reports it is about 40 minutes away from Southfield/Ferndale/Royal Oak.

<comment><USER2> Ann Arbor is great. Its very much a stereotypical liberal college town. Public transit is fine, the buss system works, and its public busses, not a lot of glowing things to say.

The music/art scene is very large, as well as the academic one with UofM being what it is.

Low crime rate, higher taxes, property I expect isn't cheap when compared to other Metro-communites but lower compared to the west coast. Very gentrified area.

The entire westside of the metro area has been experiencing very solid growth with the economic recovery. Largely since its one of the few direction the urban sprawl can still grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Downtown Detroit is definitely gaining speed. If you compare it to where it was just three years ago the difference is startling.

Now having two accelerators downtown (Bizdom and TechStars) I think its going to siphon off some of the top U of M and MSU graduates that are normally going to Silicon Valley.

Best proof is that its getting impossible to find an apartment downtown, rents are jumping 30-40% and buildings have two year waiting lists. More apartments are being developed but they literally can't get them built out fast enough.</comment>


Smalltalk on Mobile (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://simberon.blogspot.com/2017/11/mobile-smalltalk.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Too bad he's not releasing code for the smalltalk VM. I would LOVE to program for cell phones using smalltalk. The whole pharo VM is like 60 megabytes or something insanely low.

<comment><USER3> The VM is VisualWorks, a commercial? product.

<comment><USER4> The development VM is VW, for deployment on mobile he uses a custom VM. He also uses a completely separate custom class hierarchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also Objective-Smalltalk [1] which is ahead of time compiled and uses the ObjC runtime.

[1] [http://objective.st/](http://objective.st/)

</comment><comment><USER6> How difficult is it to write a VM for Smalltalk? Assume no little to no optimisations for simplicity's sake.

<comment><USER7> Not that hard, the Blue Book last chapters are a description on how to implement a VM.

[http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html](http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr/FreeBooks.html)

You can make use of a reference counting with cycle collector as basic GC implementation, without any JIT, for example.

<comment><USER6> I kind of figured, given the elegance and simplicity of the language we are talking about.

When you say "the Blue Book", do you mean _Inside Smalltalk: Volume I_?

<comment><USER7> No, I mean "Smalltalk-80: The Language and its Implementation".

The Xerox PARC books about Smalltalk-80 are known by their cover colors, green, red and blue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pointless in the sense it is just a game in a proprietary development Env which may be Smalltalk and cannot be extended.

What we to do. Play the game ?

<comment><USER9> It's at least interesting from a technical point of view that this is possible at all. Who knows, maybe it will inspire someone to make a free implementation.</comment></comment>


Interactive spin sequence of NASA's Pluto imagery - <AUTHOR> http://pluto.ginlane.com

<comment><USER2> I'm amazed just to think that I can rotate a 3D image of Pluto, so far away. And to think this image was taken so recently. I'm really living in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Review Our Startup - KEE - <AUTHOR>

Hey All
Our new App called "Kee" went up on the iphone app store the other day. We're keen to get your thoughts on it. (it's free)
I worked in the Israeli Occupied Territories during the Second Intifada (long story), and while I was there, I became fascinated with the ancient graffiti scratched on artefacts in the West Bank. I used to wonder who scratched it on, and why they did it.
Kee aims to give people the ability to create overlapping virtual graffiti with the answer to all those questions. Functionally, the app attaches content and thoughts to spaces and objects, access to which can be set to public, friends only or private.
We basically want to make the physical world a communication medium, where you can open a Kee Map, see what people have said about the space you're in, and make comments yourself. So far, one of the things that we've enjoyed doing most is dropping Kees on street art so that people can comment on it and see where to find it. (screenshots of this at http://appsto.com/kee)
Tell us what you like and what you don't. Our web page (that needs alot of work) is http://www.keeapp.com. <comment><USER2> I don't have an iPhone anywhere near me. I'd love to see a video demonstration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. We're working on that at the moment. It will be done after Christmas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> clickable <http://www.keeapp.com></comment>


Show HN: I made an ncurses SPV bitcoin client: bitc - <AUTHOR>

https://github.com/bit-c/bitc
bitc is a thin SPV bitcoin client.

  * 100% C code,
  * support for linux and mac platforms,
  * console based: uses ncurses,
  * home grown async network i/o stack,
  * home grown poll loop,
  * home grown bitcoin engine,
  * supports encrypted wallet,
  * supports Tor/Socks5 proxy,
  * multi-threaded,
  * valgrind clean.
 You'll need basic dev skills to install it: check-out the code, install dependencies then build. It's all in the README file. I'm interested in all kinds of feedback you may have: feature requests, bugs, etc. Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> It looks like this: [http://i.imgur.com/IJJU14s.png](http://i.imgur.com/IJJU14s.png)</comment>


Product Roadmaps, Made Simple - <AUTHOR> https://www.productstash.io/ <comment><USER2> The app is not working. It says: `jQuery is not defined`</comment>


Bolts: collection of low-level libraries for mobile apps from Parse and Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2014/01/30/let-s-bolt/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to see that the "Tasks" of the Android library are pretty similar to JS Promises, and the Futures and Promises of frameworks like Akka. All of which do help simplify and structure concurrent code.

There are people trying to play with Akka and Scala for Android as well, though it's an awkward fit: Scala's run-time library is large enough to strain size limits on an Android app. (On older versions of Android, pre-Jellybean, you need to have Proguard evict unused methods and classes just to get something small enough to fit.)

That said, using with the tools of more modern JVM-based languages can tighten up your code in all sorts of ways. An experiment along those lines is here:

[https://github.com/rst/positronic_net](https://github.com/rst/positronic_net) [http://rst.github.io/positronic_docs.html](http://rst.github.io/positronic_docs.html)

<comment><USER3> It's not limited to Scala though.

Google copied the limits of their .dex file format from Java .class files, except that the limit is (of course) per class in Java, while it is per application on Android.

People could have expected that they didn't do something this stupid, but hey, saving two bytes per .dex file was more important I guess.

They still haven't fixed this. The thing fixed in Jellybean was a different bug in their code where they didn't deduplicate parent interface types.</comment></comment>


I, Pencil - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/resources/i-pencil/ <comment><USER2> Begin quote

Ideas are most powerful when they're wrapped in a compelling story. Leonard's main point—economies can hardly be "planned" when not one soul possesses all the know-how and skills to produce a simple pencil—unfolds in the enchanting words of a pencil itself. Leonard could have written "I, Car" or "I, Airplane," but choosing those more complex items would have muted the message. No one person—repeat, no one, no matter how smartor how many degrees follow his name—could create from scratch a small, everyday pencil, let alone a car or an airplane.

End quote

This bothers me a lot because I want to support economic liberalization but I can't.

Something I didn't think about even a few months ago is that people are individuals. They have their own hopes and dreams. A CEO is an individual. They do what is best for them. Often, what is best for them isn't what's best for the corporation in the long term much less what is good for the world. Project managers are also individuals. Sometimes, success of a project will be detrimental to its manager's career.

I'm sorry for bringing this up because like they say I relatively learned of principal agent problem and so I see it everywhere (sort of like how you see a vw beetle everywhere if you count vw beetles driving in the road).

When I talk about the defects of capitalism, people call me (humorously I hope) commie scum. But that's just complacency to say "the alternative is worse" and it is like saying "you may not like me but you must vote for me because otherwise this other guy you hate more will win the election". It leaves a bad taste in my mouth just like pencil lead or this ridiculous article that our history professor forced us to read in a college level history course.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Web Design - <AUTHOR> http://worldnet-shipping.com

<comment><USER2> There is a very strange bug with Firefox on Mac. Sometimes when the slide transitions, the explanation text appears to the right of the arrow, instead of overlayed on top of the image. This causes a horizontal scroll bar to appear. Sometimes I even see all of the explanation boxes.

This will probably be nasty to debug; I can't even figure out what the exact circumstances are that cause it. I thought it might have to do with restarting at the beginning of the animation, but I'm not sure.

For the design itself, perhaps reduce the font size of the navigation text on the right? It would offset it more from the body text, and then I could view all of the navigation without having to scroll.

<comment><USER3> It also does this for me with OmniWeb (WebKit based). It probably is something fairly fundamentally wrong in the CSS or HTML, that hopefully can be highlighted with something like a CSS validator?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just finished this for a client. Hulu-esque theme / mimic. Slideshow powered by some custom jQuery + scrollTo plugin. Backend is Drupal. Best viewed in IE7. What do you think?

<comment><USER4> The slideshow is broken in Safari 3.2.1 on Leopard.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks..haven't really checked safari yet</comment></comment></comment>