The Most Innovative Companies In Big Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies/2014/industry/big-data?utm_source=facebook <comment><USER2> the right title should be: "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies In Big Data according to their marketing team." The article I would like to read is about the real advantages they made, not just "they are applying BIG DATA to the X,Y industries". No description on the size of the problem nor the advantages or details.(I'm especially looking at you AYASDI... )

I've been to Big Data conferences where the main application was mean and standard deviation on a huge datasets, I'm just sick of companies inflating the Big Data bubble (and this comes from a "data scientist")

<comment><USER3> _I 've been to Big Data conferences where the main application was mean and standard deviation on a huge datasets, I'm just sick of companies inflating the Big Data bubble (and this comes from a "data scientist")_

"Data science" is a bizarre job description to me. Some companies' data science teams are doing work that could be done in Excel, and others are doing sophisticated machine learning research. In many companies, though, it's a watered-down version of the (extinct, sadly) R&D job description. I've heard people opine that 95% of "data scientists" have never implemented anything more sophisticated than an SGD regression, and it wouldn't surprise me.

Granted, you can get some neat insights and visualizations with off-the-shelf tools, but I still consider it important to know how the algorithms actually work and what the basic assumptions are. For example, you can _usually_ use linear regression for 2-class classification problems (as opposed to the mathematically more correct logistic model, since probabilities are in [0, 1] and linear models diverge at the boundary) get a reasonable predictive model, but it's worth knowing when (and why) that short-cut breaks down.

In software, you hear "data scientist syndrome" used to describe people who have a lot of short job tenures because they (a) leave if there isn't interesting work for them, and (b) tend to be the first laid off, not because they're bad but because R&D is first to bleed when things go bad. The software industry forces you to choose between short-term job security (people doing interesting work are most exposed to organizational changes) and long-term career health (people _not_ doing interesting work turn into dinosaurs). It stands to reason that the selection process for organizational credibility (favoring tenure) would be something other than deep knowledge of data science (which requires a stream of interesting work, and the behavioral correlates such as job volatility).

It's sad that the typical corporate culture of reliable mediocrity, at the expense of excellence, has also learned to use the vocabulary of "Big Data". Reality: truly Big Data (> 10 TB) is a huge pain in the ass. It's what you have to deal with when there is too much noise, or the model's essential complexity is too high, to get a good model out of "small data".

<comment><USER4> Curious- why would you ever use linear regression for binary classification?

Logistic regression can be implemented as linear regression predicting the input to the logistic function.

<comment><USER5> From my experience, it's easier to explain linear coefficients. Also, at least in R, linear regression tends to run faster than logistic regression.

<comment><AUTHOR> Might be a good read [http://mrvar.fdv.uni- lj.si/pub/mz/mz1.1/pohar.pdf](http://mrvar.fdv.uni- lj.si/pub/mz/mz1.1/pohar.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> eh. not including Google in a list of big data companies is of similar kinda ridiculousness as not giving the Nobel Peace prize to Gandhi. It doesn't take anything away from Google/Gandhi, it just marks the list/prize as farcical.

<comment><USER7> Just for context, Google was #1 on their general "most innovative" list. I think it's pretty common to try to have a variety of companies topping different lists, even if one company really should be at the top of them all. That doesn't make this list any more accurate, but it might have been what they were thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does "Big Data" even mean? Personally I think of it as some kind of disruptive synergistic paradigm. Is it a sea change or a holistic approach? Perhaps some kind of seamless mission-critical win-win? I hate when people use overloaded terms that can be twisted to mean anything at all. To not put Google in this list clearly shows it's just a random collection of companies, or maybe based on advertising sales to the magazine.

<comment><USER5> Well said. To me, the definition of 'Big Data' is data so big that that the computation time is much greater than the data analysis/munging time. It has nothing to do with how complex, robust, etc. the analysis is. Big data is really not that sexy, but it's a fad that I'm riding because people are hiring for data analysis skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am bit surprised to see both Palantir and Factual missing b/c 1. they are doing interesting work, and 2. they probably spend a pretty penny on PR.

<comment><USER3> Factual has smart people at every level (a rarity in the "tech" world) and seems to be able to market itself organically to top developers. They have an extremely competent core team that people want to work with. This doesn't require a PR budget.

It's the Knewtons of the world that have to spend millions on PR. Actually, Knewton is solidly OK at hiring good people but they usually leave within a year because of the management.

<comment><USER10> I noticed several of your comments criticizing Knewton. Could you expand a bit? I am not related to Knewton at all, but interested in ed tech. If you don't want to say it in public, I'd appreciate if you could email me.

<comment><USER3> I'll post half of it publicly and email you the other half.

Their management is known throughout the industry to be unethical. Some recruiters refuse to work with them, and you'll hear some amazing stories if you hang around New York. They've existed for almost 6 years, pivoted constantly and recklessly, and delivered next to nothing. They're great at using the founder's family connections to raise money and get partnerships, but they treat engineers like commodities and have extreme architectural instability. There's also one high-profile case of the execs spending months trying to ruin the reputation of someone after he left.

Ultimately, their true mission is fire teachers. That's a really terrible mission, if you ask me. Obviously, the engineers and data scientists (Knewton's management is scum, but they have good people at lower levels) are being told a different story about "democratizing education", but their real mission is to make teachers obsolete while making a few ed-pub incumbents (like Pearson) very wealthy.

They're really damaging the reputation of the ed-tech space. It's a shame, because there are some really good companies trying to advance the field, and they're struggling to raise money due to the behavior (and declining reputation) of a large no-longer-startup that has nothing to do with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excuse my marketing terminology but I think splunk was only successful because they were the only enterprise "big data" player present on the way to the peak of inflated expectations[0]. Technology wise, it's easy to poke holes in and not even valuable with free indexing tools like elasticsearch[1] coming out and being paired with logstash. And if you think a distributed inverted index for syslogs is the future of real time analytics, you're probably stuck in 2009.

0: [http://berglondon.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/trough.png](http://berglondon.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/07/trough.png)

1: [http://www.elasticsearch.org](http://www.elasticsearch.org)

</comment><comment><USER12> The slant in the list is companies doing interesting things with big data or applications from unexpected areas like weather and mapping it onto things like shopping habits. What I don't understand is how Splunk is on the list since operational data and business intelligence has been a historical fit for big data. Nothing new. IBM is evangelizing big data. A bit of a weak one, I thought but the Smarter Cities initiatives doing some good work. Some interesting companies on the list and in the comments section.

</comment><comment><USER13> A bit surprised not to see Google in that list.</comment>


No Surprises (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2009/05/01/no-surprises/ <comment><USER2> Does "No Surprises" mean I won't find unwanted Firefox extensions pre- installed by Mozilla that are impossible to remove and only serve to reduce privacy by opening up new unwanted avenues to access my input and broadcast it over third party non-mozilla private networks? Shouldn't I at least be able to opt-out of a private video service running on a third party server that I have no terms of use or privacy policy covering?

"All changes must be 'opt-in', meaning the user must take non-default action to enact the change."

Right, just like I "opt-ed" in to Firefox Hello.

I can't even "opt out" of Firefox Hello!

"Uninstalling the add-on restores the user's original settings if they were changed.

I wish. Just goes to show that they're pushing an uneven playing field where Firefox Extensions are auto-installed, can't be removed, and can break all the rules. But hey, at least everyone ELSE can't break all the rules.

Funny that they won't even apply this philosophy to their own products and services that they are forcing into user installations without an opt-in or opt-out.

<comment><USER3> Firefox Hello _is_ opt-in. If you don't use it, it will just be a button in your toolbar, it will do absolutely nothing before you opt-in, by making a call.

As a bonus: You can make video calls without ever having to create an account.

<comment><USER2> >"Firefox Hello is opt-in. If you don't use it, it will just be a button in your toolbar, "

Are you being serious right now?

Ok, how about this, We auto-install the Ask Toolbar on every single Firefox installation, 100%, everyone gets the Toolbar.

But don't worry!

If you don't click on the Toolbar which automatically installs and appears in your browser, you won't use it!

It's "Opt in"!

The funny part is, can you tell me how to uninstall Firefox Hello completely?

Mozilla's NO SURPRISES policy says I should be able to uninstall unwanted extensions with no loss to my browser.

So, can you help me achieve NO SURPRISES by removing the surprising and unwanted third party Hello feature?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but mildly put, your definition of opt-in seems to be an unrealistic one. If you think Mozilla should ask whether people want to have a change or not for every single change, then that's your prerogative, it has nothing to do with practical software development though.

<comment><USER2> My definition of opt-in is:

"Click INSTALL to install this third party software"

I did not realize that this community had become so adverse to traditional software that asking a user before installing new software was now considered "revising definitions" and weird.

That's all I want: To be asked before third party software is automatically installed.

We used to call that adware/malware when a company bundled third party software without permission.

Now I guess we call it normal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I consider the way they hid the "block third party cookies" option a surprise. Mozilla is so dependent on Google and other companies' money, they can't be completely trusted to offer the best privacy out of the box.

The fact that Safari has 3rd party cookies disabled by default whereas Firefox hasn't... is both telling and sad.

<comment><USER5> Just checked, got totally surprised. Firefox basically overwrote my previous setting on third-party cookies. As you said the new checkbox is very much hidden: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-third-party- coo...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-third-party-cookies)

<comment><USER6> Look into RequestPolicy [Continued], it prevents those third party sites from even loading data via a request in the first place. It's very nice having that level of control if you find it to be worth the time to fiddle with a few sites' request settings. I find that I prefer the simplicity in a site loaded without a lot of third party BS (and often not even CSS for sites that use a CDN for it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this mean they'll be rolling back the Pocket integration?

<comment><USER8> This policy has zero to do with Pocket if you actually read it. It's about changing the user's search engine and homepage. Unless of course you wanted to get in a completely unrelated jab at Pocket again because reasons.

Get over Pocket. There's no closed source code included. The open source code that integrates with Pocket is never executed due to lazy loading if you don't specifically use Pocket. No money changed hands. It was implemented because users had been asking for the functionality for years and Mozilla determined that it made more sense to partner with the best in breed provider of the service rather than reinvent the service and support it on an ongoing basis themselves. You can right-click and remove it if you don't want it.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "No money changed hands."

Money changing hands would have been better. That would've been a valid reason.

>> "best in breed provider of the service"

Or providers could have just created extensions. Now that Mozilla picked a winner competition suffers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> (2009)

<comment><USER10> The internet is a source of constant dynamic change and the flexibility to adopt new synergies is essential to maintaining best in class shared experiences.

<comment><USER11> The marketing speak is strong with this one...

<comment><USER12> I'm now one "synergy" away from a Buzzword Bingo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this is a quip against Mozilla adding the 3rd party functionality?

<comment><USER14> Probably more thinking of Mozilla replacing default search with Yahoo, without asking the user.

<comment><USER15> It's stuff like this that has an indirect effect that is much more serious than the change itself.

Not all that long ago there was a thread here about 'why those bloody end users don't keep their systems up-to-date'. Well, there you have it: because they never _just_ get the fixes, they also get all kinds of other junk rammed down their throats, if such an upgrade does not break their systems entirely. And so the end-users get wise and stop updating their systems, resulting in systems that are then wide open to malicious parties.

I feel that I'm pretty tech savvy and in spite of that I've got a hard time clicking the 'upgrade' button next to my browser for that exact reason, it's a toss-up if it will actually do something useful for me or if it will cause me no end of misery to try to restore the situation back to working after a failed update.

I'd need a couple of extra hands to count the number of times where an update to an otherwise perfectly functioning system caused it to break and in some cases that in turn led to a complete re-install.

In tech we even have a meme for that: "If it isn't obviously broken, don't fix it!".

<comment><USER6> You raise an extremely good point that describes my feelings lately perfectly.

How do HN folks manage the inevitable change in and monetization of popular and useful products?

I'm having serious heartburn consuming updated products (e.g. Win 10 and FireFox). It seems that the forced dichotomy is Control, Ease of use, Features within 3 years: Pick two. I had been really happy with my customized FireFox and locked down Windows 7 from the control and usefulness standpoint but FF has been taking liberties that parent notes and Windows has a "new direction" than the standalone value they provided with Win 7. Now it feels like they're yanking the rug out, and constantly evaluating the large amount of technology I rely on is tiring.

<comment><USER16> I'm right there now. I just simplified everything by going back and looking for the technological singularity where everything just worked.

This is a really hard and uncomfortable thing after years of convenience along the same lines of going back to CDs after using mp3s but it's worth it.

<comment><USER6> Hah. I actually am very happy with my music solution (for now). I buy CDs and rip them with iTunes to MP3 on my media PC to a network drive, and then manually sync my phone. I can play it on anything by opening a folder.

The UI is essentially put in CD, wait, have music, and sync phones occasionally.

What is your current setup that you're happy with?

<comment><USER16> My entire outlay is now a single laptop running CentOS 7, a desktop as a backup machine if I kill the laptop, some earphones, a dumbphone and a USB stick and USB mp3 player in the car. I rsync the USB stick for the car periodically and that is it.

As for everything else, browser is Firefox still (ick) and the only services I use are an IMAP box and domain.

I gave up music on my phone, contact sync, email on my phone, navigation, everything. A simpler life seems to be better for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Might be better to change the link to the official policy: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/AMO/Policy/Revie...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/AMO/Policy/Reviews#section-defaults)

</comment><comment><USER18> Sounds like FreeBSD's POLA

[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/f...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/freebsd- glossary.html#pola-glossary)

</comment><comment><USER19> So Googles Safe Browsing will finally be opt-in?

<comment><USER20> That seems like a poor example of something that should be opt-in. The people who would benefit most from it seem the least likely to opt-in to optional features.

<comment><USER19> True, but I would like to know that my non-Google browser contacts Googles server every now and then. If the goal is "no surprises", then users should be made aware of this feature and allowed to opt-in or out easily.

<comment><USER20> It's pretty benign. I'm not sure "warning you about potential phishing sites" is the sort of surprise they were trying to move away from. Would you consider being warned of a revoked SSL certificate a surprise too?

<comment><USER19> >Would you consider being warned of a revoked SSL certificate a surprise too?

I suppose not, but it's not the feature I find surprising, it's that it's a Google service in a browser I picked because it's not a Google product. Yeah, I know, the SSL revoking is a service provided by each of the certificate providers, so it's sort of the same thing.

Google search is in Firefox as well, but it's not surprising, it's kinda obvious really. They could do so similar with the anti-phishing/malware thing. On the phising site warning just write "This is a Google provided service, click to opt-out".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is from 2009.

</comment><comment><USER22> This derogatory treatment of Mozilla by hivemind consensus emerging from opinions of a vocal minority is a curious phenomena and a indicator of the increasing ideological rift in open source community. It can be roughly summarized as a conflict between deontological and consequentialist ethics. User privacy, "meritocracy", freedom from DRM/EME, etc above all else vs strategical trade-offs that strengthen competitive positions against Chrome, Edge and Safari.

<comment><USER23> How exactly destroying user's trust wrt privacy and including extensions no one wanted does strategically strengthen against competition? I would say it weakens Mozilla's position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So does that mean the WebRTC issues will be made visible to the average user?

</comment><comment><USER25> I was pretty surprised when tabs suddenly were on the top.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, I didn't expect that.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is that a surprise in your pocket, or are you just happy to throw away my privacy?

<comment><USER28> Pocket is small stuff. A button on the taskbar that can be removed. Or completely disabled in about:config. Surprising, but not much damage.

For me the Sync surprise was much more disappointing. They broke the feature to the extent it became unusable for me any more (unless I spend some more weekends trying to understand their poorly-documented proprietary protocol mess, which is not how I'd like to spend time).

<comment><USER29> Unfortunately the View Pocket List menu entry in Bookmarks menu cannot easily be removed. (It is there even with browser.pocket.enabled set to false). Fortunately for me that I don't access the Bookmarks menu too often to be annoyed by it.

<comment><USER30> > Unfortunately the View Pocket List menu entry in Bookmarks menu cannot > easily be removed.

It will be removed if you remove the Pocket icon using the (right-click) contextual menu on the icon. The entry is not removed if you remove manually using the `about:config` way.

Related bugzilla entry[1]:

> The normal/supported way to remove Pocket works fine: Right click the > button, select "Remove from toolbar".

[1] [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1171569](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1171569)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shortage of Engineers or a Glut? No Simple Answer - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/04/shortage-of-engineers-or-a-glut-no-simple-answer/

<comment><USER2> Definitely a shortage. To be specific, there is a massive shortage of engineers with extensive qualifications in very specific sets of frameworks used by a given company and expertise in their specialized domain, who are willing to work for less than market rate and/or relocate to some backwoods town at their own expense.

There is also a shortage of new 2010 Porsche 911 Speedsters in chartreuse with candy apple red leather interiors available for the reasonable and normal new car price of $15,000.

There is also a massive shortage of qualified licensed plumbers who will come out to my house for less than $150.

I am also terribly unhappy about the shortage of reasonably priced fresh strawberries in winter.

No, I am not the unreasonable one. The government must supply me with the engineers, plumbers, cars and strawberries of any quality I wish at whatever price I name. Help me gubmint, help me with the shortage.

<comment><USER3> You mentioned quality, location and price for each product/service, but not the times and ages? The engineer must be willing to leave a cellphone beside their bed every night, to be woken up at any hour to fix a problem which may or may not be related to the computer systems they work on during office hours. They must be over 25 yrs old, i.e. "mature enough", but under 34, i.e. with plenty of energy to work 12-hr days, "still not cynical", etc. Their track record must be in 2-yr blocks of uninterrupted service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As Pardo says, "There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." - Piaw Na

<comment><USER5> Might I add: on uninteresting problems under terrible working conditions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're interested in looking at some hard data on this, you might look at a recent RAND study.

<http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241/index.html>

This study is mainly focused on PhD level degree recipients and compares salary and career prospects with "the professions" (jd, mba, md, dds, etc). By this standard, the study concludes that there is no shortage.

Mr Wadwha is segmenting the "engineer" population differently - including all degree and experience levels, but also treating different micro-slices of the STEM workforce differently. This makes sense, and I think he's right - it does show that the issue is very complex.

If you've read my posts in the past, you'll know that one thing I find exasperating about Mr Wadwha is that he almost always includes the word "xenophobia" when describing people who look askance on visa programs designed to bring more engineers and scientists to the US. I respect Mr Wadwha's point of view (since I agree with him to some extent that we need to be open to global talent), but I don't think he gives enough credit to the people who oppose these programs. When a RAND study finds that there is no shortage of engineers or scientists, and that poor wage and job prospects are the main contributor to low levels of interest among US students, then it is immensely reasonable to question whether we should hand craft an immigration policy designed to bring more scientists and engineers here, as opposed to a more general, profession neutral system. Accusing people who hold this point of view of xenophobia adds nothing to this discussion, and drags it into the mud, as far as I'm concerned.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very simple answer: there is a shortage of good engineers, but a glut of crappy ones.

<comment><USER8> I've ran into a few people out of work who were "in IT." They are almost always some kind of one-trick pony who has spent the last 20 years writing SQL for Crystal Reports or administering Novell servers or maintaining VB 6.0 applications. They didn't bother to modernize their skills and now they're stuck. I hope I never get like this.

<comment><USER9> In most companies, that's what IT is: doing the necessary stuffs to support business.

On the other hand, it's their decision to specialize in such technology. Perhaps they have the necessary business knowledge and they just need to compliment that with enough IT skills.

Please don't act like a jerk by calling them one-trick pony. There are reasons before one came to make a decision, be it quality time with family, or piece of mind, or just to get by in life and do other things outside work.

I met tons of super-ego developers who always try to keep up with the latest greatest ORM tools in different languages praising the latest technology as the "best one out there" every 2 years. They did this for their on satisfaction, not for delivering any meaningful values.

I also met "one-language per year" developers who don't know low-level OS, or how computer networks work.

I met developers who know how to write code but don't know how to perform capacity planning, security audit, or heck, even write proper unit-testing, integration-testing, and acceptance testing.

I met developers who write code according to his/her "raw talent" (you know them developers, they're smart, but they can't work well with other people. Don't even bother touching their complex code).

People come in various experience and background. Don't make generalize judgement.

Some people decided to improve their skills once every 2 years, be it learning a new programming languages or a new web-me-too-framework. To others, that's like a rat-race. By the time these developers reached 40 years old, they have learned 20 different programming languages yet they don't understand the business inside-out. They deliver great architecture yet it's not what the business need.

What's that called? one-trick pony?

<comment><USER8> Yes, those people are bad too, but it's not a dichotomy. People tend to overvalue their non-portable organization-specific skills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems as if the good programmers are finally waking up to the actual value they bring to the table, as opposed to just taking a job getting paid about the same as the not superstars. This would explain why companies aren't happy with the level of applicants, and why most people have trouble getting a job.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's funny, there are a lot of engineers! Mechanical engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, etc.

Oh wait, I think they meant Computer Scientists or Programmers.

<comment><USER12> or maybe even a software engineer...

<comment><USER13> When programmers can earn an accredited degree and must be granted a license before practicing, we will have earned the right to be called "engineer".

Until then, using the title "Software Engineer" is a bit like a man who plays Warcraft all day calling himself a "Raid Engineer".

<comment><USER14> In the US, maybe, but your statement is rather insulting for engineers in Quebec.

Here, software engineers must follow an engineering program at university, spend at least 2 years working under an Ordre des Ingénieurs member's supervision, and pass a test before they can use the title of (software) engineer. The mandatory courses cover things like ethics, sociology, physics, electrical and electronic circuits, computer architecture, differential equations and numerical methods, and vector calculus.

Even Microsoft's MSCEs can't use the word "engineer" here: [http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default....](http://www.microsoft.com/canada/learning/quebecmcse/default.mspx)

Now, it's true that "programmers" don't require certification. The Ordre des ingénieurs and Quebec are thinking about ways to make the programmer profession more regulated, but it's of course hard to implement without an international agreement on the matter.

<comment><USER15> I, for one, do not want any kind of regulation for our trade. People can wrangle over the term "engineer" if they'd like. I don't use it for myself, as I am quite content to be called a programmer. One could argue that a guild/regulatory body would put us in a stronger position to negotiate salaries, via a kind of artificial shortage (since some individuals won't get certified). But the last thing that I want, personally, is to have to answer to any kind of guild that tries to tell me that I am or am not a "proper" programmer.

<comment><USER16> When it comes to the use of the term "engineer" in the states, it's not about regulating the trade or determining what's "proper," it's about making sure that people who use a title have the minimum knowledge and qualifications implied by the title.

<comment><USER15> I understand what you're saying, but what will we consider an "engineer" to be, in the case of programmers?

A "programmer" can be someone who picked up PHP in their spare time, and may have a degree in art history, for all anyone knows. It can also be someone with a solid background in CS, with a degree to boot. Both of them can get jobs as "programmers" (though in this case, probably very different wage scales) if they are good enough to get hired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> when a company is laying off good engineers while b!tching about no being able to fill the dev positions in another department (same technology, same domain) for which they are actively hiring - is the company experiencing a shortage or a glut? (disclaimer: i left on my own ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> >Now, because of flawed U.S. immigration policies, most buy one-way tickets home.

I assume, since you are claiming that is a "flaw" that you want to hire a cheap engineer. On the other hand, if you were an engineer looking for a job, I would suspect you would think that was a good policy. On the gripping hand, and recognizing this is TechCrunch, you are probably just repeating liberal cant on immigration without thinking about it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this highlights the importance of doing things outside of your uni work while obtaining a degree. While people don't want to have to train someone from scratch that's come out of a CS degree if you are able to say CS degree plus 3 years of contracting on the side it all becomes much easier.</comment>


The first solid-state quantum processor - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090628/full/news.2009.603.html <comment><USER2> Will quantum programs exhibit all possible bugs as well as correct behavior?

<comment><USER3> New theory: quantum computers are just cloud computers that steal computing cycles from other people's universes.

I jest, but seriously, just the idea of theses things trips me up in the head. It's neat to see 'wacky' physics put to practical use.

<comment><USER4> The irony is that that's not far from the reason that they were first conceptualized.

David Deutch is a proponent of the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics and originally came up with the notion of quantum computing as an experiment that could ideally prove the truth of the multiverse interpretation by solving a problem large enough that it would not be tractable in one universe.

<comment><USER3> So when my quantum computer is slow, does it mean that most of the alternate versions of myself are playing Cryis instead of working? :)

The idea of solving a problem too big to be solved in one universe is really crazy, it reminds my of Asimov's "The Last Question".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As cool as this is, sadly, I don't think we'll be seeing those processors in mainstream computers for a couple of decades.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's the first processor that works and also doesn't. ;-)</comment>


Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/riaa-lawyer-solicitor-general

<comment><USER2> I came here with 18 comments in the thread expecting to see people talk about why this person is not a great candidate and, honestly, am quite shocked to see people defending this pick. I assure you, had Bush made this pick it would be lampooned as being too corporate etc etc etc.

I understand that people want to give lawyers the benefit of the doubt and not judge them by who they represent, but honestly, I find that logic appalling. Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts. Same in this case. It seems clear this man is not about ideals or principles but rather money and privilege. Is that who we want in arguably one of the most important non- supreme court law positions in the country?

Even if he _is_ about that, he hasn't proven it with his judgement by taking those cases. This should also count in the decision. I'm sorry, but I cannot find the silver lining in this nomination. Perhaps someone can educate me....

<comment><USER3> _Would we really be saying that for a lawyer who defended the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal? No, b/c anyone with _any_ integrity would likely walk away from that...or anyone with any political smarts._

Very poor example... The right for everyone to have a proper defense in criminal trials is a cornerstone of the legal system, and I'm really surprised anyone would argue against it.

<comment><USER4> I understand your point, however the role of the Solicitor General has a specific function that leads one to wonder - "The office also determines which cases it will bring to the Supreme Court for review" This is a very dangerous role for someone who has engrained themselves in such a controversial topic. Not to mentioned (according to the article) hasn't been able to argue a consistent punishment for such crimes. I would imagine in the same token anyone else involved in another highly controversial law topic should receive the same scrutiny. Where Obama is heavily criticized is the fact that the general populous has a lynching out for big corporate media companies that are trying to fill their pockets with more money by simply "suing the shit" out of anyone that dares cross their path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disheartening, but not surprising. Obama has made it clear where his priorities lie, and that's with Big Content. Look to see more ICE takedowns of "infringing" sites and more COICA-like legislation.

<comment><USER6> I am curious to see how this will affect his Administration's relationship with Google and YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, this doesn't _dis_ confirm what we already knew about the administration's affection for Big Content, but what we already knew was a lot more important.

Look at the ACTA talks. It was something of a tipoff that drafts of the agreement were shared with a panel of "big content" lawyers[1], but hidden from the general public, supposedly on grounds of national security. As to substance, leaked drafts required DMCA-type legislative provisions and strongly encouraged "three strikes and you're out" policies for kicking infringers off the net, (they weren't mandated, but were, IIRC, explicitly listed in one draft as a "best practice", with no stated alternatives). And while current drafts back off of that, and some of the other more draconian positions, that's largely due to push-back from other parties, particularly in Europe.

The problem with a two-party system is that whichever you pick, they're going to support _something_ that you really don't like. For me, with the Democrats, this is one of the biggies: on these issues, the party positions have been largely dictated by Hollywood for a fairly long time. (Sonny Bono copyright act, anyone?) Then again, the Republicans haven't been all that great on this either; ACTA started under Bush....

[1] The list is here: [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2009/10/these-42-peo...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/news/2009/10/these-42-people-are-shaping-us-internet-enforcement- policy.ars) The White House was, for a time, trying to keep even the names secret, again claiming "national security". (How does it compromise national security if people know these drafts are going to lawyers for eBay? I have no idea...)

</comment><comment><USER8> There are few things that irk me more than judging a legal appointee based on the clients they've represented.

<comment><USER9> Donald Verrilli Jr is replacing Elena Kagan. Elena Kagan is now sits on the Supreme Court. That should shed some light on how important this position is.

If the RIAA/MPAA/old media (Donald also represented Viacom in its case against Google/Youtube) wrote its own laws the internet would be a sliver of what it is today. Many entities, for profit, not for profit, corporation, or association work to crush individual rights. Few do so to the degree that the RIAA has pursued.

Its sickening and disturbing that any representative, former or current, for such an organisation would be even nominated for such a powerful role in the United States government.

Clearly this guy has had a vested interest in crushing innovation and personal freedom in the United States. And you are irked that anyone cares.

<comment><USER10> > The internet would be a sliver of what it is today.

The American portion of the internet would be a sliver of what it is today.

Keep in mind that the world is a bit larger than just the US and that whenever the US decides to shoot itself in the foot like this some other entity will take its place.

This will likely continue until the US wises up to that and starts to move with all the resources they've got directed at recovering the lost ground, which I'm sure they'll be able to do fairly rapidly.

Software patents, the situation around copyright, it's all the same thing, a temporary disturbance. On a human lifespan scale it looks like things are moving with glacial speed but since the web as we know it is not even two decades old you can bet that given the changes it has already brought about you won't be able to recognize the information landscape in another hundred years or so.

This is just a delaying action, in the long run it won't mean anything. Now if we could make it not mean anything in the short run is up for grabs, vested interests will always fight to the death to keep their gravy trains rolling.

When Gutenberg made the printing press it took another 100 years or so before the implications were really felt far and wide give it some time.

Incidentally it only took very little time after the printing press was invented for the first primitive copyright legislation to follow.

<comment><USER9> You would be comfortable with YouTube's alternative hosted in Russia connected to the web by a likely mob influenced ISP?

Laws the United States makes have a more wide reaching affect that you seem to realise. Your outlook of online freedom is quite optimistic. Smaller countries follow the lead of larger ones and for profit corporations generally do their best to follow (or write) the laws of the United States. What happens here influences the behaviour of many. After all, no CEO wants to be arrested on a layover in the United States because their company happened to break a US (this has happened.)

The reality is that organisations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been fighting hard against our own government, the United States, since the early 1990s to keep the internet as free as possible. Had no one decided to take up that fight your internet would be under control of such gems as 1998's COPA, along with who knows what garbage the RIAA and MPAA would dream up.

The rising influence of authoritarian states such as China dim the prospect of an open and free world generations to come. While they may flaunt intellectual property law today, make no mistake when it is their own intellectual property being infringed upon they will happily add infringement to one of their 68 crimes punishable by death.

Make no mistake, what happens today will have a decisive impact on how free the world is 50 or 100 years from now.

Nominating Donald Verrilli Jr as the Solicitor General of the United States sends a clear message that the Obama administration seeks the same expertise in chilling internet freedoms as the RIAA and Viacom did when they hired him.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I Write Invoices in Vim - <AUTHOR> http://jezenthomas.com/how-i-write-invoices-in-vim/ <comment><USER2> In a couple years, he will probably learn that maintaining this invoice system to support the changes in his business will prove to be a frustrating waste of time.

For a reasonable fee, I now use Freshbooks. I love paying a small fee to have a company constantly improving and perfecting the invoice system I use, and the system saves me A LOT of time each month.

13 years ago, I could just put numbers in an invoice in word, send it to a customer, they paid by check. Then over the years, it got much more complicated. In-house tools, mixed with other accounting software, was just sucking time.

I know it's fun to write tools like this for business tasks, but I think you also have to pick your battles, and when you can pay for an affordable tool that will greatly simplify a business task, I choose this path.

EDIT: I recently started using Freshbooks' API to do little reporting tasks they don't provide, and this fills the "make my own tools" void when it comes to accounting.

<comment><USER3> Freshbooks is great. At a consulting company I used to work at, we used spreadsheets for time tracking. When Freshbooks came out, we immediately jumped ship and started getting tasks, tracking hours and being able to actually see when (all) projects go over budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can also have a nice LaTeX template ready and then programmatically complete it with the required information, for instance the template is set to read a \input{clientinfo.tex} somewhere that you create with a command like echo Mike > clientinfo.tex etc. Then you issue the compile order and you have a nice PDF that can then be emailed or archived or whatever. At least that's how we make repetitive reports in our lab!

<comment><USER5> That is also how I generate contracts!

makecontract --ip=mine --fee=100 --duration=30 contract.pdf

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I used a similar method until I realized my data wasn't very accessible afterwards. When I needed an anual report I had to write a small script, then for taxes, then for repeating customers, and so on. I also had to go and look customer data to an old invoice and copy that when the customer repeats. All this was error prone and not architected with care.

I moved to a simple invoicing app and most of my problems were gone. I miss the command line a bit, that's all. Just my experience.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, ledger[0] or hledger[1] is probably the best solution then. You could instead write a script to generate invoices from the data in them.

[0] [http://ledger-cli.org/](http://ledger-cli.org/) [1] [http://hledger.org/](http://hledger.org/)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's exactly the way I do it.

The invoice data from my hledger file and a HTML template together are generated to a HTML invoice. The HTML invoice together with a CSS file are processed to PDF using WeasyPrint [1].

[1] [http://weasyprint.org/](http://weasyprint.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Using a good tool for the wrong problem makes it the wrong tool.

<comment><USER10> It seems to work fine for them. And with the apparently simple invoices, why bother making things more complicated by using a more complicated tool? If the invoices were complex, I'd agree that this method might be the wrong tool, but for simple invoices, it seems like a lightweight and fairly straight forward approach. So it can be considered a right tool for the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speaking as an accountant...please dont write invoices with Vim, Excel or minesweeper. Just use a standardised package. The amount of botched homecooked invoices I've encountered is frightening & worse the people producing them seem entirely oblivious to the fact that they're wrong (sometimes wrong to the point of constituting tax evasion).

It really one of those cases of "just because you can doesn't mean you should"

<comment><USER12> > (sometimes wrong to the point of constituting tax evasion)

Can you say more about this?

<comment><USER11> That would be a country specific thing & is a bit of an outlier. As a simplified example though - sometimes the sales tax / VAT is calculated as 10/110 instead of 10/100 (or vice versa depending on law). Or there is some small piece of info missing that technically means the invoice isn't a legal tax invoice which means whoever you issued it to claims tax on that illegally (again country specific).

It's unfortunately a case of people dont know how much they don't know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Used [https://www.getharvest.com](https://www.getharvest.com) before but now that I am working a retainer, I use [https://www.recurvoice.com](https://www.recurvoice.com)

<comment><USER14> Harvest does have retainers and recurring invoices: [https://www.getharvest.com/help/invoices-and- estimates/invoi...](https://www.getharvest.com/help/invoices-and- estimates/invoices-estimates-faqs/recurring-or-retainer)

(Disclosure: I work at Harvest)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have successfully used wkhtmltopdf to render PDFs from HTML. Better than opening chrome and printing manually.

[http://wkhtmltopdf.org/](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a huge fan of [https://invoiceatonce.com](https://invoiceatonce.com). Keeps it simple, and it looks nice for the client.

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems ok for really simple invoices, maybe with just one or two line items. But anything more complex than that and it would seem foolish not to use a spreadsheet, I think. I'd get annoyed having to do the math myself.

<comment><USER18> Same here, it's what I do. Plus, in my experience, people receiving your invoice or timesheet appreciate a spreadsheet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> LibreOffice is my go to office suite. When I decided to stop using hand written invoices I decided to take a look through their template library and I landed on this.

[http://templates.libreoffice.org/template-center/simple- serv...](http://templates.libreoffice.org/template-center/simple-service- invoice-1)

I've been using it now for over 2 years and its been great.

</comment><comment><USER20> I fill CSVs and wrote a small python tool to add the totals and add VAT if needed, outputs a TeX file. Then a Bash file creates snippets for month/date stuff and numbering. If I had to do it again I'd just use Go's text/template system & CSV support.

Edit: oh sure, the bash script generates a numbered (filename prepared for tax filing) PDF with PDFlatex

</comment><comment><USER21> This is great! I was using Google Doc Spreasheet and export to PDF but it sucks, I hate the tables. I'm going the vim way from now on for sure! It's simple and straightforward and that's what counts!

I'll keep my invoices in a simple text files in a private git repo.

Book-keeping and accounting is a simple concept. Just nowadays over- complicated by accounting companies, historical software etc. Unfortunately also by regulations. :(

</comment><comment> e-xcavator I am sure that all the programs mentioned here are useful and helpful. However, the best open source accounting software by far is GnuCash ( www.gnucash.org ). I have been using it for years to do the books for online retailers and hedge funds and still get amazed by the versatility of the program.

If you have any question do not hesitate to drop me a line. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER22> Just my 2 cents: Despite comments like "wrong tool for..." this gives great elasticity when it comes to data manipulation, you can grep it, put in RDBMS, make csv/graph/one large flat file out of it, keep it in VCS etc. Sure you can use one of billion apps to do that, but then what's the point of developing your own solution to anything, just buy/use someone else app. Keeping your financial data in cloud for me seems like so-so idea. Of course there's emacs mode for it ;) ([http://orgmode.org/w/?p=org- mode.git;a=blob_plain;f=contrib/...](http://orgmode.org/w/?p=org- mode.git;a=blob_plain;f=contrib/lisp/org-invoice.el;hb=HEAD))

</comment><comment><USER23> I created an overview of invoicing systems for myself a while ago: [http://goo.gl/forms/QAOLcuW6F2](http://goo.gl/forms/QAOLcuW6F2)

</comment><comment><USER24> I also write it in Vim, but a script turns a kind of markdown derivative of mine into HTML, inserts it into a template, which in turn is converted to PDF by Chrome.

I have most of the bugs sorted out, which fonts work fine and render selectable text, how to deal with a single pixel white line in a full page background image, etc. It works, but it's an ugly hack. I'm dreaming of writing my own PostScript someday. From my initial research, it seems to be not that hard really.

<comment> semi-extrinsic For rendering markdown straight into PDF (and other formats), have a look at pandoc, it's really powerful. If you can make your markdown flavour compatible with (or a superset of) pandoc markdown it should be simple. See RMarkdown for inspiration.

<comment><USER24> Pandoc is great, but my layout is a bit complex, and last I checked, templating in HTML first seemed easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I currently use (on a Mac) Intuit's "My Time" to track hours - what I like about it is that it'll publish my hours straight to Quickbooks without me having to do repetitive data entry. But I don't know if there are other solutions that also have that easy communication with Quickbooks (Quickbooks is a requirement for me). Since QB generates invoices, I don't need a separate tool for that.

</comment><comment><USER26> markdown + pandoc would be perfect for his system, yeah you need haskell, but pandoc is so nice.

<comment><USER27> If I were to do a similar task, I would use pandoc, too. I'd probably set it up so you just enter a line in a CSV or spreadsheet and run a script that outputs an invoice for the new entries. Setting up vim to do it is about the last thing I'd try...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Textbook HN hint: (Here's how I) don't do X in a traditional manner, but use Y, an obscure, undocumented, poorly supported and inferior alternative because f- you and your standards, that's why.

<comment><USER29> This is a textbook example of using creativity and a free toolset to solve a very common problem. As a member of this community, I love stuff like this. I might never do it myself but I learned some new VIM commands that could totally come in handy.

If this kind of post is annoying to you, you aren't going to enjoy this place.

<comment><USER30> but (s)he's been a member for more than 2 years and has a very high karma for the time. So I'm going to take this observation on HN's tendencies seriously. Why should observations on the HN community's biases inevitably solicit downvotes or finger wagging?

I personally love Vim and like to use it far outside its scope, but I recognise that there is a case to be made for many posts on HN being a little "originality for originality's sake".

<comment><USER31> Because meta is murder[1]. Nobody comes to read HN about the finer points of posting on HN, they come to read the interesting stuff on the front page (and IMO, someone hacking vim to do invoices is interesting) and the further interestingness in the comments.

This entire comment chain is both not interesting and not contributing anything to anyone. It's a complaint. It's a long form "I didn't like this" that could have been avoided by not clicking on the link. Okay, they didn't like it. So?

And on top of that, it comes across as a rather dickish snipe at the community.

Both of these things deserves downvotes.

[1]: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is- murder/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/meta-is-murder/)

<comment><USER30> Yet meta is necessary, no? That's how the community improves in a feedback loop to increase its value? StackOverflow even created an entire Meta site for that reason, though they wisely segregated it from the main location. Such a thing does not exist for HN so I guess the meta pollutes the main threads. Anyway, I'll stop polluting now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For simple ones this is fine and all, but I'd sooner write the same thing in markdown then convert it directly to pdf via mm2pdf or whatever. Saves the trouble of vim options, browser, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> I love Vim and hate spreadsheets. But this just seems wrong. At the end of the month I open my spreadsheet invoice templates and send my invoices. The right tool for the job and all...

</comment><comment><USER33> If I wanted my editor to do everything for me, I would switch to Emacs. On the other hand, scratching my itches (some which others probably thought were silly) is what got me here.

</comment><comment><USER34> >When you issue the :TOhtml command, Vim turns your text into html

7 years of using VIM and my mind is more than blown after I just tried it now. It worked perfectly and It even showed a frigging progress bar!

</comment><comment><USER35> I use PayPal for my invoices. I have yet to regret my decision.

<comment><USER36> I do like that you can accept credit/debit card there from a domain name that's trusted. And if people pay by alternate means you can manually mark the invoice as paid and optionally add a discount.</comment></comment>


The dark ages of AI: A panel discussion at AAAI-84 (1985) - <AUTHOR> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220604602_The_dark_ages_of_AI_A_panel_discussion_at_AAAI-84 <comment><USER3> _" To sketch a worst case scenario, suppose that five years from now (from 1985) the strategic computing initiative collapses miserably as autonomous vehicles fail to roll. The fifth generation turns out not to go anywhere, and the Japanese government immediately gets out of computing. Every startup company fails. Texas Instruments and Schlumberger and all other companies lose interest."_

All of which happened. That was the "AI Winter".

The "Fifth Generation" was an initiative by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in Japan to develop a new generation of computers intended to run Prolog. Yes, really.[1]

The "Strategic Computing Initiative" was a DARPA-funded push on AI in the 1980s. DARPA pulled the plug in 1987.

I got an MSCS from Stanford in 1985. Many of the AI faculty from that period were in deep denial about this. I could see that expert systems were way overrated. I'd done previous work with automatic theorem proving, and was painfully aware of how brittle inference systems are.

Each round of AI has been like that. Good idea, claims that strong AI is just around the corner, good idea hits its limit, field stuck. I've seen four cycles of this in my lifetime.

At least this time around, machine learning has substantial commercial applications and generates more than enough revenue to fund itself. It's a broadly useful technology. Expert systems were a niche. There's enough money and enough hardware now that if someone has the next good idea, it will be implementable. But strong AI from improvements to machine learning? Probably not.

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

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

<comment><USER4> I worked on an AI program in the 80s that is perhaps the only program from that era that's still being used.

I got hired in 1984 into the AI group at Boeing Computer Services (neither the AI group nor BCS exists any more, and yes, it was part of that Boeing); I was in the Natural Language Processing group (the expert systems group was a different set of people). I left in 1987 to do s.t. else. By that time, we had built a syntactic parser of English that covered most everything in "standard" English (but without most of the probabilistic apparatus that modern parsers have). It was a solution in search of a problem.

After I left, the rest of the NLP team came up with the problem. When Boeing builds an aircraft, they have hundreds, if not thousands, of manuals. (No comment on the 737 MAX...) The planes are sold to airlines around the world, many of whose employees don't understand English anywhere near as well as a native speaker would. Boeing wanted its writers of manuals to write in simplified English. There was (and is) a standard for that, but it was very hard to ensure that writers conformed to it. The solution was to rip out all the "interesting" constructions from my grammar, and retain only the constructions and lexicon that conformed to the simplified (technical) English standard. Then the manuals got pushed through the parser; anything that didn't parse had to be re-written to conform to the grammar. And (I think, remember this was after I left) if anything parsed too ambiguously, it was sent for a rewrite as well.

And that's how a 1980s AI program is still in use today.

<comment><USER5> Is it open source? Why keep it for themselves? Where you doing semantic parsing? What parsing techniques where you using? Where you inspired by a linguistic formal grammar in particular?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because of strategic challenges, Reusable Scalable Intelligent Systems will be developed by 2025 with the following characteristics:

• Interactively acquire information from video, Web pages, hologlasses (electronic glasses with holographic-like overlays), online data bases, sensors, articles, human speech and gestures, etc.

• Real-time integration of massive pervasively inconsistent information

• Self-informative in the sense of knowing its own goals, plans, history, provenance of its information and having relevant information about its own strengths and weaknesses.

• Close human interaction using hologlasses for secure mobile communication.

• No closed-form algorithmic solution is possible to implement the above capabilities

• Reusable so that advances in one area can readily be used elsewhere without having to start over from scratch.

• Scalable in all important dimensions meaning that there are no hard barriers to continual improvement in the above areas, i.e., system performance continually significantly improves.

A large project (analogous to Manhattan and Apollo) is required to meet strategic challenges for Intelligent Systems and S5G (Secure 5G).

See the following for an outline of technology involved:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3428114](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3428114)

<comment><USER7> Why do you think intelligent systems is even feasible? Why do you assume it will be developed? And how is this any different than today's social networks? Either it already exists, or there is a significant AI portion that is completely unsubstantiated at this point.

<comment><USER6> Strategic competition will be crucial because once one side shows that it is possible others will quickly follow.

Do you see any reason that the technology outlined in the article cannot be implemented by 2025?

<comment><USER7> All the AI technology in the article is promissory technology, i.e. it doesn't exist except by analogy to human intelligence, and specious claims it'll be better than what has come before.

What if all AI tech that has come before sucks because there is a fundamental limit to what algorithms can do, and that limit is much less (infinitely less) than what human intelligence can do?

There is a fundamental assumption behind all AI research that the human mind can be simulated by a Turing machine, and no one has verified that assumption. AI research is just floating on the materialistic bias that the mind is reducible to the matter in the brain. We could very well have a supernatural soul, and thus the materialistic bias is completely wrong.

Thus, I don't see any reason the technology can be implemented by any date.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. A Turing machine operates in a discrete countable state space, whereas the human brain requires real numbers for a complete state description. Cantor showed (with the diagonal argument) that real numbers are uncountable - <USER2> there are (infinitely many!) real numbers that are unreachable using a Turing machine. My suspicion is that AGI, consciousness, perhaps even the supernatural soul you allude to, can be found only in this unreachable state space. There exists a Cardinality Barrier!

<comment><USER7> Why would the brain require real numbers for a complete state description? Physical reality is discrete and finite, as far as we know.

<comment><USER9> Every single neuron has many levels of excitement with different ramp-up, cool down, refractory periods just to name a few non-discrete variables. Not accounting for the rest of chemical soup and meyham happening in the nervous system. Thinking that nervous system is discrete and finite is very, very reductionist and wrong, perhaps as if to compare a novel and an alphabet ("why would you need infinite set space to describe all the possible novels? There are only 30 letters in the alphabet").

<comment><USER8> Exactly this. To be more precise with your analogy, given a finite alphabet and a finite length for any novel, then in fact the set of all novels is countable (and computable) - but when novels can have (countably) infinite length (or are written using an infinite alphabet?), then the set of novels is uncountable (and indeed by construction correspond to the reals, if my understanding is correct).

<comment><USER7> If the set of all novels is an infinite subset of all finite symbol strings, it may not be computable. This is because the set of all halting programs is not computable, even though each halting program is a finite symbol string. So, we could have a set of novels that enumerate the halting programs (best sellers, those!), and since this subset of novels is not computable, then the set of all novels is not computable.

<comment><USER8> Ah - but though a subset (bestsellers/halting programs) may not be computable (recursively enumerable) as you say, this does not preclude _all_ novels/finite programs from being enumerated. Taking the alphabet as just the uppercase letters, I can list all novels as A, B, C.. AA, AB, AC... ... and hence eventually reach any novel you may supply. But this tells me nothing of whether they are bestsellers (or halting programs)!

<comment><USER7> Yes, of course, enumerating all symbol strings is computable.

What I mean is the novels as a whole correctly label the halting machines, an unreasonable assumption to be sure. That would prevent the novels from being computable.

If real novels somehow exhibit an equivalent characteristic, then that would prevent real novels from being computable. Perhaps the logical consistency of good novels would be such a characteristic. We probably cannot depend on novels being perfectly consistent, but still consistent to a greater degree than we can achieve by randomly generating bitstrings.

The objection would be that a finite set of axioms can generate consistent novels, so there is also some other criterion that is necessary to make the novels uncomputable. I would say this second criterion is novelty, defined as an increase in Kolmogorov complexity.

Using a single set of axioms to enumerate an infinite set of novels will hit a novelty plateau, as per the proof of uncomputability of Kolmogorov complexity.

So, based on these two criteria, one can derive a hand wavy argument that novels in general are uncomputable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it odd that people get most excited when thoughts of AI are aimed towards education in the classroom as the research hinted. I've always thought the most exciting thing about AI would be making robots that can cover the work needed so all human beings get to focus on what's meaningful for them. The interest as hinted from the article makes me question where peoples priorities are when it comes to the next generation getting to live life.

<comment><USER11> What if the work needed is the work human beings want to focus on because it's meaningful to them?

When you have AIs that can do arbitrary work that humans can do, what prevents other humans from simply cutting out the humans that want to do that work for AI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What if the human mind is not computable? Why does no one test this hypothesis instead of throwing billions of dollars and our brightest minds against an unsubstantiated hypothesis? Why are we so unscientific in testing assumptions when it comes to AI? It is not difficult. I've thought of tests myself. But, the closest I've seen in academic literature is Penrose' microtubules and silly hypercomputation. Nothing with empirical tests. I blame materialistic bias, since if materialism is true then the human mind must be a computation. But, materialism does not need to be true in order to have empirical tests whether the mind is computable.

<comment><USER12> I don't follow your logic, you're saying that if the human mind isn't computable, all our research of AI is a waste?

What if weak AI systems are extremely useful? What if we don't need to mimic the human mind to create intelligent systems? What if machine intelligence is very different than human intelligence?

We may never build a replica of a human brain. I think it would be absurdly lucky for the Turing model to be the correct one for understanding the human mind since it was developed without much knowledge of how the human mind works. But is that the only way for AI to be successful in your opinion? I don't understand that perspective.

<comment><USER7> The basic premise behind AI is to capture human intellectual capabilities with computation. If that's not the goal, then it is just algorithmic research by another name. And if we're talking spandrels that result from AI, why not look for spandrels while researching something that is feasible?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the panelists (B. Chandrasekaran at Ohio State University) was my dad's PhD advisor (my dad is Ashok Goel at Georgia Tech). Pretty cool to come across his name on HN!

</comment><comment><USER14> AI is going to be huge no doubt. However, in my opinion there would likely be some costly mistakes made before humans can reap its full benefits. We have been seeing a lot of AI developments but in reality it hasn't really brought us many meaningful changes as we had expected. In general our daily lives still remain pretty much the same as before. Our civilization has never experienced significant AI impacts at a large scale so mistakes may be hard to avoid, and it will serve as lessons for later generations not to repeat those same errors.

I have noticed human emotions and intelligence seem to be at odds with each other. Sometimes they are even a trade-off. The increase of one may lead to the decrease of the other. If we look around, humans today have the most advanced technologies in history, but are our lives really better compared to people's in the past? Materialistic wise, certainly yes because they are products directly produced by technologies, but mentally and emotionally it could arguably be worse.

AI and techs keep getting better and better everyday, but then human have to work more with longer hours and higher stress. We all thought the machines are supposed to help us human but it's actually the other way around. We work tirelessly days and nights in order to keep making those machines better and more advanced, but in return our lives have not seen many meaningful improvements, and even arguably worse than before in some areas. Individually our personal ability has limits and naturally it evolves very slowly, but the power of AI machines is potentially unlimited and growing at an even faster rate than Moore's law. We seem to be collectively working to make machine much better than us while we are remaining relatively the same individually. Are technlogies actually enslaving us?

We keep buying things that don't really serve us much. We have a lot of stuff now but they don't mean much. If something broke, meh we will just get another one. It's just another item and it will get shipped here tomorrow. We didn't have as much in the past but every little thing carried much greater value. Even the most simplest thing could fascinate and brought us joy.

We humans today already operate based on rules and algorithms dictated by the machines. We still don't know how our brains function organically (memory, consciousness, etc...), but in the quest of trying to make AI becoming human- like, we have created AI neural networks to simulate our brain. The danger is that even though we still don't know how our real brain functions, but we have now turned around and claimed that the human brain works in a similar way under the same principles of an AI neural network. We are enforcing AI rules onto ourselves.

This is a dangerous assumption to make simply because AI does not have emotions. Once we begin to operate strictly under these rules and principles that are dictated by AI, we would soon lose the attributes and characteristics of what made us human. Our emotional spectrum may get increasingly shorten.

TV shows and movies are an example as they are a form of story telling that have biggest influences on us at the emotional level. It's no coincidence that "Seinfeld" and "Friends" are still the two best tv shows today. Many movies that are considered as best were also made from a while ago. Despite the most advanced technologies, why is it that today we can't seem to tell stories that bring out the same level of emotional reponse and intensity as before? They all seem to lack the genuity and inspiration that the previous generation once had.

Is it because AI do not understand human emotions so its algorithms cannot accurately factor that into consideration? One can say that today humans are the ones who write those algorithms so maybe we can add in compenents to account for that? But just like the example above, if we don't even understand how our brain works, how can we simulate the machine to accurately reflect us? In the future, machines are supposed to learn and write all the codes by itself without human intervention, what would likely happen then? Would we still retain the ability to even understand those codes? Would it possible that human may slowly evolve into machines? In trying to make those machines becoming like us, we may instead become like machines.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dark ages of AI is a meme like dunning krueger effect

</comment><comment><USER16> This time it is different.^{tm}

More seriously, we are almost about to

i) Generate a good book using a short intro.

ii) Generate a meaningful video using a few photos and a basic text scenario.

Which makes us closer to generate movies on demand (say in 2025) and then good luck to people claiming that the current progress in AI is a bubble.

<comment><USER17> We're no where near a "good book" (we can't even do a good 3 paragraphs reliably), nor a "meaningful video."

You're confusing a 1000 monkeys (transformers) with 1 human intelligence (AGI). That giant leap hasn't been met.

<comment><USER18> Have you seen the tables in Appendix E (starts p. 16) of the Transformer-XL paper? I think they're pretty good.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.02860.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.02860.pdf)

<comment><USER19> Quote from that paper:

> The Battle of Austerlitz was the decisive French victory against Napoleon

It didn't even catch that Napoleon was the leader of the French as described in the source snippet. And this was when it just generated text of similar size as the input. Based on just that paper I highly doubt that this method will generalize to creating entire books.

<comment><USER16> "he was still in conflict with Emperor Napoleon, the French Republic's king"

<comment><USER19> My point was that the text lacked coherence, that quote only makes it worse. If it can't even keep coherence for a single page how would it manage for a hundred?

<comment><USER16> by improving metrics over time

see, e.g., [https://gluebenchmark.com/leaderboard/](https://gluebenchmark.com/leaderboard/)

<comment><USER16> Oh fuck, I am banned here from getting points. Time to avoid selling my own profile to whoever sniff on HN users.

<comment><USER20> You're not banned here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much equity can a startup give to investors in a seed round? - <AUTHOR> I run a b2b startup in a small country and last year we did a modest seed round for 30% of the company. Now we are profitable and basically have a natural monopoly in our small home country and want to raise a follow on seed round to prove that our model can work abroad. If we have to give up another 20% equity to fund this expansion, will there still be an appetite to take part in a potential A round later this year? Or will 50% equity share for founders pre A round be viewed as a reason not to invest for VCs?<p>Thanks for inputs, feedback and stories... <comment><USER2> I have limited experience compared to many people on here, but 30% for a seed round seems higher than average. It might make more sense to go straight to a series A where you will likely get more money than a seed round (expanding abroad is always more expensive than you think). I don't know which county you're in, but many (if not most) U.S. investors will be wary of investing in a company where 50% has already been given away, making it difficult to raise more money later. Exceptions are made if you're doing incredibly well and they're guaranteed to make money, but on average it's not something they like.</comment>


Show HN: Memory with cat gifs - <AUTHOR> http://static1.volkskrant.nl/static/nmc/red/frameset/2015/katten/ <comment><USER2> Pretty cool! It's interesting how animated pictures seem harder to remember than static pictures. Don't know if that's real it just felt that way.</comment>


Google Offers to Help Others with the Tricky Ethics of AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/google-help-others-tricky-ethics-ai <comment><AUTHOR> Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?</comment>


Step into the Huge Factory Forging America's Fancy New Trains - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/06/siemens-brightline-florida-factory-trains/ <comment><USER2> Those are pretty cool, I wish the self funded passenger rail was feasible in California.</comment>


Flickr will introduce video uploads next month. - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/368466/flickr-to-video-users-youre-a-bunch-of-amateurs

<comment><USER2> Could it be that their slowness in introducing this feature is because it's hard to break even with online video?</comment>


HackrTrackr Now Allows For International Users - <AUTHOR> http://hackrtrackr.com/blog.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Based upon all the requests for international users I've added that capability, so feel free to sign up. I've also altered the interface based upon some other suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER2> PG: Can you please add the hacktrakr link with the other (jobs | leaders) links on the top of the page. I see many benefits to this:

1\. That way, even if this link is not on the first page, visitors to Hacker news have an idea of where the end-users are coming from

2\. There are more off line Hacker news meet-ups

3\. Since, YC has no plans of starting programs outside of the US, the # of visitors from various countries would be a good sign for YC clones

Thanks,

<comment><USER3> A more permanent solution might be to have a "Community Wiki" link that goes to a site we can all add to. Useful third party stuff like this could be listed there.

<comment><USER4> Side note to staunch, I was in Tokyo a couple months ago!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> so once you find someone near you, how are you supposed to get in touch?

<comment><USER6> I guess put a note to new users, if you sign up make sure you put contact info in your YC profile. right?

Interestingly I looked up all 5 people in my area (Maryland, US) and none of them had anything in their profiles filled out. For shame! ;-)

<comment><USER7> _"... if you sign up make sure you put contact info in your YC profile ..."_

I added something like

\- [http://hackrtrackr.com/state.php?region=&country=AU](http://hackrtrackr.com/state.php?region=&country=AU)

\- <!-- location:latitude=-37.816,longitude=144.966 -->

the first is the hackrtrackr url for you area, the second is a microformat lat/lon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> dotter, It's great that you were able to so quickly improve HackrTrackr. The last time I looked at it, it was a little unpolished. It's all quality now. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER7> works for me thanks @dottertrotter for the quick turn around

</comment><comment><USER9> East Coast is De Best!</comment>


FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right - <AUTHOR> http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ <comment><USER2> You want to start at the FAQ:

[http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked- ques...](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/03/frequently-asked-questions- last-revised.html)

His methodology is pretty crazy; he's used historical data from all the pollsters from the tail end of the last few election cycles to rate them, and uses that to weight poll results; he has a regression model for each of the battleground states that he uses to reconcile polling results with on-the- ground reality; he uses monte carlo simulations to give percentage odds on who's going to win in each state. It's pornographic.

Sean Quinn's state-by-state tour of the ground operations of the two campaigns is also fascinating. Obama apparently has 2-1 and 3-1 field office advantages in the battleground states, and his offices are open 7 days a week; McCain's are a ghost town.

Nate Silver was recently on Colbert, also worth watching:

[http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/10/08/the-colbert- report...](http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/10/08/the-colbert-report-nate- silver-predicts-barack-obama-to-win-the-election/)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps more important is the reputation he already built through predictions on the primaries.

From a recent New York Magazine article here: <http://nymag.com/news/features/51170/> on the Clinton/Obama primaries...

"Reading the polls, most pundits predicted she'd win Indiana by five points and noted she'd narrowed the gap with Obama in North Carolina to just eight.

Silver, who was writing anonymously as "Poblano" and receiving about 800 visits a day, disagreed with this consensus. He'd broken the numbers down demographically and come up with a much less encouraging outcome for Clinton: a two-point squeaker in Indiana, and a seventeen-point drubbing in North Carolina. On the night of the primaries, Clinton took Indiana by one and lost North Carolina by fifteen. The national pundits were doubly shocked: one, because the results were so divergent from the polls, and two, because some guy named after a chili pepper had predicted the outcome better than anyone else."

It will be great to see how his model stacks up against reality on election night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nate Silver (the guy behind 538) is a pretty famous baseball statistician who has applied his trade to politics and polling. It's politics for geeks.

I wrote more at <http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/nate-silver---t.html>

He just started last year, but over time I bet he's going to discover things about politics that have been overlooked (in the same way Billy Bean found out OBP was overlooked).

<comment><USER5> Funny, five minutes ago I was reading fivethirtyeight while watching the Dodgers game and thinking that the two were somehow entwined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an independent, I would be extremely bummed if I was never allowed to travel or live in any of the blue states (on the site page). Can't say the same for the red states.

<comment><USER7> Austin is supposed to be pretty good.

<comment><USER6> It is. It feels like you're on another planet (relative to Texas).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For non-americans, what happened a month ago (see supertracker) that caused what looks like the start of a landslide for obama. Was it palin?

<comment><USER7> It was the changing of the campaign narrative from being about all sorts of things to being solely about the economy in wake of the financial crisis. Barack Obama is widely viewed as being more sound on economic issues.

<comment><USER9> I think Palin is a big part of that dynamic, especially after the Paris Hilton line of attack. Say McCain had picked Romney, they could have been hammering away at the experience card on both foreign and economic policy. By picking Palin, McCain basically killed the experience campaign, especially when she started blathering in uncontrolled settings, and they've gyrated around ever since trying to find a compelling narrative without sufficient knowledge or experience to address the economic realities. As evidence, independents now break in a big way for Obama where they weren't prior to Palin.

EDIT: Just to be clear - Palin got the ball rolling downhill, after an initial and short bounce. The economy kicked it that much further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm still going to use electoral-vote.com to track the election, because it is so much easier to see who is going to win and to check out the map.

The stats are of course interesting, but isn't it insane to have a "win percentage" down to the tenth of a percent?

<comment><USER9> Not when the WPCT is based on 10,000 state-by-state _daily_ simulations with every new stream of polls included.

<comment><USER10> I agree that the numbers reflect the model. But there is no way that the model can fit reality that well. So it is a misleading number.

<comment><USER9> It's a probability estimate. There is no reality to which it corresponds - that's the popular vote and electoral college projections. And there I expect the model will do exceedingly well, as it did during the primaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You know what really caused the change in polling numbers, in my opinion? People just got used to seeing barack. It's like you meet a paralysed guy for the very first time. The first few times you are very consious of him being paralyed, and are all gingerly and careful with him. But after a while, you stop noticing it and you just speak to him normally and have fun with him.

I think that Barack is no longer the 'black guy running for president', people have stopped paying attention to his blackness and have started noticing the other stuff.

He's the cosby show of politics - after season 1, it was not really important anymore what color they were.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://nymag.com/news/features/51170/> (print link at the bottom)

</comment><comment><USER12> 538 is pretty awesome, and Nate was doing great work even when people thought he was named after a pepper (he went by "Poblano" for a short period of time to maintain anonymity).

However, seeing this posted by pg makes me think that this is the post that people will point to as an excuse for posting politics on YC.

<comment><USER7> >However, seeing this posted by pg makes me think that this is the post that people will point to as an excuse for posting politics on YC.

This is election silly season... things will calm down after Obama wins next month. At least until there is more info about his proposal to eliminate the capital gains tax for startups.

<comment><USER12> Well, I can appreciate that this is "election silly season"... I'm very politically active for one of the candidates; I just think that politics is a very touchy subject. It can cause deep divisions amongst people who would otherwise get along just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm addicted to this site.</comment>


Show HN: QuickPublisher A simple Blogging Platform to monetize without ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.quickpublisher.online <comment><AUTHOR> Get started at [https://www.quickpublisher.online](https://www.quickpublisher.online)</comment>


Loopt May Be Friending More Mobile Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/15/loopt-may-be-friending-more-mobile-networks/

<comment><USER2> Good, they need to get with a GSM carrier so they can get iPhone users.

<comment><USER3> Loopt wont work on the iPhone yet (natively), because it requires GPS hardware (which the iPhone does not yet have). Hopefully someday though, its a cool app.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't it work on some phones that have APIs for a triangulated, interpolated GPS?

<comment><USER3> I havent heard about that, but if thats the case and you find out more please share. It might be proprietary code rather than an official optional library.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can you solve this geometry problem for 6th graders in China? - <AUTHOR> http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/08/07/can-you-solve-this-geometry-problem-for-6th-graders-in-china/ <comment><USER2> I'm more appalled by my need to prove that I'm smarter than a sixth grader. Yes, I solved the problem but why the hell do I feel the need to compete with a _sixth grader_?

</comment><comment><USER3> The proof is trivial: [http://www.theproofistrivial.com](http://www.theproofistrivial.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well the first problem is trivial. The second seems a bit harder.

<comment><USER5> "A bit" is an understatement considering you now have to figure out the area of a sector of a circle, and also an isosceles triangle (not just a right triangle and a rectangle as in the first problem).

For a high school geometry test, this is a great problem. But for a 6th grade class, this is well beyond what 6th graders in the US are capable of I think.

<comment><USER6> Just because it was given to 6th graders doesn't mean most of those 6th graders answered it correctly, or were even expected to answer it correctly. It could have been, e.g., a bonus question. Likewise for the easier problem.

On the other hand, instructors could have spent months drilling the particular problem identification and solution pattern into the kids until they could solve it without any rigorous thought.

Also, many countries put children on different academic tracks very early in life. The US is arguably somewhat distinctive in the way we group children into classes. Usually kids in a particular grade aren't broken out, if at all, until late middle school or high school. I think it has something to do with our concept of equality, and in particular how we organize and fund our school systems. We tend to focus investments in the poorer students (poorer financially and poorer academically), while some other societies do the opposite.

In any event, my point is that the particular 6th graders given these problems could have been more math savvy than the average 6th grader.</comment></comment></comment>