Tesla recalling 90,000 Model S sedans to check seat belts - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/20/us-tesla-recall-idUSKCN0T92CR20151120?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter <comment><USER2> I just got the official e-mail. I thought this part was interesting:

"If you are concerned about the status of your seat belt prior to your scheduled inspection, you may be able to detect this condition by pulling very firmly on the lap portion of your seat belt with a force of at least 80 pounds. This procedure may detect an improperly attached seat belt but performing this procedure does not replace the need for an inspection by a Tesla technician."

It's cool that they're being so straightforward, but it's weird to see that sort of procedure so casually recommended to the end user.

Edit: I got my appointment scheduled for next week. Pretty quick and easy. I was afraid it might be a substantial wait, as the last time I needed a service appointment they were booked for a month. This inspection is only supposed to take 20 minutes, so maybe they're able to squeeze it in earlier because of that.

<comment><USER3> It's nice to see a company treating people like adults again.

I find that pretty refreshing. I try to handle my responsibilities so maybe I don't have to rely on a corporation or the government to hold my hand. In that ideal scenario both the consumer and company can be sensible, limit pain, suffering, costs, lawsuits and so forth.

That said, in my experience the most common is the corporation not holding up to their side of the bargain. I recently had a recall on a GM vehicle I own, the car has been great. 110,000 miles and nothing extreme has happened. GM only got 90% of the way there though. I took it in for an ignition recall, they rekeyed my ignition to my driver's side door and now my keys won't work on my passenger side or trunk. They told me to pay for all new locks or take a hike. Or, they said I can use my keyless entry or carry two keys. I complain to GM corporate, they sided with the dealer as per their policy and also told me to take a hike. The correct thing to do would have been to key it to the VIN. But they wanted to make sure they didn't have to replace my driver's side door lock, since that's the one that's most likely to be worn down. Oh, and GM's own blog on the subject has a company official stating very clearly all your locks should work with your new key. I told GM corp that and even sent a link and showed them a screenshot of it. They ignored it.

We're thrifty but we have a slightly higher than average household income. I'm a developer, she's a teacher. GM won't get another dime from me or my wife, and I like to share my recall story with others. :)

Our next car is going to be a Tesla Model 3.

<comment><USER4> Didn't realize companies haven't been, went through a recall with a 95 Dodge Stratus back in the 90s where the rear seat belt shoulder mount was decided to be defective with regards to regulation. The disclosure sent even then went into detail about the problem and the resulting fix. In fact every recall I have seen with regards to safety is pretty explicit just so that fear isn't the reaction

<comment><USER5> I think the Tabata airbag fiasco is an exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seat belt and safety system defects usually have a very low threshold for necessitating a recall or raising the ire of the NHTSA. Some manufacturers, notably Honda, have a lifetime unconditional warranty on seat belts.

<comment><USER7> It states in the article they are recalling every Tesla because of a single complaint.

Pretty good on the customer service/safety aspect if you ask me (I do not own a Tesla nor do I own Tesla stock).

<comment><USER8> They constantly mention the safety of their cars as a selling point. It's not surprising that they want to take care of this as quickly as possible, before it damages the brand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This thread is hilarious. Tesla has quality problems on seat belts (!) and the thread is almost absolute positive focusing on how well they do the recall instead of focusing on the quality issues of a security (!) feature. I wonder what Tesla needs to do to get negative feedback on HN.

<comment><USER10> The way it works for me is, people can make a mistake, that's something we just have to accept. But whether I get negative about it or positive, depends on how the mistake is handled. Tesla gets one warning, two weeks later they announce that they want to see all their cars for inspection. What would make me stop trusting someone is if they'd try to sweep it under the rug or shrug it off.

Tesla seems to take its responsibility the way I wish all companies would when it comes to their products. It inspires trust. For me, anyway, and I think many people feel the same way -- many people in this thread, anyway :) Also, Tesla has a pretty solid reputation when it comes to supporting their own products, so that probably helps.

The alternative is to say "Okay Tesla made a mistake, they suck for making a mistake and I don't trust them anymore" and that's usually unfair because everybody makes mistakes.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how your comment would look like if your wife or husband would die due to faulty Tesla seat belts.

There is value in blameless post mortems, in openness and how you handle a crisis.

It is not the most important thing though. The most important thing is how you set up and fix quality so people don't die.

This reminds me of the Zen teaching where one points with his hand to the moon. And people forget about the moon and focus on the hand pointing instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it normal to issue a recall for a problem that has not been reliably reproducible?

<comment><USER12> If it's in a safety sensitive area, definitely. As soon as you know how to deal with a potential issue, the liability clock starts ticking, and so it should be.

<comment><USER13> And if you've just started to get the public to trust you/any slight issue is a PR timebomb.

<comment><USER2> In another comment you said they're "fighting for trust" and here you say they've just started to get the public to trust them. What is this referring to? In terms of safety, Tesla seems to be extremely trusted, and has been for a while now.

<comment><USER13> Well I think they are fighting for trust, and they will be for a long time.

As the other commenter says, in these circles, Tesla is very well trusted. Out in the world though, there are still a lot of people who associate Teslas with spontaneous combustion. Even if that same person would say that they're "probably safe" or some similar hedged assessment.

<comment><USER2> I think I've heard people mention the fires once or twice, but they also seem to be aware that it involved exceptional circumstances and that no lives were at risk. And yes, I've talked about the car with a lot of people outside the tech community too.

I think in terms of safety, Tesla is more associated with things like blowing out the NHTSA rating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm wondering to which extent the uneven distribution of Tesla cars around the world lowers the cost of recalling them (i.e. I suspect 50% of them live in a 10-mile radius of Palo Alto :) )

<comment><USER15> I've been kind of shocked at how many Model S cars drive on the roads in Chicago, even in the dead of winter with (2 years ago) -17 degrees F. My wife and I count them on the way to work and generally see 3 every morning at least.

<comment><USER16> There is a Tesla owner down the road from me who keeps his outside all year. I live in Calgary, Alberta. It was -14F last night...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The notice was very clear that this problem didn't affect rear seatbelts. That's reassuring, but the rear seatbelts are certainly not immune to problems. My side rear seatbelts were replaced a while back under a service advisory after one of them started fraying pretty badly, and one of the replacements has also been replaced.

I guess the rear seatbelt problem wasn't considered a safety issue. It was certainly quite difficult to put on the rear seatbelt in both my car and the early test-drive cars, though.

<comment><USER2> As long as the failure is visible, it's not nearly as much of a safety issue, since you can just see that something is wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Once the whole self-driving thing is completely integrated it'll be even easier.

<comment><USER19> OMG! I didn't even think of this. Here's how I imaging it might go:

      [CAR] Sir, I need to visit the service center and will be gone for about 1.5 hours.  Is that OK?
      [ME] Will you be back before I need to go home?
      [CAR] According to the traffic patterns and the availability of the service tech's I'm 98% sure that I can return by 5:00PM.
      [ME] OK.  Have fun!
      [CAR] Thank you, sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That might not be good, but the biggest surprise here that they've actually made and delivered 90,000 Model S's I didn't knew that they built so many of those already.

<comment><USER2> Production is accelerating fairly rapidly, so it's easy to get behind on that. About half of those 90,000 have been sold in the past 12 months and they're currently producing at a rate of about 55-60,000/year. Next year they're aiming for 100,000, although that will include Model X.

<comment><USER21> > About half of [all Teslas ever sold] have been sold in the past 12 months

If Tesla hits its goal of 500,000 cars produced annually by 2020, then this will remain true for several years, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The decision and messaging both seem like the right way to deal with an issue with this, with respect to the consumer, the market, and the public at large.

<comment><USER23> How is this any different from any other manufacturer recall? My Jeep has an ignition key issue.

"Recall issued. Bring it in. We'll fix it. It'll take x amount of time."

<comment><USER24> Jeep refused to acknowledge the issue as a problem when the researchers contacted them until the researchers broke the story through wired and a conference talk, and got national coverage on it. Ignoring a problem until it gets national media coverage is not the appropriate way to deal with safety issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I once overheard a few Tesla owners chatting about their cars and most of them had a weekly two hour maintenance buffer for scheduled appointments with Tesla. People who buy Tesla are early adopters so they shouldn't be surprised when stuff like this happens.

<comment><USER2> Really, two hours a week? That doesn't even pass a basic smell test. A typical owner might see the service center a few times a year at _most_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> In a corporate world almost devoid of trust, Tesla are building brand trust on a deep level

</comment><comment><USER27> This is in such stark contrast to the way automakers have been behaving lately. I never thought i'd buy a new car, but if I get the chance it'll be a Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is probably the first real test of the "Unconventional" car maker. Tesla scoffs at the Dealership model, hates Gas stations and champions disruption in general.

Now a somewhat massive issue forces a recall...Traditional Car Makers have fixed ways (with well known issues) to deal with stuff like this. I am genuinely curious if Tesla can "innovate" again.

</comment><comment><USER29> And on the same day the Volt was named 2016 Green Car of the Year! <\- how did that happen?

</comment><comment><USER30> its nice to see that they are taking owner ship for the issue, rather then just trying to pass it under the rug. >> GM im looking at you. but then again who really classic american cars anyway? Everyone i know is buying JDM / Euro. Unless they buy a Tesla, but the factory is literally down the street from my house, so that would explain why i see them all the time.....

</comment><comment><USER31> Hahaha UTM-Mangler...

</comment><comment><USER32> Wait. So hundreds of people did die from this? Seems a little early for a recall...

<comment><USER33> Hah!

It's refreshing to see a large company that realizes that getting in front of an issue before it's an issue will keep you in better standing with customers, press, shareholders and general public than trying to hide your mistakes in the hope that people will never find out.

<comment><USER34> > _It 's refreshing to see a large company.._

Large in the sense of market cap, maybe. But nowhere _remotely_ close to the size and scale of the large automotive companies. Obviously, Tesla can be more agile.

<comment><USER13> Agile? How about responsible?

Letting safety issues slide for as long as possible, even at the expense of life and limb, has _nothing_ to do with agility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> marketing ploy

<comment><USER36> I don't see how a recall can be a marketing ploy. Please explain

<comment><USER37> "Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches." andy warhol but tesla seems pretty dedicated to maintaining a really strong pr image and messing up something as simple as seatbelts seems like a bad thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> These things are bound to happen when you're trying to push new technologies. I think its a good thing that Tesla is trying to prevent potential accidents by recalling the cars.

<comment><USER39> Seatbelts are new technology?

<comment><USER40> ELECTRIC seat belts.

<comment><USER5> With regenerative braking.

<comment><USER40> Honestly, the brake is SO sensitive on the Model S (a slight tap has you flying forward I've found) that you COULD almost make this a reality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The iPad's answer to Courier - <AUTHOR> http://www.popplet.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think this has great potential. This might be a killer app for the iPad. This seems like an excellent tool for brainstorming and journaling. This can handle a lot of the functionality shown in the Microsoft Courier ad. A website where a Javascript version can be shared and edited collaboratively would go a long way towards making this a killer app! The addition of a desktop version for Windows, OS X, and Linux (possibly based on WebKit) would seal the deal.</comment>


Tensorflow I Love You, but You're Bringing Me Down - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nateharada.com/tensorflow-i-love-you-but <comment><USER2> Good, brief article.

It looks like one of the issues (one of th library issues) raised will go away: Apple just embraced Keras for its ML library, so anyone who wants to write ML code for iOS (or MacOS) devices might as well just use Keras.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried out tensorflow for the first time a few months ago and was immediately overwhelmed by the variety of workflows in different tutorials. It was very hard to know what the most recent/useful method was going to be. Having a list of mostly up-to-date tutorials would have made the whole process much smoother.

<comment><USER4> Use Keras until you need something it can't do, ez.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google does this with all their APIs. Maybe Tensorflow just has it a bit worse. Google writes code for Google and then abandons it at some random time in the future without much notice. It is off-putting, but they are primarily inwardly focused.</comment>


Download.com wrapping downloads - <AUTHOR>

Download.com is now wrapping downloads with their own installer.
I just tried a download of my product and I find it really sleazy the way they wrapped it. By default they install a toolbar, change the user's  default search engine to Bing, and change the user's home page to MSN.
I wonder how Microsoft feels about being associated with such a sleazy activity which acts directly against the interests of developers.
They have a FAQ page here: http://cnet-upload.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2064
If you want to opt out they will "carefully consider your  request on a case-by case basis" sent here firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> My guess: Microsoft was probably ecstatic about this. Until it becomes a PR headache (it's just about to start). At that point, Microsoft will probably condemn this as misleading and something they don't endorse. They'll probably cut them off from whatever referral program they are currently on.

<comment><USER3> I think the toolbar war is one of the most significant yet under reported stories involving the battle for search engine market share.

Where as Google has let third parties distribute their own toolbars and funnel the traffic back via paid search feeds, Microsoft has taken the approach to just changing the default search provider to Bing. When someone downloads an ugly toolbar, its Microsoft's brand that takes a hit, where as no one is associating IAC's toolbars with Google (even though Google is paying them somewhere around $1 billion a year, maybe 70% of that is from toolbars.)

I doubt Microsoft is ecstatic about this, partnerships with other major players such as conduit most likely blow download.com's measly traffic numbers out of the water. Heck I would expect conduit is sending more installs per day than download.com will send a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There'll be a backlash. Microsoft will kill the program and claim that "Microsoft relies on a number of 3rd parties for its marketing. In this case, the 3rd party acted without consulting Microsoft and as soon as Microsoft was made aware of the issue, they cancelled the program"

<comment><USER5> A claim that may actually be true in this case.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but as Mark Twain once said, one of the best ways to lie is to tell just part of the truth.

Things I'd like to know: When did they find out? Why didn't they detect this before the general public? Are they clawing back every dollar they ever paid this and all intermediate vendors? Will they sue for reputational damage and the penalties allowed under their affiliate program terms?

If they didn't know about this, they certainly should have expected it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This really does seem like a violation. We develop enterprise help desk software and also offer it via Download.com and didn't receive a notification of this change.

It doesn't exactly look great on our software that a toolbar is installed alongside it -- especially for a professional business product.

<comment><USER8> Maybe you can answer this question. Why would any developer use download.com instead of just self-hosting on something like S3? I've always found "download sites" to be nothing but trouble and do everything I can to avoid them.

When I see someone's official site being at a place like that, it feels kind of like your office would be in your mom's basement and your business cards were chosen from a template at Kinko's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our product was placed there several years ago. It hasn't been obvious how to get it removed. We are actively trying to do so now.

It's not our official site but it was a one time a legitimate place to distribute software from. They just killed that of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The upsell is here! They'll expose your direct download link to people who are registered. Who registers for download.com?!?!

And, if you pay them for the privilege of hosting your content with them, they'll let you opt out of it. This is how they try and make money.

Take your software down: its 2011, you can distribute yourself, cut out the middle man, and (unless you're getting 20000 downloads a day) still not pay very much for it.

<comment><USER10> > Who registers for download.com?!?!

I did. 10 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> More info on this - [http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/17/the-cnet-download-com- insta...](http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/17/the-cnet-download-com-installer/)

<comment><USER12> That's what I had experienced - the Babylon toolbar, another one in a long line of annoying crapware.

My girlfriend accidentally installed it when downloading a PDF printer or similar.

They have a search page that looks just like Google's (maybe to minimize the need to switch back).

I didn't get the Microsoft toolbar version, I guess the Babylon one was bad enough.

I used to like C-net, now it's definitely going downhill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if you could bundle an uninstaller into your package - just for them. They install some adware, you uninstall it right after.

<comment><USER14> What if that was the whole app? There is a recursion joke in here somewhere...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised this doesn't violate the license of many of the applications available on Download.com. Time to abandon ship?

<comment><USER16> Here's to hoping Apple and Microsoft's respective App Stores will help kill parasitic download sites (CNET and MacUpdate especially).

<comment><USER17> What is the problem of macupdate?

<comment><USER16> They used to:

        * list alpha/beta software as new releases, even without the dev's consent
        * re-list software as updated, even when no updates have occurred
        * the owner has on several occasions rewritten various app descriptions
        * re-wrote and misspelled one of my company names and ignored requests to change it
        * ban any form of in-app mature content based on "religious principles" IIRC
        * refused to list one of my apps because the owner didn't see the "utility" in in it,
        even though Apple and VersionTracker both happily hosted 500K D/Ls..

That comes from the corrospondence I've had with the owner over the years. He's generally been a giant asshole and we finally quit updating to them several years ago.

It's always possible things have changed.

edit: format

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's called "OpenInstall", see openinstall.com - after looking up the domain owner, old owners, servers and registration of the company as well as multiple addresses, I found it is the same company responsible for this: [https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/FXL1y8qG...](https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/FXL1y8qG7YF)

"Viveli" or "GameTheory" are the company names, see comments on Cutts page. According to the posting, they even lost ties to their former toolbar partners Zugo.com because Bing.com shut them down for forced installs (like on Bright.com or on CNET).

<http://www.openinstall.com/aboutus.html> \- seems like most of them are former founders of "FreeCause", a toolbar company that hides installs under the false impression of charitable donations.

The person behind it is Eduardo Vivas, who just opened up his new startup Bright.com, which is Co-Reg scam, if you look at the getsatisfaction.com support requests this becomes very clear. Sign up people, send them to education affiliate offers, cold call them from a call-center and have them download a toolbar to get access to job postings.

Scam.

<comment><USER19> I can see in the plus article that you usually do pretty thorough research, but this time you're wrong. OpenInstall didn't do the CNET deal. Try checking out installcore.com

<comment><USER18> I have the openinstall toolbar path install wizard, linked to a bunch of silent installers and originally found on download.com and a couple other smaller "game" sites, in our malware database. The database is collected by a robot that scans the net for such "non typical" installers. Maybe CBS changed it or was just trying them out. Either way, they are scammers.

Public entries are available:

[http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia...](http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Adware%3AWin32%2FOpenInstall&ThreatID=157719)

[http://www.malware.com.br/cgi/search.pl?id=QWR3YXJlOldpbjMyL...](http://www.malware.com.br/cgi/search.pl?id=QWR3YXJlOldpbjMyL09wZW5JbnN0YWxs)

[http://amada.abuse.ch/?search=cdn.openinstall.com.s3.amazona...](http://amada.abuse.ch/?search=cdn.openinstall.com.s3.amazonaws.com)

Concerning are the MC alerts:

[http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/66beb6cff7a046d...](http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/66beb6cff7a046d7848de11b36dda920.php)

[http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/8509e4805e78b0b...](http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/8509e4805e78b0b018f7e03d4df94656.php)

[http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/89267efa2271745...](http://www.malware-control.com/statics- pages/89267efa22717455b07207051b48a3c8.php)

The external reference links to avast, bitdefender, etc. are all broken and "OpenInstall" can't be found in their databases. I assume openinstall payed them off to remove the entries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> (1) I really appreciate this post & discussion. It has been clear for a long time that lots of website owners pay little or no attention to the experiences customers have with fulfillment providers (and Download.com _is_ fulfillment, in the larger sense). It's time to hold people accountable for this kind of thing.

(2) Microsoft has been associated with sleazy stuff for years. I'm thinking of the installation of all kinds of nonsense software when you buy "Microsoft Windows" pre-installed. I doubt this issue is the kind of thing they consider a problem. Sad, but true.

<comment><USER21> I believe horrible pre-installed software is the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers. If it were Microsoft doing it, they'd also do it for purchased copies.

<comment><USER22> It's entirely a hardware manufacturer thing, just as Android "customizations" are a hardware/carrier thing. Microsoft doesn't make an extra dime when HP/Dell/Asus/etc. bundles that crap. In fact that stuff probably hurts MS significantly. Lack of system-slowing crap is a big benefit for Apple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this even legal? Did you give them permission to distribute your software?

</comment><comment><USER24> I cant find this issue with any of the software the company I work for sells via download.com, it looks like people who pay CNET millions of dollars per year are not affected.

</comment><comment><USER25> Clicky: <http://cnet-upload.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2064>

<comment><USER26> For once I'd like to see a little more honesty... you know: "we did it for the money" rather than "we did it for the users". Liars.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

2\. Why is CNET Download.com making this change?

The same reason you have your applications on Download.com – for the users. The CNET Download.com Installer ensures a safe and improved download experience by making it easier for Download.com users to complete downloads and launch the software's installer.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

</comment><comment><USER27> Assuming you have a piece of software which is supported by bundled toolbar installation, does this mean that Download.com effectively steals your slice of the pie?

(not that I advocate toolbar bundling, but it is one way that some apps make money)</comment>


Dayguard – CSS Regression plugin for NightwatchJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tacoss/dayguard <comment><USER2> Author of another CSS regression testing tool here which doesn't depend on your full web app being up and running (which is the default for WebDriver and friends). I'd be seriously interested in feedback from people who have run a CSS regression test suite against a deployed web app, and especially how maintainable their testing setup was a year in and how much defects it found in that process. My personal experience with WebDriver for acceptance tests have made me approach such things very carefully. I am very conservative in how much I want to leverage a full stack setup.</comment>


Names Proposed for New Elements on Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/science/names-proposed-for-new-elements-on-periodic-table.html <comment><AUTHOR> flerovium (atomic symbol Fl #114 ) and livermorium (atomic symbol Lv #116).</comment>


Pagespeed Exporter for Monitoring Website Performance - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/foomo/pagespeed_exporter <comment><AUTHOR> Measure, monitor and compare performance!

Any suggestions are welcome!

Using golang / prometheus / grafana</comment>


We All Work at Enron Now  - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/02/we_all_work_at_enron_now.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29 <comment><USER2> This article is rather crappy. Quick summary:

1\. Ten years ago, some people committed egregious accounting fraud.

2\. Let's imagine what would happen if everyone committed accounting fraud. (Where we re-define accounting fraud in a very liberal manner.)

3\. Sprinkle in lots of non-sequitur. Oh look, this is an explanation for the current state of the economy and Everything Else!

4\. Therefore, the environment is going down the drain and we're all screwed, unless all principles of accounting are re-based upon environmental economics.

Come on Umair, you can do better than that!

<comment><USER3> Also:

5\. Fortunately, the Internet has Changed Everything and, like in $CONTEMPORARY_REFERENCE, all bad things will be swept away. The End!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's what I don't understand about Pure Capitalism (and the Pure Capitalists who espouse it): The end goal of it is, in almost all non-theory cases throughout the history of civilization, suffering in either quality or quantity delivered to the customer or suffering of the well-being of the non- owner personnel.

Whether it is by imperfect competition due to myriad reasons (information asymmetry, {mono|duo|oligo}poly, "regulatory capture" or blatant corruption of governments) or industry verticalization or horizontalization, the end result is always one or a cabal of big ass companies runs everything, exploits its workers in one or more industries, and the smaller competition gets squeezed out to the point where the barriers to entry are impossible except through regulation (and, often times, regulation is the reason it makes it hard to compete).

How many more times can we say "Capitalism would be perfect, if it weren't for humans" before we conclude that we need something different? And, why do we continue to pursue it in practice if we know it doesn't work in almost any situation?

In fact the only industry that is known to have "perfect competition", the one taught about ad nauseum in econ classes, is fishermen in Southern US. And, even then, governments and even the Ku Klux Klan were called in when hard- working Vietnamese immigrants came in and fished harder and longer. There's no win when Free Will is involved.

Pure capitalism doesn't work (or else we'd have done that already), communism doesn't work. Something in between, but what?

<comment><USER5> The US is far from a pure capitalist society. Between 1800-1900, despite a civil war and the massive economic damage involved in such things, we went from being a backwards third world country to being a world power in a nearly pure-capitalist society. We were well on our way to eliminating poverty.

Starting in 1900 socialism in many forms started to take over the country, resulting in the great depression, the new deal, etc. But still, between 1900-2000 despite inflation eroding the purchasing power of the dollar by %90+, the standard of living for the lowest %20 of americans increased drastically. We went from nobody having any electric utilities in 1900 (of those in poverty, maybe lights and phone service) to it being fairly common for the lower %20 to have computers and internet and TVs and electric dishwashers, etc.

Too long of a time horizon? Look at india from 1980-2000. India is a socialist country and did not embrace pure capitalism, but had reforms that greatly reduced buracracy making starting small businesses much easier. The per-capita income of India doubled in that time period. That is over a billion people. Many of them are still poor, but their relations who are now living in first world standards can send money back home and the quality of life of the poor was improved dramatically-- just by lessening the burdends of socialism slightly.

Seriously, if you study economics, and you look at history, you'll find that where a country has a relatively free economy, the standard of living of the poorest %20 improves. Where a country has a relatively unfree economy, ranging from British socialism to German socialism to the USSR and North Korea, the poor have much lower standards of living.

If socialism is very dominant, it is true that there is "less poverty", but this is simply because everyone but the government is made to be poor. The only economic equality historically comes from everyone being poor.

\--

Finally, I think that, given that the purpose of this site is to foster a startup spirit, you really should question whether a startup is for you if you reject capitalism.

I don't see how you can make good business deals, treat your employees right, or be a success if you thin the very nature of what you're doing is bad or evil.

Capitalism works because in a consentual exchange, both parties profit. When we trade, we are trading something we value relatively less for something we value relatively more. The apple farmer has so many apples, he'd rather have money, while the cobbler has no apples and wants to buy some.

When you give government control over the economy you naturally create centralized planning and inefficiencies that lead to shortages. Either they price things too high or too low, because they aren't aware of the market signals. Compulsion of force eliminates choice which eliminates the method by which consumers give feedback to economic entities. This is why there was scarcity in the USSR while there was abundance in the USA despite the USSR having more resources overall.

Of course, it is also in governments interest to indoctrinate people with the idea that they need government, which is why governments take over schools and then proceed to teach children that socialism is necessary to for "equity" while ignoring that it has failed everywhere (even the USA.)

Study economics. It isn't that difficult of a subject. The obfuscation and handwaving is all about trying to make keynsianism seem viable. Economics in one lesson, by henry hazlit is free online from various sites and gives very succinct arguments for why various programs do or don't work, and how the world works economically.

We're in a depression in the US caused by a distortion of the market from government. Under clinton it was decreed that loaning money only to people who could repay it was racist, and under Bush it was decreed that the rate of interest should be below the rate of inflation. This caused the housing bubble and the consequent bust. It is no wonder that the perpetrators of this crime -- years after it turned out that there was no racial bias in the loaning results-- blamed the wall street banks and "bailed them out", often forcing solvent banks like wells fargo to take "Bailouts" even though they didn't need them...and to try to push thru congress the power to arbitrarily force mergers of banks at the federal reserve level.

Capitalism works. Freedom works. Let people be and they will make better choices for themselves. Try to impose your whims on them and you will make their lives worse.

You need to embrace this if you want to run a business.

<comment><USER6> _The US is far from a pure capitalist society. Between 1800-1900, despite a civil war and the massive economic damage involved in such things, we went from being a backwards third world country to being a world power in a nearly pure-capitalist society. We were well on our way to eliminating poverty._

Uh, US poverty in 1900 was immense. This was the era of the Wobblies, The Jungle and the Robber Barons. Yes, a variety of radical ideas appeared about then. Why?? Look at the conditions...

It seems like length abuse is creeping into HN...

<comment><USER7> Poverty is the natural state of man. Its not until he could trade and keep the results of his efforts that he was able to start accumulating capital.

Government limited to the enforcement of property rights allows each of us to accumulate capital.

But some of us are smarter, work harder and defer consumption. They can accumulate more than others. There is nothing wrong with that.

Then mass production and mass media came along, enabling some to sell what they produced to millions of people and accumulating a lot more. Still no crime committed.

In fact, the average person benefits when others are able to produce a lot with little effort. Things become cheaper.

And those who save rather than consuming benefit us too. We can borrow their money and invest in improving our own productive abilities.

Its true that those who commit crimes and get away with it also can accumulate wealth, but that doesn't mean that those who've respected the rights of others don't deserve what they've accumulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think you'll find that economies have been doing this for centuries and theyve been crashing because of it too. [http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/fallromeeconomic/a/econof...](http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/fallromeeconomic/a/econoffall.htm)</comment>


Librem 13: A High-End Laptop That Respects Your Rights - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-13 <comment><USER2> So their selling a standard laptop with a custom linux distro, and that's somehow so much better than... a standard laptop with a linux distro installed that you pay 50% or so extra?</comment>


CircleCI Raises $1.5M To Test Web Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/25/circleci-raises-1-5m-from-eric-ries-and-heroku-founders-for-platform-to-test-web-apps/ <comment><AUTHOR> CircleCI is an awesome service that has made testing and continuous integration significantly easier for our small dev team. Highly recommended! <https://circleci.com/>

<comment><USER2> Big +1 to Circle. Works great. Unfortunately, the way we're running our test suite (Konacha for JS front end + rspec/capybara/et al for the backend) precludes us from the "magic" parallelization, which is a bummer.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

We have a couple ideas on how to make non-magic parallelization easier to set up. Expect to see that in the next few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey guys, I'm a founder of CircleCI. Happy to answer any questions, or check us out and give me feedback!

<comment><USER5> I saw on your blog post that you use clojure - could you give an overview of your technology stack and how clojure fits into it?

<comment><USER3> Hey, I'm the other founder at Circle.

So the entire backend is clojure. For the devops stuff, we use pallet [1], a clojure library similar to puppet or chef, and stevedore, a clojure DSL for writing bash. We actually have zero bash in the source tree!

The web UI is a fat javascript client using knockout and HAMLcoffee, so the web server only serves a JSON API, all HTML rendering is done client-side.

[1] palletops.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well done! Can't wait to see circle grows with more features.

</comment><comment><USER7> A++++++ great service would use again :)</comment>


Some HP Enterprise SSD will brick after 40000 hours without update - <AUTHOR> https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docLocale=en_US&docId=a00097382en_us <comment><AUTHOR> More comments: [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hpe-ssds-firmware-patch- br...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/hpe-ssds-firmware-patch-brick-40000)</comment>


Show HN: Indie Hackers Analytics – Insights into profitable internet businesses - <AUTHOR> https://ih-analytics.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Modifying the attributes and seeing the updated charts is very nice. What is the data you're using?</comment>


SmartPath (YC S16) Helps Companies Educate Employees on Budgeting and Saving - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/08/smartpath/ <comment><USER2> Hey, @aloksmartpath here. Excited to be part of the YC community and, more importantly, helping the underserved majority with personal finance. As background, I've taught over 10K low and moderate wage employees personal finance after leaving a career at Bain. The most striking challenge for over 90% of participants was consistently spending less than they made..and even knowing if they're on track. I believe we're on the right path to making an impact. Open to questions, comments, and any/all perspectives on how to address this problem. Would love to get more people involved.</comment>


Ask HN: Isn't planning exit b4 starting, ~ framing prenuptial divorce agreement? - <AUTHOR>

I have a minimal upstart. I have approached to couple of angels, few have been kind. No matter whom I talk to, the question is inevitable - "What is your exit strategy?"<p>Isn't this akin to framing a prenuptial divorce agreement, before getting married?? <comment><USER2> That's a question I thought a lot about when I was 22 and getting my first round of funding, but today, at 36, I would just dodge. "I'm sorry, I'm really not thinking about that. I'm just concentrating on how to make my business as successful as possible. The bigger we get, the more options we'll have."

Maybe things have changed in the last 8 years, but I imagine that anyone you'd want to take money from knows exactly what the exit strategy of a tech startup is. Investors probably aren't screening you with the actual answer to the question.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you think they strictly mean it that way? Sure, they ould literally mean "How and when do you intend to flip this thing and pay me off?", but you don't necessarily have to answer in those terms.

Personally, I'd take it as a general question about planning, expectations and commitment. Is there are a point where you certainly want to cash-out? Do you intend to make this your life's work? Have you thought about how this business would function at double, 10x or 100x the current size?

<comment><USER4> The other "exit strategy" is when to cut your losses and quit. At that point, what do you do? What criteria would you use to figure that out?</comment></comment>


Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/making-music-and-art-through-machine-learning-doug-eck-of-magenta/ <comment><USER2> Art is not putting up data until it brings up something "cool". It's the expression of mind. Miyazaki has a clear expression about the subject [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfxlgHBaxEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfxlgHBaxEU) and I'm really deeply sadden that people doesn't get this before hand.

Try expressing feelings and stop using that word that has absolutely nothing to do with machine learning.

The very very very basic Idea of machine learning is at opposite with art.

These things have nothing to do together.

<comment><USER3> Art- and in fact, most creative endeavors often DO involve creating many things until you discover something "cool".

With my personal experiments with generative art, I think of the machine almost as a work assistant. I have a rough idea of what I'm going for, and the ways to attempt it, and I teach that to my computer using code. But then I go away from the computer and out into the world and drink coffee, sketch in my notebook, and in the meantime my computerized assistant is back home working on draft after draft of my latest piece of art.

I come home and I see what he's done, and most of it isn't great, but occasionally there is a gem! I look at what he did for that gem and then encourage him to do more of that, and then go back out into the world. I highly disagree that machine learning is the opposite of art.

If you go to any traditional artist's studio you will often find notebooks filled with discarded sketches and ideas. Paintings with color combinations or techniques that weren't ideal. This is almost exactly the same process. And I would argue that process is exactly what art is.

<comment><USER2> "most creative endeavors often do involve CREATING many things" ; not generating them.

You've "selected" something you liked. You are no artist and should not call your self like that. If you do, you will never inspire "simple" people.

At least if you do it would become the MacDonald of art.

Do nothing, sit and say to the bot if it fits you or not.

You're even worse than a DJ. The DJ actually works his selection and works his transitions.

Sketches have been written out of artist mind. Not by some selection that fits you or not.

Art is work.

<comment><USER3> What is the difference between creation and generation?

What is the difference between me selecting the specific frame made by a generative algorithm and photographer picking a specific moment in time to capture a frame?

What's the difference between me using a generative algorithm and Michelangelo using assistants to paint the Sistine Chapel?

<comment><USER2> Dedicating our life to find a meaning trough work.

Get interested in some artists and what they have achieved.

A humble human being would never call it self an artist.

That's the first mistake, and it's philosophical rather than technical.

I would say the tool it self is rather an piece of art. Not what it creates.

<comment><USER3> I am really curious to hear your responses to the questions I raised

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here are some examples of music they've generated:

[https://magenta.tensorflow.org/performance- rnn](https://magenta.tensorflow.org/performance-rnn)

</comment><comment><USER5> I really don't understand the point of this. Do we need a computer to help us add to the vast store of music nobody ever listens to? Reminds me of Douglas Adams's electric monks

<comment><USER6> IMO, the end game of this sort of thing would be to, one day, have an app that can generate endless new music just for you, based on your taste.

<comment><USER7> That really sounds like the computer would have to _understand_ you and your shifting moods better than most people could.

<comment><USER6> Which might actually be quite possible. At the very least, I'm sure machine learning can have a better understanding of your general musical taste than most of your friends do.

<comment><USER7> That's a pretty exciting prospect then, and I could imagine even a mediocre implementation being almost catastrophically popular.

<comment><USER8> Spotify seems to implement this with custom play lists generated for you daily, with those play lists broken down by different styles/moods

<comment><USER7> Personally, I find that Spotify doesn't "get" me in that way, not really. Maybe it hits the broad center of a normal distribution, but I think a lot of people lie outside of that. Even then, surely the challenge of curating existing music which is heavily tagged is much less than composing it with a mood or taste in mind. Just my gut feeling that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A wide-ranging talk on computer generated art, music, stories, humor, etc.

I liked listening to it, but am disappointed by the field's disregard for existing methods of structure. "We don't use rules".... well, rules have helped mankind progress forward for hundreds of thousands of years.

Just because they don't easily transfer into your ML model doesn't mean they are useless. Maybe the model needs to learn some new tricks.

<comment><USER10> There is a lot of interesting work going on in this area right now in the research community - using ML for things like program synthesis, meta- learning, and combining ideas from constraint satisfaction with ML approaches.

The rules based approach has (as you mention) years of history, so people are currently exploring the green-ish fields of raw learning approaches with good success on tasks where rules based approaches performed much worse or didn't work at all (cf image recognition, speech recognition), and in some areas it seems like the more you let the model learn / get rid of classical rules based approaches (with enough data), the better it does. Whether that is true for field X, not true _yet_ for field X, or will never be true for field X depends on who you ask.

There is definitely a recent tide of models which are focused more on rule learning, function generation, and so on. The general thing I see is that rule based approaches with _good_ approximators/probability models to guide heuristic or exact search can do crazy things - this is the story of AlphaGo at a 10k foot level. People in the ML community are just more focused on the _new-ish_ part (learning good probability/function approximators from data) right now.

Just because rules aren't incorporated widely yet, doesn't mean they won't be in the future. I am personally very interested in this direction, and a bunch of work from Sony CSL (Pachet et. al.) has focused heavily on this idea in the past.

As an aside, whenever you hear an ML researcher say "prior", it is generally functioning as some kind of soft or occasionally hard rule - so maybe there are more rules floating around than it seems. Soft rules aka priors are generally (much!) easier for gradient descent style optimization and incorporating directly into models, so we tend to have priors rather than hard rules as seen in many other parts of computer science. Even the structure of the model itself can be seen as a prior.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the additional info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I heard a quote about automobiles: "When you remove the horse from the cart you no longer have a horse & buggy" I suspect if convincing music can be generated procedurally people will no longer put much value in a linear composition. Its possible music will become interactive via interfaces like AR and VR.

</comment><comment><USER12> I did something similar in relation to art.

Making physical art based on inspiration from machine learning processes:

[https://medium.com/@rememberlenny/digital-processes- inspirin...](https://medium.com/@rememberlenny/digital-processes-inspiring- analog-paintings-a358eb7801a0)

</comment><comment><USER13> Re: the latest Performance RNN, discussing their "best sounding" output.

> _Note that this isn't a performance of an existing piece; the model is also > choosing the notes to play, "composing" a performance directly. The > performances generated by the model lack the overall coherence that one > might expect from a piano composition; in musical jargon, it might sound > like the model is "noodling"— playing without a long-term structure. > However, to our ears, the local characteristics of the performance (i.e. the > phrasing within a one or two second time window) are quite expressive._

It's understandable to be encouraged by progress, but to my ears, it's not really expressive other than the first thought that I had when listening to the piece:

"That piano player is having a stroke, somebody should do something to help."

<comment><USER14> I've used the same analogy. Its unconditional and produces no coherent structure, but at least it captures some pianist-like timing and dynamics. Magenta is a github project ... please do something to help! :-)

<comment><USER13> Eh, asking a musician to write code is like asking a programmer to learn a scale on an accordion. Either you're going to see the failures in your own art, and be open to criticism, or ask for somebody to do it for you.

I'll put it thusly: As a broke-ass musician barely making ends meet, I'll be more than happy to contribute if Alphabet pays off what's left of the mortgage on my house.

Until then, I've only got the perspective that a project like this is trying to take food off my plate, money out of my pocket, and replace me. If you want my help, Son, you got to come better at me than with Altruism.

Otherwise, the best thing I can do to help is to say "This project is a heap of shit and your time is better spent elsewhere" without tinging it with too much condescension. Your child is brain damaged. Take it to Oregon.</comment></comment></comment>


On this day, 52 days ago Robert Kennedy gave his greatest speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp81OYCjXtU&t=215s <comment><AUTHOR> This speech is perhaps the only speech I've heard that resonated with me as an entrepreneur.

What do you think about it?</comment>


Advice for YC applicants on the fence - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rmorrison.org/advice-for-yc-applicants-on-the-fence

<comment><USER2> I stopped applying because I realized my projects are just way too small for YC. I care about building stuff, but also just want to make something that can provide a decent passive income for myself. A few hundred grand per year in profit would be massive for me, but nothing to YC investors.

<comment><USER3> I don't think there are many YC startups that can boast a few hundred grand per year in profit, as opposed to revenue or money they raised.

<comment><USER2> Before successful exits, I bet their operating profits are quite a bit more than a few hundred grand. I don't see my projects ever making much more than that, they're just too limited in scope.

<comment><USER4> You would be wrong. For most atleast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i've applied twice, single founder, with no success, and for the third year i still find myself without a team, by yc terms (deep-ish relation, built something together, etc). altough i have confidence in what i want to do, don't even feel like applying again.

EDIT: came back to clarify that this wasn't meant to criticize yc, just that i don't feel like taking time from the yc, that can be applied screening awesomer and more solid projects. flame on!

<comment><USER5> EDIT2: from the comments and buzz around HN, i feel like the focus this year has been much around the 150k. ppl should keep in mind the great projects that came out of YC, when there was no "easy 150k"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For all the applicants on the fence my only response is that yo have nothing to lose. If you don't get picked then so be it but there have be a lot of successful start-ups that are not chosen to participate every year. If you are placing all of your chips on the YC to help you make it then I think it would behoove you to reassess your goals. start ups are about creating something that solves a problem, changes lives and to make okay products better. The initial start up should be about creating a stellar product more than it is about money. To those critics, yes money is a crucial aspect of business but start-up have the unique ability to bootstrap and work under financial constraints that most would never be possible. Creating a start up is as much about the business as it is the experience of starting that business. So go for it you have nothing to loose.

</comment><comment><USER7> How critical is it to have a technical founder? and what constitutes technical? I've applied this year with a team but none of us are competent programmers.

Thats not to say we're incompetent. Two of us have the beginner knowledge of university intro courses, but not the level of knowledge we would need to actually create our project.

Is our current ignorance the kind of thing that will get us ignored or overlooked?

And while you were there did you hear of any other teams with non-technical founders?

This is my biggest worry so I'd be interested to get more info.

<comment><USER8> Can't speak for YC, but I can tell you that everyone in our group had at least 1 badass hacker on their team. I've never heard of a hacker-free team going thru YC. My guess is that you'd need some pretty outstanding accomplishments on your app to overcome it, but I'd wager it's theoretically possible.

<comment><USER9> Harj and Kulveer from Auctomatic were the sole exception but had a bit of a unique situation as pg says here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2325376>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I gotta ask: Every start-up this session got not just YC funding but also SV Angel funding. With that much seed money, what do you do with it all?

<comment><USER11> $150k is both a lot (if you're very new and need a little time to build your product on your own), and not very much at all (if you're doing traditional marketing or hiring)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if all applicants receive some type of feedback, even if they are not chosen for an interview? Basically, an explanation as to why they were not chosen to move on to the next step in the process and which areas they may want to improve on.

<comment><USER13> No.

<http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Aaron also wrote a similar post about 6 months ago: [http://formisfunction.posterous.com/how-to-make-your-yc- appl...](http://formisfunction.posterous.com/how-to-make-your-yc-application- stand-out)</comment>


Painted-on salt provides glowing thermometer for tiny things - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/painted-on-salt-provides-glowing-thermometer-for-tiny-things/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08727](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08727)</comment>


Facebook accused of obtaining concealed weapon licenses with false info - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/2-facebook-security-contractors-identified-alleged-gun-license-plot-2020-8 <comment><AUTHOR> Note that it's a fairly big (bribery) deal in Santa Clara, but the Facebook part hasn't been discussed much.

[https://www.mercurynews.com/ex-ceo-of-security-firm- charged-...](https://www.mercurynews.com/ex-ceo-of-security-firm-charged-in- santa-clara-county-sheriff-concealed-gun-permit-bribery-case)</comment>


Update on Steam, Ubuntu, and 32-bit support - <AUTHOR> https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206447625383/ <comment><USER2> Telling everyone they have to change just to suit your interests does not seem reasonable.</comment>


Logic Theorist - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_Theorist <comment><USER2> Here is more information on Logic Theorist's improved proof of a theorem in Principia Mathematica:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=iYHuBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=iYHuBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=principia+mathematica+2.85&source=bl&ots=zyu408jeG0&sig=dApPpxiPyFGM8wBkIv8wmjjGM8I&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=principia%20mathematica%202.85&f=false)

<comment><USER3> For people who don't understand the dots and colons, OP's proposition can be expressed in modern notation as

      ((p V q) -> (p V r)) -> (p V (q -> r))

It's easy to justify this tautology by considering the case when (p) is true and (p) is false.

By contrast, the proof in PM and by LT strike me as highly unintuitive. I guess it's an example of using Hilbert Deduction instead of Natural Deduction, where Natural Deduction is closer to how people normally prove things. For programmers, it's as if they programmed in Combinatory Logic [1] instead of Lambda Calculus[2].

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKI_combinator_calculus) [2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus)

<comment><USER4> Assuming p V !p (read: p or not p) as an axiom means that you are admitting excluded middle. This axiom is part of "classical propositional logic". So a proof using this case distinction (p true or p false) would be valid, in the classical sense.

There is a stronger system, called "intuitionistic propositional logic", where this axiom is not valid. There are less formulae that are valid intuitionistically, but any formula that is valid intuitionistically is also valid clasically.

There are various philosophical reasons why one prefers intuitionistic logic, but note that in any case it is stronger to have an intuitionistic proof, so these are preferable (when they exist).

<comment><USER5> The formula ((p V q) -> (p V r)) -> (p V (q -> r)) isn't valid intuitionistically, though (you can get excluded middle from it by taking q=p and r=⊥), so there's no reason to want an intuitionstic proof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a simple analogy.

Human: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4 Machine: 2 + 2 = 4

The machine 'knows' the result must be exactly 4. The machine is just finding new ways to arrive at a result that it already knows to be true. But i want the machine to arrive at a result that is hitherto unknown. That for me is AI.

<comment><USER7> We humans often run into new discoveries by basing it on stuff we already know.

We knew that combustion engines could rotate an axle. We knew that axles could drive a wheel. We knew that wheels turning could drive a cart. Thus, the automobile.

Just like humans, AIs can only solve problems it already understands.

<comment><USER8> > _Just like humans, AIs can only solve problems it already understands_

This isn't actually true. Problems can be solved by random chance, as long as there are good ways to test the validity of solutions. The most obvious example of this is the evolution of living organisms.

As long as AI can "understand" whether or not its solution solves a certain problem, it can just assemble random solutions and test them. There's obviously an incentive to decrease the randomness as much as possible, but an infinitely powerful computer wouldn't need any such optimization at all.

<comment><USER9> If you watch videos of AIs learning to run [1] or playing Mario [2], you see that there's definitely "try random shit until your reward function gives you positive feedback" as a method for training AIs.

The difficult part is developing the reward function. There's a lot of intelligence in our hormone-based incentive system - that we feel pain, that we feel sad, etc. Many of those emotions are pre-programmed. If we find a way to design reinforcement systems with the right goals, we can do it like mother nature did it for several billion years. But it's still a ton of computational power required.

If we look at nature as a massively parallelized computational system that defined "just live" as the reward (not because it "wants" it, but because it just emerged), it shows us how much power we would need if we would try to build a completely random process that gains intelligence.

I think your proposed method works ("just assemble random solutions and test them") because we've already seen it in nature. But it takes a lot of time and energy, regardless of our computational power. I think we're faster when we find the right boundaries and reward functions instead of randomly trying stuff.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/gn4nRCC9TwQ](https://youtu.be/gn4nRCC9TwQ) [2]: [https://youtu.be/qv6UVOQ0F44](https://youtu.be/qv6UVOQ0F44)

<comment> s-shellfish > If we look at nature as a massively parallelized computational system that > defined "just live" as the reward (not because it "wants" it, but because it > just emerged), it shows us how much power we would need if we would try to > build a completely random process that gains intelligence.

With that definition I can't see how artificial life created would be any much different than the behavior of a computer virus.

> I think we're faster when we find the right boundaries and reward functions > instead of randomly trying stuff.

Boundaries and reward functions in human society are part of the 'human social organism' that allows each individual human to function with autonomy in a fashion that is collaborative, aligned with our developed value systems, and allows us to live with stability, security, faith (be it in some sense of wonder, divinity, in each-other - doesn't matter), independence - and these things are base needs, no matter what variation they manifest with. Boundaries are redefined when there is conflict, and the less violent and destructive the conflict, the better the chances are for these boundaries and reward functions to continue functioning as they have been developed (rather than being obliterated in entirety, requiring them to built from scratch).

It makes us faster, but it's also us standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think it's important to question what things are worth applying random solutions to, and what things require deep contemplation. It seems very paradoxical, to try to define something that both is a function of the system it exists in, and also something that could potentially break the whole system. But, creation, destruction, clearly an oversimplification.

I do know that what looks random to one person is not necessarily random to another. This goes back to how the context is defined, how society is defined, boundaries and reward functions established a priori.

Emotions can be simple. The problem is that a computer already has them. Computer produces wrong solution, algorithm dies. Computer produces right solution, algorithm survives. We don't give the computer words to express itself about this because we never taught it to do that. What would happen if we did?

<comment><USER9> > try to define something that both is a function of the system it exists in, > and also something that could potentially break the whole system

That is what's so damn hard about shaping societies (and the market). The recursive feedback loop and the self-interference.

It's also on individual levels: We're able to dynamically adapt our reinforcement system using meta-cognition (based in the prefrontal neocortex).

I understand the other parts of the answer, but I can't really see what you try to say with them (e.g. boundaries, society and deciding if we apply randomness or not).

<comment> s-shellfish I tend to be of the mindset that over the long term, you are going to get a good perspective if you approach the problem 50/50\. Apply randomness half the time, apply the knowledge you know the other half. Divide and conquer, sort of.

Randomness potentiates the space that you will both be able to identify error and consequently, find mistakes, find errors in reasoning (Monte Carlo simulations are traditionally used for this sort of thing). The other good thing with randomness as well, find ways to see errors as being 'not errors', e.g. a tool that can be developed, structured, a new way to see the problem, a creative approach. Some melding between the two seems to be something of significance for an AI. So you don't want it to be all random, because you need stability, structure, you need a 'language' or an 'awareness' you understand that isn't so chaotic and constantly changing that you can't even find a place to put your feet on the ground.

It doesn't have to be a perfect 50/50 balance, because that has it's own set of problems - divide and conquer all the divisions and you still wind up with 2^n newly defined problem spaces to interpret, possibly losing sight of the bigger picture or maintaining independent direction in one focused lineage of all those spaces. Just very generally, maintain balance, because the world is chaos sometimes.

It's like a stream of information. All the analysis to all of that space is meaningless if the context changes enough. So, adapt to a new context.

Honestly though, I don't know what I'm trying to say much of the time, aside, 'help', lol. Life is terrifying. :)

<comment><USER9> > Honestly though, I don't know what I'm trying to say much of the time, > aside, 'help', lol. Life is terrifying. :)

from another comment made by you:

> Evolution does not care if an asteroid hits the earth and wipes out all life > as it presently exists.

My advice: Stop worrying. Enjoy the randomness :) Maybe book a flight to Asia. Life is short. Embrace uncertainty. Sell luxurious sanitary pads to rich women in their 40s. Dress well and be funny. Then suddenly change your mood to sexy, ask a stranger for a kiss. I now write random love letters to my ex- girlfriends. Let's see where randomness will lead us to. See you on the other side of existence.

<comment><USER9> Found the boundaries pretty early. Wearing nothing but socks and singing "Why does it hurt when I pee?" while trying to cross a freeway is not considered "appropriate in the public". shmocks everywhere.

I'm in jail now. I'm free now. But a little cold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would like to see a few more details about how this actually worked.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this like an enhanced SAT solver?

<comment><USER3> No, not really. A SAT solver checks if there's a model in which a formula is true, while this program checks if the formula is true in every model. It's believed that there's no efficient reduction from one to the other, because otherwise NP=coNP.

<comment><USER12> However, modern sat-solvers do both. That is, although they are called "sat- solvers", they can actually output both "sat" and "unsat". In software verification they are used for the "unsat" side: you produce a logical formula P stating that your software is correct, and then you ask the sat-solver about ¬P. Hopefully it returns "unsat", meaning that it has proved P is true; otherwise it will return a satisfying assignment, which is a counterexample to your proposed theorem.

So I guess you could say that a theorem prover for propositional logic, like Logic Theorist, is "half" of a modern solver like Z3, it can produce proofs but not counterexamples. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Has any of the code for this survived?

<comment><USER14> Not the original source but pretty explanatory:

[https://history- computer.com/Library/Logic%20Theorist%20memo...](https://history- computer.com/Library/Logic%20Theorist%20memorandum.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Systems of logic should not be hard coded into AIs (or AGIs) imo. The basic problems with logic is that it doesn't take uncertainty into account, and doesn't support the fact that almost every statement about the real world is only approximately true, or a useful model; it also usually can't handle inconsistencies very well.

It would be unable to prove or in fact have any useful facts about the real world. For example, consider the statement "The sky is blue.". It is not categorically true -- the sky becomes red near sunset, (depending on chrominance vs luminance interpretation) it gets black at night, may be other colors in other planets, etc. So the system would be stuck trying to convey all necessary conditions, might not be able to formulate simple thoughts or communicate well. It would almost certainly lack abstraction capabilities.

There are some logical systems that make slight modifications to logic to accommodate probabilities and uncertainty, but those still might be insufficient or incomplete.

The fundamental issue is that, while logic works and is useful for us, it is just a tool. The end goal of any real world agent is not logical correctness, it is achieving tasks, understanding/predicting its environment, communicating, etc. Because of the specificity of those environments and tasks, there isn't going to be a general method that is efficient in them. You need a evolutionary-like, or leaning system that can adapt to the problem with minimal underlying assumptions. The assumptions of logic that everything should be binned according to falsehoods, probabilities, etc, is ultimately not necessarily a good way to (for example) control a robot in a complex environment, make it assemble a product, play videogames, or even do mathematics. Perhaps they can be augmented with side models (again tools) allowing them to formulate subtasks as logical problems (although its not clear those approaches would be better than just training neural networks). Nothing can be set in stone, everything must be learned and modifiable.

So again the main problem with AGI is formulating good frameworks that 1) Have good, general goals aligned with what we expect from this AI; 2) Is able to adapt in almost every way to achieve this goal, without degrading its ability to recognize its rewards/goals.

This is such a hard problem that it occupies a significant chunk of even humans' lifetimes. We spend lots of time thinking about long term goals, which in part are dictated by society, in part dictated by biology, and which we reflect upon to conclude what we should do -- from small daily goals like eating or getting to work, to long term career advancing and relationships. Then we set to achieve those goals by learning and acting on the world around us. It does happen often that our goals degenerate, ultimately because of our ability to modify ourselves and set our own goals: the reward achieved from a drug is a degeneracy that overrides other long term goals; various addictions exploit loopholes in our reward system; we suffer from despair, depression or lack of motivation that can even override the basic biological rewards.

If we could not override basic biological rewards, setting our own goals, then we would fall to addictions and inability to live in complex environments which require complex unnatural goals related to careers, learning, and other abstract concepts.

And too much of this power can leave us in desperation, depression, meaninglessness.

So there is a constant balance and search for genuine rewards, and constant refinement of them. That is central to human existence, and to conscious experience in general.</comment>


How to Not Be a Shitty Recruiter - <AUTHOR> http://team.adzerk.com/post/17768823073/shitty-recruiters

<comment><USER2> If developers were artists, we'd all be getting emails like this:

Hi user24,

I saw your profile on ArtIn and wanted to see if you might be interested in a commission.

The role requires significant experience using paint and canvas, as well as familiarity with brushes. Experience with chalk or pastels is not required, but would be a bonus. Our artwork hangs on walls around the house, where it is seen by lots of people. Our house is very exciting.

We are offering a competitive rate of pay in a very dynamic house.

If you're interested, please contact me. Alternatively if any of your artist- friends might be interested, I'll happily use them instead. I don't really care if it's you or someone else that fills this role so long as you tick the boxes. As far as I'm concerned one artist is much the same as the other yeah? Obviously the most important thing is how long they've been painting for, and whether they've used the exact techniques our other artists have.

Look forward to hearing from you!

A. Recruiter.

NB: I'm not trying to say that as a developer I am an artist, or that you can't quantify what makes a good developer. My point is that if you were an artist, would you take that role? You can't even answer the question because it doesn't tell you anything. Every art commission needs experience with paint! Is it a portrait? An abstract piece? What size?

Recruiters: your job is to _attract me_ , not simply to find me. Tell me that your company is growing, which industry you're in, that you'd rather do it right than fast, that as a developer I'll have input to the product direction, etc etc.

Attract me.

<comment><USER3> I don't think that "I don't really care if it's you or someone else that fills this role" is such a bad thing. Good companies want developers that are smart -- they don't care about you because you're you, they care about you because you possess the characteristics of someone who will do good work for them. Similarly, if you want some graphic design, there are a number of people who will do a good job. You want any of those people, not one specific person. Unless, that is, that person has done something specific that makes them a particularly good fit. But you can offer jobs without being that specific.

In my own experience, I've gotten jobs both ways. I got a job at a small Perl web app company because of my work on a Perl web framework. The lead developer approached me directly. I've also gotten jobs where someone has recommended me because of general ability rather than any specific work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I generally loathe recruiters, but I do feel a bit sorry for them. They are up against the real recruiters in this field: other software developers.

The pattern that I've seen over and over is:

* Good developer #1 starts a project.

* Hey, this project is great and there's more work here than one person can handle.

* Asks other good developers to see who is in between projects.

* Gig is filled without a "recruiter" ever knowing about it, because the real recruiter was Dev #1.

<comment><USER5> I don't feel sorry for them - they chose that profession, and most are starting to feel the futility of their job. What I'd like to see is a recruiter that works backwards: they asks what companies you want to work with, then actively goes out and see if they can form connections to get you an interview in those companies...

<comment><USER6> That does happen. Recruiters that cultivate relationships in both directions are known as "full desk" recruiters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The increase in bad recruiters is simply because the demand for developers is so high and there is room for them in the market. To me it's starting to feel like 1999 again - developers talking about what they are entitled to like they are sports stars. I just hope 2014 isn't like 2002 - I remember going to a job fair in Waltham where thousands of folks showed up for a couple of hundred jobs. For all you 20 somethings - enjoy this time while you can.

<comment><USER8> Glad someone else remembers this well. Every time I read some self-righteous, mid-20-something blogger ranting like they are Michael Jordan, I remind myself of when the first bubble blew-up and there WEREN'T jobs or opportunities for a lot of really talented/smart people.

<comment><USER9> I remember the last two career fairs at my engineering school in late 2002 / early 2003. There were crickets chirping. Five airlines had booked booths, but only one sent a representative to say "we're not hiring.' The other four were left empty. Tech companies were about as sparse, but most at least sent a rep. The only ones doing any real hiring were FedEx (but not for technical positions - package handling only!) and a GeoEngineering firm that was looking for GIS grads.

Talk about depressing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Number one rule (for all sales people, not just recruiters): be polite.

A remarkable percentage of recruiters can't graciously accept a politely negative response. Threatening to report me to my boss for endangering the (nonexistent) relationship with their firm was not an acceptable counter; I hung up. Ringing every nearby phone number in the hopes of finding someone to connect him to my boss was aggressively stupid.

True story.

<comment><USER11> Upon very politely declining an offer from a recruiter on Linkedin, I was very surprised to find a response saying "send me your resume, the offer expires tonight. one day you will be on the job market again, and I will not help you". Unbelievable, I wonder why he had to go out of his way to sound like a jerk, and why he thought that would be a good idea...

<comment><USER12> Why do recruiters on Linkedin always ask for a resume, anyway? Don't they already have it?

<comment><USER13> I think they are too lazy to actually look at your profile, they just do a keyword search and then contact you directly form the search page (you can still do this on LinkedIn if memory serves me correctly), apparently, being bothered to click on your profile and read through it would take too much of their precious time

<comment><USER14> I suspect they ask for a resume so they can send it to someone else. Extracting a resume from linkedin is work (AKA an opportunity for an application or linkedin feature).

I wonder whether folks are more likely to keep their linkedin profile up to date or their resume.

<comment><USER15> Every LinkedIn profile has a "PDF" button that generates a pretty nice-looking resume representation of the profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would be interesting is the demand side of this industry (those startups and tech companies with with a sense of ethics and responsibility) starting demanding certain standards of their tech recruiters.

If you are a desirable company working with interesting technology, and a recruiter does an offensive job trying to recruit, that reflects badly on the company who hired the recruiter.

The companies should stipulate rules for the recruiters to earn the recruiting fee. Rules like: in the first email and and solicitation such as on a list, you must disclose who you hiring for, the nature of the project, the technologies involved, etc.

Companies could even resolve this issue by issue a company email like firstname.lastname@example.com that forwards leads to the appropriate recruiter. It's not a perfect solution, but any solution that allows candidates to deal with the recruiter in a way that holds the recruiter accountable to the company for which they are working can only serve to raise the very very low bar we have at the moment.

<comment><USER17> If they disclose who they are hiring for then what's to stop a candidate applying to the company directly? Cuts out the recruiter and they lose their fee. I've known this has happened to a few friends when they've dealt with recruiters who were stupid enough to disclose this in the first e-mail.

<comment><USER18> Bingo. It's not the only problem though. There is a surprisingly large number of recruiters posing as developers in order to find out who the competition is recruiting for, your reason, coupled with this is the sole reason why recruiters never disclose their client.

<comment><USER17> Wow, I didn't know this! Cheeky buggers :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While the DHH quote was amusing, sadly it turns out be just a fictional scenario created by one of the commenters of the gist: <https://gist.github.com/1285068#gistcomment-56327>

<comment><USER20> Damn. I laughed pretty hard when I read that though. Mostly because we all know full well that if you or I did invent something, we _would_ be asked by a recruiter how many years experience we had, and if it was invented 2 years ago, you would be asked for "3 to 5 years experience".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a solution here, but not everyone will like it.

Shitty recruiters do this shit because at the end of the day, it still works. Or works well enough for them to make a decent salary. Really shitty recruiters quit after a year or two because their base salary is very low (or even zero) and they don't get their commissions if they don't get placements. Ignore them and they will literally die off.

All the Engineers, Designers, Developers who complain about this practice should just put these recruiters on blast. I freaking LOVE what DHH is doing with those stupid recruiter emails. Why don't all of you do that? Those shitty recruiters will be on notice, their Agencies will be embarrassed by the bad PR or Google Search results and no startup will use their services.

At the end of the day, a good recruiter (full disclosure: that's my day job) will still be in demand because they do more than push resumes.

Cheers, Hong

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few weeks ago one recruiter made the rounds of all the developers who worked in our building- with violent disregard to the skill sets of said developers. They were looking for a senior backend dev, but this recruiter was emailing frontenders, UXers, designers, devops, they really didn't care who you were. The pitch itself was ridiculous bordering on nonsensical due to the recruiter's extreme non-understanding of what he was describing, and he didn't bother to change it from person to person. Over a period of a few days we watched as this same pitch cropped up from person to person. It was painfully obvious this guy either had no clue, or wasn't even trying. Really, what kind of response did he expect? Who doesn't want to work for a 'HOT Music 2.0 startup'!

</comment><comment><USER22> I tend to go whenever I can when a recruiter asks to meet. Most of them are the same. Interviewing is a skill I know I should work on. But usually recruiters have a job they want to fill and they myopically try to pigeonhole you into it.

Yesterday's experience...

Recruiter: So I see you have .NET experience. I'm going to put that at the top of the list on your profile.

Me: Yes I do, but as you can see my primary experience and interest is now mobile development and Linux.

Recruiter: I'll just put .NET on the top of your profile.

When a recruiter asks to meet you, they should be trying to form an impression and finding that perfect match when it comes along.

I love the how-many-years-of-experience response, "All of them."

</comment><comment><USER23> tl;dr: Use smaller agencies or solo recruiters, ignore the big firms.

Just another prospective (from a high-end recruiter): You get what you pay for.

10% on a developer making $60-100k means that you need to push a ton of paper to make out a decent living at an agency. Its like the difference between Apartment Brokers vs Real Estate Brokers: The Apartment Brokers are jokers, because they need to deal with 1000's of people to make the 30-40 fees a year that make up a decent living. A Real Estate Broker can do a tenth of the deals and make twice as much. The quality of service is a lot higher.

Likewise, in high paying industry with top tier compensation the recruiters are much higher quality. I only need to make 5 placements a year to make six- figures, where as the jokers at Selby Jennings or those other massive paper houses need to make 15-20 placements to even get close to that.

I can afford to treat candidates with respect, protect their information, and tailor their search. Most technical recruiters can't.

My advice, if you don't make over $100k and want to use a recruiter, go with someone working at a really small firm or by themselves. They take service much more seriously than the well known spam-a-lot agencies.

PS: We're hiring, and work in a very cool, niche high tech space.

</comment><comment><USER24> I made <https://jobpoacher.com/> so you can send all of the shitty recruiters (and good ones) to an anonymous email address.

</comment><comment><USER25> tl;dr and Some thoughts :

Actually talk about the project - The people sending out these emails and pitching for a position for you to fill, don't really know what the project is all about. Many a times they don't even know the difference between iOS and Android.

Money isn't everything! - I don't know how many startups actually go out and pay a recruiter firm to do this job. From what I feel, i think in a startup its always best that the founding team takes this job up on their own.

Please never call us - so true!

Be active in the community! - Most of the times because of their lack of awareness and motivation to keep themselves updated, they don't really bother doing something like this. They just go out to a forum and post a job without thinking what would happen next.

Be transparent - As I said before, most of the times they don't know.

</comment><comment><USER26> It seems to get worse every time I recruit (we're hiring, cheeky link - <http://www.easyart.com/content/help/jobs.ghtml>).

Every job ad I've written clearly says "no recruiters". Luckily, I don't have a phone number in this office. But in the first week I had:

* About a dozen recruiters calling our generic office line (despite the "no recruiters")

* A recruiter tracking down my personal contact details to offer his services

* A recruiter blatantly lied to a colleague who asked him "are you a recruiter". I Googled his name and number and found out that he was.

Absolutely relentless. Why they think I would do business with them is beyond me.

To be fair, I've had some emails from nice ones too, but the vast majority have been very unpleasant to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER27> I suspect that 80% of the calls I get are from recruiters - typically offering positions out of state. Being the polite guy I am, I used to make it a point to respond to all voicemails with a "no thank you". These days, I use an "unable to answer" message that states up front that, if you are a recruiter, DO NOT leave a voicemail - email me instead. And yet, I still get voicemails sometimes. :P

For all of the recruiter emails I get, I have a GMail canned reply that states up front the geographic areas I'm interested in and the minimum rate that I'm looking for. For the vast majority of these emails, I never receive a response.

I have this same basic "disclaimer" at the top of my LinkedIn profile. Every once in a while, I get a cold email from a recruiter who has actually read it. 10 cool points to them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Has anyone else noticed a trend of getting a lot of calls from offshore recruiters? I don't mean to sound xenophobic but I seem to get this stream of calls now (often 1-2 per day) from "recruiters" who I can barely understand as they have very thick accents, that are using poor phone connections (obviously over VOIP). My solution is that I don't answer the phone unless I'm expecting a call, everything goes to voicemail for me to weed through later. I am fairly open about putting my phone number up on resumes publicly, as it has benefited me before, so I guess its a price to pay but I just find it odd and can't help but wonder if they are actually recruiting for a real position or just trying to scam me in some way.

<comment><USER28> I've had a lot of this as well. I don't think it's a scam (though I wouldn't know since, like you, I just ignore those calls). The positions these people are recruiting for seem awful to me, which would explain why they're hard to fill (and why the company is using a seemingly cheap service to fill them).

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I agree.. well I have also gotten some emails (from seemingly similar types of "recruiters") who do some sketchy things such as asking me to fill out a form with SS#, etc, obviously these go right to my spam box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can never resist these discussions. Relevant: [http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-that-is-wrong- with...](http://voltsteve.blogspot.com/2011/07/all-that-is-wrong-with- recruitment.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> Recruiter perspective: I admit there are some really bad recruiters. And they don't improve, because either A)Lazy or B)What they do works for them.

There are two reasons why a recruiter won't release a client name initially. 1) Some recruiters use a fake position to engage a candidate in a conversation 2) Most commonly, a recruiter does not want a candidate to go around the them and apply directly or tell another recruiter about the opening. It happens and it sucks.

<comment><USER30> Two types of recruiters those that have exclusive contracts and those that do not..

Your description does not hold for those with exclusive contracts.. in fact those are types of recruiters you should interact with as they are very pleasant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> but the best was

Recruiter: How many years of Rails experience do you have? DHH: ALL OF THEM!

</comment><comment><USER31> LOL at the title

</comment><comment><USER32> Recruiters are great at getting you bunch of practice interviews (at companies you don't care about).

Then you can go to the real interviews prepared ;)</comment>


Why Password Managers Are Not the Solution - <AUTHOR> https://ao.gl/why-password-managers-are-not-the-solution/ <comment><USER2> > But what happens if they guess your Password Managers master password?

The author fails to mention the fact that most password managers have multi- factor authentication which provides additional checks into logging in to a users account which the attacker will have a hard time finding a way around. 2FA via a phone number shouldn't be recommended at all but a PIN, U2F key / TouchID + master password, etc should be enough to stay secure.

So even if someone installed a keylogger on your computer somehow and obtained your master password, they would need the PIN, U2F or TouchID codes in order to access the manager or even extract a single password. But that depends on the password manager you use. Open-source or not.</comment>


How can an artist start thinking like a programmer? - <AUTHOR> I have a friend who's a talented artist that's going through a programmer boot camp right now, and today he posed a question "How can I think like a programmer?"
I decided to answer that programming is like solving a lot of puzzles, so maybe he should try solving logic puzzles murder mysteries or something (there's a board game called Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective that's good for that), but he could probably use other suggestions.
I'm also curious what other people think, especially if they were an artist that started picking up programming. <comment><USER2> I would say it arises from programming or scripting to solve problems. Think of something you do in daily life, and try to come up with an algorithmic solution. Don't worry about actual computability or your ability to code it unless it's actually something you're planning on automating by computer, of course.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's something that just happens once you have programmed enough. With that said, I would tell your friend to keep constructing ERD's for different business applications. When making ERD's becomes second nature, your brain becomes wired to break any situation down into a data structure.</comment>


ServiceWorker's Link leads to botnet-like persistent JavaScript worker - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=662443 <comment><USER2> You can see what service workers are registered here:

chrome://serviceworker-internals/

Frankly, I'm tempted to label the whole notion of a remote-installing auto- updating local proxy as a misguided antifeature, but I honestly don't know enough about it. What was wrong with app caching?

<comment><USER3> You mean AppCache?

<comment><USER2> Sort of. I meant caching apps, of which AppCache is an implementation.

<comment><USER4> It's not dynamic and doesn't even allow wildcards. So, you have to use hashes given that opening /details?id=123 won't be served from the cache even if you have everything on the client side to construct that page. Most people just cache /details and navigate to /details#id=123. I think if appcache was made a little more developer friendly, the need for service workers would seriously be reduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm. This seems difficult to prevent without really preventing a lot of valid use cases.

</comment><comment><USER6> See [https://truefactor.io/catworker](https://truefactor.io/catworker) for botnet admin page

</comment><comment><USER7> Wheres the source for this?</comment>


Facebook estimates 126M people were served Russia-linked content - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/30/media/russia-facebook-126-million-users/index.html <comment><USER2> It's still tiny (from the article):

"Put another way, if each of these posts were a commercial on television, you'd have to watch more than 600 hours of television to see something from the IRA."

And the content was not representing only one side:

"Most of the ads appear to focus on divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum, touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights."

Only the title suggests something different (and it is obviously tailored for that effect).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a bit rich for the US to be in a huff over Russians buying Facebook ads when 1) US law allows corporations to buy as many ads as they want, because they're "people." Aren't Russians people too? 2) The US government has killed and had killed foreign heads of state to effect "regime change" rather than the comparatively civilized approach of buying political advertising.

We got Trump because we're amoral morons who don't understand our history and who deserve him, not because "Russia."</comment>


Keeping Your Account Protected - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adafruit.com/2016/11/01/keeping-your-account-protected/ <comment><USER2> I got that e-mail today. Maybe I'm old. Maybe I'm grumpy. Maybe I'm not hip, but conversational language for a matter this serious comes across as flippant and doesn't help me feel better.

When I then read that they were "protecting" passwords with MD5 and no mention of even a salt my blood tends to boil even more. This is a serious situation and the fact that they were apparently only using MD5 as recently as 2014 makes me wonder how serious they've been at protecting any data.</comment>