Algorithms Have Already Gone Rogue - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/tim-oreilly-algorithms-have-already-gone-rogue/ <comment><USER3> My only objection to this is a semantic one -- the word "algorithm" is not being well-served here. The correct word for this sort of thing is "heuristic". The concern isn't that algorithms themselves are incorrect, the concern is that the problem they are trying to solve is a heuristic one, not a formal one.

Saying "let's write an algorithm to improve search results" is meaningless; "let's design and implement a heuristic that improves search results". The algorithmic part of this is how to efficiently implement that heuristic.

I can usually get through articles like this by silently replacing "algorithm" with "heuristic"; the problem arises when some articles attempt to draw equivalencies between "algorithmic" concepts, like running time and space, and "heuristic" concepts, like optimizing for the wrong thing.

<comment><USER4> Algorithms running on "social hardware" can be surprisingly formal. A famously well-documented example are early modern witchhunts. The humorous depiction in Monty Python and the Holy Grail does a surprisingly good job at conveying the algorithmic nature.

<comment><USER5> Along those lines, here are some of my comments on this general topic from an email I posted to the Doug Engelbart Unfinished Revolution II Colloquium in 2000: [http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/012...](http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html)

===

... I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it. [Although in 2017 I'd add other possibilities like symbiosis or trying to create friendlier AI as a partner (or at least AIs with a sense of humor -- see James. P. Hogan's AIs, or the ones like Libbry in EarthCent Ambassador series, or the Old Guy Cybertank series example), improved sensemaking through better intelligence-augmenting tools, and trying to help human society be more compassionate in the hopes our path out of a singularity will somehow reflect our path going in...]

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought".

You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival. These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient.

People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends).

Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of _society_ for corporations to exist. But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves.

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows).

In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist with people to the extent they need to. But it is not clear what corporations (especially large ones) will do as we approach this singularity -- where AIs and robots are cheaper to employ than people. Today's corporation, like any intelligent machine, is more than the sum of its parts (equipment, goodwill, IP, cash, credit, and people). It's "plug" is not easy to pull, and it can't be easily controlled against its short term interests.

What sort of laws and rules will be needed then? If the threat of corporate charter revocation is still possible by governments and collaborations of individuals, in what new directions will corporations have to be prodded? What should a "smart" corporation do if it sees this coming? (Hopefully adapt to be nicer more quickly. :-) What can individuals and governments do to ensure corporations "help meet society's unmet needs"?

Evolution can be made to work in positive ways, by selective breeding, the same way we got so many breeds of dogs and cats. How can we intentionally breed "nice" corporations that are symbiotic with the humans that inhabit them? To what extent is this happening already as talented individuals leave various dysfunctional, misguided, or rogue corporations (or act as "whistle blowers")? I don't say here the individual directs the corporation against its short term interest. I say that individuals affect the selective survival rates of corporations with various goals (and thus corporate evolution) by where they choose to work, what they do there, and how they interact with groups that monitor corporations. To that extent, individuals have some limited control over corporations even when they are not shareholders. Someday, thousands of years from now, corporations may finally have been bred to take the long term view and play an "infinite game".

However, if preparations fail, and if we otherwise cannot preserve our humanity as is (physicality and all), we must at least adapt with grace whatever of our best values we can preserve or somehow embody in future systems. So, an OHS/DKR [Open Hyperdocument System / Dynamic Knowledge Repository] to that end (determining our best values, and strategies to preserve them) would be of value as well.

When aluminum was first discovered around 1827, and for decades afterward, it was worth more than platinum, and now just under two centuries later we throw it away. In perhaps only two decades from now, children may play "marbles" using diamonds, and a child won't bother to pick a diamond up from the street unless it is exceptionally pretty (although you or I probably would out of habit -- "see a diamond, pick it up, and all the day you have good luck").

This long essay is my own current perspective on this developing situation, and part of the process of my formulating my own thinking on these trends and how I as an individual will respond to them.

To conclude, I think all the "classical" problems like food, energy, water, education, and materials will be technically solvable by 2050 even if we don't do much specifically about them (and like hunger are solved today except for politics). The dynamics of technology and economics are just taking us there whether we like it or not. Those goods may all may essentially be "free" or "extremely cheap" by 2050. Obviously the complex politics of these issues need to be resolved, and the solutions need to be actually implemented. If they are "extremely cheap", people still need a tiny amount of income to buy them.

Still, I think Doug [Engelbart] is right. We face huge problems that only collaborative efforts can solve -- especially the problems of intelligent machines, technology-amplified conflict, and a complete disruption of our scarcity-based materialistic economic and social systems. These problems dwarf technical issues like energy, food, goods, education, and water.

The problem has always been, and will always be, "survival with style" (to amplify Jerry Pournelle). The next twenty years will fundamentally change what the survival issues are: environment, threats, and allies. They will also very well change what we value as "style" \-- when diamonds are cheap as glass [perhaps from nanotechnology], what will one give to impress?

===

<comment><USER6> Just sayin... point me to the person who has the habit of seeing diamonds on the ground and picking them up (and doesn't work in a strip mine). Habits aren't somethings we want - they're somethings we do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question "what should we do?". Anyone who has played around with these algorithms for solving decoding problems knows that they are fabulously powerful.

But these message passing algorithms have two weaknesses:

(A) When there is more than one solution

(B) When there are small loops in the message network

By far the worst problem is (B): it's a kind of a "corruption" of the network and causes it to pretty much go off the rails. I think people already do understand the consequences of these problems in the financial system, but we don't seem to see how we can just change the topology and/or the messages themselves, in particular, to try to fix up these self-reinforcing loops. Or: move away from min-sum towards sum-product (which often works an order of magnitude better) by perhaps implementing basic income. Etc. Etc.

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

<comment><USER8> > The financial system is a giant message passing algorithm. It is pretty much > just a min-sum algorithm [1] whose sole purpose is to answer the question > "what should we do?".

no, no no. To even propose that the answer to the question of "what should we do?" can be solved by the financial system is laughable; that is pure free- market absolutism.

The anwer to the question "what should we do?" is _political_ .

Let us not confuse the market with politics.

<comment><USER8> Downvoters, explain your logic please

<comment><USER9> I assume you're being downvoted because you seem to have misread the author's statement and created a strawman argument. He posited that the financial system's algorithm's purpose is to answer, "what should we do?". You seem to have interpreted that as saying that the financial system _should_ answer that problem for society as a whole.

<comment><USER8> > He posited that the financial system's algorithm's purpose is to answer, > "what should we do?".

Yes, That is just re-stating what the author wrote, without providing any clarifying information.

> You seem to have interpreted that as saying that the financial system should > answer that problem for society as a whole.

Maybe yes that is a maximalist interpretation; what is the alternative interpretation (it doesn't seem to be present in the author's text)?

> move away from min-sum towards sum-product (which often works an order of > magnitude better) by perhaps implementing basic income. Etc. Etc.

Referencing 'basic income' here seems like a whole society problem to me, which has nothing to do with the technical implementation financial payment gateways, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is this his new meme-hustling? "Algorithm"?

[https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme- hustler](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-meme-hustler)

I've never liked how Tim O'Reilly frames his discussion around vague terms like "open" which could mean participatory, transparent, available, or any other number of vague, feel-good terms. Now he seems to be calling "algorithm" things like economic models and government policy.

These are widely disparate things, but by using vague terms in different contexts, he pushes discussion towards the direction he wants to steer it: in the case of "open", away from free software. In the case of "Web 2.0", towards anything that involved crowd participation.

With "algorithms", he seems to be wanting to push the notion that technology is both scary but liberating and we need tech messiahs like Bezos or Musk to bring it under control.

<comment><USER11> That's been bothering me, the word "algorithm" is slowly becoming known as this ambiguously scary thing.

<comment><USER12> An "algorithm" is simply a way to do a thing based on a set of rules to be followed... of _course_ it's ambiguous.

Getting scared of anything that generic is silly. Might as well fear the outside because anything can happen out there!

<comment><USER13> Throughout most of history rules and laws were enforced by a combination of "the letter of the law" and "the spirit of the law". The latter being shorthand for the role of human discretion.

Algorithms completely obliterate the latter - increasingly turning previously flexible systems into the equivalent of zero-tolerance-policy schools, where human discretion has no role to play. This is a problem because many laws on the books were written with the assumption that "the spirit of the law" would be a guiding principle when "the letter of the law" is unclear.

As a trivial example of this going terribly wrong, consider Youtube's copyright enforcement algorithms. Copyright was clearly designed with many loopholes for fair use to allow culture to move forward. Youtube's algorithms ignore all of this, changing the effective meaning of copyright on the site from one where the rights of the copyright owner are balanced with the rights of critics, commenters, and other creators to one where the rights of copyright owners are the only ones that matter.

Now imagine this kind of algorithmic enforcement applied to traffic laws, HR rules, or insurance policies and you can see why people might be nervous about "algorithms". Algorithms neither think nor feel and have no empathy. It's the ultimate actualization of the dystopia in the movie Brazil where the world is a cold, unfeeling, bureaucratic nightmare. Except where human bureaucrats at least need to sleep sometimes, computerized ones never rest.

<comment><USER14> I write a faulty policy that harms people. I encode it as an algorithm, implement it as a program, and deploy it on a wide scale. Now it's automated and distributed, and it is harming people. Where is the fault --- in the program? in the algorithm? Or in the policy? Where do we fix the problem?

IMO, we are quick to blame inanimate constructs, when people and their policies are the source of fault. Vilifying "algorithms" only serves to distract from root causes.

<comment><USER13> The argument I'm making is that when it comes to "human systems" like communities it's not possible to write a complete, consistent, and fair policy that can be unambiguously interpreted (i.e. by a computer). This is why Hacker News still has moderators and is not strictly governed by algorithms.

"Fairness" has always been heavily contextual, and the idea that it can be distilled to a matter of "if A and B then C" is folly. Even pure math can't reach the combination of completeness and consistency you assume is possible: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_the...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

<comment><USER15> Human judgement can't escape Gödel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can anyone explain why O'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing benefits?

"We can't see, for example, that the algorithms that manage the workers at McDonald's or The Gap are optimized toward not giving people full-time work so they don't have to pay benefits. All that was invisible. It wasn't until we really started seeing the tech-infused algorithms that people started being critical."

And here's one that's more subtle, so I don't blame him quite as much, but he is naive to think "ideas" are what cause corporations to act the way they do. Material and institutional conditions cause their behavior, which is then justified after the fact by appeal to shareholder value.

"Somebody planted the idea that shareholder value was the right algorithm, the right thing to be optimizing for. But this wasn't the way companies acted before. We can plant a different idea. That's what this political process is about."

<comment><USER17> > _Can anyone explain why O 'Reilly thinks nobody knew until recently that > companies are biased toward part-time work in order to avoid providing > benefits?_

How do you know he's thinking that? The way he was talking, I read him as "well it's obvious that nobody has stopped this behavior so it's fair to assume that not enough people noticed". Wouldn't you agree with that?

> _And here 's one that's more subtle, so I don't blame him quite as much, but > he is naive to think "ideas" are what cause corporations to act the way they > do. Material and institutional conditions cause their behavior, which is > then justified after the fact by appeal to shareholder value._

That was the only part of the interview where I strongly disagreed with him -- and you're right. It's not about ideas; there are a lot of people out there who are extremely good in bean-counting, micro-management, and of course awful at promoting a positive work environment. They will never change. Only regulators can limit them a bit, if even that.

<comment><USER18> > How do you know he's thinking that? The way he was talking, I read him as > "well it's obvious that nobody has stopped this behavior so it's fair to > assume that not enough people noticed". Wouldn't you agree with that?

I wouldn't. Anyone... everyone... who's worked retail _knows_ this. Anyone who's worked retail management knows this because when you ask to hire people you're told to hire part timers. Two part timers is always better than a full timer, you're told. This is NOT invisible to anyone. It's simply unspoken.

<comment><USER19> > you're told

> you're told

> It's simply unspoken.

<comment><USER18> Not the same thing.

You're told to hire part time. You're not told it's because the company doesn't want to pay them benefits. It's implied, but you're not told.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >We had plenty of bias before but we couldn't see it. We can't see, for example, that the algorithms that manage the workers at McDonald's or The Gap are optimized toward not giving people full-time work so they don't have to pay benefits. All that was invisible. It wasn't until we really started seeing the tech-infused algorithms that people started being critical.

I'm not sure how this can be said with a straight face. An algorithm was really not needed to perceive this and it's insulting and strange to suggest it.

<comment><USER21> "Tech-infused". Like tech is an herb or a spice? Surely a sign that there are no coherent ideas to be found from that writer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "why capitalism is like a rogue AI"

These people seriously need to take a step back. At some point you cross the bridge between reporting and actively advertising someone's personal views.

I can't ever trust or read people who constantly try to push an agenda, it's disingenuous. Even more so, when reporting, engaging in personal exchange without the discussing data and statistics, i.e. the facts, you are just allowing yourself to become a personal blog of someone else.

Reporters are supposed to fact check, look for concrete evidence in someone's statements, hold people accountable to their words, and yet certain people get a pass all the time, even the star treatment.

<comment><USER23> Yes? This is an interview with an author that was conducted specifically to talk about the book and the material in it. What did you _expect_?

Unrelated, I'd like to see your argument against that particular line. IMO the comparison is an excellent one; its only issue is that the chosen scope ("the financial market") is too small. Corporations and other bureaucratic entities like governments are powerful cross-domain optimizers with utterly alien cognitive processes and goals. Intelligence, certainly, artificial, might as well call it that.

<comment><USER24> Calling financial markets AI is wrong in pretty much the only way a word can be "wrong": It's not what most people mean when they talk about AI.

This makes it really easy to make statements that sound deep and meaningful, but really aren't. E.g. "I'm not worried about Artificial Intelligence - <USER2> already have artificial intelligence, its called a company. Companies are artificial, and they behave intelligently".

This just isn't what people are worried about. What people are worried about is:

1\. Soon we will be able to create software/robots that replace tons of human jobs. This has _nothing to do_ with "companies as an AI".

2\. A super-intelligence will be created that is vastly smarter than any human, and can make itself even smarter, but will have different goals than humanity. Again, this is only very thinly related to the "companies as AI" spiel (companies are not superintelligent, they don't _actually_ have coherent goals of their own).

<comment><USER25> It's not that companies are "operating intelligently" it's that they aren't: they're operating on a principle that maximizes profits (and ROI for shareholders) at the expense of everything else, that's the central guiding principle, and nobody at a publicly traded firm can oppose it successfully, without being voted off the board by shareholders. It's effectively an algorithm that delegates tasks to human operators, and automation is slowly replacing the human component.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "I'm not sure that Jeff would make a great president, but he might."

So let me tell you about my experience with Amazon Fulfilment. I was gonna pay Amazon, who has this huge expertise in packing and shipping stuff, to fulfil my Kickstarter. I'd made a large, delicate art book. Amazon, in their infinite wisdom, stuffed them in bubble wrap envelopes and dropped them in the mail. They were getting bent, the envelopes were getting ripped up, it was a mess.

I spent a month in customer service hell e-mailing someone who was following a script that said I would have to turn on something they called "prep", which would ask them to look at it and package it better. Three times I checked that this was set, and three times I sent myself a test book that came in a bubble mailer.

Finally I got clued in that there is a high-level support team that you access by sending a complaint directly to Bezos. This person, after some back and forth, ultimately informed me that due to their internal systems, it is _completely impossible_ for them to put a book in anything _but_ this level of shitty packaging; "prep" is just not a process that can ever _happen_ to a book.

They covered shipping my books out to someone actually capable of finding sensible boxes and shipping them. And they intimated that someone maybe lost a job over this. But changing this, they said, might take on the order of years.

I'm not sure I want a man who presides over a system like this running the country.

Especially given that O'Reilly points out that the "rogue algorithms" of the title are corporations, and the only reason Amazon is headquartered in WA is that the tax was lowest there...

</comment><comment><USER27> "Our fears ultimately should be of ourselves and other people."

Indeed. The short-term fear at least should not be about machine overlords, but about how people in power use AI to increase their power and/or make life worse for everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have any of these tech "visionaries" (aka millionaires that we pretend have more insight than non-millionaires) considered that at the same time that we've increased our wealth we've also done more damage to our environment? If the cost of increased wealth is decreased habitat, will peak wealth result in the death of nature?

Aside: people are still comparing AI to a machine that feels, and this is so stupid it boggles the mind. The machine that creates paper clips will not kill off anyone who tries to turn it off because it does not have self- preservation, which is a system dependent on fear of death. Machines do not fear, and even if they did they would not fear death, because they have solid state. Bio systems are walking RAM disks.

Algorithms are basically math problems. The financial system and government do not work based on math problems, they work based on emotional instability. Seriously. Both these systems are driven almost entirely by the feelings of humans. They aren't algorithms, they are shitty biological systems that don't make mathematical sense at all.

<comment><USER29> If a good algorithm optimizes for "quantity of paperclips produced", then it would recognize that "prevent humans from turning me off right now" is an optimal strategy. No fear of death involved, only pure rational optimization.

<comment><USER28> The thought experiment is not realistic, because no intelligent system would think it could produce paperclips infinitely, and it would already have an "off feature" which was designed for a purpose (maintenance, update, replacement), and was intended to be used. An intelligent system would not reject proper use.

We already replace humans at their jobs all the time and they only very rarely kill their masters to prevent it.

<comment><USER30> > because no intelligent system would think it could produce paperclips > infinitely

This is irrelevant, being turned off while it's still possible to produce more paperclips would not be the optimal strategy for the machine trying to maximize paperclip production.

> and it would already have an "off feature" which was designed for a purpose

Look up what the control problem is. We don't know how to design such a feature for a General AI that also lets it do it's job effectively. It's not as simple as it looks. If you're not talking about a General AI than sure, it's easy, but non-General AI's are not very scary.

> We already replace humans at their jobs all the time and they only very > rarely kill their masters to prevent it.

But humans don't have "maximize my production for this company" as their main life objective. Things like food, not going to jail, not dying, etc usually come first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > financial markets are the first rogue AI.

I feel like I just got Rick-Rolled.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sorry but it is hard to take seriously someone who thinks AI and automation won't take away jobs.

They will and it is a good thing.

<comment><USER33> Even assuming we end up with some society where robots do most of the labor and universal basic income becomes a thing, what do you think 90% of people will do? People need to be occupied, and the typical person isn't an inventor or artist. Furthermore, good luck making kids want to go to school when they see it as pointless since they can just get everything free from the robots while they watch TV. If you think obesity and our sedentary lifestyles are a danger now, it's only just starting.

We're in for some huge problems as automation ramps up. The people saying "this is good" now will be screaming to go back once the problems start rolling in.

<comment><USER34> Well, I think you give people too little credit. Nobody can stand passively watching TV the entire day every day of their lives.

But even if you aren't, why would it bother you? If other people want to waste their lives on a coach in front of the TV, what makes this wrong?

<comment><USER35> Assume that the one thing you do best for a job AI/computers come out and do better. How do you recover from that. Especially, if said AI owners decide you only get a barely livable stipend while they keep most of the profits.

<comment><USER34> Is it worthless (for you) doing just because a computer can do it better? If so, you may need to look for a better hobby... because after computers start doing everything better than we, all we do will be hobbies, not work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Obviously the most controversial part of this is "capitalism is the first rogue AI" point. I will try to stay out of having an opinion on this, I just want to try to add colour to what he's saying.

First, in the classical "market" scenario, we're talking about little atomic firms, each with goals and hopes and dreams of profit. Each of these firms has some kind of "knowledge" and some kind of decision making apparatus. They all have some functionality. In a sense, these firms are like people - so much that our government treats them as such in many cases!

In many cases, a lot of these ideas and processes end up being the same, and when it is, we call it collective wisdom[0]or collective intelligence[1]. I won't go too deep into that.

So while financial markets and the firms that comprise them aren't exactly _machines_, they do display a form of intelligence different and sometimes more effective than our individual knowledge.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_wisdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_wisdom) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/collective_intelligence)

</comment><comment><USER37> > when the curtain rolls back we see that those superpowers have consequences: > Those algorithms have bias built in.

> That's absolutely right. But I'm optimistic because we're having a > conversation about biased algorithms. We had plenty of bias before but we > couldn't see it.

I must say I am really happy to see that bias in tech is being recognized and accounted for (for the most part).

Please forgive the politics (I'll try really hard not to bash Trump ;-) ), but if there is a silver lining to the 2016 US presidential election I think it is that it has really caused many of us to introspect and realize how thick our echo chamber walls have really gotten over the last few years. The chamber was constructed so quickly, I barely realized it was happening. We're becoming so polarized that we're actually moving to different communities to be with more people "like us." Simple awareness of the problem is a huge step forward in being able to resolve it.

</comment><comment><USER38> It's 2017 and humans have built several anemonae, and we have several highly profitable firms that are built around these anemonae.

Their employees act as the stewards (clownfish) more as beings in symbiosis than as one controlling the other. We can neither understand or pull the plug on these creatures. Time will tell which species evolves more rapidly.

</comment><comment><USER7> > financial markets are the first rogue AI

How about this idea: the first rogue AI was _language_. In terms of AI as a compositional system for storing meaning, I think this might be a reasonable position to take. Yes people, we've been playing this game for a very long time...

<comment><USER39> That sounds a lot like McLuhan's ideas.

<comment><USER7> Who is McLuhan? Do you have a reference for this?

<comment><USER40> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases- In...](https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases- Inequality/dp/0553418815)

</comment><comment><USER41> Seems like the only job available in a not-so-distant future will be AI- correcting engineer...

</comment><comment><USER21> I've flipped the bozo bit on the term 'Algorithm'.

</comment><comment><USER42> Capitalism is the best thing that's ever happened to humanity. The author's ideological bias gets in the way of understanding.

<comment><USER43> It has certainly enabled more humans to exist. It has created way better conditions for many of those humans. And it has created unimaginable suffering for just as many humans.

I wouldn't get rid of capitalism, but I certainly wouldn't give it a superlative. It's kind of like saying that domestication is the best thing that has happened to chickens, cause look how many more of them there are, and wow some of them live on a free range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> > For more than two decades, Tim O'Reilly has been the conscience of the tech > industry. ...he was among the first to perceive both the societal and > commercial value of the internet [and] ... he drew upon his education in the > classics to apply a moral yardstick to what was happening in tech.

Writer hasn't heard of Richard Stallman?

Update: writer is Steven Levy, who most definitely _has_ heard of Stallman, and should know better.</comment>


The ROI for large monitors is clear and well-documented (PDF) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://images.apple.com/displays/pdf/cinemadisplay30report.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> In case you want a link that doesn't sap your will to live, try [http://images.apple.com/displays/pdf/cinemadisplay30report.p...](http://images.apple.com/displays/pdf/cinemadisplay30report.pdf) , which is what I originally intended to link to before Paul Graham's software fucked it up.</comment>


Ml5js – Friendly Machine Learning for the Web - <AUTHOR> https://ml5js.org/ <comment><USER2> Tensorflow.js — yet another example of anything that can be written in Javascript will be written in Javascript

<comment><USER3> Well, for all the snarkiness js gets, it has the biggest community</comment></comment>


Would You Pay $850 for an iPhone if Carrier Subsidies Disappeared? - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2012/04/10/would-you-pay-850-for-an-iphone-if-carrier-subsidies-disappeared/

<comment><USER2> I _did_ pay that for an unlocked iPhone, because I wanted to use it while traveling. (The savings paid for the phone on the first trip I made, compared to the execrable roaming/data charges I have experienced with AT&T in the past).

But I think aes256's point is valid. That iPhone you buy with a carrier subsidy does not cost $199.

In a fully-transparent world, you'd be able to bring your own phone and get a reduced monthly bill from your mobile carrier. Or you could buy a subsidized phone and pay more per month.

In a fully-transparent world, of course, the mobile carrier becomes commoditized. They hate that.

It can't come soon enough for me, as a customer, however.

<comment><USER3> Yep. Cut $20/mo off my phone bill and I'll very happily buy my phone at full price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'Carrier subsidies' are just an illusion.

You _are_ paying $850 for your top of the line iPhone, you just don't realise it because it's in the form of $40+ monthly instalments...

<comment><USER5> In Denmark, we do realize it. The Danish law requires companies to specify the minimum price for the phone for the contract period. If the phone has an initial price of $99, monthly contract is $49, and minimum contract period is 24 months, they must list $1176 as the minimum total price.

Check "mindstepris" (24 month contracts) at: <http://www.telenor.dk/privat/mobil/mobil/iphone/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I already did. And it is great. I can take my phone with me when traveling, pop in a local SIM and actually save lots of moneys.

</comment><comment> hippee-lee If the carriers offered an Apple Care level of support/insurance for it. Yes.</comment>


Ask HN: Is possible to rebuild hnews like lobste.rs? - <AUTHOR> I ask because lobste.rs use a big font and is even better to reading on pc. Or at last add on our profile a way to use a different font size. <comment><USER2> In what way does ⌘+ (Mac) or Ctrl+ (Windows) not satisfy your need? I prefer changing font size that way, because it's simple and works on every site, and I can change it depending on whether I'm using a big monitor or not.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible? Of course... if you can change the topbar color there's no reason you shouldn't be able to change the font size. As with the topbar color, changing the font size wouldn't even have to affect anyone but the current logged in user.

Will it happen? Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm very happy with HN as it is. If you want a bigger font then you can do that in your own browser with plugins, user CSS etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for the tip, lobste.rs looks good</comment>


Network topologies for large-scale compute centers – Torsten Hoefler [pdf](2016) - <AUTHOR> https://htor.inf.ethz.ch/publications/img/HotI16-Topologies-SlimFly.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Opinion: _Some very key ideas here for whomever would run the next Google or Facebook._

Reason: The next Google or Facebook will not be run on a single server. Nor two servers. It will be run on N servers, which will need to communicate with one another.

If that network topology, that network mesh, is sub-optimal - then so will that network be.

That's why the PDF referenced above is so important.

It not only contains nice, intuitive, explanatory graphics, but shows the mathematics governing a plethora of network topologies.

It might not be complete, nor absolutely correct for all circumstances (haven't reviewed it critically), but in my opinion, this PDF serves as a _great introduction to the subject matter_ , and design issues at stake, etc., etc.</comment>


How to Make Your Product Images Beautiful With the Rule of Thirds - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/make-your-product-images-beautiful-with-the-rule-of-thirds

<comment><USER2> I hadn't realized we were resorting to LifeHacker level posts. I've got a bunch of tips on how to get the most out of Windows Me.</comment>


Untitled Dice: Run a Bitcoin Dice Casino on GitHub Pages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/untitled-dice/untitled-dice.github.io

<comment><USER2> A platform that uses consecutive app ids which are pure integers and which you can actually crash (as in, service returns {error: "INTERNAL_ERROR"} if you provide an app id > INT64_MAX ) isn't really trustworthy from my point of view...

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, the server isn't crashing, it's sending a 500 instead of a 404, but that needs to be fixed. Thanks. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> (Fixed)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> huyplzda sasi slona</comment>


Swift for JavaScript Developers - <AUTHOR> http://realm.io/news/swift-for-javascript-developers/

<comment><USER2> Related story (Immutable structures in JS) from this morning: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107447)</comment>


Ask HN: How were you able to find you passion ( If you have )? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Some trial and error... But critically... I am 30 now and I believe I am doing my passion. I hit an "inflection point." that point had some key parts... I got intensely focused for several weeks, studied like crazy, to earn a position at google. I didn't get in, though they are constantly recruiting me.. Strange indeed. But... That focus and subsequent denial caused me to consider my future path in life... Very, very seriously... And I decided that in fact all life experiences of all people are NOT the same. I wanted a better life for myself despite my rejection, and I wanted to be happy on that path. No more bullshit anymore. And so by stripping away all my future path options that consisted of varying degrees of bullshit, I was left with paths that constituted things I was passionate about. Things I really cared about. And so the problem reduced to me instantly growing up and seeing all the nonsense around me. And opting out of it. If you are having problems finding your passion, you either need more different life experiences to push you one way or another... Or you need to be more critical of the experiences you have already had. Finally, once I realized what it was that I was "passionate" about, I committed to it, prioritized it very highly and focused on it. And I had no problem doing that. It made me happier to do that.. That was the positive feedback I needed to confirm that in fact it was my passion. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Trial and error.</comment>


Teenage Iranian chess master banned from national team for not wearing headscarf - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/21/teenage-iranian-chess-master-banned-from-national-team-for-refusing-to-wear-a-headscarf/ <comment><USER2> > _the chess world championships in Iran because of the country's requirement > that she don a hijab_

Did the World Chess Federation get jealous of all the attention FIFA was getting? How is the decision to host an international competition in Iran made?

<comment><USER3> Someone has already mentioned FIDE corruption. _Usually_ when FIDE does something questionable that is the reason.

Not, however, in this case. It's in Iran for the simple reason that only Iran submitted a bid to host it.

It was originally supposed to be late last year, but nobody bid, and FIDE had to move it back a few months and try again. On the retry they got a single bid, from Iran.</comment></comment>


You don't need a logo, you need a type face. This is the best way to find one. - <AUTHOR>

http://logoswipe.com/ <comment><USER3> Hey guys, this was a side project myself and @wernah whipped up a while ago. While it isn't quite finished in terms of the basic functionality that we were hoping for, it's certainly almost there.

I appreciate the feedback. Couple of things that are most definitely need to be added.

\- Hints/clickable buttons on either side of the logo that let the user know they can click either way for new logos. \- Preloading a few logos so you don't need to wait for them. \- Bigger array of fonts.

<comment><USER4> ooh, best not hide those hints/buttons, I totally missed them without reading your comment here.

though, having the fonts slide show through automatically might be nice, and fonts chosen listed in a nice way underneath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chrome 17 OSX10.6.18 - sometimes a new font loads on one click, sometimes on two or three+ clicks. This may be due to a slow internet connection - <USER2> the first click registers then takes several moments to load the next font? Also there's no visual feedback that clicking on a page area will go forward/back. Sometimes a pointer cursor appears, sometimes it doesn't.

Poor UI design. I'll stick with Google web fonts or the multitude of commercial font sites.

</comment><comment><USER6> A singled out logo looks pretty good in some cases, but I'm afraid scrolling through multiple entries beats paging for many users. A segmented control in the top-right corner that lets you toggle between the two modes might be the solution. You can be generous with the whitespace in the scroll view and it will look just as good.

Regarding current desktop usability: Please capture scrolling and interpret it as swiping. I have to click twice to 'swipe' to the next one. I don't want to click unless I'm leaving the page or POSTing something.

Also, I suppose you might like to earn some money with this. I found an interesting typeface but wasn't even able to Google it at first, because the spelling was wrongfully auto-corrected. A button with an affiliate link to buy (or simply download if the typeface is free) is what would make this app really useful.

Thanks for sharing this, I'll be keeping an eye on you. Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Thanks a heap for the feedback. The click twice issue is really quite strange and annoying, needs to be fixed.

I've got the functionality for affiliate links in there, but not all fonts are necessarily affiliatable. I'll probably link to the ones that aren't anyway.

Thanks for the comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> i don't understand how this is more efficient than entering your logo text into the google font directory [1], or dafont [2], and just scrolling through all the fonts.. also, why are there no options?

[1] <http://www.google.com/webfonts>

[2] [http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501&text=Hacker+News...](http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=501&text=Hacker+News&fpp=50&af=on&psize=l&l\[\]=10&l\[\]=1&l\[\]=6)

<comment><USER3> This was kind of the point of the project. I thought that looking at each font in isolation rather than scrolling was a better way of handling it. Also not worrying about tweaking any options means you can ideally get in and get out of the site quicker. Bit of an opinionated look on it I suppose, but interesting to see how people react to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did this with my logo a while back, going through bunches of fonts... that being said the font selection here is kinda sparse...

Second might be a good one to have a column view of the word(s) in the different faces where you could do a side-by-side comparison and select candidates to look at in larger detail.

</comment><comment><USER9> The kerning needs work. Having a typeface is not the same as having a properly set type.

<comment><USER10> Amen to this. A skilled designer adds a lot of value by setting the type weight and kerning properly, choosing a decent color palette, giving you the right options for light / dark backgrounds and so on.

As important is a basic style guide/manual for the rest of your stuff (use these styles for h1, h2, h3, bullets like so etc).

As a formerly design-blind hacker, I've come to appreciate that consistency in visual design is significantly under-valued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is awesome.

I'd like it if you could include a "press enter" in the "type your logo name here", because I sat there for 10 seconds not knowing what to do!

<comment><USER12> My Chrome tab just crashes. I have no idea what's supposed to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it only give you one logo? Or can you hit arrow keys to cycle through different versions without having to submit the textbox again?

<comment><USER14> Click on the left or right sides inside the section holding the text. Took me awhile to figure it out too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Larger bodies of text are clipped, depending on the face used.

</comment><comment><USER16> Clickable:

<http://logoswipe.com/></comment>


Fuzzing Raft for Fun and Publication - <AUTHOR> http://colin-scott.github.io/blog/2015/10/07/fuzzing-raft-for-fun-and-profit/ <comment><USER2> I'm very excited by this work. As they say, testing for distributed systems leaves a great deal to be desired, but there work is a great step!

I was excited for FoundationDB, who put a great deal of focus on testing[1], but they were acquired into mystery by Apple. To give you an idea of how well tested they were, Aphyr of "Call Me Maybe" fame didn't test them "because their testing appears to be waaaay more rigorous than mine"[2]. FoundationDB ran Jepsen internally anyway[3].

DEMi is a really nice tool that has me excited. I've worked with similar test systems for non-blocking IO models and they're hugely useful. For non-blocking IO, you can artificially accelerate time as you can leap to the next interrupt, speeding up fuzzing substantially (see: Flow from FoundationDB in [1]).

@ikneaddough, the demi-applications repo notes Spark, have you tested it so far? I quite like Spark but had some very temperamental issues at scale.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc)

[2]: [https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/405017101804396546](https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/405017101804396546)

[3]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150325003511/http://blog.found...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150325003511/http://blog.foundationdb.com/call- me-maybe-foundationdb-vs-jepsen)

<comment><USER3> Yup! We ran on Spark as well, though we were only focused on reproducing (and minimizing) known bugs, not on finding bugs. For more info, see our research paper: [http://eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/nsdi_draft.pdf](http://eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/nsdi_draft.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is super interesting - especially the tool they used. It looks like it interposes itself at the RPC level, unlike Jepsen which intervenes at the network level. That lets it create _reproducible_ test cases in a distributed system, which it then _minimizes_ so that they can be understood more easily. Very cool.

[https://github.com/NetSys/demi](https://github.com/NetSys/demi) [http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/nsdi_draft.pdf](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/nsdi_draft.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am working on an implementation of Raft and that's a gold mine of issues to look for. It's also relieving to see testing tools for DSs coming up.

DEMi is written very clearly, and it's a pleasure to read the code: [https://github.com/NetSys/demi](https://github.com/NetSys/demi) . Definitely challenges the research "spaghetti code" stereotype.

Really cool. :-)

<comment><USER3> Haha, I'm flattered. Also, thinking to myself that you must have gotten very lucky in which source file you chose to read first :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Next, they should fuzz IronFleet: [http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=2558...](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=255833)

<comment><USER3> Actually not such a crazy idea! There are always parts of verified implementations that aren't verified. And who knows, maybe they got some of their proofs wrong!

<comment><USER6> it would be really, really interesting if fuzzing found an error in the proof! there isn't a good track record for this though. i've been thinking about what to do to have a chance of success with that for a little.

<comment><USER7> I've got a feeling that would be a very common reference point for many future "theoretical or practical security" debates...

<comment><USER6> those debates don't use facts or evidence, so, probably not ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia Releasing First Android Phone  - tomh- http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304104504579374893734151208 <comment><AUTHOR> I'll never understand why Nokia thought that going with WP was a better strategy than forking android like amazon did.

Think about it: it would have the openness and stability of Linux with the single hardware configuration and quality of the iPhone, total win-win.

Now they are going to android as the cheap option which means only crappy hardware that only "looks" like a lumia.

Had Nokia gone the other way it would be in an even better position than Samsung Mobile is in now, mostly thanks to it's vastly superior software resources.

Then again the exact same thing could be said about RIM.

<comment><USER2> Or going full steam ahead with their Maemo / MeeGo which Elop killed. It was an excellent product: [http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review](http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/22/2506376/nokia-n9-review).

In fact, N9s still retail for pretty high amounts despite being unsupported and outdated hardware.

<comment><USER3> Thank god none of you are in charge. Just kidding or am I?

Elop played the game straight forward. Forking is a half baked option and when you are leveraging your company, forking is not an option. You need full scale OS support and that means, Nokia could have either gone with MS or Google. Google apparently refused to make space for Nokia's competing service suite (Read-Business Week) and as such, the option was only MS. I know the hate is strong for MS in this community but it's way too illogical to think one man alone could have played his tactics and strategies to influence Nokia to switch to a MS OS for his career progression.

Meego was ruled out as an option as well. A tech-pretty thing may not always work out. WebOS taught us that lesson. So conspiracy theories are pretty meaningless.

<comment><USER2> MeeGo works fine. I use it everyday. It would have given Nokia independence. The Windows choice was simply a trojan horse strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Linus Torvalds once said: "If Microsoft ever starts developing apps for Linux, it means I won."

Is this close enough?

<comment><USER5> Won what? Besides Nokia is not really Microsoft and Android is not really a Linux, so the answer is probably "not really".

<comment><USER6> How is Android "not really a Linux ? It runs the Linux kernel. That means it's Linux. No, it's not a distribution of GNU/Linux, but it's a Linux kernel. It's really using Linux. It's as Linux as Ubuntu, as Ubuntu also runs on a Linux kernel.

<comment><USER7> Why would anybody have cared about Linux except as an academic exercise if not for GNU? If there had been another properly licensed kernel before Linux, we would all be using GNU bolted on top of that.

Linux has been great and Linus is a great steward, but Linux without GNU is a base for creating an OS, not an OS.

<comment><USER8> I really like GNU, but are you sure that it is GNU that has succeeded and not Linux?

Linux + GNU = small marketshare

Linux + Android = big marketshare

So maybe without GNU, Linux would have gotten some other userland quicker and taken off faster? I don't think it's entirely fair to credit Linux's success to GNU at this point.

<comment><USER9> What other userland? Without GNU, Linux might never have even gotten written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I predict this will last 5 minutes after the Nokia deal closes. This is a thumb in the eye to Microsoft by people who will also leave that part of Nokia immediately after the deal closes. They will leave with the knowledge and experience of how to integrate an Android based product with Nokia (maps, multimedia, app store) and Microsoft (Bing search, Skype) ecosystem elements.

I would bet they know at least 5 OEMs in China who would like a similar product.

<comment><USER11> Honestly, it sounds like a bad proposition overall. What is Windows Phone lacking? Apps. What will the Nokia Android phone lack? The Google Play store. Hmm.

<comment><USER12>
        >What is Windows Phone lacking? Apps.

What is the current perceived gap in the Windows Phone app store?

<comment><USER13> Quality is very low. Apps are there, but features are usually lacking and incomplete, and curation is awful. NB: I have a Lumia.

<comment><USER14> Microsoft aggressively targeted college students offering $100 for every app published. It's really easy to crank out an RSS app and pocket $100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's pretty odd.

I think it's fair to say that the only handset makers profiting off of Android today are...Samsung...and...that's about it really. Meager pickings for the rest of them.

I don't see this succeeding at all. And in any case it's dead in the water once the Microsoft deal goes through because it just muddies the waters. A person that buys one of these cheap Nokia/Android phones would reasonably expect that "upgrading" to Nokias "premium" Lumia handsets will mean his apps/features carry over too.

Oops.

<comment><USER8> Samsung, Xiamo, Huawei, Lenovo all appear to be making good profits off of Android. There are a few other smaller players also making good profits, although note that Huawei and Lenovo are pretty big players, easily bigger than RIM/Nokia/etc.

So I don't think that argument holds much water - if Nokia made an Android phone that people wanted, they could very easily charge a premium (Sony does after all, but they just barely break even on massive staffing costs) and potentially make profits too.

<comment><USER13> Lenovo made less than $500m net profit across the entire company last year, on $30b in revenue. These are margins you can sustain only if you're a Chinese ODM or a company like Samsung that makes money from all the parts in everyone else's phones too. It's certainly not the kind of money that supports expensive R&D. Apple can throw a billion at developing sapphire glass or a new tooling method, and beat their competitors over the head with it with phones that are lighter, stronger, etc. You can't play that game being a low-margin company like Lenovo.

<comment><USER16> Ah, so that's where we've moved the goal post.

Sorry it might take me a little while to get there, it's looking like I better grab a golf cart.

<comment><USER17> Confusing. How is gross margin a shift of goalposts in a thread about profits?

<comment><USER16> Fair, but this discussion is a continuation of the Android vs iOS debate which has been raging for half a decade.

My memory is horrible but I remember it going: 1\. Android has no apps 2\. Android has no market share 3\. Apple's market share is larger 4\. iPhone is always the best selling phone 5\. iPhone has the only responsive interface 6\. No single manufacturer is making big profits 7\. Only Samsung is making large profits.

Now I should admit my bias, I never considered iOS comptetitve since it is not open source. With that said it is nice to see Android becoming competitive even if you don't exclude the proprietary systems. In the end I just find the idea that we should be happy Apple is making profits as silly.

<comment><USER13> We should be happy Apple is making profits. Because companies like Lenovo and Acer that eke out an existence playing in competitive markets where prices are driven to marginal cost don't have the money to pour into R&D. Look at what Apple is doing with Cyclone: the first mass market CPU to challenge Intel in IPC since Opteron a decade ago. Its a game they can only play because the generate a ton of cash to throw around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Another reason for the Nokia Android phone is Microsoft's Windows Phone—currently the only operating system on Nokia's higher-end Lumia smartphones—doesn't work on low-cost phones because of the software's technical requirements."

I have to wonder about that statement, because WP created a smaller memory requirement version that was supposed to be run on lesser hardware phones.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nokia has the hardware chops to produce good Android phones (in the same league as Samsung). At the same time, Nokia also has the software development chops to polish the Android platform to its liking. I doubt the phone will be a simple AOSP fork. Nokia will most likely try and play the same game Samsung is playing. Google will have to decide to what extent it will license Android to Nokia. Imagine that it cannot say no, since it will look really bad then.

From my perspective, this is a very good move by Nokia. Good hardware and nice software polish will make for nice phones. Don't forget, Nokia knows how to bring the phone at a good price point. They will actually put quite a bit of pressure on Samsung and Google. This is why Lenovo will take over Motorola. Lenovo also has solid hardware chops.

It will be very interesting and good for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER20> This has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Due to anti-trust law, Microsoft can't have any influence over decisions Nokia makes before the acquisition[1]. Even if Microsoft hated the idea of Nokia building and Android phone (likely) it could do nothing about it. And, even more importantly, Nokia could NOT change its plans even if Microsoft wanted them to.

[1] [http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is- microsof...](http://hal2020.com/2013/10/16/how-much-influence-is-microsoft- having-on-nokia-right-now/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope one day Nokia will release Windows Phone Bootcamp for those Nokia Android phone. Similar to how one bootcamp to Windows from Mac OS X. If MS has its own Android stores/platform, its a win-win.

<comment><USER22> Supposedly Nokia is only building Android phones because Windows Phone 8 won't fit on low-end hardware.

<comment><USER23> Are you kidding? WP8 fits much better on low-end hardware. Just look at the Lumia 520.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Paywall :/

<comment><USER25> the verge has a write up of the paywalled report... it seems to be the same shell/hardware as the current windows phones.

which is a huge let down. it will be yet another candy bar phone.

if you had hopes of a n900 successor as well, it may be the time to give up already :(

<comment><USER26> For all those who dream of running emacs on their phone, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

<comment><USER27> Hum, an emacs native port for Android has been out for quite a while now [1]. Android is just a Linux system with a weird libc and windowing system.

[1] [http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsOnAndroid)

<comment><USER28> Unfortunately, this "port" is just running ordinary terminal Emacs inside of an Android terminal application. So it's pretty buggy and annoying to use; and you might as well just run it in a chroot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'd read all those 'Microsoft should fork Android' discussions that have been appearing on HN lately, but I never remotely saw it coming to fruition. Interesting development...

<comment><USER30> this isn't Microsoft. This was Nokia's thing and started before Microsoft bought them.

<comment><USER29> "The coming Nokia Android phone won't promote Google's Play application store, from which Google takes a percentage of profits. Instead, the phone will come installed with a suite of services created by Nokia and Microsoft"

It may have started before Microsoft bought them, but it looks like it's not the complete truth to say 'This isn't Microsoft.' It's a little bit Microsoft, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> alternate post: [http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped- without-...](http://www.slashgear.com/nokia-android-phone-tipped-without- google-10316317/)

Possible WSJ link that works: [http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304...](http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304104504579374893734151208-lMyQjAxMTA0MDAwNjEwNDYyWj)

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if this fork would be open-source?

</comment><comment><USER33> Also, "Last Android Phone" :P

</comment><comment><USER34> iOS Android.

We actually do need a third choice.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to manage clients' credentials? - <AUTHOR>

How do you keep track and securely manage the credentials of a number of clients.
I'm talking about credentials for web hosting services, web apps, other kind of services/account installed/opened on behalf of the client.
I have all them scattered into password managers and backed up into encrypted zip files, but I feels there should be a better organized way to do that.
So, what's your way?
Thanks <comment><USER2> I just go with keepassx for these things. Have a master file/password that is ultra secure and then manage this file on dropbox etc.</comment>


iPhone X: final level of UX Inferno - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcodesign.com/90150025/the-iphone-x-is-a-user-experience-nightmare <comment><USER2> >At the time, I was wary–if Apple keeps adding gestures to this simple language, I wrote, "it will kill what made these devices successful in the first place."

I remember having this thought at the time as well. Then, the gestures became useful after I learned to use them. While most of these gestures (mostly on iPad) weren't needed by the average user to do the important things, they're nice to have if you're a power user. That's where I thought this UI divide was heading. Power users (gestures) and regular users (no gestures), still able to accomplish the same things but in different ways.

Now, it's gone too far. Now the ecosystem is fragmented and gestures are necessary to use the device. I decided to pass on the X because I didn't want new gestures and muscle memory to interfere with the way I use my iPad and iPhone currently. Of course the fragmentation issue will be resolved when this language is applied across the lineup, but for now it's not.

Still, I doubt I will see an infant pick up an X and know how to use it without instruction like I've seen an infant use an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Desktop UIs were once amazingly consistent and intuitive too. Anyone over 30 probably remembers the standard menu, context sensitive help, standard keyboard shortcuts, etc. This was before abominations like Office "ribbons," skins, themes, and Electron.

UIs seem to be like Egyptian monuments. The greatest pyramids were built first. By the new kingdom they just bored holes in the ground.

We knew how to design damn near perfect desktop UIs by 1998 and damn near perfect mobile UIs by around 2010. What happened?

I think it's because tech is as much fashion as function and fashion must constantly change. It doesn't matter if a UI is excellent if it looks 5 years ago. Each new platform begins with a well thought out UI but then it must change, and change, and change. Good design principles must be thrown out if they might make your product look old.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would agree. Been using PC and Mac since 1980s, and I liked Mac OS 7-8 and Windows 2000 the best. Windows XP was great too actually, mainly because it had system restore, but it was already treading towards too much fluff.

I think Microsoft Metro on Windows mobile was probably the beginning of UI inferno, because it triggered race among major players to develop their own design language to stand apart; except it was a race to the bottom with Apple's flat UI adding to the already rubbish pile of Metro.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree about XP being the high water mark for desktop, though older MacOSX was good too.

The other side of the equation was dev tooling. Visual Studio in the late 90s to early 2000s was a far superior GUI design system before they ripped that all out for the current XML abomination.

I think the real trigger for the fall was the rise of mobile. Mobile seriously cannibalized PCs especially on the low end, so PCs entered this misguided race to try to be more superficially like mobile. Metro resulted from this, as did flat and all the rest of that trash.

The new stuff does look a bit better but usability is worse.</comment></comment></comment>


Stigmergy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy <comment><AUTHOR> It has been pointed out elsewhere that the State Machine described in my blog post[0] (submitted here[1]) is an example of stigmergy.

This is a really useful concept/tool/technique.

This is a method I used when simulating large traffic flows on a state-of-the- art distributed parallel machine in the early 1990s. It had less computing power than a modern phone, but by using the right techniques we could perform sufficiently accurate simulations to get interesting results.

Stigmergy ... a useful technique.

[0] [https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/StateMachineInRealLife.html?t...](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/StateMachineInRealLife.html?te02hn2)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23050231)</comment>


You won't kill racism by replacing words - <AUTHOR> https://www.codingnagger.com/2020/06/16/you-wont-kill-racism-by-replacing-words/ <comment><USER2> I see debts of African countries are mentioned. Of course that has nothing to do with racism.

That debt exists because these countries borrow. Even if Western countries decided to forgive that debt for the sake of helping development these countries would still seek to borrow more (all countries do).

This goes to the heart of the problem: Poor governance. This is 2020, the colonial past cannot be used again and again to explain poor governance. It is for the people of Africa to improve things at home.

<comment><AUTHOR> While poor governance is a massive issue in Africa, the starting position due to past colonialism still is a big handicap that has economical and political ramifications to this day.</comment></comment>


Hey, Computer Scientists Stop Hating on the Humanities - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/04/hey-computer-scientists-stop-hating-humanities/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what could actually trigger this to happen? If companies are just going to choose the best software engineers they can afford in order to compete, why would universities have any market pressure to make an ethics course mandatory? I do like the idea, I just don't see the path there.

<comment><USER3> Universities have a higher calling than responding to market pressures. Teaching students to ethically evaluate more aspects of their lives is certainly an aspect of this calling.

If you want vocational training (and there's nothing wrong with that), go to a code boot camp. If you want an education, go to a university.

<comment><USER2> The front page of HN has an article about Harvard Business School that claims the opposite of what you are saying. And in my own personal experience in the business world over the past few decades I've seen no evidence that university graduates leave with better understanding of ethics. In my own schooling, the focus was on learning computer science and little else. So while this "higher calling" might exist in theory I have serious doubts it exists anywhere in reality.

<comment><USER3> Business schools have always been on the more vocational end of the spectrum.

And that there exist many universities that fall short of some ideal of the university education isn't really an argument against the ideal. I'd argue that this is what happens when universities respond to market pressures.

<comment><USER2> You do realize most of the people running big corporations came out of elite business schools? I like the ideal. My entire point was that universities _are_ responding to market pressures so at least we agree that is happening.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Proposal for an Email Avatar Header - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Navarr/a-proposal-for-an-email-avatar-header-38a2879d8219#.whgrieyli <comment><USER2> I've not looked much into it but I've seen Libravatar, which claims to allow for federated avatar hosting

[https://www.libravatar.org/](https://www.libravatar.org/)</comment>


The Uses of Adversity: Can Underprivileged Outsiders Have an Advantage? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/10/081110fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true

<comment><USER2> Gladwell is the king of deep-sounding anecdotes. I always feel dumber after reading him.</comment>


Walking down the tracks with Ruby on Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/11/15/walking-down-the-tracks-of-ruby-on-rails/ <comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to add your own favorite (free) rails links to the spreadsheet at the bottom.</comment>


Newly discovered dwarf galaxy may signal dark matter - <AUTHOR> http://m.timesofindia.com/home/science/Newly-discovered-dwarf-galaxy-may-signal-dark-matter/articleshow/48556753.cms

<comment><USER2> Gamma rays coming from the direction of this galaxy in excess of what's expected might also just mean this galaxy is (currently) "in front of" something that's emitting gamma rays.</comment>


UK could build 50 new nuclear plants - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/21/nuclear-plants-energy-plans

<comment><USER2> This is a logistical impossibility. Power plants, especially nuclear ones, are a nightmare to get past public consultations. They can eventually be forced through if the location is right and there is government level pressure. That might allow a small number to be built, but 50? No chance.</comment>


Has no commute during Covid-19 increased worker productivity? - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/productivity-increase-covid19-work <comment><USER2> if it didn't increase productivity, it surely increased happiness. which is also very important</comment>


PayPal Withdraws Plan for Charlotte Expansion - <AUTHOR> https://www.paypal.com/stories/us/paypal-withdraws-plan-for-charlotte-expansion <comment><USER2> I will be super interested in Red Hat. They threatened to leave for Atlanta in the past five years. This could not be further from their corporate values, and they have a highly distributed workforce and a big base of operations in Massachusetts and a fair number of people in the Bay Area.

McCrory is a real idiot. The money in NC comes from the cities. They may have won a Pyrrhic victory in the gerrymandering, but now that the rural districts have this power to drive legislation, they are going to drive companies/money right out of Asheville (brewing, tourism), Charlotte (finance/finance tech), and Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (software R&D and biotech).

PayPal isn't the first news. NC lost a startup incubator that was going to start a local presence already. There is more to this, and it's going to end the governors' national political ambitions as well has harm the economy of NC for decades.

edit: if it doesn't get overturned (in its entirety) immediately when the legislation gets back in session or through the courts, which is already in progress.

<comment><USER3> Well, the people of NC are getting exactly what they deserve. They voted for this.

And spare me the whining about gerrymandering. The Governor is elected by everyone in the state; gerrymandering has no effect on that election. If this were really an issue of gerrymandering, we would have seen a crappy bill passed by the Legislature, and sent to the governor, and promptly vetoed because the governor more closely represents the average people in the state. That didn't happen.

<comment><USER4> There are two NCs.

One is currently in power; the rural, poor, uneducated.

The other is more modern. We live in cities and we want our homes to be good places to live for all people.

You can view maps of this state and how it votes, and the places this law will negatively impact (places where modern industry might have otherwise come) did _not_ vote for this.

There is a war here: rural versus urban. The rural counties are in control and they siphon off tax revenues from the cities. They strip the cities of any local autonomy (not just in this issue) both fiscally and socially.

You can say "the people voted for this" but the people who voted for it are not negatively impacted by it (except that there will be less tax revenue in the cities they can siphon off of).

I'd point out that California has had first hand experience in this regard as well - with Proposition 8. The happy ending to that story defied the will of the Californian people.

Lament the laws of NC, but don't paint us all with the same brush.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that you're all part of the same State, so your votes are all equally counted (more or less; for Governor, they are). So I _have_ to paint you all with the same brush: that's just the way the system is set up. Sorry. I do realize (as should anyone) that not everyone in any given State is the same, and that every state has different regions where people think differently. This rural vs. urban fight isn't confined to NC, it's happening in _most_ states now. (Maybe not Wyoming or Montana...)

But you had to realize before moving to NC that that state was like that. Like every Southern state which votes "red" in the Presidential elections, there's a large number of conservatives there, and the conservatives in the South tend to be even more religious than the average conservative. So I don't think it's quite fair to move to urban NC and then complain about the rural voters giving you shitty laws: there was never any indication that this state, overall, voted more progressively. If you want a state that really is more progressive overall, you have to go someplace like New York or Massachusetts or Connecticut or Washington (state). But of course, the cost of living isn't as low in places like that as it is in the South; that's the price you pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the first time I have ever read news that reflects PayPal in a positive light.

Never thought I would ever write these words: way to go, PayPal!

<comment><USER6> I view it as dangerous actually.

That is corporations with money, power and lawyers determining and overriding voters in yet another way. Doesn't matter how you see this particular issue. The next time it could go in another direction. [1]

[1] Live by the sword, die by the sword.

<comment><USER7> Overriding? They're not writing the law here, they're going where the best laws are (or where the worst aren't). NC gets to keep its shitty laws, PayPal just won't be part of it.

What's your alternative here?

<comment><USER6> No this is a bit different. They are publicly announcing it in a way that says "we don't approve and here is your punishment for taking this route".

Not to mention what about the harm that comes to the citizens who would have held those jobs as well as the other economic impact of the decision? All to citizens who might not have had a say in choosing this outcome?

I won't even get into the impact on stockholders who buy the stock to, in general, make money with their investments not for social issues.

<comment><USER8> > I won't even get into the impact on stockholders who buy the stock to, in > general, make money with their investments not for social issues.

Several years ago, in response to a request that Apple commit to only agree to measures that wouldn't impact the bottom line, Tim Cook told an activist investor "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock." (It was in response to a question about Apple's environmental stance, but Tim likened it to a request to ignore accessibility issues.)

If I disagree with Paypal's disagreement, I'm free to withdraw my investment and go to a company that will ignore social issues.

<comment><USER6> Apple is in a unique position to do that because of the cash that they are throwing off now and their popularity. That was not always the case with Apple (as you are aware) and also is not typically the case with your average corporation. When you are riding high there are many things you can get away with.

> If I disagree with Paypal's disagreement, I'm free to withdraw my investment > and go to a company that will ignore social issues.

If you are a long term investor and if the stock is not trading at a good point for you that may not be possible. Let's assume you have a large position in the stock and it has lost money since you bought it as only one example.

<comment><USER9> You are confusing impossible with undesirable. You care about the money more than you care about the social values espoused by the company. I'm not saying that that is wrong, but if you feel incredibly strongly about something then taking the loss may be preferable to violating your core beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great political move on PayPals part. And good social move to put pressure on the politics of NC. But... This is mostly for show. If they really meant it they would not do business in Uganda, DRC, Kazakhstan, etc. places where it's de jure illegal to be out as LGBT.

So, while the side effect of their PR is good, it's more or less a side effect of PR for them. I'll believe their intentions when the move out of all places which have medieval anti LGBT laws.

<comment><USER11> Exactly, it's virtue signaling.

This week, it's fashionable to attack and punish North Carolina. Next week, it will be somewhere else, probably also in the US.

But Paypal will never cease business in Saudi Arabia or anywhere in the Muslim world where the government executes gay people.

We shouldn't celebrate or support people "standing for their beliefs" when they're not actually risking anything.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't say they're risking nothing. Sure, they're not shutting down existing offices and removing themselves from markets, but they probably walked away from money they wont get back. I'm sure there were legal fees, plus people they might have already begun to recruit. So yes, its not a large risk, but its not like it didn't come at a loss for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good, I hope more companies follow. I understand some people's reservations with how fast the cultural landscape is changing. The biggest problem I have is underhanded tactics, asinine euphemisms, and feigned naiveté by the people trying to pass these laws. If you truly feel you are on the right side, why try (so feebly) to hide your intentions?

You are either a brave culture warrior fighting for what's right or you're a cowardly bigot. You can't be both.

</comment><comment><USER14> Too bad the city of Charlotte was the city that passed the law in the first place. So you're taking a stand against NC by hurting Charlotte who was just screwed over by the state gov too.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like Charlotte needs to start some kind of war with the state government. Maybe they should secede and start a new state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I am bummed this went off the front page (presumably flagging/downvoting because of people's political disagreements).

* this effects Y Combinator [https://ei.ncsu.edu/y-combinator/](https://ei.ncsu.edu/y-combinator/)

* it effects Google Ventures: [http://recode.net/2016/04/01/google-ventures-north-carolina-...](http://recode.net/2016/04/01/google-ventures-north-carolina-hb2-ban/)

* There are local incubators and less formal groups of local startups against it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was NC's Commerce Secretary's response. Not very well thought through.

[http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/04/05/n-ccomme...](http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2016/04/05/n-ccommerce- secretary-doesnt-foresee-economic.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Great - if only PayPal cared as much for its customers as its employees

</comment><comment><USER16> Some behavior is its own punishment. What did NC expect, an influx of tech businesses drawn to crazy hateful laws?

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this the same PayPal that does business with more than 20 countries where homosexuality is illegal, including 5 where it's punishable by death?

The NC law is bad but this from PayPal is hypocrisy of the highest order.

</comment><comment><USER18> So will PayPal shut down their office in India? Doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Elections have consequences, as they say.

</comment><comment><USER20> The law requires men to use the men's room, and women to use the women's room. I don't see the problem with that. If it's really an issue, why can't PayPal just put a third bathroom in its facility for any gender?

<comment><USER21> What is a man?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Absolutely shameful for PayPal. This is not about equality and inclusion, but rather about using government violence to force people to support that which they oppose.

A black baker should not be required to bake a cake for the KKK; a homosexual florist should not be required to provide flowers to the Westboro Baptist Church; neither should a Christian baker or florist or software developer be forced to employ his art and skill in service of something which he opposes, and which opposes his belief system.

<comment><USER2> That would be interesting if it were _in any way_ relevant to what HB2 were about.

* it overturns a local law regarding who can use a bathroom, and removes the ability for anyone but the state to legislate that (takes power away from cities and counties)

* it removes the ability of city and counties to enforce hiring standards on government contractors (minimum wage, discrimination practices, safety standards) in any way whatsoever.

* it effectively undoes the state employment discrimination laws for all classes of employees. You have to file discrimination charges in federal courts (of which their are fewer, have higher filing fees, and shorter windows to file under federal law).

Since you seem generally ignorant of the law, this is a good explanation :[http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics- government/ar...](http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics- government/article68401147.html)

It is particularly deplorable that they demonized transsexuals to pass the less popular/otherwise more difficult to pass portions of the bill. It was clearly just a way of threatening people in primaries if they didn't run against the bill that was passed in a highly unusual emergency session.

But... assuming you know all this now, what you propose is shameful. PayPal is under no obligation to 1) not have ethics/standards at a corporate level or 2) hire people and open facilities in a state it doesn't want to do business in. The bakers/florists can do whatever they want (and could before/after this bill), but they cannot benefit from the payroll taxes collected by NC from the PayPal employees that will now be hired elsewhere.

Shame on you for either not thinking about your argument or being dishonest. It's an important issue and should be distracted from/intentionally obfuscated.

<comment><USER13> It's pretty clear the OP is a troll, but at least we got your enlightening response from it. The law is even more distasteful than I knew.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, no kidding about the enlightening response. This guy has the worst username ever ("throwaway5752"); he's one of the best and most informative posters I've ever seen here.

<comment><USER2> Thanks :)

It was throwaway at first, but I've grown fond of it.

<comment><USER23> Easily the worst username.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Handling an internship where you didn't really learn anything? - <AUTHOR> I took an SWE internship with a company that seemed to be a good culture fit and seemed to have a lot of interesting things going on for its interns.
Unfortunately, neither of those things turned out to be true, and the work was mostly dev-ops tasks that didn't require writing any code (mostly config management). I'm concerned about what will happen if I put this on my resume.
Is it better to leave these sorts of internships off of your resume so that future employers don't get the wrong idea about what you're capable of, or is there a good reason to put them on there? <comment><USER2> I think that it is worth putting on there - the best way to get a new job is to have a job already. This shows that an employer was willing to bring you in, you didn't steal stuff, etc.

I'm sure that you learned something - a bit about corporate politics, why we should automate things, or just how to show up on time.

It doesn't need to be a major part of your resume, but I would include it certainly.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good advice. Thank you :)</comment></comment>


The State of JavaScript on Android in 2015 Is Poor (Jeff Atwood) - <AUTHOR> https://meta.discourse.org/t/the-state-of-javascript-on-android-in-2015-is-poor <comment><USER2> "we need to start considering alternatives for the Discourse project."

Discourse hasn't even worked properly on beefy desktops for years. You reap what you sow when you choose to render your entire application with Javascript. Inefficient software makes for poor performance on weak machines ? What a surprise...

<comment><USER3> The application I work on is rendered entirely in JavaScript. The website is just a big JavaScript application that acts as an API client to the REST API that I write.

Because it's all rendered client-side, the flow of the application (which is basically a single-page app, but with lots of fly-outs, modals, etc) is very fast and responsive.

The initial startup of the app is a few seconds, but once loaded it is more responsive than a server-side rendered page.

<comment><USER2> That... doesn't change the fact that entirely javascript based applications are a wart on web ?

It's very fast and responsive until I want to disable Javascript because I don't want terrible scripts using an entire CPU core to animate your flyout. I don't want to load 20MB of scripts and run them on my machine because the language and platforms you chose are terrible and you needed to fix the shortcomings of Javascript, I don't want your application hitting multiple CDNs telling them where I am (as an example, I do not imply that your application does so).

And most of all, I do not want to have to maintain your javascript based software, only held together by all the libraries you used.

If you wanted to make a responsive application, you'd have written it in a language that compiles to desktop applications (Java/C#/C++/Python/...). Javascript is the easy way out, where you decide to fuck over your users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The state of javascript on Android may be poor.

But I think the key here is that if you plan to do heavy processing on phones, you're going to lose one way or another. Each new version of Android has introduced more power saving mechanisms, and I'm not surprised if 6.1 or 6.2 introduces something that restricts how much battery power a pageview is allowed to cost, particularly when the battery is half-empty or worse.

Which is unfair on Discourse.</comment>


Ants follow Fermat's principle of least time - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-04-ants-fermat-principle.html

<comment><USER2> The original is better: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059739#close)

Highly recommended if you enjoy variational principles in physics and are at all interested in biology/cooperative phenomena.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats an 'acceptable' Adsense traffic to ad revenue? - <AUTHOR>

I run a website http://blacklis.com, which gets around 4000 uniques a month, its not a massive site but I enjoy running it.
I wanted to reach out to Adsense users of the world and ask what they believe is an acceptable Adsense traffic to ad revenue.
For example: My site gets 4000 uniques per month and earns on average $5-9 per month in Ad revenue.
It would be great to hear from someone, knowledgable in the subject :) <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment><comment><USER2> This question may get better traction on inbound.org or growthhackers.com.</comment>