Probably a Good Time to Say That I Don't Believe Robots Will Eat All the Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pmarca.com/2014/06/13/this-is-probably-a-good-time-to-say-that-i-dont-believe-robots-will-eat-all-the-jobs/ <comment><USER2> I find several problems with this argument.

First, it is oversimplification. Robots don't eat jobs as in "there is nothing more to do for humans." The argument is that automation will decrease the wage share (labour share) and increase the share of capital (wage share has been in decline in OECD countries since early 70's.)

Secondly, history disagrees. Luddites had it right first. When industrialization started, automation reduced the living standards of workers for several decades. What turned things around was political struggle and unions. There was violence and people were shot at factory gates. Automation itself is not going to create utopia. There has to be political change in how we share profits.

Automation and Robots create new economic situation where the value and ratio between human capital and capital changes.

Krugman has written few easy to digest articles that explain why Anderseens first and second point are very problematic.

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the- robo...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/human-versus- phy...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/human-versus-physical- capital/)

[http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/technology- and-w...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/technology-and-wages- the-analytics-wonkish/)

<comment><USER3> Yep, it is going to be pretty much Industrial Revolution 3.0.

The people that are too old to learn new skills are going to need to end up on social security [and capital will need to be taxed for it]. For everyone else, there will need to be a permanent safety net [basic income, continuation of existing welfare programs on a larger scale, or something like that] and heavily subsidized post secondary education for any skillset that is desirable in that new economy [which will have to come out of capital's share as well].

Otherwise, we'll just end up with more crime and bloodshed.

<comment><USER4> The system in place is intended to maximize profits for a ruling class. It was put in place when the feudal and the slave system was deemed inefficient. The vassalage and chains were replaced by laws and religious dogma. "Thou shall not steal", "Its against the law to steal". When we see rising in criminality its because some people are fleeing the system. Crimes are a symptom of lack of control of the actual economic system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Your job, and every job, goes to a machine. [...] This sort of thinking is > textbook Luddism

The quick condemnation as "Luddism" is counter-productive because it allows side-stepping critical thinking about how new technologies may impact our life -- whether it is ultimately for the good or the bad.

The cry of _luddism_ should be made cautiously, because it so often is accompanied by rose-color technological optimism.

Technology surely does hold the potential to make our lives better, and there are many ways in which it has, but when we talk about truly radical technologies that can utterly and irrevocably change the world and the way we view ourselves in relation to it (e.g. powerful AI), it is worthwhile to think long and hard before that game-changer arrives.

For example, I do agree that I'd like most jobs to be automated eventually, with the outcome of:

> The main fields of human endeavor will be culture, arts, sciences, > creativity, philosophy, experimentation, exploration, and adventure.

Yet, I highly doubt that the default outcome of:

> Let markets work ( this means voluntary contracts and free trade) so that > capital and labor can rapidly reallocate to create new fields and jobs.

Is going to be this sort of automation utopia where we're free from labor. More likely there will be a long and painful battle about implementing basic income or some other powerful social safety net; it will likely only be after increased poverty and misery that the safety net will be begrudgingly granted if the particular brand of captialism we currently embrace continues.

A more pessimistic outcome is that powerful AI arrives before we've really thought through the moral and ethical issues, and it possibly destroys us, or is developed and exploited by military interests to who knows what outcome.

<comment><USER6> > The main fields of human endeavor will be culture, arts, sciences, > creativity, philosophy, experimentation, exploration, and adventure.

Some of those , like arts and philosophy and exploration and adventure would not generate an income, and would be done for free/fun.

Some others like science[1] and large parts of creativity[2] might be highly automated, requiring only a few experts.

Fields that aren't highly repetitive(like many types of programming) and things that require a human touch(which computers also seem to attack[3]) might be more resistant to automation.

[1][http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/5/148614-automating- scien...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/5/148614-automating-scientific- discovery/fulltext)

[2][http://www.computerandvideogames.com/453386/no-mans-sky- proc...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/453386/no-mans-sky-procedural- creation-scares-me-creator-says/)

[3][http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/a-video- ga...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/a-video-game- designed-to-treat-depression-worked-better-than-counseling/256324/)

<comment><USER7> >Some of those , like arts and philosophy and exploration and adventure would not generate an income, and would be done for free/fun.

Why would they not generate income? Currently all of those activities are done both for fun and for profit.

<comment><USER6> It's really hard to make money on those fields.Very very few do, and i don't expect it to become any better.

<comment> UK-AL In the crazy utopian world described, there would probably be a lot of accumulated capital struggling to get used productively.

My idea would be in the struggle to accumulate/protect capital, in a world where human materialistic needs are perfectly met. The money will flow into highly risky creative projects. Where the vast vast majority of projects are expected to fail, funded by highly diversified funds.

Virtually everyone would be expected to obtain/raise money working for these funds on creative projects. It would be considered the 'norm'.

Kickstarter for example could be beginning of this

<comment><USER6> First , the problem is that this won't happen in an utopian world, this will happen in our materialistic world.

We're quite far from that utopian world.That will take long political struggle. My guess is that when we're there , machines will probably surpass humans even in the arts.

Even if not,as far as i know ,the "youtube economy" i.e. people who earn full time salary on you tube is quite small. So i'm a bit pessimistic about it filling the economy.

<comment> UK-AL "Even if not,as far as i know ,the "youtube economy" i.e. people who earn full time salary on you tube is quite small. So i'm a bit pessimistic about it filling the economy."

The point is that money making projects will be so rare, that people would have no choice but to put money into projects that have the remotest chance making money. Funds will fund millions/billions of projects on the basis of finding one superstar project. They would diversified on a massive scale. This would be better than letting money flounder.

That or a kickstarter model where people simply give money to projects that interests them.

<comment><USER6> Why will money making projects will be so rare ? people have a certain amount of attention=money and money to give to entertainment. That probably won't drastically change.

And from that pile of money, the industry has quite an efficient ways to find superstar projects. On the other hand, on the surface your way doesn't seem efficient or profitable , and it even goes against improvements we made in that process like using big data.

And with regards to kickstarter, i haven't yet though about how it and the future.

<comment> UK-AL Money making entertainment projects are rare now. Imagine how many bands there are, only a tiny fraction will make it big.

Except that work will be the only work left. So money will have to flow to it.

<comment><USER6> Money could flow to robots' owners. You can always buy better food and stuff.

<comment> UK-AL Where would the robot owners put all that money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The counterargument to a finite supply of work comes from economist Milton > Friedman — Human wants and needs are infinite, which means there is always > more to do.

I think one aspect of this that's often ignored is that while human needs might be finite, natural resources are not. I think a lot of the economic malaise felt in the west as of late has to do with simple resource constraints: our ability to simply grow the economy in order to compensate for jobs lost to automation and globalization is limited by the simple fact that the price of crude oil has looked like this over the past 30 years: [http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history- char...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart).

<comment><USER9> Also, why do we give credence to this statement from Friedman? Are human needs really infinite? From what evidence is this conclusion drawn?

<comment><USER3> Human _needs_ are finite. A person only truly _needs_ so much food, so much housing, so much medical care, so much socialization, so much entertainment.

Human _wants_ are likely infinite for many people.

<comment><USER10> In economics, the term "needs" generally means very close to want "wants" means in general conversation, and probably not at all what you mean by "needs". (Its not as odd as it sounds, since "needs" actually is meaningless without reference to a purpose, and in economics the relevant purpose is approximately "to acheive a state in which no greater satisfaction is possible" \-- often, in general conversation, the purpose for which "needs" are identified is unspecified and not all clear, making the meaning of any claim about needs highly ambiguous.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think, just like always on HN, that people who write these kind of posts and respond to them (agreeing) are not often in contact with 'the common man'. Like the Turing test 'news'; a lot of of people I know would be mistaken for a computer and if I would make a computer which acts exactly like they do, people here would call it a failure and not intelligent. I am convinced the singularity will come and we are all replaceable in the end, however I think before this there will come a (possibly long) time when machines will replace 80%(+) of the working population. There will be no jobs to replace those jobs as the humans doing them simply cannot do things which are vastly different. In the past, for instance with horse carriage to cars, you could see that operation of a car is related to that of a carriage. There is no such move to be made with people who put glue on four corners of the iPhone glass plate (in exactly the same place every time or get fired) and who are replaced by a more accurate and faster robots. Moves like this can be made with general practitioners (most local MDs are already replaced by machines; the only thing they do is search for your issues and prescribe what comes out or refer you to someone who might know) or the run of the mill lawyer or accountant who, in essence, bring nothing to the table already but the fact they have a piece of paper. A lot of people here can do a better job than these (especially MDs and accountants) with Google and their common sense and education. (Edit: I mean by this; these jobs need to be and will be disrupted but only the law/system is preventing that at the moment. There was talk of Watson somewhere with one nurse replacing (many) GPs at a time, but I bet that didn't happen yet because GPs like the status quo.)

I'm not bleak about the future as I do also think we'll need (and force) a more EU distribution of the wealth in the end, but there will be a quite hard period when that's not in place and 1 billion Chinese are out of a job...

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the impending problem is that sub 90 IQ people are rendered totally useless. That quarter of the population is already much less employable than it was just a generation ago. The social consequences of this process are already evident.

These elite IQ guys like Andreesen in coastal bubbles are totally out of touch with broader society. They really don't grasp that a huge fraction of the population is not going to be training up for the services and digital economy, because that's not realistically possible.

<comment><USER13> A 90 IQ is probably a decent rough measure at this point, because that's about what it takes to handle a cash register or a grill. And when the those jobs are gone, it will inch up, 91, 92, etc. But forget it. Look at the future this guy has concocted in his head:

 _The main fields of human endeavor will be culture, arts, sciences, creativity, philosophy, experimentation, exploration, and adventure._

...it's like he's never met anyone who didn't attend a top tier university. Here's reality:

 _The main fields of human endeavor will be copulating, hustling, consuming low-brow entertainment, eating, and the occasional lunatic running amok._

...and honestly, we're square on that path right now. There are _huge_ numbers of people who are literally useless eaters. Go to a Wal-mart supercenter sometime. Huge big fat people buying candy, soda, potato chips, frozen meals-- often paid by the public dole. I'm not even complaining. Unless you start a sterilization program (and we aren't) it's the unavoidable present and future.

<comment><USER14> Congratulations on finding ways to make yourself feel superior to the lower class. You are exactly the type of person humanity needs more of.

<comment><USER15> While I don't share the pessimism or sense of superiority one might read into OP's post, I think their point remains (somewhat) valid.

There are many people who 'endeavor' exactly the way he describes, many more than I always wanted to believe. And many of them are quite intelligent, so it's not just about IQ.

While changing our approaches to education and the right motivation, in my opinion, can bring people _much_ further than some of us are inclined to believe, this is a limited solution for all the grownups who live in the way OP describes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the best rationalization for maintaining the current structure that I have ever seen. I can almost buy it.

I don't think that our current leading-edge technology has really gotten enough penetration to see how it is going to change things. And I think that within two or three decades, the capability of those machines/AIs is going to increase by a very great amount.

It is almost of a leap of faith to have this worldview, but I have seen so many powerful AI wins recently (self-driving cars, Jeopardy bots) changes and advances in actual artificial general intelligence, that I think we are going to see "strong" AI within two to four decades.

Even if that doesn't happen, the leading-edge machine-learning and automation robotics is only starting to be deployed.

Within a few decades, I think there are going to be so many jobs replaced, the current structures will be inadequate.

And as more and more jobs are replaced by deep learning systems and/or better natural language processing, even before we get to "strong AI", I don't see how the structure is going to accommodate that.

The problem is that within not too many decades, I believe, almost _everything_ people do can and will be done better by AIs/robots.

So whether we can keep our jobs is not even really our main issue. What we really need to think about is, how can we stay relevant in a world where AIs that are twice as intelligent as people are common? The answer, I believe, is to incorporate those AIs within our bodies.

Ultimately to buy into that line of thinking really requires a significant change in your worldview, which is why I think a lot of these discussions aren't really fruitful. It comes down to your beliefs. (Everyone has beliefs, whether they are boring and reassuring, or "crazy" sounding like me.)

<comment><USER17> We are very far from merging with an AI, but what's probably going to happen during our lifetime in my opinion is the displacement of even skilled labor by AI/automation. This is definitely scary, considering how slow catching up have laws and regulations been throughout history. I am almost certain there will be a period filled with social unrest and some sort of crises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Automation will undoubtedly take many jobs. Some technologies will create jobs, some will make the cost of living decrease and the standard of living increase. Restructuring society, the economy, and the government isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not impossible and could lead to a better quality of life for everyone.

A partial post-scarcity economy would offset the job loss, then there could be regulation that limits working hours to 30 or 20 per week which would be enough because goods and services would cost less (because of automation).

3D printers and "molecular assemblers" will allow for instant creation of goods, (print every part of a car if you had enough raw materials/trash).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post- scarcity_economy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler)

There needs to be more planning for the government of the future. Maybe a world government would be good, maybe it wouldn't. Should every citizen be able to vote on every issue rather than have a congress? Obviously congress would never do away with themselves, so how would we go about removing them or a similar organization from the government if it became necessary in the future? Do citizens even have that power anymore?

What about more competition between states? Government should be as important to people as sports is. Anyone want to attempt gamification of government and online-voting?

By the way, for the "impossible to secure" argument against online-voting, who cares if it gets hacked? If someone hacks the voting systems then it should be easy to notice that the votes people made do not equal the total (because people would be able to verify their votes) and if it's bad enough then just fix the security hole, reset the votes, and try again.

<comment><USER19> >Regulation ensure that people have jobs, even if that means limiting the number of hours per week people can work.

Some kind of guaranteed basic income or national dividend is a more efficient way to ensure that people who haven't accumulated capital get treated humanely.

<comment><USER18> For things like that it might be best to limit federal regulation and let states decide those issues. This would allow for experimentation of these ideas that are too complex to correctly predict every variable.

There are numerous issues that need to be figured out for a Utopian future society, we're not even sure we want that kind of society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Human wants and needs are infinite_

I doubt that this is true. If we one day find a way to experience permanent bliss I can't imagine that we'd want or need anything else.

<comment><USER21> MDMA was patented in 1912. Does dopamine count as chemically-induced bliss?

<comment><USER20> Sure but I don't think it meets the "permanent" criteria

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The current system will just lead to a continued and ever more absurd growth in the service sector. In the end 95% of the population will be cutting each others' hair and saying nice things to each other for money. With the most detail and attention dedicated to the 5% that actually does useful stuff, then trickling down. It does sound absurd, doesn't it? But we're already getting there. Does your kitchen really need a marble counter top? No, but you want to feel important/worthy enough to have a luxurious lifestyle, and a luxurious lifestyle includes a marble counter top, so you get one. Replace "kitchen" and "marble counter top" with whatever you want to. The two great expanding economic sectors of the future I foresee is conspicuous consumption (luxury cars, clothes) and emotional prostitution (massages, photoshoots, personal trainers). Indeed, prostitutes are a great example of this. High-end prostitutes earn as much as doctors and lawyers, all for providing emotional support for their clients/johns. They are the ultimate modern workers, in my opinion, and most of us will be following in their footsteps soon enough.

<comment><USER23> > In the end 95% of the population will be cutting each others' hair and > saying nice things to each other for money. With the most detail and > attention dedicated to the 5% that actually does useful stuff, then > trickling down.

Your claim here is based on the utterly false dichotomy that says that helping someone's self image (cutting their hair) and improving their emotional state (saying nice things to them) are not useful.

These things are all useful, it's just that the ones you decry are higher up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's a _good_ sign: it means that our lower needs are already being met so we can focus on higher desires and aspirations.

Personally, a world where most people spend their "work" helping other actualize themselves instead of scraping rocks out of mines or digging up food and barely subsisting sounds like a pretty good improvement to me.

> The two great expanding economic sectors of the future I foresee is > conspicuous consumption (luxury cars, clothes)

As prices tend towards zero, it's no longer conspicuous consumption. The whole point of conspicuous consumption is to show your wealth by throwing it away. You can't be a conspicuous consumer of Taco Bell, and if automation leads us to a world where granite countertops cost as much as a fast food burrito, then choosing one is just a matter of personal preference and self-expression.

> and emotional prostitution (massages, photoshoots, personal trainers).

You say that like it's a bad thing, but you could also lump therapists, psychiatrists, counsellors, and many clergy-members in there too. What's so bad about a job that helps someone's emotional well-being?

<comment><USER6> Paying for someone to say nice things about you is pretty similar to paying to a prostitute to sleep with you ,and eating junk food instead of eating decent food.

We as a society should aim for more, and not diminish ourselves to satisfy the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >"But most people are like horses; they have only their manual labor to offer…" I don't believe that, and I don't want to live in a world in which that's the case. I think people everywhere have far more potential.

Developing that potential requires significant investment and the outcome is highly competitive: we are already seeing a massive polarization of the labor force ('hollowing out'). Sure, the new economy creates well paid internet and creative jobs, but those are highly competitive fields where 2nd best just does not cut it. It went from something that any monkey could do (agriculture), to something that required some education (craftsmanship), to formal education (cashier), to requiring college (programmer) to requiring a certain elite education (investment banker), and so on. Society is becoming more and more polarized and instead of StarTrek it looks like we are heading for Metropolis.

> What would be the key characteristics of that world, and what would it be > like to live in it? For starters, it's a consumer utopia. Everyone enjoys a > standard of living that kings and popes could have only dreamed of.

Does not follow. The robots will replace human work, but resources will still be important. So an excellent house might cost $10.000 in land and materials, but since you would have no job and no money you would not afford it. Meanwhile, someone who owns the robot factory and associated intellectual property, might decide 1 trillion dollars is a fair price to acquire the whole state of Maine and transform it into his personal golf course.

The end game of post scarcity capitalism is a completely feudal society where workers have no market value and are merely held as pets by the rich lords who want to.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can someone point to me why everyone is so sure there will be robots?

Let me explain why I am asking. It seems to me that we already hit some sort of physical limit for the clock rates. We can't (easily) double clock rate of a CPU, so we add more CPUs. But programming multithreaded applications is more difficult, so it is more difficult to utilize this power.

Can't we hit similar limit for humans? Is there a limit on what humans can comprehend and build? Let's say one programmer can code 1 abstract feature- unit per day. There are limits. What makes everyone think that replacing humans with robots will require not 10^100 abstract units of features? Why no one considers that this problem may be just _too difficult_.

<comment><USER26> Partly because the robots we're talking about here don't necessarily have to be of the humanoid/strong AI type.

Bear in mind that rug weaving was considered too complex and intricate to be automated, until it was. Also bear in mind that humans used to build cars in factories, now robots do, and that the very term "computer" used to refer to something a human being did, rather than a machine.

The complexity of the necessary systems don't need to appear all at once, but can be built on top of, and feed off of, one another. You replace jobs piecemeal -- first the simple labor-intensive jobs, then complex manufacturing, then automate logistics. At some point, autonomous cars are delivering goods manufactured entirely by robots on behalf of autonomous corporations.

Eventually, as technology and AI improves, you could have creative works done entirely by machines, or almost entirely. Movies written, directed by, starring, composed, engineered and distributed entirely by AI, with books and music and toys and everything.

There's no evidence that it's too difficult, but plenty of evidence of things once considered impossible, which turn out now to be commonplace, or taken for granted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> First this: "I would argue that 200 years of recent history confirms Friedman's point of view." Then this: "This is not a world we have ever lived in." "We just know we will create an enormous number of them."

It's unfortunate to see even the mighty brains fall victim to rationalization. Dismissing anyone who is concerned the social impact of what's coming as Luddites hinted this was a output of an ideologue and not a philosopher, and it degraded from there.

</comment><comment><USER14> There is absolutely no economic law that says the value of labor has to be greater than minimum wage, or even livable. Yes there is theoretically an infinite demand for labor, and unemployed people can always find some really low demand job or work for even less than the machines. But that isn't optimal for them. Goods might get cheaper, but not by much. The limiting factor isn't labor costs, we already have vastly automated a lot of industries and outsourced others to ridiculously low wage countries.

</comment><comment><USER28> The Title Of This Article Makes Me Think Of Jaden Smith

[https://twitter.com/officialjaden](https://twitter.com/officialjaden)</comment>


Positive Lexicography – List of untranslatable words from other languages - <AUTHOR> https://hifisamurai.github.io/lexicography/ <comment><USER2> This is always oversold as 'untranslateable', when it just means 'can be translated, but not in a single word'.

Really nicely presented though! :P</comment>


Getting Fired At Yahoo: A Twitter Log  - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/getting_fired_at_yahoo__a_twitter_log <comment><USER2> A new form of literature? I hope not. That was boring. Twitter is a vacuous way to waste time reading about boring details of stranger's lives.

<comment><USER3> It's a new way to kill the last remnants of thought out sentences.

Paragraphs are SO last year.

<comment><USER4> @nirmal eh, whatever. hey you wanna go ride bikes??

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He will be a lot better off if he stops drinking so much coffee...

</comment><comment><USER6> That is sad but this story just makes twitter even more awesome. There is something about it, i cant really seem to understand why its so popular but its amazing.

I am pretty sure that because of twitter he will find a job in no time.

<comment><USER7> I'm blown away by your comment. I felt like the entire thing made the writer seem vacuous (or perhaps it's the medium and not the author that's the problem).

<comment><USER8> I can't decide if the first comment

 _Sad that yahoo is firing such productive employees._

is serious or sarcastic.

<comment><USER9> I'm thinking the latter. Hopefully that IP routes to Yahoo HR.

 _golf clap_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> maybe Y! canned him because he was drinking too many free lattes and twittering at least 18 times a day.

/tongue firmly in cheek

<comment><USER11> Tongue-in-cheek... I guess thats a British thing.

<comment><USER12> No, that's American slang as well. It just means "speaking purely in jest" or as I think of it "trying not to laugh."

At least, that's my understanding of the meaning.

<comment><USER10> mmmm correct, I'm sure Y! encourages social participation and a well caffeinated workforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the article: "Trying to drown it in free lattes. Which I will miss."

I miss the huge amount of free tea that I drunk in my last job. I'm sure that the caffeine boost paid for itself.

<comment><USER9> You do realize that loose tea is very inexpensive, yes?

<comment><USER13> I was using about eight Twinings' Earl Grey tea bags per day, five or six days per week.</comment></comment></comment>


140 character abuse - DMCA takedown applied to tweets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/dmca-abuse-extends-to-twitter-posts.ars

<comment><USER2> This is so non-sensical it makes my brain hurt. How on earth do they not think that this would explode out of control if they started contacting individuals directly?</comment>


Rolls-Royce has plans for an autonomous naval ship – The Verge - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/13/16300866/rolls-royce-autonomous-ship-navy <comment><USER2> I can't let a post on autonomous ships slip past without at least mentioning ASV Global: [https://www.asvglobal.com/](https://www.asvglobal.com/)</comment>


In 1897, a Bicycle Superhighway Was the Future of California Transit - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/in-1897-a-bicycle-superhighway-was-the-future-of-california-transit <comment><USER2> Copenhagen has had bicycle highways for a while now.

[http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/04/launching- copenhagens-b...](http://www.copenhagenize.com/2012/04/launching-copenhagens- bicycle.html)

The elevated highway that mjn mentioned is only a few hundred metres long while the new highways have 300Km planned.

<comment><USER3> The pictures in that article don't really give a sense for how bicycle- friendly that city is. I went there for a conference last September, and the fact that there were bikes and bike lanes _everywhere_ as well as more bike parking at every train station than you can imagine really stuck with me.

That and the lack of worry about theft. At a coffee shop and going to the bathroom? Just leave your laptop, wallet, and cell phone on the table. I couldn't physically do that if I tried, after growing up in Chicago.

<comment><USER4> Fellow Chicagoan. Could not imagine doing that. Happy to know there are still places like that in the world though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is still an excellent idea for a lot of areas, especially Los Angeles where the traffic is horrendous all the time. It wouldn't take much to build this alongside major freeways so that you won't have to claim eminent domain and go through private properties. This would take up a max of an extra 10-15 feet on the side of freeways. Now, in LA a lot of freeways are built out so much that there's not even 10-15 ft without hitting a building or house, but there are a lot of areas this could work. Sometimes it takes 3 hours to go 10 miles in LA during rush hour, and this could make everything better.

<comment><USER6> As an LA motorcyclist, I can tell you that almost no one would want to bike 10-15 ft. from the edge of the freeway. It's extremely loud and unpleasant, and there's a significant amount of debris that would need frequent removal.

<comment><USER7> Such a bike lane would be loud and unpleasant, but if separated from the road it would be similar in loudness and unpleasantness to the Williamsburg, Queensboro and Manhattan bridge bike lanes, which are widely used.

That said, it would likely not work because the distances are much further in LA, and following the path of the freeway is not going to be the most direct route on a bicycle.

<comment><USER8> No. The cars and semis will be going 55-70 mph, typically 5 lanes each way. It is incredibly loud. The bridges you mention don't have traffic like this.

<comment><USER9> Why not just build a wall as a sound barrier to push the noise upward and over the bike lane?

<comment><USER8> Listing all the problems with any idea of a bike lane along a freeway will tire me out (starting with: there's no space, high barriers are regarded as ugly, there's no way to make the interchanges work, the freeway under road overpasses will permit larger road widths only with enormous expense, we can't even build carpool lanes and light rail, people won't stand for the construction delays). Let's not do this.

<comment><USER10> Agreed mturmon; an open-air LA-freeway-adjacent bike path poses many technical, aesthetic, scale-of-access, cost and possible health issues.

I do not think a freeway-adjacent bikeway would be popular with cyclists if open-air. LA has a freeway-adjacent bus rapid transit line (the "Sliver Line") which isn't very popular at 12K avg boardings in March 2013, compared to the far more successful rail-route-replacing "Orange Line" at 30K+ avg weekday boardings for the same month.

The Orange Line has a parallel bike lane which is popular with cyclists and pedestrians, even into the evening as it's well-lit and well-landscaped.

Edit: Reference for LA Metro system boardings: <http://www.metro.net/news/ridership-statistics/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On a much smaller scale, Copenhagen is reviving the idea of a grade-separated bike "highway" in at least one place. A major bicycle commuting route currently goes through a complex congested area (with a bunch of 90-degree turns, pedestrian cross traffic, canals, and even a staircase at one point), but will from next year bypass it on a 1/4-km overpass: [http://politiken.dk/ibyen/nyheder/gadeplan/ECE1594066/koeben...](http://politiken.dk/ibyen/nyheder/gadeplan/ECE1594066/koebenhavn- faar-235-meter-lang-cykelsti-i-foerstesals-hoejde/)

In the rest of the city the goal is to string together something more like arterial bicycle roads, though, rather than fully grade-separated highways.

</comment><comment><USER12> True story: I moved from southern California to Holland in no small part because of how amenable the country is to cycling.

People like to think that cycling is popular here naturally because the country is flat and densely populated. However, it's easy to forget that during the postwar boom years, a major shift toward cars happened and it took a concerted effort of willful resistance and politically non-expedient measures to bring back the bike paths (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o>). Clearly, 1897 was not the last chance the Dutch had to fix their transit system, and with the groundwork they've laid over the years, it now costs only €30 per person in funding annually! ([http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/05/487-million- eur...](http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/05/487-million-euros-for- cycling.html))

Yet I see very little chance of this happening in California, not because cyclists lack a voice, but because we need to create more _dis_ incentives to driving. This obviously is a political no-go considering that motorists are by far the majority demographic. It's saddening, though, that there is so much willful ignorance (or apathy) with regard to how we've externalized the true cost of driving, whether it's in the form of:

\- damage to the environment

\- subsidy to cheap gas prices by the DoD budget (and body count) for controlling the world's oil flow

\- casualties from motor vehicle accidents

\- health problems resulting from sedentary lifestyles

\- zoning rules that require abundant free parking to be available in communities.

We'd probably have to see gas hit $10/gallon and parking lots charge $50/day before Americans start to reconsider. (These prices are actually quite typical in European cities.)

Oddly enough, I think it's good that the Great Recession has caused a lot of Americans to reconsider their car expenses and choose to scale back their lifestyles in ways that are more healthy, safe, and environmentally friendly. I hope this trend (not the recession, of course) continues and if America can set an example of moving away from a car culture, it will do far more good around the world to discourage the growing middle class in China, India, and other developing countries from adopting the same wasteful practices.

In the meantime, though, I'll piggyback on the 40-year head start on bicycle infrastructure in the Netherlands. If I sound bitter, it's my sore legs from yesterday's 70km ride talking ;)

<comment><USER13> Respectfully, I think your analysis is overly simplistic. You ignored the elephant in the room: the geography of the US.

Cycling makes a _ton_ of sense if you live in and around an urban area--- particularly when most of your interactions with other people are in that same small area. Despite my love for driving, if I fit that mold, I'd happily adopt cycling as my main mode of transportation. But there are a couple of very common scenarios in the US that maybe aren't so common in other countries:

* Living in a suburb/rural area that is more than a half-hour drive from your place of work (in no traffic). There's a high price to pay in terms of _time_ that cycling would entail.

* Traveling throughout the US. And I don't just mean across the country where trains or buses are appropriate---I mean visiting your friend several towns over. For instance, my friend that I frequently visit is about 30 minutes away by car but is about 100 minutes away by bicycle (back-roads, no traffic, data from Google Maps). Similarly for my parents.

I think both of these scenarios strongly militate toward owning a car in favor of a bicycle. I also think tons of people in the US fit this mold---certainly more so than smaller countries with a much denser overall population. Most of the people in the US live in cities--- _but_ the overall population density of the US is much lower than most other countries, which suggests that even if you live in or around a city, you have a much higher chance of having connections with people who live in more suburban or rural areas (than similar folks in denser countries). When that happens, a car is typically the most sensible form of transportation.

Of course, it's certainly plausible that we could own cars that we rarely use but cycle to work every day, for example. But I think that's a more complex dynamic and I don't think I have the tools to properly analyze it.

I also find your enthusiasm for passing laws to legislate your cost/benefit analysis on everyone else to be deeply disturbing, but I'll leave that one be.

<comment><USER14> > Living in a suburb/rural area that is more than a half-hour drive from your > place of work (in no traffic).

That this situation is so common is a symptom of the fact that our cities and towns have been designed around driving. The geography of the US is a comparatively small factor, since (as you mention) most people here live in cities or suburbs.

> When that happens, a car is typically the most sensible form of > transportation.

For these sorts of occasional needs, car sharing services work well.

> I also find your enthusiasm for passing laws to legislate your cost/benefit > analysis on everyone else to be deeply disturbing, but I'll leave that one > be.

This assumes that the status quo doesn't already constitute legislating one group's cost/benefit analysis on everyone else.

<comment><USER13> > That this situation is so common is a symptom of the fact that our cities > and towns have been designed around driving.

I live outside Boston. Which was most certainly not designed for driving. And yet, my analysis holds there too.

> The geography of the US is a comparatively small factor, since (as you > mention) most people here live in cities or suburbs.

I think you've taken what I said out of context. I went on to qualify that by saying those people, due to the lower overall population density, have a decent chance of knowing people in suburbs/rural areas that they visit.

> For these sorts of occasional needs, car sharing services work well.

In urban areas, yes. In suburb/rural areas, no. My friend had a similar dilemma, and her solution was to rent a car. Plausible, but is of varying pain depending upon use cases. Her use case was "I need a car infrequently but for long stretches of time."

> This assumes that the status quo doesn't already constitute legislating one > group's cost/benefit analysis on everyone else.

No it doesn't. I said nothing about the status quo. I didn't even argue in _favor_ of the status quo.

Do you acknowledge that geography plays a big role in the viability of cycling as a primary mode of transportation? From your response, I can only assume that you don't. If my assumption is right, then I suggest we focus the conversation on that.

<comment><USER15> Your also assuming an ether or situation if you drive less having a cheaper car seems more reasonable. I bought a 30k car back when I spent 2 hours a day in it, now that I drive ~2 hours a week and kind of wish I had bought a Honda civic instead.

<comment><USER13> > Your also assuming an ether or situation if you drive less having a cheaper > car seems more reasonable.

Where did I assume that? This isn't about whether you have a $30K car or a Civic, just that you _have_ a car...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yes, so in 1897 we missed an opportunity. Have we completely missed the boat to bring bicycling back as a mainstream form of local travel, like they do is so many European cities? Maybe the biggest challenge is: people need to stop thinking about cycling only as exercise.

</comment><comment><USER17> The biggest problem with bicycle transport isn't how to get from A-B but what to do with your bike once you arrive. In NYC there are decent bike lanes around (although the tourists stepping out into them make them difficult in certain areas). Do I lock my bike to a pole and hope it doesn't get stolen? Do I use a bike share system (starting roll out now), and walk way out of my way at the start and destination of my journey to find the nearest one? Maybe I get one of those fancy fold up ones and hope my building lets me take it inside.

<comment><USER18> I've been lucky to work in areas where theft isn't a huge issue. My biggest problem is the weather.

In the hot, humid summers, I wish my building had a shower, or at least some area to change clothes larger and less smelly than a bathroom stall. When it rains, there isn't always an appropriate place to hang dripping, often muddy clothes (and I hope they dry off before the ride home). I'm also lucky to not need to wear a suit, but I don't envy those whose responsibilities include being more presentable.

If the roads aren't covered with snow and ice, the worst part about winter is the darkness, but that isn't something an office building can solve.

<comment><USER19> If you are commuting, you don't need to cycle as hard as if you were training/racing. Just use a regular pace, like when you walk in the street instead of running. The same energy you use when walking normally will translate to long distances in a bike, because of the energy-efficiency of biking.

<comment><USER18> That's a good point. I'm young(ish) and tend to race my past self (while following traffic laws). On one hand, what's the point of biking if I can't get to work faster than by bus? But on the other, a more leisurely pace would surely leave me less sweaty while still providing some exercise benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The notion that anyone could profit off of such a venture—a bicycle toll > road—seems insane now.

I completely disagree.

<comment><USER21> Same. Monthly and annual membership or donations, or sponsorship options, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I enjoyed the article, but I'm very hesitant to believe any news sponsored by or affiliated with Vice.

On top of questionable reporting practices, companies can pay to influence the content of articles and the type of coverage.

Examples: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/08/130408fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/04/08/130408fa_fact_widdicombe)

<comment><USER23> Careful here. I recommend you watch an episode of Vice on HBO. I had my doubts as well, but the reporting on that show is great and my only criticism is that its too short. The article you posted is just an opinion of that person and she doesn't provide specific examples or lay it out objectively. I just recommend checking it out and then judge it for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If I told you there was a new form of transport that would allow travel over great distances without having to maintain a horse or use gas, it would be revolutionary right? I can't help but wish the bicycle had a longer time period between when the safety bike and automobile were invented...

<comment><USER25> Even in countries where it was widely adopted (look at China), the car has a tremendous appeal.

There are parts of Europe where war and high gas prices didn't drive bicycle use completely underground (despite fairly inclement weather), but it's a tough sell.

More's the pity though, I agree.

<comment><USER9> Back in 1999 on my first visit to Beijing this was true: there were lanes dedicated to the sea of bicycles that was used for commutes. This sea has mostly disappeared, and many of the bicycle lanes used exclusively for bikes before have turned into a mess of parking and extra car lanes.

Using these lanes today for non-electric biking is very frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> * The 1897 Pasadena-to-LA Cycleway looks appealing to this native Angelino [perhaps in part because it's empty in all the photos?], but had it been completed and survived, I would it to be heavily subcribed now.

* Some related thoughts:

___ o My favorite LA commute replaced a 80-minute auto commute with a 90-minute total { auto + Metrolink commuter rail + bike locker + 1.6 mile bike ride } commute. By driving to the "home end" and renting a bike locker (where I kept a bike in storage overnight) at the "work end" of the commute, I solved the "last mile problem". And I got 20 minutes of reading time each way on commuter rail.

____ o Folding bikes [1] solve the "last mile" problem given that (within certain restrictions) they can be taken on-board folded on LA busses [2]. Having put over 8,000 miles on three different folding bikes, I have found them to be practical but at-times finicky.

____ o LA is getting a bike share program under beta rollout in "LA- adjacent"-Anaheim [3]. These bikes use driveshafts (instead of chains) for cleanliness.

____ o Adapting a mountain bike or hybrid bike using an "Xtracycle" attachment [4] creates a long wheelbase cargo bike cable of carrying a week's groceries for a family of four. I have over 2500 miles on one of these. It won't go on public transportation nor on the bike rack of a car, but it can carry up to 300 pounds (if the hills aren't too steep and the load is well-distributed).

____ o My present LA commute is 5 miles, suburban all the way, and takes 30 to 35 min by bike, independent of auto traffic. Taking my auto instead saves 10 to 15 minutes, depending on traffic.

\</comment><comment>-

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_bicycle>

[2] <http://www.metro.net/bikes/bikes-metro/>

[3] <http://la.streetsblog.org/category/issues/bike-sharing/>

[4] <http://www.xtracycle.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> _"The plan was to charge bicyclists 10¢ a pop for hopping on the bike-only highway one way, or 15¢ round trip. That's a savings of 50% if you make a day of it, folks."_

Is it just me, or is that math off? The round trip is 50% more expensive than the one way ticket. The round trip costs 75% of what 2 one way tickets would cost, it's a 25% discount. "If you make a day of it", savings of 50% would mean a round way ticket costs the same as a one way ticket.

</comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me of something that came up in Google's Field Trip app one day. It said that there used to be light rail running through Cupertino about 100 years ago (down Steven's Creek IIRC) and it got torn down to make room for the age of the automobile.

The app is just giving me timeouts now though, and I've never seen mention of an old light rail system elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER28> As an avid cyclist in California, I sometimes daydream about having the entire 101 and I-5 free of cars, and what a blast it would be to tour with a host of friends. Well, at least until my daydream reminds me that there isn't much scenic pleasure on those highways, and I'd probably get bored 30 miles in.

</comment><comment><USER29> Minneapolis actually has a bike highway, though it's public and free. I'm not entirely sure why the article calls the idea crazy so many times.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Lake_Trail>

</comment><comment><USER30> This sounds like a vintage version of Elon Musk's Hyperloop <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop>

<comment><USER31> But Musk hasn't really released any real details about it. How can you comparte this to something you don't know anything about? Or has he released more details?</comment></comment>


Dyn post mortem - <AUTHOR> http://dyn.com/blog/dyn-statement-on-10212016-ddos-attack/ <comment><USER2> This is not their post mortem. This is just an update now that the dust is starting to settle.

Nobody wants to be in their shoes, but hopefully they will release a detailed post mortem so we can see what steps we might take in the future to defend against such large Internet-scale attacks.

Ideally some PCAPs will be released...

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone looking for help. I'm using OpenNIC DNS servers and I was getting ZERO problems accessing affected websites. I would not notice the problem if not whole internet complaining.</comment>


'It's not a post-PC world: Just a post Windows one, maybe' - <AUTHOR> http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2012/10/09/post_windows_world/

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of the people who write articles like this forget that Windows 7 still exists for the "hard-core desktop users" (yes, I claim I fall into that category, although I'm an Xubuntu user as well). Realistically though, Windows 7 is on extended support until 2020, so that's 8 solid years of use remaining. And for an OS that currently holds around half of the _entire_ market, I'd say we're __far __from a "post-Windows" world.

And assuming this picture is accurate, then Windows 8 will actually be very good for Microsoft; who wouldn't love to have an x86-based Windows 8 tablet that can do as much as a full-fledged desktop (albeit with a bit less performance)?</comment>


Ask HN: have you installed Reddit/HN features? Best practices? - <AUTHOR>

I want to add a community feature to my site, where people can post links and comments, like Reddit, HN, StackOverflow,... I know the Reddit code is open source (minus the captchas, I think).
I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice about Reddit and Reddit-like alternatives:
- ease of installation - the robustness of the system - the maintenance involved - spam control - Wordpress integration
Etcetera. Thank you very much for your help. <comment><USER2> I haven't installed Reddit from scratch in quite some time.

I just looked at the reddit github source. You can get to it from www.reddit.com/r/redditdev

There appears to be an installer script now along with upstart scripts to launch the services. This is vastly simpler than it was when I was using the code. I had to manually install all of the dependencies; looks like they have taken care of that.

There is also a vm floating around with an already installed reddit. I'm not going to track it down but it should be able to get you up and running in a few minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm not a techie, so forgive the stupid question: is HN running Reddit code or something custom built?</comment></comment>


Show HN: NopeJS – just say nope to JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bengadbois/nopejs <comment><USER2> What are some of the other languages that run in the browser that we should use instead?

Here's an exhaustive list off the top of my head:</comment>


Building an Angular and Express 4.x App Part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://start.jcolemorrison.com/building-an-angular-and-express-app-part-2/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to also include a Git workflow here too. I figure, the more realistic I make the process, the more useful it will be?</comment>


Show HN: Searching and Filtering Facebook Events with AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://dev.austinkpickett.com/fb-events/ Hey all, I made this quick app that allows you to search the events for a given Facebook Page and then filter the performances.<p>Any feedback would be nice. <comment><AUTHOR> I created this app out of interest. Any suggestions for improvements are greatly appreciated.</comment>


Declutter Your Desk - <AUTHOR> http://decluttered.com/ <comment><USER2> This should probably be titled "Declutter your floor"

</comment><comment><USER3> what happens when you fall of your chair backwards and you feet hit something of value real hard :p

looks neat but not that practical if you move your gear around a lot.

</comment><comment><USER4> With all due respect, this ain't a tech-related post so not sure why it's here.

<comment><USER5> I thought only people on TV said "with all due respect".

It's a workspace hack, interesting to anyone optimizing their device-filled desk space -- which is much of the YCHN audience, I suspect.</comment></comment>


Instakart.com redirects to AmazonFresh - <AUTHOR> http://www.instakart.com

<comment><USER2> instacart should have bought that domain!</comment>


NSA, struggling to recruit top talent, turns to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/nsa-struggling-recruit-top-talent-turns-silicon-valley-194810149.html

<comment><USER2> Just outsource more work to Palantir.

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah, since contractors worked out so well last time!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there an equivalent term to "vote with your wallet", only for jobs?

<comment><USER5> Vote with your W-2.</comment></comment>


Goodbye AdSense - <AUTHOR> http://acme.com/updates/archive/173.html <comment><USER2> It's worth noting that the guy linked here whose AdSense was turned off is Jef Poskanzer, one of the grand old Unix hackers. You may know him from such things as pbmplus, thttpd, and two USENIX Lifetime Achievement Awards.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha! This is nothing. I actually know why my adsense account doesn't work. Google thinks I'm trying to scam them by creating multiple accounts because they have another account on their database with the EXACT same address and phone number.

That's not a duplicate account Google, it's called a brother!

<comment><USER4> Why would you and your brother have the same phone number? Surely you each have a different mobile number.

<comment><USER5> There are this things called stationary phones. Some people still use them.

Also - some people don't have mobile phone because they don't want to be available all the time. As popular as moblie phones are, there is no law that says everyone should have them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google adsense support and appeals has always had problems, it seems if you're disabled your chances of getting any sort of support are non-existent and I assume this post is an attempt to get the issue seen by people at google (I hope it works).

On the topic of their "secret" detection, it doesn't work well. In 2007 when I was in high school an acquaintance had a web page with google adverts on, there was no content beyond what came with a free template he downloaded. Every day he would arrive at school, login to the computer system and click an advert on his website, he would then go home and do the same, he would also contact other people from school via instant messengers and have them do the same, it became some what of a ritual for him. He was making $100 per month from what I recall and this went on for a while. This is the sort of abuse that should be detected very easily; abuse from the same IPs with a set pattern and yet it never was... I have no confidence in a system that can't detect this sort of abuse.

<comment><USER7> I have had s similar experience...

A friend of mine had an Adsense account and would click on his own advertisements while in school. He would do this every day in the same class. He would also ask other students in the class to do the same thing. Each month, he would show me the check he received from Google.

I too had an Adsense account but I ended up losing my account about a month later. Only problem is, I was running a legitimate forum in which there were 300+ people that were active. This forum was created because we all played the same online game and created clans. We used the forum to keep in touch with other clans and to strategize. Never did I click on my own advertisements.

Once I lost my Adsense account, I reported my friends account but nothing ever happened except he kept receiving his check each month.

<comment><USER8> >Once I lost my Adsense account, I reported my friends account but nothing ever happened except he kept receiving his check each month.

If that's all there is to the story, you come across as a bit of a dick. If you didn't have any problem with his behaviour when you were getting paid, why did you report him when you were banned? I'm not saying reporting him, out of context, was the wrong thing to do, but the context you provided makes you seem petty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I once used their very strict account disabling policy to get a competitor kicked from Google AdSense. It was not even that difficult. I just spent a couple of minutes every day visiting his website, clicking all the adsense links, closing all the openend tabs, reloading the page and so on. It took a few weeks, but then the ads just stopped showing up (despite the Javascript code still being loaded) and a few days later the webmaster removed the code, which I assume meant that he god kicked.

<comment><USER10> Interesting how you posted something that amounts to "I'm an asshole", just because it was relevant to the discussion.

<comment><USER11> Something that also could be construed as fraud, if not criminal then civil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to work for a "big adnetwork" and this is how it worked there.. AdSense is probably similar.

We tracked conversions, where possible, on our advertisers end and used that data to calculate conversions per click for our publishers. We'd use this metric, mixed with a few others (ctr, # of impressions, # of fraudulent clicks, etc, but mainly weighted towards cvr) to generate a quality score for the publisher. The quality score was between 0 and 1, 1 being "awesome" and 0 being "awful".

We'd use this quality score to discount the price per click publisher was paid. AdSense is likely doing something similar because their CPC/CPM rate/split is undisclosed and very private- likely because publishers will get paid drastically different amounts per click depending on their traffic history.

Anyways, when a publisher falls bellow a certain quality threshold, we'd drop their account because they are, in the end, not making the advertiser any money and likely hurting our future relationship with the people that pay the bills.

Social traffic usually falls into this poor quality area into this area because it doesn't convert well, has a low click through rate, and includes lots of accidental clicks.

<comment><USER13> Why not just pay the publisher the (possibly low) value of their traffic, while also providing the publisher with the tools they need to improve their traffic quality? If the site never improves then it simply never makes any money.

<comment><USER12> The networks see low quality publishers as diluting the overall quality of their network. Since advertisers only care about traffic that converts, low- quality traffic hurts stats because it makes CTRs and CVRs drop even if the overall CPC/CPA is the same.

There are absolutely ways to educate publishers and advertisers, but the easiest solution for the network is to just nip it at the bud and drop low- quality traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is all bad karma for Google. At some point they'll do this to the wrong person and, when that happens, I do hope that they pay the price in mega- bucks. This is no way to treat decent and honest partners. It is, without a doubt, being evil.

I experienced another surreal variant of this a few years ago. We had some 200 domains in GoDaddy's "Cash Parking" program. They were there for probably a year when someone made the observation that the ads on these parked domains were all served by Google. Google, at the time, offered something called "AdSense for Domains". We decided to switch all domains to Google's domain parking program and cut out GoDaddy. No delusions here, neither service was going to make any money but it seemed a better idea to let parked domains host relevant ads without unpaid GoDaddy ads.

Now, to be clear, when you make this switch Google controls the content on the domains and, of course, they own search.

All went well. The domains started to show ads as expected. Then, out of nowhere, Goggle kills our account. No recourse. No intelligent conversations. A totalitarian and decidedly-evil "we are done" of sorts.

Not one person from the office clicked on any ads. Far too busy making real money to do crap like that.

Several of the domains we parked belonged to clients for whom legitimate sites were being created. Google's actions were brutally violent. There's almost no other way to describe it.

Being that they are a de-facto monopoly I would imagine that a time might come when they migh lock horns with exactly the wrong person or entity and end-up on the receiving end of congressional action or some such thing. I really do hope this happens and that they suffer serious damage because of it.

It is so ironic and frustrating to come across site after site with crap content full of Google ads and, on the other hand, to see honest site operators being punished by having an important source of revenue cut-off like that.

I love many of Google's products but AdSense and AdWords' management, policies and their brutal handling of honest users who add nothing but value is nothing less than evil.

<comment><USER15> I never seen any value from parked domains. People only get there by mistake.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely agreed. That said, Google offered this "AdSense for Domains" and we used it. As a reward for doing so they killed our account. Unbelievable!

<comment><USER16> I wonder if that's a honeypot of sorts...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> +Matt Cutts commented on this particular issue on Google+: [https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/RpNNBRr6...](https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/RpNNBRr61Hp)

"I can't easily imagine Jef Poskanzer was click-spamming AdSense, while at the same time I trust the judgment and abilities of the AdSense team. +Jef Poskanzer , I hope someone digs into the case to investigate deeply and reaches out if there's any more info we can share."

I have to agree, though the robotic reply with non-specific answers doesn't help one bit. Edit: In reference to the article, not this post.

<comment><USER18> But what hope is there for people les famous?

<comment><USER19> It is too sad to notice that Google only serves famous people. All those people who raised their voice on blogs and HN are given priority. What about the people who post on the Google Adsense forums and GAN Forums? Nobody from Google even replies to those legitimate queries.

<comment><USER20> Even when they do, their answers are not informative.

I asked about whether one website offering a free AdSense coupon was sponsored by Google or not, and I received contradicting answers.

Edit: The website was www.googleadwordspromos.com/ and an example of conflicting answers is here: [http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/adwords/thread?tid=62a...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/adwords/thread?tid=62a5755e805fa79e&hl=es)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> G has done this for the past 8 years, if you have AdSense, it is not a question if you get banned, but when you will get banned.

What surprises me much more is that there is still no valid alternative. After 8 years! MS has tried to build something and failed. Y! of course failed. Then there's Entrieweb's SpeedyAds which are so bad I think they are not even working on them any more. Nobody seems to be able to build a system that is as efficient as G's in matching content with ads, even thou it would be highly profitable.

<comment><USER22> Maybe Facebook should launch their ad-sense now.

<comment><USER21> Have they already figured out how to run ads on their own site efficiently? I think CTR and RPM are still unsolved issues for Fb. I may be wrong, never bought Fb ads myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We had multiple sites banned and my accounts and some business partner accounts banned as well. Almost all without reason. I mean ofcourse they 'have' some reason, they just don't tell it and no-one can tell me why either. Like acme.com; I have known the acme.com site for many years; how is acme.com a threat to their advertisers? It's a nice site.

Anyway; you cannot argue with them and it makes me upset that they would do this like this. I like their products, but their adsense and adwords 'policies' are insane; you are making them money both ways and with adwords you are a paying client, yet there is no-one you can call or mail. If you do you just get 'our decision is final, don't contact us anymore'. Is that an acceptable way to threat a client who did 100s of 1000s of $ in adsense (which means Google did how much % of that running over my sites?) or more than that amount via adwords?

And Matt Cutts is also showing the real Google in that regard; he is always helping famous / connected people out, while the rest of us goes out of business because some vague Google automated fraud blah. This goes for SEO too (the HN incident for instance).

</comment><comment><USER24> Someone needs to create a market place to serve victims of google's death sentences.

1) Tap a pool of willing people that would never be involved in AdSense. Perhaps non-technical, older people who have no inclination toward that sort of thing.

2) Buy their "google birth right" from them, that is, for a fixed fee up front and an annual bonus buy the right to spin up an LLC using their identity to do business with google.

3) Rent these LLCs to victims of google and their negligent bots. The money will come through the LLC, and there will need to be a percentage commission to cover the tax liability of the identity donor plus pay. Maybe minimal if you make the payments to the victim be an expense.

4) The renter/victim will need to make a deposit that is forfeit if they burn the LLC identity, to keep them from being reckless.

The cost involved won't help the casual user, but for people forced to make a life style change because their primary income was just destroyed, I'm sure this would work.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted the article because I think Google can do better and thought it would stir up some discussion. Google has had this issue for a long long time. The process appears to be highly automated and potentially impacting innocent people buying into the platform and investing time building up a base. I also may be a bit hypersensitive given the many articles I keep encountering regarding the United States govt and detention of citizens based on their Facebook and Twitter comments along with my own dislike for the ways the multinational corporations operate these days. I wouldn't say it is fear mongering as you will find no shortage of sites and blogs with stories of disgruntled customers. Just hope Google addresses the issues and remembers part of what makes them a great company.

</comment><comment><USER25> I had my account disabled last July and went through a similar experience in my appeal attempt. The interesting fact I pointed out to Google was that they sent me about 80 percent of my visitors via organic search. I didn't try to game the system or blend the ads to increase ctr or mislead consumers.

I offered to help diagnose the issue by going through server logs and anything else to no avail.

I guess when Google is making so much money from advertisers they rather just error on their side rather than spend time reviewing appeals.

<comment><USER26> Diagnosing an individual case probably costs them more than they make from it in years. But not investigating individual cases could carry a cumulative cost in terms of perception that could bring down the entire advertising ponzi scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing that has me perplexed about Adsense. I have a site that used to get around 400 unique visitors per day and I was making $100/month from adsense. I haven't touched the site in years, now it gets around 1000 visitors per day but I'm still making $100/month from adsense.

Is there some kind of cap built into Adsense, or is it just a coincidence that the amount stayed the same.

BTW with this traffic level, is there a better ad network I could use?

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm still amazed at the high level of tolerance (up to the point of worship) people give to certain hyped/trendy companies (Google, Apple, etc) versus others that get bashed or even attacked en masse (a recent example would be GoDaddy, Microsoft in the good ol' days).

They've been doing this for years, yet there has never been a blunt response from their users against this policy. Same with Paypal. So they keep doing it.

I'm not asking for a boicot, simply stand on your ground and demand a decent customer service experience, be convincing. Large corporations such as these ones, with so large benefit at the end of each year, need to understand that we're not sheep nor wallets with legs. We're people and we should be dealing with people, not with some heartless bot with cookie-cutter answers.

What kind of response would you get if you treated your users the same way on your startup? Think about it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have had a similar experience of AdSense from Hell, thank GOD it is not my source of income or it would be very bad. But essentially AdSense was unable to access my website early on and decided to set the account to 'INACTIVE' after repeated attempts (upwards of 10) to reach out to AdSense support and having groups of people tweet at them (no response. ever.) They are still completely quiet and the 'return to AdSense home' link only persists to reload EXACTLY the same 'INACTIVE' message - perhaps the worst user experience on the internet. It has even gone so far as I have had a Google API Billing specialist whom I was coordinating with for some API stuff reach out to AdSense on my behalf after learning the details of my case, and even he said there is no hope...

</comment><comment><USER30> I had the same experience with Google Adsense.

Once I started making money from it after 8 years of being under the $100 minimum payout, they disabled my account on the second payment. I received the same reply as the person in this story.

If you are an entrepreneur, think about disrupting this field. The competition, Adbrite and Chitika are far behind in relevance and payment.

Thankfully my site is now big enough to get into one of the more exclusive advertising networks that don't pay a pathetically small amount. But it disturbs me that I am banned from Adsense for life over $100 especially when I did nothing wrong.

<comment><USER31> If you don't mind: which are those more exclusive advertising networks, and what are the hurdles you have to take to get in? What's an average ecpm there?

<comment><USER30> The exclusive networks you can find simply by googling.

They all require a large amount of unique visitors (1 million+ per month) and not controversial content like adult material or guns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> At what level of scale does Google modify their treatment? Obviously major websites serve Google ads, and couldn't risk this kind of impersonal, imperious ability to just cut you off and steal your money.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, others seems to have been kicked out, we were simply not let in.

We applied for an account couple of years back and were declined. We went back and forth 3-4 times and they wouldn't tell us why we can't get in or what we need to fix. I have never used AdSense in my life, so it can't be the past history. We rank in top 1-5 results for all relevant keywords for our business. Was it the 302 redirect? Was it the old history of the domain name? Was it the IP address we were hosted at? Who knows!

Thank God, our business model was not based on advertising.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is so annoying. Same happened to us with AdWords account for our business (physical goods). Only answer from Google after appeal

\- "Please do not contact us again". \- "Do not open any new accounts".

At the same time at least one of the competitors who is using dodgy practices (not disclosing full prices, listing VAT, etc) is happily advertising for last couple of years.

</comment><comment><USER35> More discussion on Jef's G+ post. [https://plus.google.com/114501281018969491281/posts/YM2YZfmz...](https://plus.google.com/114501281018969491281/posts/YM2YZfmzaiQ)

</comment><comment> johnx123-up Suing is the only option to get your money back...

<comment><USER36> I'm sure that reading the license agreement would tell you otherwise. I.e. there is no way they would make themselves liable somehow.

<comment> johnx123-up I don't think so. My friend once told me a case where someone can sue even for broken agreement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Google is psychotic about AdSense and very hard to deal with. They make billions from their platform, but refuse to provide even a basic level of support. They could charge for tiered support and that would be perfectly acceptable; take a few points off the margin for example in exchange.

It's obnoxious to make Google six figures in profit in advertising, and have to go through message board proxies (that don't even work for Google) to get any attention to an issue.

I used AdSense for around five years total. I found you couldn't match it up with almost any form of social media content because a single slip of a single word (in any language) was enough to get you in trouble with their heavy handed censors.

</comment><comment><USER38> The appeal seemed half-hearted to me. His answers were basically "no", "no", "no idea", "i don't know"... Maybe he doesn't really care to be reinstated. Although he cared enough to write an article and post it to Hacker News...

<comment><USER39> err and did you read the questions? not like if he could invent replies.

pretty obviously if he had replied _yes_ to any of those it would mean he had been able to find out _what_ caused adsense to disable his account.

<comment><USER38> If I were in that position, I would have done research and posted details in the answers. "I checked my log files, and received an average of X visitors over December, which compares to Y visitors over November. I also noticed IP Address K was crawling my site daily and I can't determine who they are, so I blocked their access. Perhaps that was the source of the abuse."

A little effort might have gone farther. Or who knows, maybe it would have had no effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> >Google closing AdSense accounts with no explanation

Well, the original headline here seems to be a fear-mongering fabrication unrelated to the article.

One account was closed and the guy can't figure out why. In fact, this isn't even new information. Google closes suspicious AdSense accounts. Is there some conspiracy out there Google has a number generator choosing to ruin someone's revenue source at random?

<comment><USER41> How is saying that his AdSense account was closed without an explanation? That's _exactly_ what happened.

<comment><USER40> The title explicitly says "accounts".

<comment><USER42> Well it does say that by policy they don't tell you why you're being disabled, so it really is "accounts".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Now a days these cases have become more and more. Accounts from Pakistan and India top the list...even genuine guys account gets disabled. Google says: your account is "posing a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers"...as if we are running behind his customer with a gun or knife.</comment>


Inflection Point - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080718_005261.html <comment><USER2> Good riddance. I'm sick of this fuzzy, low def picture. It's a tragedy that the U.S. telcos have scammed the tax payers and dragged their feet.

7 years is a long time, but then things will (hopefully) finally be where they should be. Of course, a lot can happen in that time. Wireless may become viable or the world could be taken over by robots running on Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER3> Exciting article. Hopefully the concept of bandwidth caps will go away and we can focus on the future with massive amounts of bandwidth.

Does anyone know what level of processing it takes to decode a 1080p picture?</comment>


Possible discovery of Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour Off US Coast - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/19/wreck-of-captain-cooks-hms-endeavour-discovered-off-coast-of-america <comment><USER2> I live in Northern England and a couple of years ago my wife and I visited the town of Staithes[0][1] on the the North Yorkshire coast. To get there from where we live you have to go around the North York Moors, either travelling east and north up the coast or north and east. If you take the latter route you can end up going through Cook's childhood home of Great Ayton. I had no idea Cook was from around there and that he lived in Staithes.

Staithes (along with Robin Hood's Bay[2] further south) is an amazing example of what English fishing ports were once like and I encourage everyone to visit if you have the opportunity.

[0] [https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Staithes](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Staithes)

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood%27s_Bay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood%27s_Bay)

<comment><USER3> Robin Hood's Bay is well worth the effort.

But that whole coastal strip is full of special places, from the bird colonies at Flamborough to gothic Whitby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a kiwi. The ship is on our 50c coins, but has always seemed almost mythical to me. This would be pretty damn cool.

<comment><USER5> kiwi too, and yes, this would be a cool find. This ship is such a significant part of the south pacifics history.

<comment><USER6> Also Kiwi. Amazing News...

<comment><USER7> Checking in from Dunedin ;)

Too bad it sounds like Endeavour will stay up there, but what an amazing find!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > It was scuttled in 1778 along with 12 other ships to act as a blockade in > the lead up to the battle of Rhode Island.

Why would sinking a ship act as a blockade? I can see if it was in shallow water, but I'm presuming these shipwrecks are in deeper water since they're only now being discovered.

<comment><USER9> Well, this is just a random guess, but as you can see here [0], the navigation channel where a linked article roughly located the wreck [1] seems to vary in depth between 50-120'. Looking at a similar style ship from the same timeframe [2], we see a main mast height taller than the water depth in that location. I would imagine if you scuttled the ships in a precise pattern, it would make it incredibly difficult for a ship under wind power to enter the port and avoid hitting the mast of a scuttled ship. I just happened to be in Newport this summer and learned about the area's history. The people who lived there were very accomplished seamen and I would not doubt their knowledge was put to good use in setting up that blockade.

[0] [http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/13223.shtml](http://www.charts.noaa.gov/OnLineViewer/13223.shtml)

[1] [https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/hms-endeavour- fou...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/hms-endeavour-found-one-of- the-greatest-maritime-mysteries-of-all-time-solved-20180919-p504lx.html)

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

<comment><USER10> It's a little odd that the article says this:

> The site is located just off Goat Island, a small island in the Narragansett > Bay.

...but the map in the article doesn't actually reflect this. The little red circle is southwest of Brenton Point, and it's a couple miles away from the vicinity of Goat Island. I guess whomever put the map together phoned it in...or decided there wasn't enough room on the map to place the circle more accurately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems there wasn't much of an appreciation for items of historic significance in those days. Although data is sketchy, _HMS Resolution_ used in Cook's second and third voyages of discovery apparently suffered a similar ignominious fate (from Wikipedia)

 _Her fate, by some cruel twist of historical irony, is as incredible as Endeavour 's – she [Resolution] was sold to the French, rechristened La Liberte, and transformed into a whaler, then ended her days rotting in Newport Harbor. She settled to the bottom just a mile from Endeavour_

And yet items of monarchical conspicuous consumption like the crown jewels are afforded meticulous preservation resources. /s

<comment><USER12> There will always be a selection effect here. You need hindsight to know with any accuracy what is old junk, vs. what is of historical interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I read this as Captain Hook the first time...

<comment><USER14> This is exactly what I read and I was actually confused why people were suddenly talking of a certain Captain Cook ('who is this guy?!') in this thread</comment></comment>


Coming Soon: Machine-Checked Proofs in Everyday Development - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9105-coming_soon_machine-checked_mathematical_proofs_in_everyday_software_and_hardware_development <comment><USER2> My current reading list:

\- Fundamental Proof Methods in Computer Science

\- Handbook of Practical Logic and Automated Reasoning

\- Software Abstractions

\- The Little Prover

Yes, currently I have Athena, OCaml, Alloy, ACL2 (via Dr Racket/Dracula) all up and running to work through the exercises in these books. I'm very skeptical anything will come of this, but it interests me and I can see the value.

Hopefully the speaker's next book Formal Reasoning About Programs ([https://github.com/achlipala/frap](https://github.com/achlipala/frap)) will be a nice next step, I have Certified Programming with Dependent Types but have not cracked it yet. Also keeping an eye on Verified Functional Algorithms ([https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/vfa- current/index....](https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/vfa- current/index.html)).

<comment><USER3> Three extra classics:

* [https://books.google.es/books?id=YseqCAAAQBAJ](https://books.google.es/books?id=YseqCAAAQBAJ)

* [http://www.concrete-semantics.org/](http://www.concrete-semantics.org/)

* [https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/](https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/)

<comment><USER4> +1 for Software Foundations

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mathematical proofs of code are not suitable for most systems.

Even unit tests which don't involve proofs can be a problem sometimes because they lock down API inputs and outputs. It's already a major problem when a developer wants to change some code and they have to spend hours updating unit tests every time. When in small teams, heavy 100% coverage unit tests slow down productivity, possibly by 5x or 10x.

I imagine that adding proofs as part of the unit test suite would further increase the productivity cost overhead by a massive factor.

In software development, you should avoid treating the code like if it's special or perfect because it's not and it will need to be changed in the near future when requirements change (and they will always keep changing). So locking it down into a specific state with proofs all around it is a bad idea for the vast, vast majority of cases.

We need more wisdom in software development and that means taking a step back, looking at the big picture and asking questions like what are the negative side effects of each new methodology that we are introducing into our projects? There are always downsides, and we're crazy to pretend that every fancy new methodology is a silver bullet.

<comment><USER6> It's hard to know the intent of a developer by reading their code. You could always add a bunch of comments, which would help, but in the long run you risk them getting out of date.

My unit tests are basically "comments" for my code, that show me how the code is supposed to work. When I make changes, the tests will tell me if I broke the intentions of the initial developer.

Sure, when doing big changes, just updating and maintaining the tests is a lot of work, but so would maintaining documentation and comments be. So we have less documentation and fewer comments, and more tests.

<comment><USER5> I find integration tests more useful for documentation because they show you how the system works at a higher level which is precisely what new developers need to understand.

If the code itself is written properly then the individual classes and objects used throughout should be high cohesion and easy to read without needing any comments or tests.

There are always cases where unit tests are important though like the parts of the code that deal with money.

But there is no benefit in adding unit tests if you're building a standard chat system for example; integration tests are sufficient in that case.

Also getting 100% test coverage is a complete waste of time if you don't actually test the right kinds of input and output parameters.

<comment><USER7> I think a part of the difficulty is in the language of coverage.

"100% test coverage" usually means statement coverage due to the nature of popular tooling.

If you deeply care about correctness you are usually more interested in _path coverage_ which is more tied to things like heap shape or state space... (which depending on your system design might encompass stuff in your database). Also yeah, technically the exceptions which can be thrown at each point in your software if you work in a language with those.

Unfortunately there's not much tooling for that so it's not visible in the same way as the more naive metrics.

Anway my point is that you can waste time pushing for "100% statement coverage" measurable by naive tools but still not exercise important paths, which I think is your point.

<comment><USER8> I want to clarify that the whole point of unit tests is to have 100% coverage, that all code paths are exercised by the tests. If you do unit testing and have code that is not covered it's either a bug or dead code that should be removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We already have a basic form of machine checked-proofs in everyday code: type systems. Type systems encode and prove simple theorems like "f(x: int) -> int returns an int, if x is an int". Typescript and Mypy show us that these proof checkers don't need to be built into a language. Even better, they show that proofs can be over subsystems of a program, since Typescript and Mypy both allow for partial/incremental typing. We just need to extend these systems to support more complex theorems.

<comment><USER10> Incremental type systems are super interesting. Lots of work being done in the last 10 years that blurs the lines between static and dynamic typing (monkeytype, reticulated Python), types and values (via the triumph of inferred types), kinds and types (powerful trait systems like Scala's), and even values and code (code synthesis like magichaskeller, or excel's flashfill).

A bit of self promotion, I touched on this in a recent blog post if you're interested in this sort of stuff: [https://performancejs.com/post/hde6a33/JavaScript- in-2017:-Y...](https://performancejs.com/post/hde6a33/JavaScript- in-2017:-Year-in-Review,-Predictions-for-2018)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Machine checked useable compilers exist (CakeML, CompCert). Useable kernels exists (SeL4). A few people officially work as proof engineers.

The future is here, but not evenly distributed. ;)

<comment><USER2> Were you able to find a position? You are qualified, but it's very competitive, few jobs and many PhD level candidates with experience.

<comment><USER11> Did not try. I'm only looking in southern Germany and afaik nobody does that here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cryptocurrencies and digital contracts are going to pump an insane amount of money into this.

<comment><USER13> I'm not so sure to be honest. I've been super surprised at just how few high profile hacks there have been against cryptocurrency protocols so far even when you've got clients implemented in C++. I wish I could explain why as well because you'd think all you'd need is a small flaw to attack the whole network when most nodes are running the same software.

<comment><USER14> Normal security practices are applicable to the node/wallet software. Smart contracts are another story -- think of the DAO heist. Short programs whose behavior determine the fate of $$$ are exactly the kind of thing where verification excels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In ten years.

That's where I thought we were in 1983 - ten years away.

<comment><USER16> > In ten years.

> That's where I thought we were in 1983 - ten years away.

Obligatory xkcd:

> [https://xkcd.com/678/](https://xkcd.com/678/)

<comment><USER17> > Obligatory xkcd

God I cringe every time someone posts that. It's like the "Big Bang Theory" of internet comics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that the classic ironical demonstration of the limits of proof systems comes up with the fact that CoqIDE 8.7.1 crashes immediately on OSX if you try to cut or paste anything.

The problem, it turns out that they included a new version of OCaml which was incompatible with the older version of GTK that was being used. Result: crash due to seg fault.

We really need both proofs and pragmatics. Proofs can give us confidence in the fundamentals when used appropriately for the processor, or for consensus algorithms like Raft, or key parts of the OS. Tests and statistical analysis can give us confidence that we haven't overlooked something crucial.

Some systems obviously aren't very appropriate for formal methods (take machine learning, for instance, there can be no formal spec for what a fraud looks like). There statistics and testing will have to suffice because we have clear value on average even if we cannot formally guarantee the system.

Other systems are much more appropriate for formal methods. I should hope that a heart monitor, CPU, voting machine or aircraft flight management system will have substantial amounts of formally proved code (I know that I am dreaming with the voting machines; let's settle for getting it down on paper). I don't want to collect a statistical sampling of whether an airplane works as we iteratively work out the bugs and specs in an agile fashion.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good talk!

So, one question: Adam gives one example of a proof where the initial automation fails because it does not consider a theorem that was previously proved. He also gives an example of some complex code where the proof is too tedious to do without lots of automation. What happens when your complex code changes in such a way that you need some extra lemmas but don't know what they are?

<comment><USER20> It's manageable in practice I believe, and Adam quickly shows a feature related to this in the demo.

First, if some new features are added with associated properties, then some theorems/lemmas related to these properties will have to be added and proven. I don't think that part is problematic, because it's a "local" decision. This work is focused on the change.

The possible problems come from the impact of these changes to existing results. If you need to go and make other changes all over the place it wouldn't be scalable. But then automation and coq hint database can help. In the demo example you referred to Adam adds the lemma as a rewrite hint, and then it's picked by coq automation elsewhere. That's how local changes can automatically be leveraged globally by proof automation in existing proofs, with no changes (ok, not always. But that limits the impact).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What progress has been made recently in making writing proofs easier? Are there any research projects targeting mainstream programmers?

<comment><USER22> Plenty of advances in logic and category theory have enabled dependently typed languages to be both theorem prover and practical implementation language.

See Lean.

<comment><USER23> I'm interested but "Lean programming languages" and its varieties are difficult to Google. Would you mind posting a complete reference?

<comment><USER24> I think this is a good application paper for Lean showing how you can use it to develop machine learning algorithms.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.08605](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.08605)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We already have them. It's called compiler type checks. Albeit having an SMT solver in your unit tests is nice too.

<comment><USER26> Type checking is (usually) intraprocedural and flow insensitive. That's what makes it easy. The other stuff is harder.</comment></comment>