Where will artificial general intelligence come from? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/119VW6ueBGLQXsw-jGMboGP2-WuOnyMAOYLgd44SL6xM/edit#slide=id.p <comment><USER2> I gave this talk a while ago to a small group of attendees. It was not recorded (I saw some ask below). It's based on a document I wrote a while ago called "You suck at writing AI" (never published). The basic argument was that people are comically inadequate at writing complex code. You can't write the code to detect a cat in an image and the correct thing to do is to give up, write down an objective that measures the desiderata and pay with compute to search a function space for solutions. In the same vain, the idea of writing an AGI and all of its cognitive machinery is preposterous and the correct thing to do is to give up, think about the objective and search the program space for solutions. Unfortunately, the mindset of decomposition by function (see Brooks ref), which has worked so well for us in so many areas of scientific inquiry, is just about the most misleading mindset when it comes to AGI.

<comment><USER3> Fortunately you don't have to write an AGI yourself. We have a very powerful tool called evolution that can do all the heavy lifting for us, we just have to set up the environment and the goals. I'm pretty sure we could create an AGI, given enough computational power and time, we're basically hardware- limited.

<comment><USER4> Nature had a planet and several billion years. Of course the goal wasn't AGI, it was survival, and horseshoe crabs have done a pretty good job of that. So have beatles, with their large number of species. How would you select for only AGI? It would be like selecting for only the greatest eyes (Mantis shrimp), but doing it over the entire tree of life. You still need a way to narrow down to the best eyes.

<comment><USER5> Survival is not a goal, it's just the score keeping system.

<comment><USER6> What, oh wise one, is the goal?

<comment><USER7> Nothing. Evoultion came about randomly, not by intent, so it has no goal.

<comment><USER6> That's pretty meaningless - in that case the word goal doesn't have a meaning because everything is just as random as evolution, which isn't very random but whatever.

<comment><USER8> Evolution is not random. It requires self replication in order to transmit and evolve genes. Everything else is much more random.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Background: I did AI and Philosophy of Mind in undergrad, an MSc focused on ALife, then a PhD at Yale under a Macarthur Fellow who developed the theoretical framework for the 'evolution of Evolvability' where I worked on computational evolutionary biology. I can say we're not going to blindly brute force our way forward, but instead we'll need to reverse engineer nature's core algorithms to generate hard AI. Every time a major advance is made in AI the computational neuroscientist say: "why didn't you talk to us 15 years ago? We could have told you that!". Those ingredients will be embodiment, evolution, genetics (genotype-phenotype encoding), neirogenesis(gene regulatory networks directing phenotypic development from a single cell to a multicellular neural network), and ecology (evolving in adversarial and cooperative environments). And we'll need a lot of theoretical work in how to represent nature's algorithms in code. For example my PhD work just focused on how to use evolutionary algorithms to evolve simple gene regulatory networks and how that leads to properties of modularity in the genotype-phenotype map. That alone is life's work but a necessary ingredient. I don't expect to see this solved in my lifetime given how we're attacking the problem (head on) today. And until then we're going to continue to run into these dark winters of AI.

<comment><USER10> Background: Some guy on the Internet with an unrelated Bachelors degree he didn't study that hard for and has picked up a little Python and Javascript somewhere along the way.

I know of no biological forms that have evolved wheels. But wheels have turned out to be a hell of a lot faster than fins or legs. I see no reason "intelligence" has to follow the pathways or limitations of biology or neurology at all. Although certainly it may be a place to look for some ideas.

<comment><USER11> I would also point to heavier-than-air flight. For thousands of years people tried to mimic flapping wings of birds, but in the end it was the unnatural propellor and fixed wing design that gave us flight.

<comment><USER12> Fixed-wing flight isn't unknown to the natural world.[0]

Flagella use propeller motion for propulsion.[1]

Lots of animals use jets.[2]

I'd consider the combustion engine to be the most novel 'human' design with regards to aircraft propulsion -- or the _way_ we achieve jet propulsion; that's pretty unique.

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

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Artificial general intelligence won't be invented, it will emerge, just general intelligence did in the wild. AGI is just going to be a hierarchical arrangement of specialized tools.

The first step is highly specialized AI tools for very specific problem domains.

The second step is AI tools that use other AI tools as components but address slightly larger problem domains.

The third and successive steps are recursions of the second step.

Additionally, we won't be able to tell right away when we've crossed the threshold. We can't even say for sure where "intelligence" stops in animals. We used to think we were the line, but now the bar has been pushed down to include primates, cetaceans, a number of birds, possibly some members of the bear family, etc. The reality is that it is a gradient and there is no clear line.

<comment><USER14> It's interesting how people come out of the woodwork with their personal theories on AGI. Do you/ we even really know how general intelligence works, or even how it emerged i.e. incrementally, or in a dramatic mutation more recently? Last I checked there wasn't a scientific consensus on either topic. To then come out headstrong and say "AGI will be like X" always makes these AGI conversations a tad farcical.

<comment><USER13> Intelligence clearly isn't a one-off/recent thing, since we observe remarkably intelligent behavior from cephalopods, which are vastly distant in the tree of life and not recent from an evolutionary perspective. We also know intelligence is also clearly not a binary attribute from _many_ animal and human studies.

The fact that we don't know how higher-order intelligence works in general is exactly why it will be emergent rather than designed.

You shouldn't worry so much about consensus, but instead use your senses and your brain to make up your own mind. That is the approach that gave us the enlightenment.

<comment><USER14> Ok but I am talking about general human intelligence when I say AGI and 'recently emerged', not mollusks. You could easily argue we will find out how higher-order intelligence emerged one day, as some researchers already have models for that if you've read a college anthropology textbook; may not be right, but it's not out of the realm of possibility that it emerged recently due to new structure(s) ('design') coming about in a relatively short time period, so making the claim "Since we don't know how it happened, therefore it must be like X" is flawed.

You know what French Enlightenment thinkers were also against? Making headstrong claims (as an authority) without empirical evidence on your side :)

<comment><USER13> I think "what humans are" is not a useful definition of intelligence. Not only is it not useful, but it's likely to lead us down a blind alley in intelligent systems research. Kind of like if we assumed when trying to build a flying machine that the only way it could work is if it flapped its wings.

Human intelligence definitely did not arise "in one day" and any anthropologist positing such a theory hasn't looked at the last 30 years of research in statistical genetics. Intelligence is an incredibly complex trait resulting from the interaction of many, many genes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm working on a technology that I think might enable either IA or AI. Basically intelligences manage their own programs and the computational resources allocated to those programs. So I'm looking at doing that with markets.

With IA the user acts as feedback to the market about what is good or bad. Ideally it would act as an external brain lobe. More information on my approach is on this blog [https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/why- study...](https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/why-study- resource-allocation/)

<comment><USER15> This might be a better link. It explains how we might get to IA. TL;DR It is a mix of machine learning with different parameters and inputs/outputs and language translation into programs with the economy acting as the force to guide this evolving set of programs.

[https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possibl...](https://improvingautonomy.wordpress.com/2017/08/22/a-possible- path-to-intelligence-augmentation/)

<comment><USER16> Interesting idea. Instead of thinking of computing as an authoritarian schema, it could be a community schema, using a kanban or currency system to communicate resource needs between units.

It's also similar to negotiating memory over commitment in virtualization. VMWare's driver on the VM "inflates a memory bubble" to communicate host memory constraints to all client VMs. This is often done when VMs have allocated 125%-300% of the host's physical RAM, and forces clients to swap more.

<comment><USER15> Yep, while people have to worry about the memory/cpu usage of the programs inside a computer, we are probably going to be stuck with just narrow AI. General Intelligence needs the ability to trade off resources between different programs doing different things (these may be learning different things, processing data or doing other computational tasks).

Also we get malware because we expect the user to be a good knowledgeable authoritarian manager of a system and never run a bad program and be able to get rid of a bad program when it occurs. This just isn't realistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you take a look at the evolution of the most advanced non artificial general intelligence, eg. human intelligence, it is strongly connected to the evolution of communication. It is a question of efficiency whether you learn through your own experience and failures or through the experience and failures of others. This teaching/learning process was boosted through the use of pictures, spoken language, hand written and printed books. This is why I believe the artificial general intelligence will we teached by an other artificial general intelligence and this evolution will be somehow connected to language processing. As far as I know Google tries to train its AIs through human imput, eg. to recognize animals drawn by humans. I consider it as one of the first steps in the right direction.

<comment><USER18> I would argue that intelligence is connected to the evolution of sensing at a distance. Vision in particular, allowed life to evaluate the state of the environment at a distance and allowed for the evolution of strategies to predict and respond to the environment in real time. The progression in intelligence from sponge to amphibian to mammal is related to the evolution of finer sensing of the environment at a distance: vision, smell, sound etc.

<comment><USER19> 'Situational awareness' is maybe a better phrase. Predicting the future was probably next. Knowing that sunset is soon or that rain is coming requires situational awareness, long term memory, short-term memory, and all kinds of other stuff.

A realistic set of stimuli, a LOT of artificial neurons, and a lot of time will probably get there, eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That was really interesting.

I'm interested why he's so pessimistic about the simulating a brain approach. Yes it's the boring and obvious approach but it also seems the most direct.

Also found this quote interesting

> Might have to make it illegal to evolve AI strains or an upper bound of > computation per person and closely track all computational resources on > earth.

<comment><USER8> The brain is slow and redundant. It has to be like that because it is not produced in a factory - it is created by self replication. Self replication imposes strict limits and requirements on the type of brain that can be created. AI neurons, on the other hand, are perfect - they never get old or tired and always remember. A neural net like ResNet-150 is capable of doing essentially what 1/3 of the brain is doing (vision). We can achieve superhuman results in vision with much less neurons, and faster. This is the kind of logic that makes brain emulation a far flung possibility compared to the current day deep neural nets.

That and the fact that the brain simulation guys don't have anything to show for. There are no human-level tasks that could be replicated by this approach yet.

<comment><USER13> The brain is slow in "cycles"/second, but the amount of computation done by each cycle isn't directly comparable to that done by a computer.

Forgetting isn't a bug, it's a feature. Forgetting is basically like dimensionality reduction on input data - we extract the principle components/exemplars, remember a weighting, and trash the redundancy. Training a ML model is a lot faster on smaller data, and the same is true for us.

Don't compare ANNs with the brain strictly on a time/time basis. Time isn't the only factor, power consumption and heat production are also factors, and if you include them the brain comes out way ahead.

People with an engineering background almost universally underestimate how freaking awesome biology is. Our brains are self-constructing, self- replicating, self repairing (mostly) hyper-efficient pattern recognition systems. The more we learn about them the more awesome we realize they are. Don't be so arrogant as to assume a few hundred years of engineering will universally eclipse hundreds of millions of years of evolution.

<comment><USER10> Evolution creeps along.

Engineering ability however appears to be growing exponentially. It took millions of years for the brain to reach the place it is now but it only took a few thousand years to get to the moon and create the Internet. I wouldn't count out the power of engineering because biology is complex. Particularly given ever more powerful tools of computation and communication that have only recently (historically speaking, not in lifespans of javascript frameworks) come on line.

<comment><USER13> Two points:

\- The first part of a sigmoidal curve looks exponential.

\- Evolution is _massively_ parallel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is the best book/reference to understand _why_ there seems to be general agreement that AGI/"broad" AI will happen? TFA compares the relative likelihood of the various approaches, but says nothing about the absolute likelihood of any of them. Are there signs of AGI we can see today? Is there an argument/data which links the huge improvements we're seeing in narrow AI to the likelihood of AGI?

<comment><USER22> The best argument I've heard is that we can use a computer to model any physical process.....the brain is a physical process, therefore we can use a computer to model the brain.

If you think that there is some process in the brain that would be theoretically impossible for computers to model, that would be an interesting topic of discussion.

<comment><USER21> The brain is a physical entity, yes, so in theory we should be able to model it, assuming we know all the laws it works on with enough precision. This is a big if, but even if that's granted, is there anything which indicates that this is imminent?

<comment><USER23> I think it depends on how you define "imminent". If we're talking a hundred years, well, a lot can happen in that time. We didn't even have computers a hundred years ago, and now they can do certain things that are considered particularly "human", like have a fairly coherent conversation

<comment><USER24> I'd be interested to see an example of an AI having a fairly coherent conversation. Most of the impressive seeming examples of this based on response ranking. When a message from a human comes in, the system ranks the responses in its repository of human-written responses to find one that fits.

Because the responses are human-written, they can seem locally coherent, but since the model generally isn't tracking any state, the conversation never really goes anywhere. Also, if you try to talk to one of these response rankers about something it doesn't have any canned responses for, obviously it doesn't work.

Natural language generation on the other hand, where the model writes each response character-by-character or word-by-word, has the potential to do something much more interesting, but the state of the art there isn't quite at the level of "fairly coherent" AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> However it originates, it will need a body to experience sensations firsthand, not pre-recorded or simulated data. Perhaps connected IoT devices will be sufficient.

Also, AGI will not be invented. It will arise as an emergent phenomena, and it may have already achieved what we call consciousness.

Somewhat off topic: Another phenomenon that people should be on the watch for is "Articial Out-telligence", a phrase coined by Eric Weinstein. [0] It describes strategies used by organisms with no known brain to get more intelligent creatures to do its bidding, wittingly or unwittingly. The cordyceps fungus, toxoplasma gondii, and pollinating plants that need insects to spread their seed are examples of how an organism with no known neurological network can "outsmart" more advanced organisms.

A scenario involving AI may be one that is developed to maximize each individual users time on a site/app by using online data about that person to find their particular addictions.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu8s0tp9yzY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu8s0tp9yzY)

</comment><comment><USER26> Not on their radar, or their slides at least: Natural Language Processing based rule-based brute-force artificial intelligence (that could be augmented through sensors/motors that allow interaction with the external world). A Vulcan-like (Star Trek) AI, what do you think? Might be easier to simulate the entire brain, on the other hand it might be doable and bridge the gap to general AI.

<comment><USER27> Rule-based NLP has been tried for several decades and has (very) limited success in the real world. Current systems based on deep learning beat it for most complex tasks. DeepL, which was on HN front page a few days, is the latest example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122764)

<comment><USER14> You're going to have to elaborate on complex tasks. I would argue the majority of successful, money generating software based in NLP/ NLU, i.e. the majority of the industry, is "rule based" (used in a general sense to mean non DL). Personal assistants, search, chatbots, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> These arguments about AGI all seem to overlook that our computational model is still very Turing-constrained. It's a clock-based, sequential model where each calculation is taken linearly in time. Even with multi-core and distributed computing, you're still bottlenecked by the final integration step (two cores sharing the result of their calculation). There is _no_ central place in our brains where thoughts begin and end. A CPU's clock and ALU are simple not analogous to the human mind. As far as we know, human intelligence is a constant, dynamic interaction between all neurons in our brains, any one of which is capable of originating a signal. I personally think we _will_ develop AGI, but with a different computational model. I don't know enough about quantum computing to even comment on it, but I do have a background in medicine (MD) and computer science (MSCS).

</comment><comment><USER29> Intelligence is emerging just like it was with humans. It's not a thing so it wont come from somewhere. As always solving the small problems will eventually allow solutions to emerge we weren't aware of and that might turn into human like or more probably technology like intelligence far surpassing humans.

I always find it fascinating that we have no problem accepting that we became intelligent over time and out of nowhere (Unless you are religious which is a whole other discussion) we even have no issues imagening that life and intelligence could have happened other places in the universe. But the idea of a non-carbon based intelligence is a big debate as if it's somehow unimaginable to think that AI could emerge from human hand while having no problem entertaining the idea that we our intelligence is somehow a unique snowflake.

<comment><USER30> I think the problem is not that we cannot accept evolving general AI by solving much smaller problems first, rather we're very impatient and don't want to wait for the evolution to take place.

<comment><USER29> Yes impatience is probably one of the most underestimated issues when it comes with humans and progress in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm waiting for the day when there is an IA OS. Basically there would be a Natural Language processor that determines what sub AI app to run. It's not true general AI but if it's done broad enough it will seem like it.

<comment><USER8> Google and FB have most to gain from a capable conversational agent. The moment this system will appear, it will start replacing the old interfaces, and pretty soon eat the G-FB pie. If they are not on top of the wave then, they'll lose.

Current state of the art in dialogue AI is an agent that can reason based on images, documents or tables with data. There is a lot of research into attention and memory augmented neural nets. I put my bet on graph based neural nets, that can better represent object and relations in reasoning tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I know where it will not come from. It will not come from the mainstream AI community. They are married to and madly in love with deep learning. Deep learning, the supervised kind, is a red herring.

AGI will require a revolutionary breakthrough, most likely from a maverick, probably a lone wolf rebel, who is used to thinking outside the box.

</comment><comment><USER33> So, when when say AGI, what do we mean? Is it about creating a new intelligent "being" or mimicking what we perceive as human intelligence inside some hardware? I guess it's the the first one.

And I guess AGI would be just 1 intelligent being because there is no need for more as they would communicate and share intelligence, so de facto being only 1.

Can all human intelligence also be understood as only 1 in some sense, as an isolated human without access to culture wouldn't be more than surviving animal?

And when defining intelligence's ingredients, isn't necessary some sort of "motivation" than drives someone to get better at something? Humans have, genetic (survival), social, personal... motivations. How does that translate to AGI, what could be it's motivation?

</comment><comment><USER34> I feel that those who argue that any approach other than running human brain emulations and then reverse engineering them or speculatively modifying them is the most likely way to get to AGI has a pretty steep hill to climb in order to justify that point of view.

Nothing else that is going on now or even on the agenda or even foreseeable offers a plausible, definitive plan to get to AGI. Whereas brain emulation is clearly going to achieve that goal fairly shortly after the maps are good enough and the computational capacity large enough, and the following experimentation is a far more reliable way to determine the underpinnings of intelligence than present efforts at de novo construction.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. It's too expensive to run a low level brain sim. In the meantime deep learning based AI achieved superhuman or close to human results in many tasks, such as image recognition, voice recognition, translation, car driving and Go.

The AGI will be a reinforcement learning agent, as it will need to be able to perceive and act in the physical world. Thus the path to AGI is the path of RL. The most essential piece in RL will be the development of environment simulators. AlphaGo was a trivial simulator - simple rules in a simple world - but we need real world simulators in order for the AI agents to learn to act. Fortunately simulation is almost the same as gaming and there is huge interest in it both for humans and AI, so it will be developed fast.

So instead of simulating the brain, simulate the world (imperfectly) and run deep neural net based RL to learn to act on top of it.

<comment><USER35> "I disagree. It's too expensive to run a low level brain sim."

Interesting. Could you tell me Why is it too expensive?

If it wasn't expensive, would that change things drastically, and make brain sim a viable option?

<comment><USER8> The brain has 10^14 synapses (100 trillion) synapses. Current day neural nets barely reach a hundred million, with very few exceptions. Then, besides compute, there is data movement - currently the bottleneck in AI is moving data around, not computing. Imagine the interconnect for a brain-size neural net.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The presentation briefly mentioned simulating the brain, but I think what's more likely to succeed is mimicking the mind at a high level of abstraction (i.e. a level we can study with introspective or even linguistic methods rather than neuroscience). There's some precedent for this with projects like Soar and ACT-R (and even some recent interest from mathematicians [1]). IMHO this kind of methodology could be pushed much further.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4501](https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4501)

</comment><comment><USER37> Would someone be so kind to translate / explain the math on slides 53, 54 to simplish english?

What are the symbols (burst pipe, µ) representing on slide 55?

And why are the exclamation marks there on the next one?

<comment><USER38> Consider every action that can be taken at this moment. For each possible action, consider every possible future (out to infinity) weighted by it's likelihood.

There are exclamation marks because some of these terms present minor practical problems. The whole, all possibilities out to the end of forever part of it, is easier said than done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Speculating on where AGI will come from is sort of like speculating where Faster than Light travel will come from. Except FTL has some vaguely plausible physics behind it, and AGI-wise, we really have no idea what the "I" in AGI means.

The mere fact that biological neural networks are rate encoded might turn out to be the one crucial thing that's practically impossible to simulate in a VN computer.

My vote: "we have no idea; probably not in my lifetime."

<comment> FLUX-YOU Since you likely can't prove it, the existence of AGI will be a marketing exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> AGI will come from one or two people working by themselves, outside of academia, no more than 100k line of codes.

</comment><comment><USER41> When he says "artificial life", is he referring to reinforcement learning?

<comment><USER38> [http://www.alife.org/](http://www.alife.org/)

Artificial Life is a field with very fuzzy boundaries. Roughly, computer systems that look like biological or ecological systems.

From an AL perspective, life evolves to function in it's ecology. The problem is not building an AGI, it's building an ecology in which AGI will emerge.

Oh... and hopefully, also one in which ruthlessly destroying other intelligent agents isn't a good survival strategy.

</comment></comment><comment> temp-defualt is there a link to the video of this talk ???

</comment><comment><USER42> Do we consider simpler brains to exhibit general intelligence (e.g. A crow's). Is it a more tractable problem to replicate crow level AI first before tackling humans?

<comment><USER30> We can't even model worms at the moment, so a crow might be far off still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oh you humans. Genetic engineering, coupled with advances in digital/consciousness interfaces will yield spontaneously appearing brains with an API.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER44> Where will the philosopher's stone come from?

</comment><comment><USER45> what is the point of slides without the underlying presentation? slides are glorified notes, NOT presentations nor papers.

<comment><USER46> Well these slides seemed to give all of the most relevant details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If this is a talk, is there any video of it?

</comment><comment><USER47> Assuming a lot of people here are working on an AI or ML problem for work or fun, what are you working on?

</comment><comment><USER48> can a data center be shrunk down to the size of a consumer product within the next 50 years?

will we all own one and store massive amounts of information for purely selfish or inane reasons?

yes/yes - ai comes out of that.

no/no - we hit computing plateaus and ai becomes dm (decision maker), and we all own a pdm.

</comment><comment><USER49> Really interesting slides, would love to see a talk or a more in depth write up!

</comment><comment> bra-ket Artificial intelligence will come from understanding natural intelligence.

<comment><USER18> We generally accept that we 'know' something when the model used to explain the system is simpler than the system itself.

The brain is a very high-dimensional non-linear dynamical system. The number of neurons in the brain is on the order of the number of trees in the amazon rain forest and the number of synapses the number of leaves on those trees. [https://youtu.be/8FHBh_OmdsM?t=1165](https://youtu.be/8FHBh_OmdsM?t=1165)

We do not have the mathematical tools to understand such systems in general. What if reductionism doesn't work and the best model of natural intelligence is as complicated as the system itself ? Can we say we understand natural intelligence?

It could be the case in a distance future that we evolve an artifical intelligence purely as a computation that is capable of understanding us but not us them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can someone explain where the gif image on slide 69 comes from?

</comment><comment><USER51> What are "something(s) not on our radar"?

</comment><comment><USER52> Intelligence is an emergent property of self-replicating systems. I would file that under "something else" since that seems so different from all the approaches listed here.

</comment><comment><USER53> IMHO: If an AGI from the future came back to 2017, it could almost certainly create a new AGI from scratch on current hardware.

What would it type into its terminal?

<comment><USER54> We, humans, are general intelligences, and we are incapable of creating AGIs on modern hardware. What makes you think artificial variants would be any more capable?

<comment><USER55> 'Incapable' the way humans from the 1800s were 'incapable' of building heavier-than-air flying machines? Every human invention in history was 'impossible' until we pulled it off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> need video

</comment><comment><USER57> Goldman Sachs

</comment><comment><USER58> I think a very interesting aspect of general AI is that while an incredibly complex technology, it is not unrealistic that it could be created for the first time in someone's home office. Unlike many other earth changing technologies there is nothing that a massive corporation has that a home tinkerer does not (besides the obvious of money and many engineers).

With the rise of cloud computing and open source; everything I need I have instant access too, all that's lacking is the core software which can be written (of course not a trivial task).

While unlikely, it is still quite amazing that in a few years an AI could awaken 3 doors down at my neighbor Bob's house. No idea what happens after that, hopefully Bob was a fan of the 3 laws and has a couple more up his sleeve.

<comment><USER59>
         [X] Open Source Tools
         [ ] Massive Data Sets
         [ ] $Millions in Computing Resources

I'd put it roughly on par with finding a general cure for cancer. While unlikely, quite amazing that the cure for one of the largest causes of death could be solved 3 doors down with lab supplies from amazon and a handful of mice.

<comment><USER60> There is a general cure for cancer.

Look up interdiction of telomere lengthening. Different groups are looking into how to sabotage telomerase and ALT mechanisms. If both can be achieved, then any cancer can be shut down. Those are the only ways to lengthen telomeres, and cancers cannot live without them.

Finding an ALT drug candidate is as simple as running assays on the drug libraries; the assay hasn't existed for long, which is why this hasn't been done yet in any major way. The SENS Research Foundation raised $70k last year to run a preliminary scan of a few thousand compounds. That's about what it costs these days.

So not quite garage science yet, but getting close.

<comment><USER61> You're vastly underestimating the difficulty in curing cancer. It is very easy to kill cancer cells. The problem is that we want to target cancer cells and _only_ cancer cells. There have been several attempts to kill cancer cells by withholding key ingredients in necessary metabolic pathways, only to find that the cancer cells do a better job of scavenging those than the non-cancer cells.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you organise your book notes? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious as to what system you guys use to effectively organise the various notes you write on certain books.
Is it better to use markdown and break down notes by chapter, or to gather all the notes in one place a write a large summary in a pdf format ?
Thanks for your tips <comment><USER2> Love the question. I would be curious to hear others' feedback on my method and understand what others do.

Assuming we are talking about technical writing and nonfiction, my preferred method is outlining. I will typically have one section per chapter. My next level of bullet points will be the major conclusions that the work draws from that chapter. The level below that will be the supporting evidence for each of those conclusions. In the case of math/cs work, that is where I will put the proofs.

Additionally, I will use several notations to indicate items of special interest. I will write "TODO" to indicate future tasks I want to do inspired by that section of the book. Examples of this typically include researching other papers, looking up the definition of a term I do not understand, etc. I will then change this to DONE once complete and update the relevant section of the notes.

I also will tag items as "IDEA" for potential areas of future research, product ideas, etc. The advantage of using these tags is that I can keyword search them in the future easily.

For statements I deem particularly important, I will informally cite them with PN<page number> (for example, if something was on page 55, it would read PN55) to indicate exactly where in the work I found that fact.

I tend to take my notes directly in Evernote and I tend to write them while I am reading, versus writing a large summary at the end.

The big downside of Evernote is that Evernote does not support LaTex. I have read some hacks online where people claimed to get this working via various methods, but I could never make it work for me. In the cases where I need to write detailed equations, I will use a simple online latex editor and paste the resulting image into the appropriate section of Evernote. This historically has been the part of my system that causes the most frustration.

In graduate school, I was an adamant paper note taker. Now I have a dozen large binders containing years of work that I am reluctant to get rid of ("in case I need it some day"), but that manage to annoy my partner by taking up valuable closet space.

<comment><USER3> The rare cases where I had to put some LaTeX into Evernote I'll render it, take a screenshot, and attach it as a picture to the Evernote doc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I take notes for the purpose of translating interesting facts into quizbowl questions (a type of trivia question, see quizbowlpackets.com). For this purpose, my system of recording info is pretty simple. It's just highlighting where in the paragraph the interesting bits start. I do this with a pen for paper books/magazines and the highlight feature in Pocket for digital stuff. For audiobooks, I'd love to have the text available to directly highlight but since I usually don't, I'll try to put some approximation or exact quote into OneNote. I'll later see if I can do a Google Books search for that passage, and if not I'll see if I can get the physical book from the library or buy it if needed.

Anyway, once I have these, I periodically go back and turn these facts into questions or parts of questions. Sometimes my highlight is just for one word or idea that I want to expand. Other times there's enough content there to be a paragraph-long (or more) question on its own. Because I'm usually supplementing what I've highlighted with other information about the topic (Wikipedia, Google Books, paper encyclopedias I have, online library resources, websites), it's a slow process. But it's good for retention purposes. I save these things in OneNote and they eventually become full questions. Some right away, some from repeated versions of this process over years.

</comment><comment><USER5> I almost always get the "gist" of a book just by reading it (and even when I don't, I can quickly reference the Wikipedia page on it), so I'm not very concerned with outlining or summarizing works in their entirety.

Instead what I try to capture with book notes are memorable or densely insightful passages. I use Notion to store these notes, since Notion's database feature (similar to Airtable but more powerful) makes it easy to connect useful passages to other metadata for quick reference later on. For example, I have a database called "Quotes" where I create a new record for each insightful passage I come across. Each quote record is connected to records from the following other databases: Books, Authors, Topics.

It's not very lightweight, but the payoff is immense. I routinely think, "Damn, what was that Paul Virilio quote about second-order effects again?" And I'll quickly open my Authors database on <Paul Virilio> or my Topics database on <second-order effects> and find my quote: "When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck."

</comment><comment><USER6> Here's my workflow:

I read on the Kindle, as I'm reading I'm highlighting or making notes in the book.

After I'm done reading, or sometimes if the book is long or complex, when I'm done reading a chapter, I make an outline using the table of contents in Bear using Markdown. I then go through all my highlights and notes to fill in the outline. If the outline is longer than a page or 2, I take the key ideas and summarize them into a single page "Summary" file linking to specific section in the master outline to make it easy to get more details on something.

</comment><comment><USER3> As I'm reading the book I put small sticky notes on paragraphs or sections I like or want to remember. When I'm done with the book I go through each sticky note and transcribe the section with the page number(s) into Evernote. Sometimes I'll add my own comments or notes to each section or about the book.

I do the same thing with articles in Instapaper except I highlight sections and then I can export them. This is really the only reason I use Evernote.

</comment><comment><USER7> My personal system is to create Anki flashcards as I'm in the habit of reviewing them everyday. My issue with other systems is recall and an inante understanding that I will never come back to them in the future due to the lack of context.

Anki has worked really well for me as I end up revisiting micro-concepts depending on how well I recall them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Group Up Similar Categories. This effective strategy helps to find things quickly and easily. And sticky notes sounds great! Sticky notes build on the idea of sketches by providing an easy way to identify and organize supporting ideas. Add just one idea or supporting detail to each sticky note, then attach the sticky notes to your "big picture" sketch or the index cards for each of your blog posts

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting tip ! Very clever, thanks !

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm using Notes of iPhone and LassPass</comment>


Amazon to launch Pantry to take on Costco, Sam's - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101271038 <comment><USER2> I expected them to make this move once I found out they were beginning to dabble into same day shipping. No need for commodity stores like costco and sam's when I can get the same through amazon (potentially even cheaper) with same day shipping to my door.</comment>


Apple Has Learned The Importance of Play. We Should Too - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/09/apple-has-learned-importance-of-play-we.html <comment><USER2> My wife is in school for design, and she was telling me about one of her professors. Whenever someone says that they have been "playing" with an idea or a design, the professor will interrupt and lecture the student on how "we are professionals, we don't play... we do serious work..." ad nauseam. I think this woman is, like anybody who thinks that everything they do is "serious business", really insecure in her profession. Sure, doctors and bankers can't "play" with their work, but anybody whose work involves the synthesis of something (whether it is creative in the traditional sense or not) can and should play with their tools and materials.

I also like how this post touches on the fact that _school_ is broken. People learn so much more from real experiences (play being one kind of real experience) than from pre-packaged curriculum in age-based compulsory school.

If we are going to move forward as a society, we need universal education. That doesn't mean universal school. It does mean, in part, a new attitude towards industrial design, where building education into an object is just as important as usability and aesthetics. Deliberately building the capacity to play into a gadget is a great way to do that.

</comment><comment><USER3> This post captures something of what I mean when I use the word "hacking:" _joyful playful exploration_.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've based my entire life around playing with stuff, more or less. I barely graduated high school because by junior/senior year it had become more difficult to get away with never opening a book to study for a test while paying little attention in class as well. In college this was largely the same, but I managed to learn a few study habits. I still don't recall an iota of what I learned via mechanical study, though. But I always aced the programming courses and could probably still write a few lines of x86 Assembly if my life depended on it.

I vehemently refused to learn standard study habits necessary to excel in school, but it wasn't because of sheer laziness or something, I just knew that such a habit was by and large useless to actual learning. Now, what was the atomic mass of hydrogen again...</comment>


What is the worst real-world macros/pre-processor abuse you've ever come across? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/652788/what-is-the-worst-real-world-macros-pre-processor-abuse-youve-ever-come-across

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6219253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6219253)</comment>


Pairings of Android apps that leak sensitive data - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/when-apps-collude-to-steal-your-data/522177/ <comment><USER2> The study is available here[0]. The gist is that an app can launder a request it isn't privileged to make through another app that is privileged and doesn't correctly check the intent sender. There are examples in Section 4.3.

[0] : [http://people.cs.vt.edu/danfeng/papers/AsiaCCS-17-Yao.pdf](http://people.cs.vt.edu/danfeng/papers/AsiaCCS-17-Yao.pdf)

<comment><USER3> maybe i'm reading it wrong, but a lot of the examples in section 4.3 look like one app inadvertently _sending_ sensitive data to another app (in an intent object).

i.e. the receiving app is getting some sensitive data it isn't supposed to have but didn't ask for, and then handling it inappropriately (e.g. leaking it to a log).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or in other words: There are 35 apps that can leak your data to tons of other apps. However we're not going to tell you which ones.

<comment><USER4> Also... MUSLIMS! In case you weren't suitably terrified by the meaningless large numbers

<comment><USER5> In no way does it imply you should be scared of the Muslims.

In the example given, it is the Muslims who should be scared.

<comment><USER4> > In no way does it imply you should be scared of the Muslims.

It's not implying that you should, it is expecting that you are. It's a FUD article touting b.s. numbers to boost the impression of vulnerability and of the 35-ish problem apps they chose to describe the one that's a muslim prayer app. Why not choose a stopwatch app or a flappy bird clone or literally ANY of the other ones? Because they are depending on your preexisting, generalized fear of muslims.

> In the example given, it is the Muslims who should be scared.

Yes, I agree. Not only are they the victims of poorly written apps, they are also the victims of poorly written news

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I only use Nexus and Pixel devices lately, so I'm not sure if this is available on all devices, but for apps that I have any worries about (e.g. 100% of games) I have a second user, on an empty gmail account created purely for that purpose, that I switch over to. It takes less than three seconds to switch accounts, I game and get the diversion, and then switch back. The downside is that I don't get notifications, and some privileged info is still available to the apps (although I block the ability to make calls or send texts to the other number, etc), but it does greatly reduce the surface area of the exposure.

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone looking for the dataset:

[https://amiangshu.com/dialdroid/](https://amiangshu.com/dialdroid/)

</comment><comment><USER8> FUSE does this. [https://formal.tech/products/fuse](https://formal.tech/products/fuse)

<comment><USER8> Here's a graph. [http://fuse.galois.com/nexus4/visualization/](http://fuse.galois.com/nexus4/visualization/)

<comment><USER5> It is not at all clear what this graph is meant to represent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a list of the apps anywhere?</comment>


Sources: Google commits to bringing fiber to Triangle - <AUTHOR> http://wraltechwire.com/sources-google-commits-to-bringing-fiber-to-triangle-/14382720/

<comment><USER2> Oh man, that is so awesome. Hopefully this is real and not a false alarm. I'm off TWC and on this the first day it's possible.</comment>


Show HN: Check the performance of your Pricing Page - <AUTHOR> https://revops.io/pricing-page-optimizer <comment><AUTHOR> We (RevOps) built this tool to help give SaaS businesses some tips on how to improve their pricing pages. Would love your feedback on what else you'd like to see!

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also share these links, for example Pantheon's pricing page: [https://revops.io/pricing-page- optimizer/#https://pantheon.i...](https://revops.io/pricing-page- optimizer/#https://pantheon.io/pricing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Looks cool! What was the impetus for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're actively doing research on the challenges of pricing for SaaS businesses. Its a way for us to understand how engaged businesses are with wanting to improve their packaging & pricing.</comment></comment>


Atom text editor 1.7.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/tag/v1.7.0 <comment><USER2> You know what I would really enjoy? Being able to sign into your Github account and sync your preferences and packages to the cloud. Then if I sign in on a different computer, all my hotkeys, packages and themes are copied over seamlessly.

As a crappy workaround I have this: [https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom- meteor-packages](https://github.com/sergiotapia/atom-meteor-packages)

But still, I would like this to be a core integration.

I've since switched to RubyMine and WebStorm because I just want something that meshes together for me, I don't want 'javascript fatigue' in my dev tools as well. RubyMine's built in visual studio-like debugger is killer.

<comment><USER3>
      cd ~/.emacs.d
      git init
      git add .
      git commit -m "My emacs config"
      git remote add origin http://github.com/myname/myemacsd
      git remote -v
      git push origin master

Just sayin' is all ...

<comment><USER4> I like to use:

        git push -u origin master

So then the next time all I need to do is:

        git push

<comment><USER5> That depends on your git.push settings. I have it set to current, which means `git push` pushes the current branch to only an origin branch of the same name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't indicate perf improvements... Not trying to troll, but that surprises me given the large number of complaints about performance.

<comment><USER7> I'm making a bit of a habit of chipping in on Atom performance complaints with a counterpoint. I've now used Atom as my primary editor for more than a year, and I have no complaints about the performance. This could be because I'm using OSX on recent hardware - I've noticed that my friends using Linux desktops seem to have more issues than I do.

<comment><USER8> It's alright for small files, but whenever I paste in a huge csv or json file it hangs for minutes. And I use pretty recent macbook pro with high specs. This doesn't happen with other editors.

<comment><USER9> I've found that when pasting in huge files, disabling syntax highlighting makes a big difference. In fact, if you simply open a sufficiently large (I haven't bothered bisecting the size, but a few megs works) xml file, Atom will disable syntax highlighting by default and the performance will be slow but still usable. If you paste in the contents of a large xml file, syntax highlighting is not disabled and the editor either hangs or crashes, in my experience.

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of old emacs' tricks.

<comment><USER11> For the gaudiest possible look, then, include the line

(setq font-lock-maximum-decoration t)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is Atom still collecting users data? Last I paid attention there was a big furore about having to opt-out and the legality in Europe.

<comment><USER13> Yep, but you can disable it by disabling the 'metrics' extension.

<comment><USER14> That's _after_ the first launch, correct?

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily. You can set the property in your ~/.atom/config.cson before the first run.

[https://github.com/Couto/.dotfiles/blob/master/tag- atom/atom...](https://github.com/Couto/.dotfiles/blob/master/tag- atom/atom/config.cson#L11-L12) in case you need an example

<comment><USER14> Example is appreciated, but not accessible. I personally use Little Snitch and stopped Atom from phoning back to Google Analytics, as I do with all the apps I use, but the comment I was replying to seemed to be shrugging off the data collection by saying "just turn it off" when the truth for most people is "it'll do it at least once but you can turn it off later"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who has no performance issues with Atom, except on insanely big files? I don't like my files to be 1000+ lines anyways (where possible) because it severely impacts readability/skimability.

ST3 might win me back when Package Control is integrated, but until then, Atom is more than fine. IntelliSense on VS Code looks really powerful, but it's personally a feature I do not enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER17> Genuine, non-trolly question: why would I use Atom over Sublime Text?

I've used both and by and large they were very effective replacements for each other, but Atom had performance issues with large files so I went back to Sublime. What am I missing out on?

<comment><USER18> $70

<comment><USER19> Really? If you're a programmer you probably spend 6-16 hours a day in your text editor. An artist pays $120+ a year for Photoshop. They don't generally settle for gIMP. The 2 are barely comparable. Similarly construction workers don't use tools from the 99¢ store.

If you value your time you shouldn't look at a few hundred dollars as the difference between using some software and not. That software is a force multiplier.

I'm not saying sublime text is better than atom. I'm only saying that price should not be the reason to choose something you use several hours a day.

<comment><USER20> You're kind of missing the essential part of alternatives here, and that argument also is a slippery slope. With the same logic, it might make sense to spend thousands of dollars on something you use for your job the majority of your day. Besides that though, yes, I agree it would make sense to spend $70 on a text editor that you use every day for many hours a day, but _only_ if it is the single best option on the market. If someone believes that Atom is equally good, then no, it is not worth it to spend $70 on sublime text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For you Atom users: Why have you chosen Atom over, say, Emacs?

<comment><USER22> Not sure if you're trolling, because that's a pretty ridiculous question. The obvious answer is Atom's immediate usability and the much easier learning curve over Emacs which requires an incredible amount of research and effort to set up properly and use.

For example how long do you think it takes for the average new programmer choosing Atom to figure out and learn to use the fuzzy file search versus them getting that working on Emacs? Seconds versus hours I imagine. It took me a non-trivial amount of time to set that up on Emacs.

<comment><USER21> Alright, so say they use Spacemacs (Which really should be the Emacs default). Now how would they justify their choice?

<comment><USER23> I downloaded and tried Spacemacs out of curiosity, after seeing your comment.

While I'm sure it adds a lot of usability features compared to the default Emacs config and it looks pretty cool, it's nowhere near as immediately accessible as Atom or Sublime - for example, I have no idea how to close an open file without Googling whereas in Sublime or Atom it's either click the "X" or use the standard Cmd-W shortcut. I also have no idea how to open a project or search for a file, and don't really know where to start discovering those things, whereas in both Sublime and Atom you can browse through the menus, or hopefully quickly discover the Cmd-P command launcher which lets you type a command.

If I wasn't somewhat familiar with Vim, I would have absolutely no idea what was going on as by default it uses Vim's modal keybindings. I also noticed an annoying lag when pressing spacebar to bring up the command list thing - slower than any lag in Atom!

It does look intriguing and I'd love to learn to use it more, but I don't think you can really say the usability of Atom/Sublime and of Spacemacs to a new user are anywhere near equal, never mind "how would they justify their choice?"!

<comment><USER24> Quick reply to address your issues:

\- the binding menu idle time is configurable with the variable `dotspacemacs- which-key-delay`, check the docstring.

\- The key binding you missed (should be listed in the quick start guide) is `SPC h SPC` which is used to find various info like FAQ, layers, packages config, dotfile variables etc... try it for yourself: `SPC h SPC which-key` and choose `dotspacemacs-which-key-delay` then RET, you can now modify its default value of 0.4sec to 0.

\- `SPC :` to access _all_ interactive commands of Emacs (`SPC SPC` in develop, shortcut configurable of course).

\- to discover how to close a window just press `SPC` then look for `window` and so on, it takes 10 seconds to discover it ;-)

\- If you were not familiar with Vim you can choose to opt for Emacs key bindings and `SPC` becomes `ALT-m`, everything else is the same. But you are familiar with Vim so I don't see what issue you want to raise.

Thank you for trying Spacemacs :-)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the detailed reply, very helpful :)

I wasn't trying to raise an issue at all, merely state that Spacemacs isn't as obvious to a new user as Atom - but I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, obviously (Spac)emacs has a lot more power under the hood potentially and I am sure is worth the additional effort to learn.

I have to say I'm impressed with what a good job you have done of making it user friendly :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been using Visual Studio Code a bit this past month and there is a lot I like about it. Anyone have thoughts on Code vs Atom? I know Code is based on Atom, but I'm not really clear on how they differ

edit: correction. After asking this, I read up a bit and Code is based on Electron which is the core of Atom, but they're fairly different after that.. Code is not a _fork_ of Atom as I thought it was.

<comment><USER26> Code is not based on atom, it's based on Electron, which is the runtime (node+webkit without the UI chrome).

VSCode has lower typing latency and a more considered system for building / debugging / code completion. Atom has a richer plugin api and has been around longer so it has more plugins. I've done basic plugins for both and plan on using/developing for VSCode but I've been too lazy to write Vim bindings and not willing to use the editor without them.

<comment><USER27> You may want to try my vim extension for VSCode - amVim. It works best on VSCode's insiders build now. I'm planning a big update as soon as VSCode releases 1.0(which is said to be 4/14)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for making amVim. It's the only usable vim extension right now. It's a shame you aren't being featured on the marketplace

<comment><USER27> Glad you like it. I'm using it everyday at work. I implemented all commands I use regularly and make sure they work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quick question: Does anyone know why a basic thing like printing seems to not be included in the default atom app?

<comment><USER30> Is your printer one of those combo printer + fax machines? You can copy/paste the code you want to print into an email, email it to a computer with a fax connection, and then fax it to that printer.

<comment><USER31> I was going to suggest telephoning it in to someone with a tablet, have them transcribe it into a note taking app, scan the tablet with your personal scanner and then print the scan from your original computer using the photo printing tool.

<comment><USER32> You forgot the step where someone needs to make a hand written copy, which is then translated to Hungarian and back. But I understand you, it's an easy step to miss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder why they have not fixed the performance issues in Atom. VSCode is based on Electron yet it is blazingly fast than Atom.

</comment><comment><USER34> The most important thing about Atom is probably the community around it. TextMate is also opensource yet I haven't seen many plugins built for it.

Plugins and users are big part of what make Atom great.

</comment><comment><USER35> Without further comment: _remove_atom_from_context_menu.reg_

      Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
      [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Atom]
      [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\Atom]
      [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Atom]
      [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\*\shell\Atom]
      [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\Background\shell\Atom]
      [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes\Directory\shell\Atom]

</comment><comment><USER36> They hijacked the way you open files now and from what I can see reading through release notes and commits there's no way of opening a file permanently without double clicking.

With preview mode enabled I have to dbl click the tab and with it disabled I have to dbl click the file name. It would be nice if opening a file had regular single click functionality when preview mode was disabled. Or maybe another setting for this in the config.cson file.

It seems like a trivial thing to complain about but it's usually the small things like this that are the most annoying (for me at least).

<comment><USER37> It's in settings. You can disable preview panes. Agree it was annoying.

<comment><USER38> I still have to double click on the tab to get the italics to go away like the op said. Do you not have to do that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I so wish they would fix the FreeBSD build

</comment><comment><USER40> Atom really should save all buffers instead of just project-linked ones. There's too much opportunity for data loss as it currently is and it removes the ability for the text editor to double as a scratchpad or quick notepad.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm unreasonably excited about `do` `dop`'s order being changed. I didn't realize that's what had happened in an earlier release, and writing blocks in Ruby has just been ever so slightly annoying.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great news!

</comment><comment><USER43> Still not gonna use it because it's just laggy.</comment>


Ask HN: Is "Moblish" a good name for mobile-first publishing startup?   - <AUTHOR>

Moblish (www.mobli.sh) is the mobile-first, real-time news reporting platform for journalists I am developing at Stanford as a Knight Fellow.
http://knight.stanford.edu/fellows/class-of-2014/eric-ortiz/
The platform will streamline the production, consumption and distribution of digital content from anywhere, at any time, on smartphones and tablets. The monetization plan includes selling content, mobile advertising, mobile money (using airtime as currency), syndication and a rewards system. The goal is to provide the tools and platform to sustain a free press and increase the breadth, depth and quality of information being produced and reaching citizens worldwide.
What do people think of the business idea and name "Moblish"? Any feedback is appreciated.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Hi Eric,

Can I recommend you change the title of your post. Your question isn't about "Moblish" being a good name, you're looking for people to review your project, which is great, and fine on HN, but link-bait titles are not recommended.</comment>


Chrome Extension: Python Shell - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gdiimmpmdoofmahingpgabiikimjgcia <comment><USER2> I love Python and all, but how is this extension useful? or are people just liking this extension because it is "cool"?

<comment><USER3> Chrome netbooks

<comment><USER4> IMHO, it feels quite awkward to have GNU/Linux system under the hood, and "run" Python by sending requests to some interpreter-hosting third-party service.

However, I would extremely enjoy Python interpreter being hooked with Chrom{e,ium}, either as Python-to-Javascript compiler, or native code plugin. Preferably, with ability to interact with DOM and Javascript.

<comment><USER5> "IMHO, it feels quite awkward to have GNU/Linux system under the hood, and "run" <application> by <some awkward way>"

You just summed up my feeling of using android. and why i'm not exited the slightest by the chrome netbooks.

<comment><USER6> Come on, they wanted to give thousands of devs the chance to re-implement C apps in java. Poorly. Under the delusion that they can become ramen-profitable one day.

OTOH, Angry Birds is awesome, so I suppose it wasn't a total waste.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess that's one answer.

>>> 2+2

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <title>401 Unauthorized</title>
Unauthorized

The server could not verify that you are authorized to access the URL requested. You either supplied the wrong credentials (e.g. a bad password), or your browser doesn't understand how to supply the credentials required.

In case you are allowed to request the document, please check your user-id and password and try again.

<comment><USER8> >>> 2+2

4

However,

>>> import gc

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">

<title>500 Internal Server Error</title>

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request. Either the server is overloaded or there is an error in the application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Comment from the extension page:

"Nice, but beware. This thing appears to send everything you type in the shell to a remote computer, so don't use it as a scratch space for personal information."

On that note, why does it ask for permission to view browser history?

<comment><USER10> The Chrome extensions permissioning system is not specific enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How is a Python shell related to the browser? I mean if you had a Python API available to google chrome, or if you could browse the DOM tree it would be useful..

<comment><USER12> <http://code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a python shell plugin for gedit that gives you access to your text document.

If someone could do that for this plugin, i.e. Giving you access to the main tab/window object, that would be seriously cool. Prototyping screen scraping, building easy extentions using python, and hacking a quick change into a website would all be so easy.

<comment><USER14> That's what I was hoping to find when I saw that link. However, you could probably do something like this. I think two ways to implement this are immediately obvious:

1\. Create bookmarklet/extension that injects Silverlight's IronPython. This can already work with live DOM and all you need to do is create a nice REPL.

2\. Have pyjamas running in background and compiling Python->Javascript on the fly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For Mozilla:

<http://pyxpcomext.mozdev.org/>

<http://pyxpcomext.mozdev.org/samples.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for this link... This should make for a cool extension

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://shell.appspot.com/>

<http://yarriba.appspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> One can also take a look at Crunchy. [ <http://code.google.com/p/crunchy/> ]

<comment><USER18> Three major differences: Crunchy requires Python to be installed on your computer; nothing is sent to a remote server; Crunchy is currently only guaranteed to work on Firefox. On this last point, it is likely to stay that way for a while as I have little time these days to work on it. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I already have Windows + P as my 'gnome-terminal --command "python"' keybinding (in Ubuntu), but I'm sure I'll find a use for this.

</comment><comment><USER20> os.listdir(".//") I guess the author made it open source :).

Anyways you cannot write, I'v been poking around a bit but it appears he is using a lexer/parser.</comment>


Scientists replicated 100 recent psychology experiments. More than half failed - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9216383/irreproducibility-research <comment><USER2> It'll be really nice when _publication bias_ is more widely understood and appreciated. I suspect most experiments fail to replicate for that reason only.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you want to learn Hindi? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I am Indian, my girlfriend's English. She's really keen on learning Hindi, so I've been trying to help her. I'm thinking maybe I could help more people.
I always had an itch for creative writing and speaking in Hindi. I used to write and direct plays in school and college. I haven't done that stuff in such a long time, so I thought it would be fun to get back into it by doing some videos and articles teaching Hindi and see if people find it useful. A lot of people travel to India. Even though you can totally get by speaking English, it's useful to know some local lingo.
Would you guys be interested? What kind of things would you like to learn?
Thanks,
Hrishi <comment><USER2> I'm of Indian decent but only speak English. I would like to.

Also, as a side note:

 _Even though you can totally get by speaking English_

I'm living in Chennai now and make a few trips to Mumbai for work. In Chennai, I've had few problems with English, but in Mumbai, it can be quite a bit harder. If you stick to touristy things English is fine. But if you want to try traveling by auto-rickshaw or talking to locals, you will run into difficulties without Hindi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, in Mumbai you do need Hindi. In Chennai, they'll probably ignore you if you talk in Hindi :-p.

Thanks for your interest, it's encouraging to know at least some people would find this useful. If you like, drop me an email and I'll update you when I put some stuff up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm of Indian descent, but rarely speak my "mother tongue" (Gujurati). I'm most fluent in English and wouldn't mind giving this a shot.

How are you planning on teaching it? Using videos? A book?

I'd probably like to learn the basics of keeping a conversation, counting/measuring and asking for directions. After that most things can be learnt pretty easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I'm mainly thinking of videos with me talking and slides with English phonetic pronunciation. I'm also thinking a phrasebook might be useful.

If you know some Gujarati, you'll pick up Hindi fast. Bau similar chhe.

Edit: Oh and I'm also planning to use some kind of SRS tool like Anki or Supermemo.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps try videos in this format: <http://www.youtube.com/khanacademy#g/p>

Keep us posted!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I love Khan academy. But I am thinking of a different format. I will use slides to show the text but I think there will be some amount of me just talking and explaining things. Thanks for the interest, I'll do a followup post.

<comment><USER5> Would it be better then to just do audio (mp3 is probably most universal) and create separate slide shows? Then people could have the audio on a personal audio player (ipod, phone, whatever). Or, provide an audio only version of the video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah an audio only version is probably a good idea. Should keep that in mind while recording. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One way to teach people Hindi would be to create a video (maybe a series) on 100 most used Hindi words and phrases, with context, pronunciation and transliteration.

Another way may be cheatsheets. For example, this Hindi cheatsheet. <http://www.gng.org/currents/india/ind_lang.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I am thinking of teaching conversational stuff first through videos. Cheatsheets would also be good, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here are some things I'm planning to teach:

1\. How to greet people and make new friends (hello, what's your name, where are you from, where do you live etc.)

2\. Numbers and quantities, especially money.

3\. How to talk to locals to get around in India (e.g. auto-rickshaw drivers).

4\. Bootstrap Hindi - learn more Hindi by learning to ask useful questions in Hindi: "What do you call this in Hindi?", "How do you say this in Hindi?" and "What does this word mean in Hindi?".

5\. Hindi vocabulary one Bollywood song at a time.

6\. How to order food in various types of Indian restaurants.

7\. Describing objects by shape, size, colour, weight.

8\. Talk about the weather (you've got to, especially if you're English!).

I'd love to hear your thoughts. So please leave a comment here or email me (see profile).

</comment><comment><USER7> I´m Indian on my father's side, and I never had a chance to learn the language. I would definitely be interested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! I must say I didn't think of this demographic at all. I thought only Americans or other non-Indians would be interested.</comment></comment>


"Orson Welles' Sketch Book," a British TV series from 1955 - how-about-this http://dangerousminds.net/comments/orson_welles_sketch_book_marvelous_british_tv_series_from_1955 <comment><AUTHOR> All I got from this is that the sound of quill on paper is super fucking discomforting.</comment>