AT&T promised lower prices after Time Warner merger, but it's raising them - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/att-promised-lower-prices-after-time-warner-merger-its-raising-them-instead/ <comment><USER2> Whenever a corporation says a merger will result in lower prices, they're usually lying, because mergers increase prices.

[https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ref...](https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1857&context=californialawreview)

<comment><USER3> Even if a merger allowed a company to lower prices through cost reductions, they still wouldn't because they own more of the market and have less incentive to compete.

The only exception I've ever heard of is Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods, but you could argue that Amazon wasn't competing much with Whole Foods before it purchased them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Brodkin's article takes the relevant "promise" quite out of context: [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339/...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339/gov.uscourts.dcd.191339.121.0_1.pdf) (see page 1).

The full quotation is:

> As to its price-increase theory, _the government_ itself conceded that the > merger would cause prices to go down for millions of AT&T customers > nationwide. The _government's own "bargaining model" likewise showed a price > decrease_ for all consumers, once the correct data were employed. And the > government's own economic expert effectively repudiated its other two > theories of likely harm. The government, in short, gave the Court no basis > for finding that this merger is likely to reduce competition at all, much > less substantially. Rather, the evidence overwhelmingly showed that this > merger is likely to enhance competition substantially, because it will > enable the merged company to reduce prices, offer innovative video products, > and compete more effectively against the increasingly powerful, vertically > integrated "FAANG" companies.

The brief was addressing the predictions of the economic model _the DOJ offered_ in opposing the merger. Nowhere did AT&T, as Brodkin misleadingly suggests, "promise" to "lower prices" (or that no specific rate would never go up). Of course, that all makes sense. AT&T _had no reason_ to make such promises. In blocking a merger, the burden of proof is on the DOJ. They have to show consumer harm; the merger company has no burden to show consumer benefits. Why would AT&T go out on a limb and make promises it has no reason to make?

Moreover, the brief addresses the government's arguments for blocking AT&T's merger with Time Warner, which has nothing to do with the price of DirecTV:

> The government's central prediction of harm rests on the premise that AT&T > would use Time Warner's Turner content as a "weapon" against rival > distributors by threatening to withhold it during bargaining, thereby > forcing them to pay higher prices.

The subject of the briefing was prices for _content distribution_. Prices for _DirecTV_ \--what Brodkin points to--have nothing to do with that.

<comment><USER5> This kind of crap is why I dropped ArsTechnica from my RSS feed after 11 years.

<comment><USER6> Ars is _on whole_ still quite good, but there are some heavy biases on the part of some of their writers, and I don't think Ars' editorial staff keeps them in check. I did actually subscribe to Ars' $25 a year plan that gives you full text RSS, but I almost didn't because of Jon Brodkin's crud alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great opportunity to educate our less-technically-minded civilians on the pitfalls of large, unaccountable corporations, and the benefits of anti-trust enforcement... It's easy for the mainstream to understand how this particular monopolization negatively impacts all of our bottomline.

<comment><USER8> My parents love talking about how bad monopolies are. They are well aware and it's useless because they keep voting for the same people.

<comment><USER9> That's what happens when you only have two choices to vote for.

<comment><USER10> You don't just have two choices to vote for. You have a system where candidates are chosen in a vote by proxy, meaning that there are a few powerful people in each party who negotiate to decide what candidates are going to run for election. Not only that, but many states are highly polarised meaning that if you are a politician and you want to win the election, you may be highly encouraged to run for the dominant party in your area. What this comes down to is that there are a few powerful people who negotiate about who is going to run, and in many cases who is likely to win. I suspect this is why the media in the US takes a highly polarising stance on politics -- because this suits the people in power.

It's even worse when you consider the presidential elections, though. In that case, there are only 2 sets of candidates to deal with. If you had enough money/influence to spend, how difficult would it be to make sure that the candidates for _both_ parties were selected to be sympathetic to your cause? Or if you can't do that, make sure that the match up in the election is in your favour.

A lot of people on HN have at least some experience with security on computer system. We've seen how people will search for the slightest vulnerability and leverage it to get an advantage. When you look at the electoral system, it's completely insane how vulnerable it is. And with so much money on the line, it would be completely unrealistic to imagine that it's not already completely compromised.

Having said that, I'm not really intending this to be a rant against the US electoral system only. Some systems in the world are slightly better IMHO, but only slightly. Given that the system is likely to be compromised already and the system is only changeable within that compromised structure, I think there is little one can do. Lately I think it's better to act _outside_ of the system. If you want something done, then don't _vote_ for it. You need to get off your bum and actually _do_ it. This is a problem (especially for me!) because most people (including myself) feel like the situation is "good enough" that it's not worth getting involved. However, I encourage people who are more motivated than me to trying to do good with their own 2 hands instead of encouraging them to vote for the "right" person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm more surprised that such a "promise" is given any credibility in court to begin with. I'm not familiar with the law, but from my naive understanding a company can basically decide to change their pricing however/whenever they want. So how does stating to a judge that they _might_ have an opportunity to lower prices at some point in the unknown future translate into any kind of legal obligation to do so? To me it just sounds like an empty promise that got them through the court proceedings, and in no way affected their behavior afterwards because why would it?

</comment><comment><USER12> Merging feels like a form of collusion.

I have a service. You have a service. Let's combine them to eliminate competition between us and make both of us richer with higher prices.

<comment><USER13> It is also almost always bad for shareholders when companies are merged.

Let's say there are two competing companies, I could myself as an investor chose where to put my money, in one or the other or both. When they merge I lose the ability to place my money how I see fit.

As my professor/dean in financial economics said: If you get to vote on a merger, always vote no!

<comment><USER14> This seems to assume that the conjoined entity is exactly equivalent in terms of efficiency and market power to the previous two separate entities- That's a pretty radical assumption and it seems you'd have to give some evidence to explain why this would be the case.

<comment><USER13> I don't have any evidence other than anecdotal and theories.

I used to work in a bank that merged with another and the amount of inefficiencies, double teams/management and general disgruntlement was staggering. I left and so did most of the ones capable of finding new jobs. The ones that stayed behind were not the highest performers.

Another one is from macro economics. When two companies compete they tend to be very efficient but when they merge they have no more incentives to compete to attract customers. The result is higher prices to customers and lower effectiveness. Imagine what would happen if Intel bough AMD.

But the main issue is that I want to manage my investments myself and not let the companies manage it for me by merging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The three largest OTT providers (Sling, YouTube TV and DirectTV Now) all raised their prices by $5 recently. This seems similar to how airlines all manage to raise their fares at the same time without explicit coordination (one airline does it, and the others quickly match). I don't think it has anything to do with the merger.

<comment><USER16> The way I look at this DTVN price hike, is that my HBO add-on went from $5 to $10/mo. Still a good from my perspective...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> AT&T carries directly or peers with basically every other major internet carrier in the country.

This makes them defacto critical national security infrastructure and thus completely immune to the kind of recourse and accountability that all corporations should be subject to.

The technicality of being an independent and non-governmental entity allows them to collect and in turn share back[to the NSA] information about the traffic that crosses their fabric circumventing those pesky laws which purportedly prohibit the NSA from operating within our borders and inspecting local-only traffic.

AT&T is only going to be checked by legislation now as it has always been. The last time they were broken up they magically reassembled themselves because voters allowed it.

Until we as a country decide that communication infrastructure, like roads, can't be owned by quasi public/private abominations like AT&T but instead only held by us, the people and our government we will continue to get the worst from this present unholy union.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Just two months ago, AT&T said in a court filing that buying Time Warner > would allow it to lower TV prices. The US Department of Justice tried to > stop the merger, arguing that it would raise prices for consumers, but a > federal judge sided with AT&T. The merger was completed on June 15.

Someone please explain to me why AT&T (or its counsel) isn't in contempt of court or guilty of lying under oath? Did they just use weaselly language in their briefs and testimony that didn't actually say anything of substance?

It seems to me like there's a serious flaw in this process if a company like AT&T can make claims like it did without any obligation to follow through.

<comment><USER19> IANAL, but "would allow us to" is a far cry from "we will do so"; could be as simple as that? They never _committed_ to lowering prices post-merger, just said they _could_...theoretically.

<comment><USER18> > IANAL, but "would allow us to" is a far cry from "we will do so"; could be > as simple as that? They never _committed_ to lowering prices post-merger, > just said they _could_...theoretically.

Yeah, I was thinking along the same lines, but I didn't want to rely on Ars Technica's paraphrase.

I would hope such "arguments" could be efficiently shot down by the observation that, by the same logic, buying Time Warner would similarly allow [AT&T] to buy every American a pony. The likelihood of that happening is similar to the likelihood AT&T would lower its prices post-merger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If pressed to actually provide reasoning, I'd expect something like "This service was drastically underpriced and would not have been viable long-term. The merger has afforded us greater market vision and economies of scale, and consumers are immediately benefiting by the fact that this increase is substantially smaller than it would otherwise have been, saving them millions."

</comment><comment><USER21> well AT&T is crappy, but this article is poorly sourced. The CEO has said exactly that before, but the court filing is about what the government could prove, not about what will happen.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-ceo-makes-the-case-for- time-w...](https://www.cnet.com/news/at-t-ceo-makes-the-case-for-time-warner- megamerger/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Seriously?

AT&T just spent $85bln and someone believes the prices will be lower?!

<comment><USER23> AT&T bought assets with that money. They're receiving income that in theory should be offsetting what they spent. It's not like they bought a car and a nice dinner. The money isn't gone.

<comment><USER22> The money isn't gone but cash-flow is.

With this step they will have better cash-flow earlier.

<comment><USER23> Yes, raising prices tends to do that. Doesn't mean they had to in order to finance the deal. They did it because they could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The content providers see the clouds and they want more money too.

On the digital side, I did noticed that YouTube TV, Sling, and now DirecTV Now are all raising their prices.

</comment><comment><USER25> Surprise, surprise?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm absolutely shocked.

</comment><comment><USER27> WhoCouldHaveSeenThisComing(tm)

</comment><comment><USER28> Also, grass is still green, and sky is still blue.

</comment><comment><USER29> Let's be honest the judge was right in that AT&T/Time Warner doesn't offer much against the Facebook/Netflix/Amazon/Apple stack.</comment>


The right to vote should be restricted to those with knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/the-right-to-vote-should-be-restricted-to-those-with-knowledge <comment><USER2> That is certainly an idea, but I would counter with "do you have any freaking idea of the history of this kind of thing in this country?" [http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm](http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm)</comment>


Ask HN: Sorry, that story was previously submitted - <AUTHOR> Is it really that hard to give a link to the sorry if it was submitted? <comment><USER2> The search box at the bottom of the page will often turn up one to many results.

If I had to guess at the implementation of the duplicate detector, it might be a bloom filter or a hash (or both in layered combination) for speed and space efficiency. If true, this separates 'yes it is a duplicate' from 'what is it a duplicate of'.

</comment><comment><USER3> That usually means the link was banned, since the default for when you submit a duplicate link is to redirect you to the discussion for that link.

<comment><USER4> Or you yourself submitted, deleted, and attempted to resubmit. (Personal experience.)</comment></comment>


UniversalCoin is a cryptocurrency that will be distributed for free on Jan 15th - <AUTHOR> https://universalcoin.io <comment><USER2> This is cool. It is the essence of the current coinmania reduced to the minimum, the MVP of a shitcoin.

It will be interesting to see if they really shell out the money (GAS) to distribute the coins.</comment>


Asia's smartphone addiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33130567 <comment><USER2> In Singapore, at the movies or even formal music concerts, like the symphony orchestra, the audience is full of people doing who knows what on their mobile phones throughout the entire event. It is so obnoxious. Best thing that's improved in my life since leaving Southeast Asia is being around people who aren't so intimately attached all the time with their silly phones. Even at a nice restaurant there, the table next to you is often a middle-aged couple watching a whole movie on their phone together -- speakers fully turned up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know it happens elsewhere, but it's insane here in China: People using their phone while on the road. Whether it be crossing the street, driving their car, or trying to keep balance while holding the phone with both hands and driving their scooter with their elbows.

I even see the police doing that.

<comment> stargazer-3 One of my most memorable memories from Taiwan includes a police car stopping near us and two officers asking... if they can take a picture with us.

But I would love to see some more in-depth analysis of Asian phone usage. This article gives a lot of numbers which, although interesting, are losing their meaning without a comparison to other parts of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't even know what people do all day on their smartphones. I only use mine when I need to quickly check a fact, e.g. when my train departs or where a building that I've never been to is located. I dislike the touchscreen interface. Gaming on it is horrible, typing is horrible, navigation is passable if the buttons are big enough. Overall, the desktop is vastly superior in every way and when I'm on the road, I prefer looking at my surroundings and sorting out my thoughts because I couldn't do serious computer work anyway.

<comment><USER5> > I don't even know what people do all day on their smartphones

This is a mindblowing thing to hear. You really don't know that people use cellphones to keep in touch with friends?

Did you miss the last 10 years or something?

I have friends all around the world who I don't get to see in person and I want to maintain those friendships through chat and social media bc they are very meaningful to me. I'm constantly on my phone.

Sure a desktop is more convenient, but I'm not at my computer all day. The phone lets you have an ongoing conversation. Without them you'd only be able to talk with people when you're both sitting at a computer.... Or you'd have to send long messages and wait hours to hear back from them; which is less dynamic and engaging.

At the same time it does allow you to have pauses in the conversation, so not only can you take the time to think and for instance write a thoughtful response, but you can also easily do other things in the mean time. You can buy groceries and chat and then stop for a minute when you're at the checkout counter. So it's vastly better than making a phone call

<comment><USER4> >You really don't know that people use cellphones to keep in touch with friends?

>Did you miss the last 10 years or something?

I guess I did miss the last 10 years then. I am old-fashioned in that regard.

I prefer friends who don't require me to be available 24/7 (unless it's an emergency or something like that). I am happier to interact in 'bursts', that is, exchange thoughts in one intense session, or writing longer messages, rather than the trickling 1-message-per-hour that seems to be so fashionable today. I like to be either part of an interaction, or not. And not in a perpetual conversation that never stops. But hey, to each their own. I know that other people like me exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."

"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman seems appropriate here.

</comment><comment><USER7> This makes the lack of consumer HUDs/AR glasses even more perplexing.

The technology is here, so why are companies toying around with smartwatches (a very limited concept, imo, might as well strap a small smartphone on your wrist :-)) instead of making these a reality for everyone:

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

[http://www.lumus-optical.com/](http://www.lumus-optical.com/)

<comment><USER8> It's not perplexing. People don't want it. They thought Glass was ... nerdy and creepy.

<comment><USER9> People didn't want Newtons either and PDAs were considered nerdy. Now you're a outlier if you don't have one. People will want it when it's presented correctly with the right UX and it has the right set of features.

<comment><USER9> WTF was this downvoted? What did I say that pissed people off so much they felt this was worth of a downvote?

First off 7 French natives have told me the minimum is 2 months. 3 work at Nintendo of France. 1 works at a Nuclear Power Plant. 3 are currently working in Japan, 2 in Kyoto, 1 in Tokyo. They might have been wrong but that's what they believe.

Second it doesn't matter if it's 40 days off a year or 25. That's still INFINITELY MORE THAN THE USA which is ZERO and still entirely makes the point that lots more vacation than is typical in the USA is at least something to be considered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Worth pointing out that every year millions of people worldwide are killed or injured by drivers using cell phones while driving.

<comment><USER11> I didn't realize how bad it's gotten until I saw a guy texting WHILE DRIVING HIS SCOOTER!

<comment><USER12> In Vietnam they drive their scooters side by side with their friends and carry on a full conversation while driving and looking straight sideways XD

Honestly, it works fine. Westerners are way too concerned with safety.

<comment><USER13> I have an office in VN and would disagree it's working fine...

> the majority of those injured and killed in VietNam are vulnerable road > users

> road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for those aged 15 to 29 > years.

(PDF) [http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/c...](http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/road_traffic/countrywork/rs10_vietnam_en.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Edit: deleted comment because it was inaccurate. Apparently accidents still rank higher than suicide in the US, of which most are probably vehicular.

<comment><USER14> Source? Is this what the dead 17 year-olds tell you?

<comment><USER12> The suicide rate in the US is 2.5x higher than in Vietnam. Clearly people are a lot more fucked up mentally in the US than in Vietnam.

Also, anecdotally, I was much less depressed in Vietnam than in Canada/US. You don't realize how oppressive day-to-day life is here until you've lived there. Everything in the west requires 'insurance' and 'licenses' and 'regulation' and there's always someone telling you what to do and how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazed in Bangkok at the degree to which I only ever see Samsung or Apple phones. Many more for sale in the shops, but I feel like Samsung and Apple absolutely dominate. Lots of very old phones, mind you.

<comment><USER16> Maybe Samsung and Apple phones are the most durable brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Although I like the saying "smart phones dumb people", I think this is just a subset of computer addiction; but in this case, the computer is so easily portable that people become even more preoccupied with it and become unaware of their physical environment.

<comment><USER18> But isn't computer just the medium to access the _real_ addiction-causing substance, whatever it may be?

I mean, if you give person _a computer_ of any kind without internet access, they'll likely feel just as anxious as not having the device in the first place. This, to me, would suggest that what _actually_ causes the addiction is something these online services provide for people. Be it for example some form of self-expression in form of Facebook status updates. They'll be fine for as long as they get to make the update for example (and perhaps see it go live? As in to check their outside appearance like a person checks the mirror after fixing their clothing, despite knowing the clothing is fine. Just _need_ that feedback for the sake of feedback itself, not for any particular practical reason necessarily).

Why do I make the distinction? Because I've had to deal with something related to the subject matter myself. (Acknowledgement of some form/sort of addiction, which isn't computers _themselves_ (though the addiction-causing behavior is mediated through a computer), or "being online", but something more general because the addiction takes its shape and form for as long as the online service provides the easy "dopamine rush" (in lack of a better term), perhaps to relieve some underlying anxiety?)

<comment><USER19> > But isn't computer just the medium to access the real addiction-causing > substance, whatever it may be?

Sure, this ain't anything new. The internet, is a source of constant novelty addiction, which keeps the brain stimulated.

Mobile phone is just another medium, that you can carry around all the time and extend that addiction and makes it possible anywhere.

<comment><USER20> And all that gossip and kitten-video-sharing, that's just ... human interaction. It's almost as if we're a social species which uses low- information chatter as grooming.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Guipedia – clone, program, and execute in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://guipedia.com/

<comment><USER2> sat there for 30 seconds clicking around. haven't a clue of what this thing is suppose to be doing. what is the concept?

<comment><USER3> The learn more button is in the top right. It's a very cool concept (friend of OP).

<comment><USER2> snide remarks don't minimize the fact that I couldn't grasp the concept or find the button within the amount of time I visited the site.

<comment><USER4> Ah, a cold fusion developer. Cool..no wonder you couldn't grasp it..lol, not sure what snide comments you're referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been getting some reports of SSL warnings. It appears that some computers don't recognize StartSSL's class 2 CA. I'm going to issue one from their class 1 to see if that solves the issue.

<comment><USER5> I got the warning using the latest Opera.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord The idea is pretty nifty, although the explanations so far are absolutely terrible, quite frankly. It's hard to get a coherent idea of what this is meant to do.

From what I've gathered, it's a collaborative real-time software development environment where anyone can work on any user-submitted program, which is isolated in a VM. Everything and anything is programmable, so it takes the meaning of "programmable web" to an ultimate.

It's still rudimentary, but keep going.

</comment><comment><USER6> What the heck is httpl?

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm the op) Yaniv is correct. It's HTTP that's JSON-encoded, which makes it faster to parse and serialize when you're in the browser environment. It's otherwise the same as HTTP/1.1.

The 'httpl://' scheme is also under application control, so you can use the API to add and remove hosts in its namespace.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you record your online meetings? - <AUTHOR> I use the online web client for Skype and Google Meet. I want to capture my tab audio and mic audio.  If possible tab video/desktop video too. <comment><USER2> Zoom (comes with automatic text transcriptions).</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup idea. - <AUTHOR>

I had a professor who graduated from University of Cambridge, where they use a tutorial style course system, (for more information check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutorial_system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Cambridge#Teaching, and http://oxcheps.new.ox.ac.uk/Publications/Resources/OxCHEPS_OP1_08.pdf (PDF)) which I think would work really well on the web.
The two main concerns I have are recruiting professors, and keeping tuition low while covering all financial bases. I'll admit, I have no clue what to look for in a professor other than the proper degrees and experience, and even if I do find qualified people, how do I convince them to join a new college? I'm not mentioning potentiiial professors not knowing the tutorial system yet, because I imagine most in the USA don't, they'll have to be trained.
Resources I found online (forgive me, I don't know how to add links.): * How to start an online college - http://www.ehow.com/how_4759165_start-online-college.html * School start-up consultancy - http://www.halladayeducationgroup.com/school_ser_form.php?gclid=CPvQkPe1lpgCFQETGgodmUX5mQ * The accreditation process and it's benefits - http://www.worldwidelearn.com/accreditation/accreditation-process-benefits.htm * How to start your own online college - http://melbrown1.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Start-Your-Own-Online-College
A tl;dr for those who didn't read the two wikipedia articles I linked to earlier. * Students write an entrance essay on a topic set by the professor. * Professor grades the essays based on criteria layed out in the syllabus and picks the top three. * Students and professor meet weekly to talk about last week's assignment, the students are give given a new assignment with a new set of source books and websites. * Additional exercises may be added based on the course. * It's just a pass or fail grade, there is no a,b,c,d,f scale as seen elsewhere.
Should I start this business? Keep in mind I know nothing about how the college system works. As always,  comments, critisism, ideas, and resources are appreciated. thank you. <comment><USER2> An online college has a lot of startup costs, unless you're just making a diploma mill. You need to get enough profs to teach a degree's worth of classes, especially if you're getting accreditation. (also, as an aside, the accreditations that matter require you to have a few years of successful classes). You also need a system for handling communication with teachers and students, grading, actually giving the lectures, and education software is not cheap. So as you hopefully can see, its not really bootstrap-able or easily scalable. You need money, and you need to get it right the first time, because you'll lose that money if you don't get enough students. Also, you need to be able to operate at a loss for several years, because it will take a long time to get accreditation. College is a lot about signaling - thats why it matters where you actually go. A few credits from a brand new online college is not great on a resume, so there will not be as much demand.

So, how about instead you try to take the tutorial concept and and apply it to practical skills? 2 classes of biology from an online college isn't really useful to someone. 2 classes of SEO or knitting or 'How to contract with the federal government' is really useful to people. This would also make it easy to recuit instructors. You could find retired people who just got out of an industry and want to make a little more money, or working professionals who want the feeling of giving back.

Here's kind of a short vision for a site i think has a shot at being successful. Have bios of the instructors, spelling out how they can actually give you good instruction in the course they're offering. Let people apply - advertise a class size capped at a certain number of people, and be upfront about costs. You split the cost with the instructor, so they only get paid if they bring in business. Don't use an essay, its a big barrier to conversion. Have people write 100-200 words on why they want to take the class, what experience they have in the area, and their future goals. Let the instructor choose who to take if more people apply than the class size. Bootstrap your way to more and more courses - and make the courses practical skills. There are a million websites that will teach me biology or history or math - most of them free and a lot better than what you'll be able to do. There aren't a lot of places where i can get someone to teach me how to transition from being an employee to consulting or get started in commercial real estate or start bidding on government contracts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input, and I think I'm going to build a school for tech- based entrepreneurs, possibly walking the students from concept to launch, and teaching programming, system administration, and more as needed.

I need to get some sleep or I'll lose myself in this idea. :)</comment></comment>


Facebook is talking to the White House about giving away 'free' Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/06/facebook-is-talking-to-the-white-house-about-giving-you-free-internet-heres-why-that-may-be-controversial/ <comment><USER2> I don't want free internet. I'm not willing to concede whatever it is facebook wants in order for it to be free. We already have problems with ISPs injecting crap into requests. I don't trust facebook to provide something that crucial without screwing me over somehow.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. But perhaps it's worth it for people who are unable or struggle to afford internet?

<comment><USER4> No. Facebook engages in propaganda and psychological manipulation. It would be better for those people to avoid the internet altogether than for their only connection to it to be an NSA Skinner box designed to distort their worldview, profile them and every one they know, and mine their identities for profit.

edit: ok, "NSA Skinner box" may be a bit hyperbolic, but Facebook is still a PRISM participant that engages in emotional manipulation and ideological filtering, and they have a deeply vested interest in surveillance, profiling and correlating user data.

Why would anyone trust them to act as a gateway for the internet? Ever?

<comment><USER5> > Facebook engages in propaganda and psychological manipulation.

Wasn't Facebook caught scrubbing positive conservative news stories in the past? I could see secret deals between facebook and political parties regarding the consumers of their "free" internet.

<comment><USER4> Which they're within their rights to do, as a company. They can distort your newsfeed any way they want, they don't have to be impartial or fair.

Which is why they shouldn't be trusted as if they were a neutral party providing a utility - they're demonstrably not. Even if they _intended_ to be, the temptation to wield the power they have towards some financial or political end would inevitably be too great to resist.

<comment><USER6> A news service, such as a newsfeed, has a duty to be impartial by virtue of naming itself news unless there is a real contract with the user stating alternative duties.

<comment><USER7> ..he typed on Hacker _News_ , a newsfeed actively censored by YC against negative news about companies that they invest in.

<comment><USER6> If you're good, you can still get your information through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is it "'free' internet"? I would think that it should be "free 'internet'", since the issue isn't that there's a hidden price, but that it's not really the internet.

<comment><USER9> The hidden price is advertising, platform lock-in, surveillance-as-a-service and propaganda-as-a-service.

So maybe "'free' 'internet'".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, India rejected this specifically because of the concerns surrounding net- neutrality. I am surprised they are trying this in the US.

<comment><USER11> Surprised? I'd guess it would be easier to pass it here.

<comment><USER10> On second thoughts, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it hard to believe that monopolistic control of the media is good for the happiness of people in totalitarian regimes. By analogy I think the maintenance of the public space in common is important for the good of all. Projects like this run up against that need, and should be blocked when promoted by profit or power-seeking entities.

Net neutrality aside, let's consider the image promoted by the company. It is brazenly false advertising. A product where the user is made to do useful work for the company should cannot possibly be free to that person.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if Zuckerberg would be helping with the current white house initiative, or if he wants to deploy his own 'free' internet?

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/21/new-steps- deliver...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/21/new-steps-deliver-high- speed-broadband-across-united-states)

</comment><comment><USER14> Free internet, or just free Facebook (plus a few token sites to look like they're trying)?

Seriously, is there anyone left who isn't fully aware this is just a ploy to create more lock-in and entrenchment, disguised as charity?

</comment><comment><USER15> What? A megacorp trying to erode net neutrality under the guise of philanthropy? Shocking.

</comment><comment><USER16> And of course Facebook is considered a basic internet necessity by Facebook. I could potentially understand an argument for .gov addresses (still would be against it) but this is just a weakly veiled attempt at forcing Facebook down more people's throats. Sadly I wouldn't be surprised when this or something like it becomes a reality.

</comment><comment><USER17> I found this line intriguing:

> In the wake of the uproar, Facebook updated its approach to Free Basics. It > currently allows any third-party organization to offer its services as part > of the program, provided that the organization's developers abide by terms > that, for example, prohibit the use of high-definition images or video that > could consume a great deal of mobile data.

So I took a look at [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet- org/participat...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet- org/participation-guidelines)

These jump out at me:

>Your site(s) may be proxied to make your content available through Free Basics. You can let us know that you want to pull your site(s) from Free Basics at any time, but because we may need to make product and marketing adjustments, we may require 60 days from receipt of your notice to transition gracefully.

>In order for your content to be proxied as described above, your URLs may be re-written and embedded content (like javascript and content originating from another domain) removed. In addition, secure content is not supported and may not load.

Then looking deeper at the technical guidelines: [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet- org/platform-t...](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform- technical-guidelines)

>HTTPS support

>We encrypt information for Free Basics wherever possible. When people use the Free Basics Android app, their traffic is encrypted end-to-end unless you specify that your service should be HTTP only. For the Free Basics website in a mobile browser, we use a "dual certificate" model to encrypt traffic between a person's device and our servers in both directions. If your server supports HTTPS, we will also encrypt traffic between our servers and yours. Even if your service doesn't yet support HTTPS, where possible we will encrypt that information between our servers and people's devices unless you ask us to not use dual certificate HTTPS. When people use the Free Basics mobile website, information is temporarily decrypted on our secure servers to ensure proper functionality of the services and to avoid unexpected charges to people.

So anybody using 'Free Basics' is giving Facebook full access to their encrypted data. That seems like significantly more than just the 'not using high-definition images or video' claim the article makes.

<comment><USER17> And does:

>Any data (e.g., proxy requests) or reporting we provide is deemed Facebook confidential information and cannot be used by you for any advertising purposes or shared with third parties.

Mean that facebook now owns your request logs and you can't share them with third parties?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We need to be absolutely strict on net neutrality and zero rating or we will end up with something a lot worse than Facebooks "free" internet.

It is hard to argue against free Netflix etc but the end goal of these activities is clearly to centralise the internet (targeting poorer / disadvantaged people first), and turn the internet into a modern television- like propaganda machine.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reeks of bipartisanship; either major presidential candidate will help push this if elected. Facebook is 99% likely to be able and 100% likely to be willing to book either of them for speeches once they're out of office. No threat of an "anti-colonial" mindset amongst US elites.

</comment><comment><USER20> Ive been thinking about it and Im fine with ""Free Basics"" of lets say wikipedia or some city/ weather.org websites or other Non-profits.

However I have no idea why Facebook should be the gatekeeper nor why Facebook or any large corporation should be on Free Basics.

</comment><comment><USER21> This was the plot of Kingsmen. It didn't turn out too well...

</comment><comment><USER22> Ring plus and Freedompop and T-Mobile already offer basic free internet for various amounts of data. I don't see a need for this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Didn't this fail in India?

<comment><USER24> Psst.. it mentions that in the article you are commenting on...

<comment><USER23> Sotto voce: I'm being sarcastically rhetorical. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Uh-oh, the average USAmerican probably doesn't know what "If you aren't paying for it, you're the product" means. :/</comment>


Ask HN: Should I take an online college after completing CS? (chem or biology) - <AUTHOR> Here is my story:
I went to a college and immediately got a job (when I was in first year). After 5 years I got my CS degree and now I'm a Head of Software Development at a good company with a good pay (at least for Croatian standards).
College was pretty easy for me (most of the things I have learned at work), wrote 4-5 research papers, professors appreciated me, etc.
I feel like I need more education/knowledge. I'm interested in all kinds of topics, mostly biology and/or chemistry. I would like to make software for biology and chemistry but I don't know where to start.
Is it worth it to take/pay some online college courses? I work 8 hours a day (mostly) and I'm pretty positive I could do college work after that.
What do you think? Do you have any opinions on online college courses and could you provide me some names? I did some research but I know how marketing works and I don't trust them. :)
I'm in Croatia and I'm 24 but I will most likely move to Germany or Switzerland by the end of the next year. <comment><USER2> > I would like to make software for biology and chemistry but I don't know > where to start.

Start by getting a base-level understanding of biology/chemistry. You'll gravitate to an area you want to explore further. Here's an interesting list of online courses > [https://www.mooc-list.com/categories/biology-life- sciences](https://www.mooc-list.com/categories/biology-life-sciences)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics](https://www.coursera.org/specializations/bioinformatics)</comment>


Github down?  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com

<comment><USER2> It was but now everything seems back to normal.</comment>


Twitter's @Earlybird Account Will Send Out Deals From Brand Partners - <AUTHOR> http://pulse2.com/2010/07/03/twitters-earlybird-account-will-send-out-deals-from-brand-partners/ <comment><USER2> Full story:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_to_publish_shop...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_to_publish_shopping_deals_through_earlybir.php)</comment>


How Startups should care about their User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.inspireux.com/2010/06/21/importance-of-focus-experience-strategy/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but doesn't a "fictional case study" defeat the purpose of case studies?

It's like assuming the hypothesis you want to prove ...</comment>


Show HN: We just launched Xrispi, a service for sharing bites of content - cool-RR https://xrispi.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like a very useful tool for bloggers and online publishers. It can help to grab attention of readers. Well done guys!</comment>


Ask HN: is bondero.com a weird domain name? - <AUTHOR>

I am planning to consolidate my blogging related activities and you know how hard it is to find a nice, available .com name.
I still have bondero.com laying around and a friend of mine said it sounds weird / funny.
What do you think? What would you associate with it? <comment><USER2> As an Spanish speaker it doesn't sound very good. But it is Spanish looking if that's what you are looking for.

Edit: It doesn't mean anything in Spanish but it is similar to "FireFighter" and "BullFighter", the literal literal translation will be "the one who makes bonds".

</comment><comment><USER3> Bondero, starring Antonio Banderas as Zorro

It rolls off the tongue well enough, it's spellable (English speaker here), and it's distinct enough that it looks like you're top of the search results for it[1].

To me, that's all you need.

1\. There does seem to be a YouTube account at #1, but you can knock that out after a couple weeks of blogging.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds Latin. If you like that go ahead. Also try lean domain search. [http://www.leandomainsearch.com/](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of Canyonero [0]

[0] [http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Canyonero](http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Canyonero)

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds good enough to me; better than any .net you could find I think.

</comment><comment><USER7> To me, it sounds like the brand name for a denture adhesive.

<comment><AUTHOR> :) probably negative right?

<comment><USER7> Not necessarily, but if you're blogging under that domain people are going to assume that's your name or something. Which if it is, is fine - someone got to the .com of my last name before I did (so I had to register the .net), and that's always a good resource to have. Otherwise to me it just seems kind of confusing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not my last name, actually my last name is too complicated to even type it into a browser (cserny) :)

Thanks for your feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> James Bond + Zorro</comment>


The Historical Development of Computer Chess and Its Impact on AI (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/the-historical-development-of-computer-chess-and-its-impact-on-artificial-intelligence <comment><USER2> Note that this is a 1997 paper, seemingly written before Kasparov's rematch and overall loss to Deep Blue. I imagine there have been more ideas that have become standard in the 20 years since, though machine learning still seems to not be used much.

 _Blatant self promotion_ for anyone interested in this subject, I wrote up a series of blog posts about the evolution of Chess and Go AIs with some more detail and pretty pictures: [http://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/a-brief- history-of-gam...](http://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/a-brief-history-of- game-ai/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally the latest Phrack has a tight little chess playing AI written in just 256 bytes: [http://phrack.org/issues/69/4.html#article](http://phrack.org/issues/69/4.html#article)</comment>


Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders (or: Why we pivoted) - <AUTHOR> http://swish.com/blog/2013/03/06/kickstarter-sucks-at-pre-orders-or-why-we-pivoted/

<comment><USER2> I _strongly_ do not approve of having a website that lists "pre-orders" and then links Kickstarter projects. As has already been mentioned repeatedly in this thread Kickstarter is not pre-orders even if users, and sometimes projects, treat it as such.

Treating it as such is not only incorrect but actively hurts the Kickstarter concept and brand. You are literally causing direct harm to the service which your website is largely dependent on. That's very uncool. :(

</comment><comment><USER3> Did you read the "what is Kickstarter?" page before making this? Because Kickstarter isn't about pre-orders, its about backing projects. The "Kickstarter Is Not a Store" post on their blog is pretty clear about it all.

I'm not saying that an alternative browser for Kickstarter projects doesn't have merit. Or that a meta-directory sat on top of Kickstarter (and others) isn't a useful service. I'm just saying that your framing of it (pre-orders) is actually opposed to the ethos of the underlying service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kickstarter never intended to be a place for pre-orders. But it's hard to deny that a lot of campaigns treat the plaform that way. We think it's amazing and wonderful, but Kickstarter doesn't really want it on their platform (though they're not fighting very hard, see eg the Almond+... a story for a different day).

Both consumers and sellers want these transactions to happen, and we want to (eventually) be the best place to list. But for now, we're starting by being the best place to shop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Kickstarter sucks at pre-orders_...

...because Kickstarter is not _for_ preorders. Also, my car is an awful boat.

<http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store>

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought that blog post didn't live up to the title. It mainly said two things: 1) no renderings and 2) no offering multiple quantities, and they're not even enforcing the second part (Lace Anchors, eg).

The post itself says, "The new guidelines only apply to [projects] that are developing new products ... that backers are expecting in their mailboxes." They're not disallowing such campaigns at all. But we are offering an easier alternative.

[Edit: clarity]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Are you sure you are solving an actual problem? I've backed a dozen projects, and never gone to to the kickstarter.com home page looking for a project.

I'm not sure many people spend time browsing for things to back. People just hear about interesting projects via HN, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc., and then transact via Kickstarter.

<comment><USER6> Creators tell us that around 30% of their traffic comes organically from Kickstarter. There are _some_ people browsing on Kickstarter -- but it's not really set up to help them browse. We just want to make it easier :)

<comment><USER7> So, in essence, the problem is that KickStarter is noisy at scale and you're essentially selling a filter. Maybe the title of the post should have been "KickStarter Sucks, Long Live KickStarter"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't want to be _that_ guy, but clicking on your logo on your blog takes me back to... your blog. Super annoying.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am so embarrassed. I had fixed it on the other WP theme, but then switched themes to F2. Thanks, it's fixed now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My initial thought was 'is this solving a real problem', but then I checked it out and have ended up backing a project. Definitely a cool service to help promote product based Kickstarters.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you still planning on taking 35% of markup? I commented in a previous post on HN that I thought that was too high for the value you're adding. I don't see this discussed on your website. There is mention of a "wholesale price". What factors determine the wholesale and retail price? Also how do you handle returns/refunds/exchanges?

I still think this has the potential to become a great service, but I'm not convinced you understand (yet) the pain/problem that you've built a solution for.

<comment><USER6> Don't tell anyone but we're going to switch to free listings soon. Sellers still have to use our fulfillment, though -- it's the only way we can guarantee delivery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > So, following the apocryphal advice, we imagined the future, and built it. A > refreshing pre-order store for sellers and shoppers alike.

Isn't Kickstarter always trying to get people to _stop_ referring to them as preorders? You are supposed to back a project, and you are supposed to get a reward if its successful; but they are NOT preorders.

That's where people keep getting in trouble. They "preorder" something off Kickstarter and then complain when the project fails.

</comment><comment><USER12> Swish looks cool and useful for finding fun new toys. Good work!

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're trying to help people find cool stuff on Kickstarter and elsewhere...fine (good luck with that). But "Kickstarter sucks"? Really? Really lame.

</comment><comment><USER14> I came to a similar conclusion with something that I'm building so I realised to focus on the people with inbuilt audiences on social media & their web presence (creators, charities, product makers, etc). Rather than building another marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER15> You say 'pre-order with guaranteed delivery,' but doesn't that mean in cases where the creator underestimated project difficulty and the product is never finished, backers will be asking you for their money back? How are you going to deal with that?

<comment><AUTHOR> When you list on Swish, you don't get the money until you deliver the product. Much like dealing with Target or Wal-Mart. If it never shows up, shoppers automatically get refunds after 1 year. This also really changes the incentives for creators... only list if you're sure it'll succeed.

Some creators need the money up front, but most don't. (Creating the prototype was comparably expensive, and they found a way.) Once you have the Purchase Order, it's a lot easier to get VC funding, a bank loan, or use friends/family/savings. If your project is very successful, you can deliver in batches and we will release your money accordingly.

One of the weird things about Kickstarter is that every product needs to explain why they need the money, even the ones that don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> swish sucks at crowdfunding</comment>


JsFiddle - Online Editor for the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsfiddle.net/

<comment><USER2> Either I don't understand the point of this, or there's a bug in it. I went to the HTML window, entered
Hello, world
 and then pressed [Run]. In the Result window, I got back:

       {"error": "Please use POST request"}

Is that what it should do?

<comment><USER3> Weird - it should only happen if page is reloaded and no POST request is send.

What browser/OS etc.?

BTW thanks for info

<comment><USER2> Firefox 3.5.2 on Ubuntu 7.10

<comment><USER3> contact us on <http://twitter.com/js_fiddle> \- working on mine on similar system

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to be able to see the automagic stuff in the windows, like the doctype and the javascript framework inclusion. I feel disoriented without it, and I don't think I trust the software to do it the way I want it done -- being able to see it on screen would make me more comfortable.

<comment><USER3> You've got the page only after adding "show/" after the link with the demo - <http://jsfiddle.net/wr8qE/show/> \- just look at the source.

The goal is to actually see the code working and remove the repetitive hassle

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does it do a server round trip every time you tell it to run something?

<comment><USER3> It is loading the example by submitting a form. The submit goes to an iframe which is by definition a sandboxed environment

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What are some common examples where using a platform like this would be more efficient that doing in on a common HTML page elsewhere? Regardless, it's a beautiful little system.

<comment><USER7> It's an incredible tool for screencasters (I used that for a "Introduction to jQuery"). Invaluable, really.

<comment><USER3> could you provide a link please?</comment></comment></comment>


The Hottest New Thing in Seasteading Is Land - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/silicon-valley-seasteaders-go-looking-for-low-tax-sites-on-land <comment><USER2> Isn't this the plot of BioShock?

If this sounds like a dorky joke post, it's not.

Isn't this literally motivated by the same neo-fuedal oligarchical narcissism that made the bad guy in BioShock build essentially the same thing as this? Tell me one of these "seasteads" won't get hit by some speedboat pirates and decide OK, we're gonna arm up and hey why not build down? And you know what? No one's gonna say we can't do human experiments on our residents, so why not? As long as they sign their names to it.

Just stay in Palo Alto or whatever, and pay your god damned taxes. This is bleak, bleak stuff.

"Do I want to create the first venture-backed city-state? Hell yeah"

<comment><USER3> Just stay in Manchester or whatever, and pay your god damned taxes to the king. Moving to the New World is bleak, bleak stuff.

Just stay on Earth or whatever, and fix your god damned environment. Settling the Solar System - how dare you? Tell me one of those space ships won't get hit by an asteroid.

I mean, heck, the idea of doing a startup of any kind is dangerously transgressive. If you make new things, something bad might happen! And existing companies might lose customers! There will be change! Chaos! Mayhem!

Or - crazy idea here - perhaps we could have the courage to not let the plot of a video game limit our social innovation?

Or, if that's the only metric you have, at least pick the right game - SimCity!

<comment><USER4> The New World was a bleak dystopia for a few hundred years. Preserving the Earth is a better option than colonising other planets, although less sexy.

<comment><USER5> > The New World was a bleak dystopia for a few hundred years

That's a bit of an overstatement. I expect if that were true, people wouldn't have kept on coming.

<comment><USER6> You're disregarding the extremely large number of people who were more or less forced to travel to the new world. Add up the slaves taken there, people sentenced to be sent there for crimes, people who had to leave their home country or starve and people who had to leave their home country or be murdered and you start to get a pretty large number.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. A large chunk of the population was forced to American against their will, and a large chunk of the people who chose to go to America only survived because of the labor of the people who were forced to be there. Claiming success on the back of slave labor isn't something that's super popular these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if they will ever succeed or not, but it sure is heart-warming to see people still pushing these ideas and trying to get something going. Competition is Good Thing and if we can come up with something better than nation-states, then we should. Personally I encourage these guys to keep experimenting, keep iterating, and keep pushing to break the mold.

Maybe "government" as we know it today is a just a "fashionable solution" \- to riff on pg's earlier essay.

<comment><USER9> It really does sound like a bunch of wealthy folks (and I don't mean your- town's-surgeon wealthy, I mean billionaire-class-wealthy) want to further remove themselves from laws that govern everybody else. Imagine this - a group of super wealthy bound by no laws of any nation but benefiting from them all. Terrifying.

<comment><USER10> A city of all billionaires sounds like a very small city.

Also, hiring for service jobs might be hard :)

<comment><USER11> Why hire? There's no law against kidnapping or slavery on a seastead.

<comment><USER12> Because the UN will get on you. While this isn't an issue for some random warlord in Africa if you're a tiny island who still wants to operate within the world you're still fucked.

<comment><USER13> The UN doesn't have an army

<comment><USER14> No, but it's members do.

And some of those members aren't afraid of using them, or their Navys, or Air Forces...

<comment><USER15> You're not wrong, but consider that there are plenty of atrocities, including slavery, happening right now around the world.

<comment><USER16> Happening in sovereign nations, not on floating platforms in international waters [1].

Items of interest:

Article 88: Reservation of the high seas for peaceful purposes

Article 98: Duty to render assistance

Article 99: Prohibition of the transport of slaves

Article 100: Duty to cooperate in the repression of piracy

Article 101: Definition of piracy

Article 103: Definition of a pirate ship or aircraft

Article 105: Seizure of a pirate ship or aircraft

The law is very clear on the authority of warships to intervene.

[1][https://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unc...](https://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> " _Slytherin_ sweatshirt"

"sipping well water at his mountaintop _compound_ south of San Jose"

"He also says, _with a straight face_ , "

Next up they're going to say lex luthor bald head and evil villain laugh.

\----

The principle has been done before. It's similar to free trade economic zones in other countries, shenzen is one example, or reproducing something like HK or Singapore in other areas of the world.

<comment><USER17> So because it's been done before, it's not as radical of an effort. I bet if they changed the marketing to "let make another Singapore in YOUR COUNTRY" I bet locals, politicians and journalists would be way more into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obviously it's sci-fi scenario, but the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies.

Experimental governments on Earth are limited by the fact that [large state power] can invade you in a matter of hours for arbitrary reasons, no matter where you on are the planet. Fly off into the deep cosmos, though, and your chances of survival dramatically increase.

<comment><USER19> > the real solution (assuming that you see it as a problem) to overbearing and > entrenched government power will probably be self-sustaining space colonies

Why in the world would you think that the politics of self-sustaining space colonies would not devolve into the exact same (dys)functional states (pun intended) as politics here on earth?

<comment><USER20> Some will, some won't. Just like on earth, new forms of government will evolve. What we _do_ know from our historical past is that small communities can do much better at self-government in most cases. It's always harder to screw over your neighbor than a random guy from the other side of the nation, and easier for the neighbor to get redress.

More importantly, I don't think the possibility of a bad outcome ought to halt the progress of mankind in perpetuity.

Interesting thought: many suspect nations with frontiers flourish due to having an "escape valve". I am curious to see what an unlimited escape valve will enable.

<comment><USER21> > Interesting thought: many suspect nations with frontiers flourish due to > having an "escape valve". I am curious to see what an unlimited escape valve > will enable.

Can you expand on this? I think I understand the general implication but it's not something I have considered before. If you have more thoughts/writing on this I'd like to ingest it.

If I understand correctly the idea is "undesirables" can go to a place where they are free to explore their ideas.

<comment><USER20> Sure. The basic idea is that there are always people who just "don't fit in" to society at large. Those people can stay and cause trouble, can be imprisoned, or can go through the safety valve to go live where they won't harm others. It also gives people opportunity for advancement; think of the many stories of families going west to find a better life. It allows societies to preserve a degree of individualism and a shared goal of expanding into the great un-known. I'm dipping my toes into deeper sociological waters here than I'm entirely comfortable with, but there's a broader concept of a "safety- valve institution" that can be viewed as positively helping maintain order or negatively keeping oppressed masses from rising up (the class warfare folks start beating there drums around here). Some more interesting reading:

* [http://www.ditext.com/shannon/shannon.html](http://www.ditext.com/shannon/shannon.html)

* [http://www.ditext.com/robbins/robbins.html](http://www.ditext.com/robbins/robbins.html)

* [https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/2716011](https://sci-hub.tw/10.2307/2716011)

The obvious issue is that the treatment of Indians was unethical in the case of America, but space exploration might allow us to get many of these benefits of historical colonialism without genocide. I'll admit that I'm biased favorably towards this idea, as the frontier could, in some cases, be much closer to a libertarian utopia than a more heavily-organized society, but the up-side is that it provides options for those who want more and less state control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For those wondering about the mentioned couple off the coast of Thailand:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-seahome/thai- nav...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-seahome/thai-navy-tows- floating-home-of-fugitive-us-seasteader-idUSKCN1RY0SX)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-libertarian-nirvana-at-sea- ru...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-libertarian-nirvana-at-sea-runs-into-a- stubborn-opponent-the-thai-navy-11556466473)

</comment><comment><USER23> Ultimately any country/state needs a variety of services, from utilities like water/sewage/electricity to emergency services like ambulance/fire/police to a military to defend what you've got from other countries. you also need things like roads, telecomms infrastructure and other things that have been built over decades/centuries in established countries.

You also need things like a foreign service to liaise with other countries so that the fate of your state isn't the same as the Thai SeaStedding adventure. Then you may also need things in the longer term like social services, pension funds etc to care for your citizens in the long term.

Those all need to be paid for somehow, and that somehow is taxes. A "low tax" environment inevitably has to skimp on those services somehow. I'd guess that these low tax environments intention would be to skimp on the services that richer people don't need in exchange for having those richer people pay less tax...

So I'm not really surprised by the comments in the article that they're having trouble getting "host" countries to buy into this, what's the upside for them? These low tax environments will obviously not provide good long term environments for workers (the low tax is likely to == low social care standards) so it'd seem likely they'll take in workers where it's suitable and ship them back out once they're not productive any more, back to the host countries they came from.

<comment><USER24> > A "low tax" environment inevitably has to skimp on those services somehow.

I think this is preception, not reality.

The US was formed with checks and balances amongst the branches of government yet there seems to be no checks and balances against government spending or taxation.

The fact that the Laffer curve[1] is a thing leads me to believe that government will continue to tax until the maximum taxation is achieved, or beyond.

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

<comment><USER25> [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S)

<comment><USER24> wow, check this one out:

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was the obvious conclusion. The experiment is governance, not "governance plus the enormous practical issues of living on the high seas".

I'd guess it's not stable unless you assume all the other trappings of state (like the monopoly on violence) and then you're just some uppity proto-nation practically begging to get subsumed into a more powerful entity.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seasteadding today seems a lot more like the ambitions of billionaires for their own benefit. I am not convinced they are interested in new forms of governance insofar as they are just interested in a tax-free region where they can skirt regulations on an absolute level.

I might be convinced if the discussion around these new societies they want to build were more focused on egalatarianism. Otherwise, it sounds like the societies they want have already been built and tried around 100 years ago with company towns like Fordlandia.

<comment><USER28> We've simply found a new way to make a company town without calling it that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A more effective way of approaching this goal would be to propose a seastead as a way of creating valuable waterfront property as part of an existing coastal city.

The technologies could then be developed with less political controversy, and once the technological/practical concerns are ironed out, it would be easier to build a more politically-contested settlement. You would no longer be confronting political and practical obstacles simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://archive.md/zG5Zs](http://archive.md/zG5Zs)

</comment><comment><USER31> Whatever happened to those people who planned to put a cruise ship in international waters just off the coast of San Francisco?

"project blueseed"

[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/14/silicon- valley-...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/14/silicon-valley- entrepreneurs-propose-startup-colony-on-international-waters/)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/12/17/16...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2012/12/17/166887292/dont- like-the-government-make-your-own-on-international-waters)

<comment><USER32> [https://blueseed.com/](https://blueseed.com/)

nginx bad gateway.

No updates since 2014 or so.

<comment><USER31> I guess the free market has spoken!

<comment><USER33> That was usually my first thought when these projects come up. Who would want to live there? I can see why billionaires want to, but what about all the citizens that make up a real city? Why would a cook with a family and ambitions want to live permanently in the middle of an ocean, far from the "real world"?

<comment><USER31> The sad reality is that the wealthy people running the place would probably recruit domestic servants, using the same labor recruiters that send people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_workers_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_workers_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates)

[https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&ei=hjsBXo...](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&ei=hjsBXo3pPOPy9AO24Y_ICQ&q=kuwait+slave+market+instagram&oq=kuwait+slave+market+instagram&gs_l=psy- ab.3...3751.4901..5006...0.0..0.465.1825.7j3j0j1j1......0....1..gws- wiz.......0i22i30j33i22i29i30.NTUBf4c399s&ved=0ahUKEwiNxML05MzmAhVjOX0KHbbwA5kQ4dUDCAo&uact=5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This won't ever attract American workers without a bilateral tax treaty, and all these initiatives are in English...

I think there's more than 1 missing piece in these plans.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm immediately reminded of Sealand:

[https://www.sealandgov.org/](https://www.sealandgov.org/)

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

[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/se...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/sealand- outlaw-ocean-tiniest-nation/596074/)

They tried everything: hosting servers, their own currency, their own crypto. It never really took off, but it was a fun and interesting effort.

<comment><USER31> The really funny thing about Sealand's internet connection, at the time, it was a terrestrial microwave radio link with a capacity equivalent fo a couple of T1s going to a terrestrial ISP connection near the shore in England.

It was singlehomed to something that was network topologically indistinguishable from putting servers in a house near the beach on land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If high intelligent without selfishness people would make some state that has low taxes and simple whitelist of actions without changing it will be great place to live.

</comment><comment><USER37> Me, I'd rather have a bobbler. Plus the associated technology, of course.

</comment><comment><USER38> As long as there will be people born there will be demand for land for it being the necessary condition for life and industrial production.

Billionaires now looking for ways to acquire more land? Or to create artificial land on sea? Or to discover new continents or planets with new land? Nothing new under the sun. Guess where all the money acquired from current day monopoly industry ends up in era of zero interest rates and rock bottom innovation. Of course the majority of it is parked in land.

This is not capitalism. This is feudalism. Just rename 'billionaires' to 'aristocracy'.

<comment><USER39> This is the problem when you have more billionaires than land in Monaco:

[https://www.cnn.com/style/article/monaco-extension- sea/index...](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/monaco-extension- sea/index.html)

<comment><USER40> I was a bit shocked by this:

> For $1 million you can buy just 183 square feet (17 square meters) of prime > property, according to the Knight Frank 2017 Wealth Report, compared to 280 > square feet (26 square meters) in New York or 323 square feet (30 square > meters) in London.

Land in Monaco is more expensive that New York City, but not a LOT more expensive, hah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> One big problem: Pirates.

</comment><comment><USER42> "We will eliminate poverty by not letting the poor live in our cities "

</comment><comment><USER43> Prob won't get past govt allowing banks to work with these little states

</comment><comment><USER44> Everyone is hating on little city states like they are the bastion of human exploitation, unlike _cough_ most Western societies in the past couple centuries _cough_. I guess no one realizes what happened in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and even the US just a bit over half a century ago. Hundreds of millions killed over political whim, anyone? Nothing Peter Theilians or even Scientologists can concoct in these seasteads will ever compare to the horror enacted by nation states the last century. I'd say the historical record is entirely in favor of city states for safeguarding human life.

</comment><comment><USER45> For sure I didn't think there were enough problems with the status of the Marshall Islands in international law, and so this seems like a brilliant idea altogether.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think this is one of if not the most important issue in the entire world.

We currently have two primary forms of government: dictatorship and democracy.

Almost everyone prefers democracies. But many, if not most, living in democracies also take major issue with the way their countries are run. The best defense of democracy is Churchill's: democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest.

A framework in which we can experiment with other forms of societal organization, especially one in which minimizes or eliminates externalities, has the potential to produce massive benefits if it discovers better forms of political organization.

<comment><USER47> "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the rest"

That's until you realize that representative democracy (rule of majority) is effectively an authoritarian system, which is based on the monopoly of force and the monopoly of currency, and which incentivizes politicians with low time preference to spend more money than what they take (by force) through taxes, therefore indebting and impoverishing the whole population progressively.

There's a social organization system that allows for individual freedoms: free markets with no centralized governments. It's not a setup that will be implemented through revolutions, reforms or good will. It's inevitable that we'll get there as the cost of transactions becomes increasingly small (therefore making centralized systems of organization not viable). Refer to the work of Ronald Coase to understand why that is.

<comment><USER48> Please don't take HN threads further into generic ideological flamewar. It leads to tedious, repetitive, and usually nasty discussions—see first reply below.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER47> My observation is not ideological, it's a reference to the work of an economist...

<comment><USER48> People understand these words differently, but by the standards that apply on HN, it's definitely ideological and generic. These are things we're trying to avoid, because internet forums don't have anything new to say about them. The arguments just get increasingly repetitive and nasty.

<comment><USER20> Why pick on this comment, though? The whole thread here is an ideological debate between forms of government and is repetitive; you may as well lock the whole thing at this point.

<comment><USER48> The comment was significantly more generic, which makes for worse discussion, especially on divisive topics: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generic%20discussion&sort=byDate&type=comment).

One thing to look for is whether a comment remains anchored in the specific content of an article, or has become unmoored from it. Most of this thread retains at least some contact with it. Even the parent of the comment I replied to ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21866584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21866584)), which is pretty generic, has at least a wispy string connecting it to the OP. But [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21867096) just goes into talking points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Tried web in normal and private mode, can not read.

<comment><USER49> Reader mode.

<comment> the-dude Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his bro?

<comment><USER51> I can't tell if that's a typo or not, but it's great.

<comment><USER50> Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 This is as suspicious and creepy to me as the unbridled control Alphabet sought with Sidewalk Labs' Toronto experiment.

<comment> the-dude We have corporations as big or bigger as countries. The class war has ended. What are we going to do?

<comment><USER52> The largest corporation (not government-owned) in existence today is a microscopically small fragment of the size of the corporate behemoths of 100 years ago, and the corporations of one hundred years ago were microscopically minuscule compared to the largest corporations of 400 years ago.

Not only that, but the ancient proto-corporations were not partners with government, they were governments.

For about 20 years, the Mississippi Company was worth between $5-7 trillion, adjusted for inflation. That's about 6 Microsofts, and at the time of the Mississippi Company there were many chartered trading companies that ruled over their dominions with iron fists. Microsoft doesn't have a private army.

How did puny little Microsoft/Google/Apple/BP/GE/Chase/whoever/whatever "end" the class war when Standard Oil did not?

<comment> the-dude Thanks for your comment. I did not mean to blame the end of the class war on the mega-corps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> There's a somewhat progressive government in Honduras, Pres gets kidnapped by military and flown out of the country Thiel + friends get ready to buy out a piece bringing prosperity and justice

</comment><comment><USER54> Down the road, the still hotter thing in Seasteading will be physical security.

Do-it-yourself city-states will be like owning hard metal gold, and for the same reason: once you reach the tipping point of being valuable, you become a target to own/eliminate.

For a more near-fetched, though not precisely analogous example of the this kind of issue, see Deepwater Horizon => [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon)

<comment><USER55> There's a much simpler example in armed attempts to take the Principality of Sealand</comment></comment>


GPT-3: A Disappointing Paper? - <AUTHOR> https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/ZHrpjDc3CepSeeBuE/gpt-3-a-disappointing-paper <comment><USER2> All valid points, but I disagree with the conclusion, for several reasons:

* First of all, the GPT-3 authors successfully trained a model with 175 billion parameters. I mean, 175 billion. The previous largest model in the literature, Google's T5, had "only" 11 billion. Models with trillions of weights are suddenly looking... achievable. That's a significant experimental accomplishment.

* Second, the model achieves competitive results on many NLP tasks and benchmarks without finetuning, using only a context window of text for instructions and input. There is only unsupervised (i.e., autoregressive) pretraining. AFAIK, this is the first paper that has reported a model doing this. It's a significant experimental accomplishment that points to a future in which general-purpose NLP models could be used for novel tasks without requiring additional training from the get-go.

* Finally, the model's text generation fools human beings without having to cherry-pick examples. AFAIK, this is the first paper that has reported a model doing this. It's another significant experimental accomplishment.

More generally, I find that some AI researchers and practitioners with strong theoretical backgrounds tend to dismiss this kind of paper as "merely" engineering. I think this tendency is misguided. We _must_ build giant machines and gather experimental evidence from them -- akin to physicists who build giant high-energy particle colliders to gather experimental evidence from them.

I'm reminded of Rich Sutton's essay, "The Bitter Lesson:"

[http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html](http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html)

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi > More generally, I find that some AI researchers and practitioners with > strong theoretical backgrounds tend to dismiss this kind of paper as > "merely" engineering.

It's just that this kind of work is more interesting as a general member of the public than as an AI researcher.

As a human being I find it really interesting to see where this kind of models can take us. I was amazed playing with GPT-2 online demos and seeing to what extent it could generate text that looked like what a human could produce. With its quirks and problems, but still impressive. And I can't wait to put my fingers on a GPT-3 online demo.

But as an NLP academic researcher (and this is not hypothetical, I'm actually one), what do I learn from this paper? What importance does it have to my research? Actually very little. You need more than 350 GB to fit the 175B parameters in memory, currently the largest GPU I can access has 24 GB (and I can access only one of those, which I use to -barely- run BERT-large). The cost of training the model in the cloud is estimated to be $12 million ([https://twitter.com/eturner303/status/1266264358771757057](https://twitter.com/eturner303/status/1266264358771757057)). This is a single training run, not including any neural architecture search, bug fixing, etc. So even though for an academic researcher my funding situation is not bad at all, I'm like a couple of orders of magnitude away from being able to do anything meaningful with models of this size, and can't expect that to change for at least 8-10 years (by which point, at the pace NLP evolves, this will be ancient history anyway).

On the other hand, of course very often you learn useful ideas from papers that you can apply yourself even if it's not by implementing the same models in the paper, but that's not the case either. Here the lesson learned is "bigger is better" and I cannot train these enormous models, so there is not really much here that I can apply.

So as an academic researcher, really there isn't a lot to do with this apart from shrugging, and basically dismissing it and just keeping trying to do our best with what we have. Which is still useful, at least if we don't want NLP applications to be in the hands of an oligopoly of megacorps and restricted only to the few most economically viable languages.

<comment><USER3> I am doing other hpc stuff, so I am wondering why are you limited to 1 GPU? Windows recognizes up to 8 I think.

<comment><USER4> The 24GB card mentioned is almost certainly a RTX Titan, which are $3000 each. Just the card. Second, training frameworks like Megatron can distribute to multiple GPUs in the same computer as if they were on different machines, but the naive trainer is greatly helped by NVLink in order to actually look the memory and greatly improve accuracy, which means V100s which are $5000 each. (Also, people use Linux for ML)

<comment><USER5> An average cost of an NLP researcher is probably around $300k/year. If buying 10 $5k cards makes them twice more productive, then it's a no brainer.

<comment><USER6> The average cost of an _academic_ NLP researcher is probably closer to $30k/year.

<comment><USER5> Most universities have access to supercomputers, including GPU clusters. But that's not the point, not every NLP problem requires experimenting with 175B parameter models.

Academic researchers shouldn't try to compete with Google or OpenAI in scaling up models. They should try to come up with new approaches. Our brains have been evolving under tight constraints (size, energy, noise, etc). Maybe a good academic problem to solve is "how can I do what GPT-3 does if I only have an 8 GPU workstation?" This might lead to all kinds of breakthroughs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Transformers are extremely interesting. And this is about the least > interesting transformer paper one can imagine in 2020.

Because it's not a transformer paper.

This paper goal was to see how far can an increase in compute continue to deliver an increase in model performance. There is no better way to study this than to take a very well known architecture and keep it the same as possible, otherwise it becomes very hard to know what is due to the increase size of the model and what is due to the tweaks you make.

So yes, it's a disappointing paper if you expect it to be on a different topic than what it is.

</comment><comment><USER8> > "GPT-3″ is just a bigger GPT-2. In other words, it's a straightforward > generalization of the "just make the transformers bigger" approach

Yes it's true. But there is a difference between what's interesting and what works. deep learning (RNNs, transformers, etc.) is usually old ideas applied at large scale with slight modifications. Proving a model works well at large scale (175B parameters) is a great contribution and measures our progress towards AI.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Article > One of their experiments, "Learning and Using Novel Words," strikes me as more remarkable than most of the others and the paper's lack of focus on it confuses me._

This sort of "learning" is not necessarily real learning and it's not new for GPT-3. Even reduced GPT-2 willingly used made-up terms from the prompt in its results:

[https://medium.com/@VictorBanev/interrogating- gpt-2-345m-aaf...](https://medium.com/@VictorBanev/interrogating- gpt-2-345m-aaff8dcc516d)

Search the article for 'Now I will feed it the same thing, but with a bunch of made-up terms.' It has some examples of how that stuff worked.

I've already posted this in the original discussion of GPT-3 paper and I will post it again: statements about whether some system "learns new words" or "does math" require hypothesis formulation and testing. It astounds me that many people in ML community not only don't do these sort of things, but even actively oppose to the very idea of them being necessary.

Recently there was a great live-stream from DarkHorse talking about this problem in science in general:

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

They talk about "data-driven" science and the fundamental problems with that notion.

</comment><comment><USER10> My biggest problem with GPT3 is that it's not going to be accessible (practically speaking) to the general public. There's been a recent push to democratize this type of work with libraries like Huggingface transformers, but models this large will force the benefits of this work back into the ivory tower.

</comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile, a revolutionary paper that brought for the first successful time a new paradigm to NLP (latent variational autoencoders) and that destroy GPT 3 on text perplexity on the Pen treebank (4.6 vs 20) and with order of magnitudes less parameters is talked about nowhere on the web...

[https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.02645v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.02645v2)

<comment><USER12> FYI, the MELBO bound in that paper is invalid. Their perplexity numbers using the MELBO bound are also invalid.

<comment><USER11> Where is the error? How much would that change their score of 4.6?

<comment><USER12> The bound is completely invalid, as are the NLL/PPL numbers they report with the MELBO. Look at the equation. If they optimized it directly, it would be trivially driven to 0 by the identity function if we used a latent space equivalent to the input space. The MELBO just adds noiseless autoencoder reconstruction error to a constant offset equal to log of the test set size. This can be driven to zero by evaluating an average bound over test sets of size 1.

The mathematical/conceptual error is that they are assuming each test point is added to the "post-hoc aggregated" prior when they evaluate the bound. This is analogous to including a test point in the training set. Another version of this error would be adding a kernel centered on each test point to a kernel density estimator prior to evaluating test set NLL. In this case, obviously the best kernel has variance 0 and assigns arbitrarily high likelihood to the test data.

<comment><USER11> Interesting, thx!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does GPT mean? I assume it is not about partition tables (GUID Parition Table), it has something to do with NLP, but besides that it is hard to find what does this acronym mean.

<comment><USER14> Supposedly it stands for "Generative Pretrained Transformer", but nobody ever expands the acronym; it's a language model, originally released by OpenAI and announced at [https://openai.com/blog/language- unsupervised/](https://openai.com/blog/language-unsupervised/) and [https://openai.com/blog/better-language- models/](https://openai.com/blog/better-language-models/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be cool if there was a platform to crowd source compute resources to train stuff like this so that regular people (without 7 figure budgets) can have access to these models which are becoming increasingly out of reach to the general public.

<comment><USER16> Here is a recent paper (disclaimer: I am the first author) named "Learning@home" which proposes something along these lines. Basically, we develop a system that allows you to train a network with thousands of "experts" distributed across hundreds or more of consumer-grade PCs. You don't have to fit 700GB of parameters on a single machine and there is significantly less network delay as for synchronous model parallel training. The only thing you sacrifice is the guarantee that all the batches will be processed by all required experts.

You can read it on ArXiv [https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04013v1](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04013v1) or browse the code here: [https://github.com/learning-at- home/hivemind](https://github.com/learning-at-home/hivemind). It's not ready for widespread use yet, but the core functionality is stable and you can see what features we are working on now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Newbie question: If/when models the size of GPT3 are released to the general public, will average people going to be able to run them on their PCs, as they can with GPT2? Or will that basically be impossible now without expensive specialty hardware?

<comment><USER18> The big one is 175 billion parameters. With your hardware's usual 32 bit floats, that's a 700GB model. You won't be using the big one for a while.

<comment><USER5> This one uses FP16, so you just need to have a server with >350GB of RAM. 512GB of DDR4 would set you back around two grand. A total cost of a server for this would probably be under $5k. Comparable to a good gaming rig.

<comment><USER19> A TPU can allocate 300GB without OOMing on the TPU's CPU. That's tantalizingly close to 350GB. And 300GB + 8 cores * 8GB = 364GB.

It'll take some _work_ , but I think I can come up with something clever to dump samples on a TPUv2-8. i.e. the free one that comes with Colab.

Realistically, I don't think OpenAI will release the model. Why would they? And I'm not sure they'd dare use "it might be dangerous" as an excuse.

<comment><USER5> Have you (or anyone) tried running GPT-2 inference in INT8 precision? Perhaps worth looking at one of these efforts: [https://www.google.com/search?q=running+transformer+in+int8&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=running+transformer+in+int8&oq=running+transformer+in+int8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > it would represent a kind of non-linguistic general intelligence ability > which would be remarkable to find in a language model

As a relative outsider to this field, I don't really see the stark line between natural language and general intelligence implied by this statement. Language is just abstractions encoded in symbols, and general intelligence is just the ability to construct and manipulate abstractions. Seems reasonable to think that these are two sides of the same coin.

Put another way, natural language is the product of general intelligence.

<comment><USER21> I think the line you'd see is that there exists some task where the language- based model suddenly lacks the ability to perform the task despite the fact that it "should."

I'd conjecture that this might include something like describing where places are in relation to each other, and asking it to describe a route. (Not an NLP expert, but work with AI folks; this task chosen as an example because it seems like something you'd want a planner for rather than anything MLful.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the main disappointment is that we humans aren't that special when a brute-forced scalable transformer is getting into our ballpark. We have also recently seen how Open AI + MS were able to use a GPT-variation for automated text-description-to-python-code generation, and utilizing something like GPT-3 in that task might render many swengs obsolete fairly soon.

</comment><comment><USER23> I could not disagree more with this post. To summarize what the author is unhappy with:

1) "It's another big jump in the number, but the underlying architecture hasn't changed much... it's pretty annoying and misleading to call it "GPT-3." GPT-2 was (arguably) a fundamental advance, because it demonstrated the power of way bigger transformers when people didn't know about that power. Now everyone knows, so it's the furthest thing from a fundamental advance."

2) "The "zero-shot" learning they demonstrated in the paper – stuff like "adding tl;dr after a text and treating GPT-2′s continuation thereafter as a 'summary'" – were weird and goofy and not the way anyone would want to do these things in practice... They do better with one task example than zero (the GPT-2 paper used zero), but otherwise it's a pretty flat line; evidently there is not too much progressive "learning as you go" here."

3) "Coercing it to do well on standard benchmarks was valuable (to me) only as a flamboyant, semi-comedic way of pointing this out, kind of like showing off one's artistic talent by painting (but not painting especially well) with just one's non-dominant hand."

4) "On Abstract reasoning..So, if we're mostly seeing #1 here, this is not a good demo of few-shot learning the way the authors think it is."

\</comment><comment>--- My response:

1) The fact that we can get so much improvement out of something so "mundane" should be cause for celebration, rather than disappointment. It means that we have found general methods that scale well and a straightforward recipe for brute-forcing our way through solutions we haven't solved before.

At this point it becomes not a question of possibility, but of engineering investment. Isn't that the dream of an AI researcher? To find something that works so well you can stop ``innovating'' on the math stuff?

2) Are we reading the same plot? I see an improvement after >16 shot.

I believe the point of that setup is to illustrate the fact that any model trained to make sequential decisions can be regarded as "learning to learn", because the arbitrary computation in between sequential decisions can incorporate "adaptive feedback". It blurs the semantics between "task learning" and "instance learning"

3) This is a fair point actually, and perhaps now that models are doing better (no thanks to people who spurn big compute), we should propose better metrics to capture general language understanding.

4) It's certainly possible, but you come off as pretty confident for someone who hasn't tried running the model and trying to test its abilities.

Who is the author, anyway? Are _they_ capable of building systems like GPT-3?

<comment><USER24> I think we should not compare if anybody is capable or not. Here the most of the work is done by azure engineers and none of them are mention in the paper. So no even open ai can't do it without azure infrastructure.

<comment><USER25> OpenAI wrote a new GPU kernel to do this. It's a collaborative work.</comment></comment></comment>