ReactOS: Rebuilding Microsoft Windows from the ground up, fully open-source - <AUTHOR> http://www.reactos.org/about-reactos <comment><USER2> I definitely admire their moxie, but I have to say that it surprises me that the developers keep on working on this project year-after-year.

There was a time many years ago when I was hopeful that ReactOS would end up providing us with an open version of windows to help break their stranglehold. But considering the ways the industry has changed since the project launched in 1998, I just don't think there is much demand for an operating system like this anymore.

I would have lost motivation for this project a decade ago, but I still wish the devs the best of luck.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you're looking at the project the right way.

Think about it like FreeDOS. FreeDOS facilitates running DOS software on modern hardware, and by its open nature, it can continue to evolve and make DOS software runnable on the next generation of hardware.

Think about 10, 15, 20 years from now, and all that software written for XP. That is where ReactOS comes in. A sustainable, maintainable platform for running XP-era software on hardware systems yet to come.

At least, that's how I see the project, as someone who is neither involved nor a close follower of it.

<comment><USER4> Why is that a good thing for the world? Serious question. Why should we enable businesses that don't want to develop modern software? Doesn't this hold back the world in terms of productivity and software quality?

<comment><USER5> The side of the coin: Why are we wasting time re-writing software that is already done? How is that progress?

<comment><USER6> Because the already-done software (e.g. XP) has serious issues; namely, even if you have obtained it legally, you can't legally install and run it without the manufacturer's _explicit_ consent (activation servers _will_ go down some time after EOL - after that, you can either go illegal and crack your copy, or you can't use it at all). In other words, it's timebombed. (Note that I'm not passing judgement on this - just stating the existence of such condition.)

For a home user, this is a non-issue (as "meh, just get a new OS" is also an option, due to commodity hardware); for an organization, this is big trouble (as neither "so we'll use the OS illegally, whatever" or "so we'll throw away the equipment we now can't use" is an option).

<comment><USER7> Or Microsoft could issue a hotfix to remove the license check. Adobe has such unlocked version of CS2.

<comment><USER6> Which is something which might happen, or perhaps not, and is entirely under MS's control and discretion.

IMNSHO, this is a very unlikely scenario - the (misguided) reaction of the general public would be something like "oh look, XP had its antipiracy protection disabled by MS, which means it's now free to use; who needs Win8 anyway?" I can't imagine MS essentially undermining one of its core cash cows (Windows) anytime in the near future, especially as the "meh, just get a new computer with new Windows" line has proven effective in most cases. Also, as I have yet to see this to happen to any deprecated and truly obsolete MS product (Altair BASIC? MS-DOS? Windows 3.11?), I don't see that happening to a product which is anything but disused.

<comment><USER8> It is easy for me to imagine them doing it, if they wait enough time, that most new hardware has no XP drivers anymore, and most programs/games depend on higher versions of windows APIs, the general public will not care about the then obsolete XP, just like they do not care about DOS, or Windows 3.11 and so on.

I agree that this is an act of kindness, that can not be depended on and it is entirely under MS control when/if it will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Successful software lasts decades. Yeah, that accounting system might run on rickety Windows XP and developed on PowerBuilder 0.2 but it sustains a multi million dollar operations without a hitch.

There are tons of happy software running on old operating systems. It takes years to depreciate your software assets. It makes no sense to keep redeveloping all your software just because Ember 2.0 and Node.js (asm.js) are out.

ReactOS is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just like Windows!: [http://screencast.com/t/tWlRhQ3z](http://screencast.com/t/tWlRhQ3z) Edit: I know it's alpha and I still think it's cool even after that BSOD.

</comment><comment><USER11> The fun thing about this is that it is allowing diving directly into an approximate implementation of the API, without having to locate the specific Old New Thing post or other such article on an obscure function.

I've seen some great write-ups were people have done just this when investigating bugs and strange behaviours, it's rather cool!

</comment><comment><USER12> Downloaded official VirtualBox image and ran. This is total immersion, just splendid. [https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-DL6-mRptqHM/UiMTf_TCY9I/A...](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-DL6-mRptqHM/UiMTf_TCY9I/AAAAAAAAUco/bD4AFt2Kyp0/s640/2013-09-01-125524_1280x800_scrot.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Seems to be disk related - maybe try another emulated controller?

<comment><USER12> I am not an expert in virtualbox, but what is the point of images then..

<comment><USER13> It's unfortunate you're having trouble. I'm running the latest (beta) version of VirtualBox and it seems to be fine for me.

A VM is not magic, it's emulating real hardware under there - a PIIX4 IDE controller by the look of the settings. You may have better luck picking another option in Settings under Storage.

<comment><USER12> Oh well, I have no chance to test this, since ReactOS magically began to start. Thanks for the conversation, anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One of the very nicest things about the ReactOS project is their build chain -- you can download one project and have a very nice toolchain for building open source software targeting the windows platform, with very little fuss.

Consider the pain of getting a functional Cygwin system able to target non-GNU libraries.

Also, it's just plain fun to use the ReactOS desktop to look at your own desktop looking back at ReactOS ... and drag the ReactOS window down so it does the whole infinite mirror thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> They should put this on Github and start using Git.

I would love to browse through the code easily - as I am sure many others would.

I think that would likely increase the likelihood that people participate.

<comment><USER16> What's interesting is that the screenshots they have showing how to check out the code using SVN has context menu options for Git:

[http://www.reactos.org/development/source- control](http://www.reactos.org/development/source-control)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have kept half an eye on ReactOS for a number of years. I think it has potential when it gets to the point where it starts having Distros like Linux. I have installed Windows often enough to know how much work it is to turn a Stock windows machine into something tolerable. Things like Ninight try to serve that need as best as possible but being able to spin it into an actual distro would mean you could potentially make a Windows that was truly targeted to what users wanted intead of pushing Microsoft's technology du jour.

</comment><comment><USER18> There were questions a day or so ago about running Docker on Windows.

Would it be possible to build a react OS based system that supported running Win32/64 based applications in an isolated environment on Windows or POSIX?

For instance, running a CSRSS and all child processes with a binary Registry.

</comment><comment><USER19> The goal of creating an open sourced version of Windows has always intrigued me. But I can't help but wonder if the time would be better spent working on WINE itself which at least works a whole lot better but needs more resources than trying to build a new operating system mimicking Windows.

I believe this project has been around since 1998/1999 and I admire their determination. But if you want Windows, just use Windows. What I and many other Linux users have been wanting for years is a way to run basic Windows applications within Linux.

Wine bridges this gap somewhat and for many apps it works well. My dream is to see Adobe CS6 running on Linux flawlessly to the point people can ditch Windows completely.

<comment><USER20> Older versions work, what is so important in the latest version that you can't use the old? How did you get any work done say, 2 to 3 years ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The best part of this project is that they've provided a way to compile and run a Windows clone _on unix_

<comment><USER22> That is more akin to the wine project, which they share code with. ReactOS is not UNIX/linux/*nix in any meaningful way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ReactOS will probably be one of the rare convenient ways to run legacy software for Windows in the future.

<comment><USER24> What, an XP, Vista or 7 VM is not going to be good enough anymore?

<comment><USER23> Try to get a license key in 50 years. ;)

<comment><USER6> Even assuming you could somehow, legally, procure a functional one, try to activate it ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think this is a good use of time.

All we need is the Win32 subsystem, I see little use for other parts of the project. The two major pushed besides Windows compatibility are hardware drivers that aren't supported on Linux and supposed performance gains by removing a layer of abstraction. The later is rarely an issue and it can be solved at a later time.

The driver thing is absurd because unless the OS is 100% identical, they will not be compatible causing random crashes. Imagine how unstable your system will be if you are running a driver that wasn't tested on your system? I don't want buggy drivers form 2003 on my computer! If this was my requirement I would install Windows XP.

This project has the functionality of a wrapper for Wine, why not just wrap Wine into something more useful like a Linux?

More time on Wine and less time on this.

<comment><USER26> Win32 is the ugliest part of Windows, to me. I like seeing the lower level "native" NT bits being re-implemented. (I think NT itself is a pretty elegant OS. I'd love to see a "distribution" of NT with a POSIX personality and no Win32.)

<comment><USER27> Oddly enough, as someone who was fluent in SoftICE, I almost cringed when NT surpassed Win32. I love Windows 7 now...the interface is second to none and I don't have to reinstall the OS every 3 months, but sometimes I miss the days where if a program didn't do what I wanted, I could have it grovelling at my feet within 30 minutes.

This was great for either sniffing out serial numbers or getting unlimited health in games. I know there are good NT debuggers around nowadays, but nothing really beats loading in at ring0 on Win32 =].

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As i said higher , i'am a huge fan of gaming culture, concept & game design and with project like that we still be able to play od games originating from the 90s. If you want to be a game designer you have to play to old games.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wine depend on too many microsoft components for games, sometimes it's difficult to find the good component on microsoft website. And if microsoft stop giving that component ....

</comment><comment><USER29> can i run .exe application in here?

<comment><USER30> Yes, but it might not work.

<comment><USER31> So just like Windows then.

<comment><USER32> I don't know about you, but I have much, much better luck running executables under Windows than say Linux or OS X.

Microsoft puts a ton of work into keeping backwards compatibility. You can watch the YouTube Video[0] of someone upgrading through every Windows version (well, most?). OS X users have to figure out if they need that Intel or PPC binary, or maybe just the larger universal one and call it a day. Then there's not being able to run any of their older PPC-only apps once Apple removed Rosetta from OS X.

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14)

<comment><USER33> Guess what. OS X users upgrade their system much faster than win-users. That leads to developers not wasting time to support old OS X and focus on the new one, with new APIs.

> OS X users have to figure out if they need that Intel or PPC binary, or > maybe just the larger universal one and call it a day.

Whoa, how is life in 2006?

>Then there's not being able to run any of their older PPC-only apps once Apple removed Rosetta from OS X.

I would like an example of the app that you absolutely want to run.

> Microsoft puts a ton of work into keeping backwards compatibility.

Usually MS fails at it. Upgrading to win 8 made me furious because apps stopped working. I still remember time when I had to dual-boot win 98 and xp in order to play pre-xp games.

<comment><USER34> Which programs didn't work for you under Windows 8? Just curious, I haven't hit one yet.

<comment><USER35> Most excellent old games that used to work fine on XP don't work anymore on Windows 8 (Stronghold, Thief, Warlords battlecry 2...) or only after long hours of tinkering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> We know. ReactOS has been around for many years.

</comment><comment><USER37> theyve been stuck in alpha for like a decade... by the time Windows UI becomes futuristic they will still have windows 95 UI... ReactOS in my opinion is nothing but a hobby i wouldnt use it for free even if Windows costs 2000$</comment>


From developer to entrepreneur: Learning to build an indie startup - <AUTHOR> https://twomakers.io/two-makers-one-journey/ <comment><USER2> > "My biggest fear before every launch was the reaction of the people"

Today I was looking at a project one person posted on the internet. A labor of work, probably a week. One of the few comments was "Is this real? [...] This is dumb and useless."

Imagine being that person, spending a lot of time crafting something, even just for fun, being told that. You probably won't do anything like that ever again.

The best thing as a maker is finding a welcoming community and a place where even if you fail, it's not the end of the world, tomorrow is a new day and you can make something new that will succeed.

This post is so inspiring, I joined your newsletter to follow the journey!

<comment><USER3> Is one person really going to take you out of course if you are doing something you want? In that case you have to figure out what you really want. Getting in shape people criticising gave the added fuel to succeed and storm ahead

<comment><USER4> Well, yeah.

Some people have a low self intertia. It takes very little external preasure to change their perception of them selves. They can't just "fix" that. Many don't even know they could "fix" it.

It's like a parent telling a kid they suck at somthing. It has a lasting effect on the persons perception of them selves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a solopreneur myself I think the hardest part is maintaining and improving what you've built.

For makers the rush dies pretty quickly once the idea is validated (with praise, press or downloads) or invalidated (nobody cares).

Unfortunately, the journey only truly begins after that point and everything upto it really doesn't matter because even if your are on the frontpage of HN/PH it's not that big of a deal after a week.. But doing support, handling feedback, doing the boring stuff like content marketing, seo, optimizing conversions and worst of all waiting is the part that matters. The stuff that really makes your product incrementally into a business but which you can't see happen (like a flower bloom).

</comment><comment><USER6> I think it's amazing the impact Pieter (and others) have had on solopreneurs and bootstrapped startups. He's become a reference point for what's possible when you release quickly (and publicly) and put your project front and centre in social media. Disrupting Agile by replacing weekly release procedures with several per day and broadcasting it all on Twitch. Disrupting customer interviews by talking to people directly on Twitter and getting feedback on features there and then.

Pieter's work is great because he applies everything that everyone says you should do but in the most simple and effective ways.

</comment><comment><USER7>
       France is a country where failure is a taboo. People see
       it as unwise to start anything and will try to discourage you

Actually, once you have the "fuck you" attitude, this kind of environment pushes you in the right direction...

</comment><comment><USER8> > "Sometimes it's easier and reassuring to avoid the reaction of others by > postponing your deadline."

So true. I suffer from that.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Indie startup" is an oxymoron

</comment><comment><USER10> > France is a country where failure is a taboo. People see it as unwise to > start anything and will try to discourage you.

Maybe part of the reason there is no "Silicon Valley" of Europe is cultural? This attitude will have a chilling effect on anything that requires risk...

<comment><USER11> This is definitely the reason. France specifically makes it very difficult to start a business, but even in other places such as Germany or the UK, it seems like any attitude towards independence is always met with discouragement.

<comment><USER12> And yet, many European countries have higher entrepreneurship rates than the US. [1]

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-w...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think- were-the-most-entrepreneurial-country-in-the-world-not-so-fast/263102/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Web designer who codes, or designer + front-end coder? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to hire a web designer right now, and in my ad I specified that I was looking for someone who had a strong aesthetic design sense AND who knew had to code (HTML, CSS, hopefully a bit of JS, etc.).
Most of the responses I've gotten are from designers who can mock up designs in Photoshop but can't / don't really code.
Am I being unrealistic in my quest for this person? Should I instead try to find a designer with strong visual skills and pair them up with a front-end coder who can implement their vision?
I also have to confess to a personal bias, that a designer who can't code is just a graphic designer pretending to be something they are not -- and that a true web designer who understands the medium will know how to code it up themselves. I'm not sure this bias is valid though.
I'm just curious if any of you can share your experiences with web designers in this regard or other opinions you might have on the subject. <comment><USER2> My experience is that you'll find more front end developers that bridge the gap than designers.

Personally, I'm frustrated that the majority of designers won't pick up such simple things as XHTML and CSS when developers are expected to know such a vast array of languages, conventions, and photoshop to boot.

I think you'd have an easier time if you specified you're looking for a frontend developer with skills in design. Just ask for work samples, I'm sure they're up to par.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been designing for 11+ years, as well as learning code (HTML/CSS/Javascript/JAVA/ROR). I do consider myself a ui designer first, and a developer second - but that hasn't stopped me from trying to learn as much as possible so I can build my vision (nothing is more satisfying that designing what you want, and then making it work - front end and back end).

That said, people like me do exist - more so as entrepreneurs though. I have met a few designers who know at a minimum HTML & CSS though. I wouldn't even look at designers who don't know that much.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wouldn't be confident that a designer who can't code in HTML/CSS would understand the restrictions of the medium. I've seen a lot of great "website designs" done in Photoshop that wouldn't make terrible websites due to load speed, structure, or other unconsidered elements.

I'd say the answer somewhat depends on the specific candidates and your budget. There's rockstar designer/coders out there and there's good designers and coders.

Try hiring a front-end coder who does their mockups in Photoshop. That could narrow out serial wireframers (wireframes are good, just not when used to build a design) and help you find someone who's the best of both worlds.

Maybe you're also getting a lot of non-coders because of the location you listed the job as well. Try posting a job here on HN, asking for a referral to a good designer or a more established "design+coding" marketplace.

<comment><USER5> > I've seen a lot of great "website designs" done in Photoshop that wouldn't > make terrible websites due to load speed, structure, or other unconsidered > elements.

Agree. We've had designers deliver good looking stuff to us that ended up being unusable because they put a lot of time into delivering what they thought we needed instead of just reading the instructions. Tech knowledge helps eliminate communication problems.

The approach that works for me is keeping things simple and only adding graphic detail when it improves the look of the service. It helps to give developers examples of existing graphics to work with when you want a certain look. When you're looking for something very, very specific you can get an outside designer to put things together. I'd be surprised if you don't get responses from this post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think you're being unrealistic, and I think your quest is worthy. I work with a guy who fits your description: he designs screens and then implements them in HTML and CSS. And it's awesome. When those skills are in a single brain, the result is interfaces that feel native to the web (and not like pretty pictures that were sliced up and made clickable).

But these guys are indeed tough to find. It might be helpful to advertise for two positions -- web designer and front-end developer -- and in each description mention the other skills you expect applicants to have. Most people I think will naturally be stronger in one area than the other, or will just self-identify with one job title or the other for whatever reason. Framing the position in a couple of different ways might help you cast a wider net.

</comment><comment><USER7> You're better off finding a skilled developer who also does design rather than vice-versa -- it will be easier for you to judge his design skills (which are his secondary) right off the bat from his work samples than it will be to judge his development skills.

My opinion is biased though, as I am a developer myself. I think intelligent developers have enough skills to pick up Photoshop/Illustrator and hack together great designs, granted you give them guidance, inspiration, and a few examples of styles that you dig.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think you're right, those people are graphic designers/designers. Don't expect them to code, they won't know how.

Front-End Developer/Designer better suits the job task.

I started out as a designer and naturally made my foray into to css and html. Now I rarely even do mock ups in Photoshop.. and just start hand coding the css.

But if you're looking for killer UI design, Hire a Designer who does nothing else. You need a specialist for the best work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hire just a designer, than have me do the conversion into HTML/CSS/JS. Soup :)</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension showing comments on Hacker News for an article - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/decfpoogjcefcgolalhpigfcofidngjk <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool, I could see it being used mainly when your thread gets pretty filled up.

It might be hard the catch the users that could benefit from it at the right time, no?

I wish you the best with it!</comment>


Why Mobile First Is Outdated - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/intercom-inside/why-mobile-first-is-outdated-f10a3dc357bd <comment><USER2> I disagree. I want the same access to features regardless of the device, screen size or input type (within reason).

I don't need or want developers to figure out which screen or device I should be using for a task.

Yes some devices can do things better at some things. But that's NOT an excuse to withhold a feature that's a reason to make the feature work better on said device.

I don't care how hard it is. I don't care what device the dev prefers. Make it scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Totally agree. Screen = f(Use case)</comment>


Analysis – Why Google is now a better competitor to Slack, WhatsApp and Zoom? - <AUTHOR> https://cnc.substack.com/p/coming-together-of-googles-communication <comment><USER3> At this point, google can have all the features it wants, and their products can be as amazing as anything, but I'm personally wary. If they established a couple billion dollar endowment for their products to make sure it can't get cancelled or created some sort of binding legal contract saying they wouldn't dump it and cause chaos for everyone using it, that would be more meaningful. I can count on slack and zoom to fight to keep their services alive since that's their entire business. Facebook seems to have treated WhatsApp and Instagram reasonably well so far. But I'm not in the mood to go through the hassle of setting up yet another google chat service, convincing friends to join (allo's gonna be great! This smart reply thing is so cool!) only to end up seeing it cancelled so quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I think, when it comes to messaging alone, Google has a steep climb to make for sure. But I also think that they are trying to progress towards their goal of ambient computing. They are trying to make sure they control as many touch points as possible which enables them to better integrate the software & hardware together to achieve things like voice assistant interaction (e.g hey Google, send a message), AI integration (e.g smart replies) and seamlessly using different Google products (quickly create a doc in messages or chat). This is a long term vision though; companies may happen over time which are better than Google at this.

<comment><USER4> Aren't they at the same time better than any other cloud provider to deliver messaging with Firebase?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reputational baggage Google carries from decades of failed/killed social/chat products is too big for anyone to take anything they release seriously.

The only real question is will they kill Meet or Duo first?

<comment><USER6> Like WhatsApp/Facebook and Zoom don't have more reputations baggage?

<comment><USER5> Not like Google. Google make some really neat stuff that people start using only to have it killed for no reason - especially chat apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone tell me why large corps do this ? Compete with every new product or buy companies instead of sticking to the core product. I like Slack and all but if Slack started implementing Google Docs I would be surprised.

<comment><USER3> Two things, ecosystem and diversification. For an ecosystem, build a suite of products that all work together so you solve a complete set of problems and lock customers in. Anyone can easily switch to a new video call provider, but it's far harder to do that when that provider is linked to your email and your calendar and so on. And diversification is just that - dont put all your eggs in one basket. Grow the business. AWS is immensely profitable and has nothing to do with buying books online, but amazon is a stronger business because of it. And if you just stick to your core product, you'll find yourself going the way of blockbuster or Kodak.

And for the slack point - Really? I would be surprised if they didn't. Collaboration is pretty much the core of slack and they already let you share documents, making it possible to edit them seems like an obvious next step.

<comment><USER7> That makes sense. But why diversity needlessly ? Isn't google's core search suffering ? Red Bull / Coke don't diversify but they are not exactly ecosystems either.

<comment><USER3> Coca cola is really diversified. Just because they're all drinks doesn't mean that they haven't diversified across sectors of the refreshment industry - <USER2> depends on how you define a core product. Google sees themselves as "organizing the worlds' information" which is a core that lets them do pretty much whatever they want. I don't know if they've done anything as offbrand as Coca Cola purchasing Columbia Pictures, which was a thing they actually did for some reason. And a counterpoint to red bull and coke is pretty much every other consumer packaged good company out there, like P&G or Pepsi, who are also the companies that might find themselves aquiring red bull once the founders move on.

And in terms of diversifying needlessly - obviously, nobody doing the diversifying thinks its needless. Everyone is convinced that it's positive NPV, lowers overall risk, allows them to unlock "synergies," etc etc etc. There's been a swing away from that as conglomerates like GE are dismantling, but especially if you get financial analysists involved, it's nto hard to come up with a model that shows diversifying will lower your risk.

And also, in case this isnt obvious, the most important thing here is more money equals good. If your bonus is based on hitting a sales target, why not acquire a company to boost division revenues and meet that target? And if you can make money (or think you can make money) by entering a new business area, why wouldn't you? Google doesn't see search as suffering or think their moonshots are the reason for that, otherwise they'd be redirecting investment towards saving their cash cow. They might be wrong, but they think this will make more money.

<comment><USER7> You are right. This thinking is finance thinking as opposed to product thinking. It seems corporations are acting as hedge funds once they hit this stage of quasi monopoly / oligopoly.

In reality it's just squashing the competition and increasing sales numbers. It's just a quirk of the law that it seems legal. I literally can't think of one silicon valley acquisition that actually ended in synergy.

<comment><USER3> They probably literally brought in hedge fund people to be their CFO. And it's not hard to hire McKinsey to make a slide deck backing up your strategy to acquire a company for whatever reason.

Interestingly, actual hedge funds tend to not like companies that act like hedge funds. They want companies that are focused on one area since they think they're better at diversifying their portfolios than the management at these portfolio companies. They'd rather have fine grained control over what markets/products/industries/regions they have exposure to, and you cant do that with these messy conglomerates. That's why fiscal discipline being imposed at Google looked like separating business units and providing insights into the individual business units of the company, so even if investors in alphabet can't control what alphabet diversifies into, they can at least understand and evaluate it.

<comment><USER7> That's probably it, the CFO. I've mostly been sold on Jeremy Corbyn's ideas on worker cooperatives. I like open source based economies, they seem to encourage innovation and are fairly similar.

The concept of hedge fund is completely fine as well. Messy conglomerates though! Ughh it's like a code refactor gone wrong 90% of the time. I guess I like my naive capitalism of build a product, sell, make money and keep everyone happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think Google Meet will probably continue to gain traction and might eventually kill Zoom.

* integration with Google calendar, private Google accounts and GSuite

* no problems handling large numbers of participants

</comment><comment><USER9> "Analysis" of half a page.</comment>


Show HN: Sort and Filter Brown CS Courses - <AUTHOR> https://macmccann.github.io/brown-cs-courses/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! This is part of a course project my group did at Brown University attempting to create a better system with which to find Computer Science courses. Part of the project was to post the website on a forum for feedback, so we decided to use Hacker News. Let us know what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> Why not try implementing the pathway and hour filters on the current UI from Cabs? It sounds very smart and should be easy to add to the existing UI.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea! We think that the current product offered by Courses@Brown is finalized however, so we're not sure they would be open to changing the software like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there a way for the users to leave comments on any of the courses? I think it'd be cool to have reviews on each course too!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good suggestion. We'd have to figure out how to authenticate the users first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks good. Are there any plans in the future to build this out more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! There are plans to expand this project and several other related ideas into a more extensive and usable tool to help Brown students plan their courses over four years.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hinoki.shop – Japanese Knives hand-forged by master bladesmiths - <AUTHOR> https://hinoki.shop/ <comment><AUTHOR> Over the past year I've been working on a labour of love, Hinoki. My goal is to create 30 - as close to perfectly possible - products that you need in your life and that last a lifetime, ideally encouraging people to consume less.

I'd really appreciate any feedback or thoughts you have on the site and the first product, a chef's knife I've designed and developed with a family of Japanese Master Bladesmiths who have been hand-forging steel swords and blades for over 100 years. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is beautiful.</comment>


Major Meltdown at Yahoo As More Top Execs To Depart - <AUTHOR> http://kara.allthingsd.com/20100929/exclusive-major-meltdown-at-yahoo-as-more-top-execs-to-depart-including-u-s-head-hilary-schneider/ <comment><USER2> This is frustrating to watch. Yahoo is a terrific company with some amazing people. And they know how to execute. YUI / YDN / Boss / Flickr / Hadoop / etc.

But they lack any sort of strategy or vision. Wall Street has assigned $0 to the entire value of Yahoo! as a solitary business unit. They should have sold to MSFT but they didn't and now they need to move on.

What they need is to gut the top, promote from within and act like a startup again with a true leader who is willing to think long-term and galvanize the troops. The people at Yahoo! want leadership, and they want a strategy and they want to succeed. But until they get that from the top, they will continue to leave.

The only thing they have going for them in their favor is that they have lost so much value, that taking a gamble to restart the engine isn't that big of a gamble at all.

<comment><USER3> Nobody says "I need to yahoo that". And it's a big problem.

Yeah, all the products you listed are cool, but they are not worth $19 billion (current YHOO market cap.).

<comment><USER2> A lot of people say "I use Yahoo!" Yahoo also has a ton of partner traffic that represents a major chunk of their revenue which is never under the Yahoo! name.

You can have a strategy that doesn't care if people use you as a verb or think of you as a search engine, but you still need to have a strategy. Yahoo! has none.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yahoo is on life support.

Realize this. Kill it. Move on.

They should drop most of their employees and run the company on life support returning capital to shareholders as it dies. They've missed the boat to sell it and now the guys at the top know the writing is on the wall and are bailing before it tarnishes their careers.

No it's not going to be popular but what else can they do.

<comment><USER5> Yup. And yet, they're still hiring. I was surprised when earlier this week I was contacted by a Yahoo recruiter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't really surprise me: Yahoo has no vision, its leader is a business wonk (rather than a product person) and they've given away any of their assets that had any value (ie their search market share to Bing).

<comment><USER7> The leadership knows how to move their peas around on the plate but they don't know how to cook.</comment></comment>


Someone's first Attempt at Material Design in WPF and C# is really nice - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/HxBWJ

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually a reddit post, but i was really suprised at how good the guy did it... He's like only 19.... [https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/3ggyfd/my_first_att...](https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/3ggyfd/my_first_attempt_at_material_design_in_wpf_c/)</comment>


New Book: Clojure Algorithms and Data Structures Cookbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.clojure.tn/posts/20-08-2015-clojure-data-algos-book.html

<comment><USER2> I've always been a huge fan of Algorithms, (I was a TA in college for the course). All of the algorithms in our course were imperative. I'm interested to see how Clojure approaches those in a way that's idiomatic to Clojure.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks cool. I started going through _Algorithms in C_[0] a while back and implementing things in Clojure to gain some experience. This book looks like it does something similar, but does it idiomatically from the get-go.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Computer-Science-Robert- Sed...](http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Computer-Science-Robert- Sedgewick/dp/0201514257/)

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks interesting, I'm hoping it's not completely introductory like 'Living Clojure' (takeaway: don't trust amazon reviews). Is there any early draft discount? Like Manning's MEAP?

</comment><comment><USER5> I picked it up, and am quite excited so far. The algorithms are much more varied and interesting than normal fare for an A&D book.

</comment><comment><USER6> The book I want to read today is "Data Science with Clojure" updated to use Ashley Madison data-sets.

<comment><USER7> Its a MySQL dump. Surely SQL would be the first choice for analysis on them.

<comment><USER6> I stand corrected. It will be an update to Joe Celko's "SQL for smarties": "SQL for voyeurs"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> nice!</comment>


Ask HN: How do I become a world class automation engineer? - <AUTHOR> as titled really, or maybe a better question would be, are there examples of world class automation engineers and if so, who are they? <comment><USER2> Are you based in Dublin? I have twenty years experience as a highly technical tester. I can help you find a meaningful path. Contact details in my profile!

<comment><AUTHOR> not Dublin myself, further up North but I'll get in touch, thank you for the kind offer!

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to it! Shout here if you have trouble getting in touch.

Testing can be a satisfying and fun career choice, but in order to grow you need to find a way through the thickets of self-promotion by high-profile consultants and forests of low-quality discussion. There are isolated island communities of folks trying to push the craft forward, but they're doing it without much current or historical context. You need to build your own synthesis. Frankly the field is a mess and it's no wonder testing is held in such low regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What kind of automation are you talking about? Test automation?

<comment><USER4> Yes, based on the user's previous AskHNs it's about test/QA automation.

<comment><USER5> Is it disappointing that OP thinks only web testing requires/uses automation engineering?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions there?

The reason I'm targeting automation is that it tends to be done really badly in most companies. At the moment I feel I do it pretty well but always seek to improve. At the moment I don't feel like I'm improving much and want to avoid things staying static for long. Therefore I'm trying to re-evaluate the basics or gain new insight and get back on track

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> what do you think a world class automation engineer does?

<comment><AUTHOR> Improve testability throughout applications by working with their team, setup and maintain test frameworks (hopefully improving them over time), determine what tests should be automated and those that shouldn't, write automated tests, coach team members on writing automated tests and testing in general, add new tools/processes to improve testing, investigate the application in- depth to find risk areas.

I'd be curious if HN think the above includes things that shouldn't be there or is missing a number of items? I'd be curious what the 80/20 for an automation engineer looks like?

<comment><USER7> I think there's a change occurring recently (last 3-4 years), especially in the larger tech companies with respect to this role. There are still programmers dedicated to writing and maintaining the automation infrastructure but most of the test are expected to be written by feature developers.

Understanding the build system and devops in general is important because if the teams you work with use continuous integration then the test systems interfaces with it.

I work on a team dedicated to making build and automated test reporting better (see my profile) so obviously I have an interest here but I think great reporting is often overlooked and it's crazy because all of the effort involved in automation and writing tests is only valuable if everyone can see the benefits and resolve failures immediately.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Common Cold+mental work = likelier to experience mental fatigue? - <AUTHOR> I have made an observation that suggests I might need to take a pause from mentally stressing work while having a cold but I'm not sure. I usually think of colds as can work 100% but stay away from gym. What is your experience and attitudes regarding limiting mental work to prevent exhaustion during sickness? <comment><USER2> I always felt like my IQ had dropped significantly when I had a cold, as mental tasks were much harder. Also assumed that everyone else felt the same. See also [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915911...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159112001547) for some research.</comment>


Science does advance one funeral at a time - <AUTHOR> https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/science-really-does-advance-one-funeral-at-a-time-study-suggests/3010961.article <comment><AUTHOR> I searched for the quote because it came up in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225) on how a "cabal" of believers in the amyloid beta hypothesis shut down research on alternate explanations of Alzheimer's disease. And found it independently interesting that the phenomena has been demonstrated to be common across many subfields of biology.

<comment><USER2> See also Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution. It's the book that popularised the term 'paradigm shift'.</comment></comment>


Freedom of Information needs your help - <AUTHOR>

On the eve of his retirement, Senator Rockefeller is single-handedly killing a FOIA reform bill that otherwise has near unanimous support. http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/05/bipartisan-foia-reform-is-on-the-ropes-and-sen-rockefeller-is-throwing-the-punches/<p>If you can, please help demand an answer from @SenRockefeller before it's too late. <comment><USER2> Clickable link: [http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/05/bipartisan- foi...](http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/12/05/bipartisan-foia-reform- is-on-the-ropes-and-sen-rockefeller-is-throwing-the-punches/)</comment>


Mobile data shows which European countries took lockdown seriously - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/mobile-data-shows-which-european-countries-took-lockdown-seriously-138758 <comment><USER2> It rather shows that how people treated the lockdown has a inverse correlation to its fatalities. In countries with a 0.2% fatality people don't take it as serious despite the massive threat campaigns. In countries with a 1% fatality people were really afraid.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any site that throws a full-screen notification in my face, the second the page loads, gets closed just as quickly.

[Just sayin']</comment>


Belgian ISPs Ordered To Block The Pirate Bay - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/belgian-isps-ordered-to-block-the-pirate-bay-111004/

<comment><USER2> echo "nameserver 126.96.36.199" >> /etc/resolv.conf

problem?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, windows doesn't have a resolv.conf. And on OSX that file is only there for unix applications and it's overwritten when you change networks. Native Mac apps don't use resolv.conf, they use the system apis.

<comment><USER4> <https://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stop me if for some technical reason what I'm asking here is increadibly stupid... but isn't it relatively cheap to substitute HTTP-based URL redirection for DNS in a case like this? Like so: <http://hops.me/7nq> -> 127.0.0.1

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there a list anywhere exactly which domains are blocked? Are some bit- torrent trackers part of it? That could be annoying.

</comment><comment><USER7> So it's a DNS block? That will be incredibly easy for Belgians to bypass...

<comment><USER8> How many non-nerds do you know that even know what DNS is? Yes, slowly people will learn 'just type in the numbers xyz into your address bar', but it'll be a rather big obstacle for most casual users.

On top of that, if it turns out that a DNS block is insufficient to stop the majority of Belgian users to access The Pirate Bay, it's a small step to go back to the judge and ask for a more stringent block.

This is a first step, but a major one - it will set a precedent not only for Belgium and similar sites with pirated content, but also for other European countries. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out, and if there will be a counter-movement of sufficient weight to instigate legislation that will overturn broad, sweeping blocks of content. I suspect not.

<comment><USER9> Apparently Danish traffic to the TPB has actually _increased_ 12% since the block ;)

In any case, TPB is just one of many nowadays. Block one and three more will pop up, like always.

<comment><USER7> Good old Streisand effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any minute they'll all be goose stepping.

</comment><comment><USER11> Welcome to the Internet in 2020, where content is approved before it is allowed on the tube. What is left of the idea of freedom through a networked world which once inspired the creation of the great tubes is now a shell for business, government and corporate interests. You shall not pass is the new greeting many will recognize. Your communication is surveiled, filtered and censored. For your own good.

<comment><USER12> Your comment incidentally reminds me of the term "boob tube" (slang for television, for those who may not have encountered the term). I suddenly wonder whether that's what we're heading for, with the Internet. Throttle it until it become the latest form of "boob tube".

[The term boob can describe a rube or idiot, not just a female mammary, so the term is a double entendre.]

Ultimately, we ("the people") need unfettered control of at least one physical medium supporting the Internet. Route around the damage.</comment></comment>


Machine Learnings Newsletter - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearnings.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> The goal is to make the machine learning and ai more accessible and less intimidating. It's going to impact our lives in so many ways that its important to help it seem more familiar to more people.

What are some other ways we can work towards that mission in the future?</comment>


WCF WebSockets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davidpadbury.com/2011/01/13/wcf-websockets-first-glance/ <comment><USER2> What is WCF? World Coffee Foundation? Wee C Functions? We Crave Freedom?

<comment><USER3> No where near as interesting. Windows Communication Foundation - a networking stack for .NET. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't they just implement the accepted WebSocket standard instead of their own competing API?

<comment><USER3> The WebSocket protocol is still very much in flux. This drop is only to give an idea of the server side API would look like (I think anyways). I imagine as the protocol calms down they'll implement whatever's decided on.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if you'd really call it 'in flux'.

We've been using websocket for over a year now on Mibbit. I think around 20% of our users currently do websocket.

Fair enough to wait and see though, hopefully they'll do it the same way everyone else has.

<comment><USER3> By "in flux" I was intending to vaguely refer to the problems with the protocol which has led Firefox and Opera to ship with WebSockets disabled. I'm guessing we're probably going to see some changes to it in the future. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I honestly don't know a thing about the version of the protocol that they've implemented. It looks like one that they (Microsoft) have submitted - [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-hybi-upgrade- hel...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-montenegro-hybi-upgrade-hello- handshake-00).

That's cool you're seeing so many clients with WebSockets enabled.

<comment><USER3> Yeah - A "hoo-haw" is good. The quicker issues are brought to attention and resolved the better.

<comment><USER4> FWIW I think it was an absolute edge case bordering on silliness.

 _if_ there is a crappy silly caching proxy, an attacker can use websocket to get it to cache things it shouldn't.

I think the fact Chrome hasn't done anything about it, (especially since they can auto update and turn off support tomorrow if they wish), is telling.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Revolution Pi – Industrial PC Based on Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://revolution.kunbus.com/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Just to announce that the price is now available. From 141 to 199 euros, including VAT</comment>


How Judea Pearl Became One of AI's Sharpest Critics - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/machine-learning-is-stuck-on-asking-why/560675/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I really like that people asking fundamental questions about the way AI can be pushed forward beyond just ML seems to gain a little bit of traction again, at least in the public eye. Even Kissinger opined on the topic just a few days ago

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-k...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry- kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/)

I agree with Pearl that there's something deeply misguided about thinking that intelligence truly can be solved as a data optimization problem. I'd be happy if we'd see more research about AI at a symbolic level again.

The biggest hindrance seems to be funding. ML is really successful in a lot of commercial domains, general AI is a big moonshot. With most researchers moving from long term university positions to the business sector I'm concerned about this sort of research, not just in computer science.

<comment><USER3> Nature herself "solved" intelligence as a data optimization problem. We can too.

<comment><USER2> There's problems with that attitude. First, it offers no scientific insight. We don't learn anything about the fundamental nature and skeleton of minds by simply replicating evolutionary processes. It does not grant us knowledge.

The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge. Clearly, that is unsatisfactory, we strive to understand the meaning of systems so that we can reason about them and alter them in predictable and fundamental ways.

Secondly, we don't know how likely it is that evolution produces intelligence. Maybe we're the only intelligent spot in the universe and it's an aberration. It took 4 billion years as well.

That seems to be a fundamentally impoverished way to go about things. We shouldn't forego the ability to understand minds at a deep level just because we have made practical strides in closed domains. That would be to mistake a trojan horse for an actual horse.

<comment><USER4> >The equivalent in engineering would be to throw over trees and rocks in the hope of building a bridge.

Imagine if aliens dropped a machine learning computer on earth in the 17th century.

Maybe we'd have never bothered to derive the laws of classical mechanics.

<comment><USER5> I don't follow. Classical mechanics are still very useful, no?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but we might have never created metal models and theories if we had a magical machine that could predict the outcomes of physical systems.

The machines might have replaced classical mechanics, but the downside is that the machine would be a black box, and we would never really understood how it derived its results.

<comment><USER5> Fair. That assumes we wouldn't try and understand the black box. I suspect somebody would have, but I have nothing to base that suspicion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth noting that there has been a fair bit of good research in causal machine learning in the last year or so, for example "Implicit Causal Models for Genome-wide Association Studies" ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10742.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.10742.pdf)).

The key point of this paper is that neural networks really are very good at "curve fitting" and that this curve fitting in the context of variational inference has advantages for causal reasoning, too.

Neural networks can be used in a variety of structures, and these structures tend to benefit from the inclusion of powerful trainable non-linear function approximators. In this sense, deep learning will continue to be a powerful tool despite some limitations in its current use.

I think Pearl, who's obviously remained very influential for many practitioners of machine learning, knows the value of "curve fitting". However I think it's a bit hard for a brief interview to sit down and have a real conversation about the state of the art of an academic field and the "Deep Learning is Broken" angle is a bit more attractive.

<comment><USER7> It's worth considering that anywhere in graphical models where coefficients of any sort learned can be augmented by neural networks (such as in the last decade of natural language processing, where the SOTA of almost all problems has been successfully neuralized).

I wonder if Deep Belief Machines and their flavor of generative models, which seem closer in nature to Pearl's PGMs, have a chance to bridge the gap involved.

Edit, as an aside: Given the enormously high dimensionality of personal genomes and the incredibly small sample size, for over a decade I've failed to put any trust in GWAS studies and found my suspicion supported on a number of occasions, considering difficulty in reproducibility likely brought about by the above problem. Is there any reason to think that improved statistical methods can possibly surmount the fundamental problem of limited sample size and high dimensionality?

<comment><USER8> Numerous important biomedical findings have resulted from GWAS. Most GWAS today are inherently reproducible since their hits usually come from multi- stage designs with independent samples. Sample sizes are no longer "incredibly small" either; large GWAS often have in the order of 100s of 1000s of patients. Some have over a million.

I suppose the most important idea is that GWAS aren't really supposed to show causality. "Association" is in the name. GWAS are usually hypothesis generating (e.g., identification of associated variants) and then identified variants can be probed experimentally with all of the tools of molecular biology.

In summary, GWAS have their problems, but I think your statement is a bit too strong.

<comment><USER9> Mendelian randomization is a good technique to start thinking about causality for epidemiological studies.

This is a good paper that demonstrates the approach: [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep16645](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep16645) Millard, Louise AC, et al. "MR-PheWAS: hypothesis prioritization among potential causal effects of body mass index on many outcomes, using Mendelian randomization." Scientific reports 5 (2015): 16645.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are a lot of efforts in developing models that understand causal relationships within mainstream machine learning community. Mostly to train models that don't require a lot of training examples. Deep learning usually requires a lot of data and trained models are not easily transferable to other tasks. Yet humans tend to transfer their knowledge from other tasks pretty easily to seemingly unrelated tasks. This seems to be due to our mental models surrounding causal relationships. One example of such efforts is schema networks. It is a model-based approach to RL that exhibits some of the strong generalization abilities that can be key to human-like general intelligence. [https://www.vicarious.com/2017/08/07/general-game-playing- wi...](https://www.vicarious.com/2017/08/07/general-game-playing-with-schema- networks/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't help but see this as another example of the pattern in which a big name in a field gets up and says that the current direction of their field (deep learning) is great and all but not really making progress on the big question (intelligence), and that to solve that question we need to solve another big question (what is causality) before we can make true progress. Other examples to me are Chomsky on consciousness and its implications for language, Einstein on causality w.r.t. quantum theory. This isnt to say the big name is wrong, just to point out a potential pattern.

<comment><USER12> Just want to point out that in general it's a lot harder to recognize the correct direction, than to make a progress in a direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In history we call this determinism. The more you know about a historic choice and the complex mechanisms around it, the more it makes perfect sense while at the same time leaving you absolutely clueless about the why.

Christianity being chosen by the Roman Empire is the typical example. To most people the choice makes perfect sense, because we look back at what it brought with it. But when you put yourself in the heads of the decision makers and look at all the options they had, well, it makes no sense at all.

A lot of machine learning tells us trends, but it tells us nothing about the why, and I completely agree with the article about how useless that data is. I mean, it's probably great at harmless things, but when my elaborate online profile still can't figure out why I happen to read a cultural, artsy but somewhat conservative news paper, despite the fact that my data shows the algorithm that I really really shouldn't be doing that, well, then we simply can't use ML for any form of decision making or even as an advisor. At least not in the public sector.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I think it's worth also asking whether humans /actually/ are any good at answering the 'why' with anything but bullshit. I would argue that we're pretty good at understanding causality in very limited circumstances (the window broke because that kid threw the ball), and extremely overconfident in our ability to understand causation in a much broader range of circumstances (the stock price went up because...). This overconfidence drives a lot of the decisions we make, for better or for worse.

It's an area where if we push hard on AI, we'll likely have to come to terms with how bad we are in this area, and ask ourselves whether we feel comfortable deploying 'thinking machines' with similar levels of incompetence and/or arrogance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pearl's words from the Introduction of "BAYESIANISM AND CAUSALITY, OR, WHY I AM ONLY A HALF-BAYESIAN":

"I turned Bayesian in 1971, as soon as I began reading Savage's monograph The Foundations of Statistical Inference [Savage, 1962]. The arguments were unassailable: (i) It is plain silly to ignore what we know, (ii) It is natural and useful to cast what we know in the language of probabilities, and (iii) If our subjective probabilities are erroneous, their impact will get washed out in due time, as the number of observations increases.

Thirty years later, I am still a devout Bayesian in the sense of (i), but I now doubt the wisdom of (ii) and I know that, in general, (iii) is false."

<comment><USER16> For (ii) what do you use instead of probabilities? And for (iii) what changed for you to think this doesn't improve over time?

<comment><USER17> Subjective probabilities are based on the model. Increasing observations won't help if you have the wrong model to begin with. So we need causal methods to ask if the model is correct. We also need methods to propose new models or rebuild if it is wrong as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I bought Judea Pearl's new book The Book of Why last night after reading this article. So far I love the book. I manage a machine learning team at work and I appreciate Pearl's discussion of how deep learning and statistics won't lead to strong AI.

<comment><USER19> When I saw another one of these publicity articles, I basically ran to buy the book. It's really nice to have a book that will help me get the intuition and history of causal modeling rather than just giving theorems about graph structure under intervention.

<comment><USER18> I agree, it is nice to have a very clear high level approach to causal reasoning. I find his other books to be 'slow going' so I hope that after reading the Why book, I will have an easier time absorbing his earlier work.

<comment><USER20> I just started reading _The Book of Why_ too, so far so good. I pre-ordered it once I found out it was coming. I've been telling people my view of it is it's like the primer to the primer ( _Causal Inference in Statistics: A Primer_ ) to a subject-introduction paper ( _An Introduction to Causal Inference_ ) to the OG math book ( _Causality_ ). I'm hoping to eventually get back to the nice _Causality_ hardcover I've had on my shelf for too long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The core issue is trust, explanation is one part of trust, but there are deeper issues. After all, if I explain that I have made this clinical decision because it results in lower mortality and you point out that the mortality statistic is to shit, and then I point out that we can't do the experiment required to work out the mortality statistic properly because that would mean potentially killing children... we have an issue.

We trust doctors and pilots, they offer partial explanations that we can somewhat understand, but they are backed by experience and qualification. Their perspective is informed by science - some good, some bad. Most of us don't think about that.

We have a perspective based on our cultural and social background, the machine must understand this and provide alternative explanations to suit us.

I have written a long article on this all, but I can't finish the game theory off!

<comment><USER22> Sounds like an interesting article

<comment><USER21> Yeah, if only I could sort out the sums...

But then.. I guess that's the point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> For me, AI is now in the same category as religion; I don't talk about it because nothing good ever comes out of these type of "discussions."

We should be more open minded and humble about how to approach this problem but almost everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it creating a very low signal to noise ratio.

<comment><USER24> I don't think you have to go as far as comparing it to religion. Diagnosing the field as being (currently) overhyped should be enough to explain your observations. However, Kissinger's article [1] raises worthwhile and important questions that really should be discussed broadly.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-k...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry- kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't necessarily agree with the assertion there has been no progress on algorithms that can propose experiments. Isn't this exactly what Bayesian Optimization with regret minimization is all about? Also seems strange to say that AI is just curve fitting in a pejorative sense. Isn't that all of science? Curve fitting is hard!

<comment><USER26> >Isn't [curve fitting] all of science?

No! Astronomical observations can be shoehorned into geocentrism by adding more and more epicycles. That's curve fitting. At some point you have to realize the Earth revolves around the sun. Currently ML is on a dangerous path because any disagreement with empirical evidence can just be waved away with more data, more computation power, etc. In that sense, it's practically unfalsifiable.

[http://wiki.c2.com/?AddingEpicycles](http://wiki.c2.com/?AddingEpicycles)

<comment><USER25> Only if you don't have a complexity penalty in your fit. This is a model selection problem and you should have a prior on the structure of the model that leads to something like the BIC. Curve fitting is hard. The elimination of epicycles was due to Tyco Brahe collecting more data and a lower complexity model being proposed to explain the data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If someone can ELI5 to me what is Pearl's do-calculus, that'd be quite great.

I have tried to build an understanding of it since he got the Turing prize, but have failed so far.

<comment><USER28> Rain causes people to carry umbrellas. Rain causes puddles. Probabilistically, there's a strong connection between me carrying an umbrella and you seeing puddles (assuming we're both in SF or whatever).

To be a bayesian, you could model this as a conditional probability: p(you see a puddle | I carry an umbrella). It will look like a strong connection, but it isn't a causal one. If it were, then I could stop carrying an umbrella and clear away the puddles. That intervention of me changing my umbrella carrying behavior is what causation is all about. If we change this, does that change?

So then you talk about the probability of you seeing a puddle given some intervention that forces me to carry my umbrella regardless of anything else. We see that if you force me, independent of rain, to carry an umbrella or not to, then the connection between the umbrella and puddles is gone. p(puddles | do(umbrella)) != p(puddles | umbrella). do(X) means to take an intervention and force X regardless of other things.

As contrast, you can talk about the connection between rain and and puddles. If there were some hypothetical weather machine where we could force rain or sunshine, then you'd see that intervening and forcing rain (a.k.a. do(rain)) still keeps the relationship with puddles. p(puddles | do(rain)) still shows a connection. That is a causal connection.

It's all about counterfactual "what if I changed X?" questions. Using that idea, you can get all sorts of cool theory.

<comment><USER27> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You dont need to go that far. If you want to replace an algorithm in a regulated industry like insurance (say, premium calculation based on risk score), you need to show the audit trail of how you arrived at the result. You cant have a probabilistic model that builds bias without any explanation.

Only a few ML algorithms like decision tree can show the causal relationship today. It is very hard to that in neural network with multiple layers.

<comment><USER30> Isn't there a lot going on already in insurance based on algorithms - and no explanation? I'm looking at scoring/rating... People getting a lower credit rating for living in the wrong neighborhood and other things, well that would at least be an identifiable reason, but I think that you cannot find out _how_ exactly they arrived at your personal score? How transparent are banks and insurances for consumers, today?

Also on the HN frontpage right now is a link to a Guardian article "how to disappear from the internet", and the top comment in the forum there about his difficulties to deal with the results of identity theft, credit card debt, also shows a complete lack of transparency.

<comment><USER31> The lack of transparency is for a good reason: if a model's parameters become known, they can be gamed and lose their predictive power.

Not only do banks etc keep their models secret from customers, they keep them secret from other departments. The credit risk strategy team, for instance, won't want to risk customer service staff 'helping' customers alter their application details to get their scores over a cut-off.

(I used to run credit risk strategy, fraud, collections, operations etc for two credit card companies)

<comment><USER32> Giving customers of banks transparency of the models as a third party could be a good application of causal reasoning. Each individual customer of a bank only has their own parameters, and a yes / no output from the bank.

A third party designed to help customers get approved could aggregate data across multiple customers, generate hypotheses of what changes would artificially lower the bank's perceived risk for a customer (which would also require it understand what sort of changes customers can make easily), and test those hypotheses to refine a model.

It could optimise for revenue, paying customers for information, and receiving income if it succeeds in getting them approved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> >The language of algebra is symmetric: If x tells us about y, then y tells us about x. I'm talking about deterministic relationships. There's no way to write in mathematics a simple fact—for example, that the upcoming storm causes the barometer to go down, and not the other way around.

Is this true? It kind of blows my mind if it is.

<comment><USER34> As a former mathematican, I was at first a little offended and dismissive of his claim. But, perhaps what one can say is that mathematicians don't seem to distinguish "causation" with "implication". After all, if the barometer goes down, that does imply a storm is coming (perhaps with some increased probability), but it still doesn't cause the storm to come (even with increased probability).

In a simplified closed system, where all you have are barometers and storms, maybe there is no difference between implication and causation; all you know is these variables are correlated. Perhaps once you take every atom in the universe into account, the two start to look the same.

<comment><USER35> That can't be right, because you can take the barometers out of the closed system, and it will still storm. Correlation isn't causation, and for good reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Chris Manning gave a really interesting technical yet pretty approachable talk on machine reasoning at ICLR this year. If you're interested in this topic, i recommend watching!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNLp9SnTF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpNLp9SnTF8)

</comment><comment><USER37> The problem is that deep learning is not powered by an intelligent system able to suggest a way to control and filter input data. Today humans are the ones that filter and decide which loss function to use, and in order to achieve GAI deep learning must be provided with a meta-deep learning framework able to filter and adjust the loss function. Perhaps a feed-back network trying to evolve from a small model to a more general one using some kind of generative grammar for filtering and controling the input. A transfer knowledge graph powered by deep learning that select a generative grammar for designing the most valuable filtering and objective function to produce a deep learning system that learn by itself.

</comment><comment><USER38> Honest question: If two models are each trained with a single training set, tested with a single test set, and used only to predict a single stream of data and predict it approximately equally as well, is there any formal way to say one model is engaging in "casual reasoning" and another isn't?

<comment><USER39> causal, casual, same thing

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Once ML models are routinely provided time-based features; particularly deltas between events and the 3rd derivative rate-of-change; they are going to identify some amazing causal relationships that humans are incapable of today.

<comment><USER41> Why 3rd derivative? Do you think that because we don't typically work with 3rd derivatives to explain physical phenomenon that there is a lot we are missing? Or are there particular scenarios where you see 3rd derivative as being critical to causality? 1st derivative = direct causality, 2nd derivative = ability to affect change, 3rd derivative = ?? tertiary causes.

Wait. Doesn't a derivative mathematically define a causal relationship?

EDIT: nevermind re: derivative = causal ... that's just a correlation relationship. dx/dt. Still I'm curious as to what is special about the 3d derivative (besides jerk).

<comment><USER42> 3rd derivative is a simple filter on acceleration. Obvious feature in something like fault prediction on heavy machinery.

What you really want, though are the ability to decouple and infer relationships between short and long term features (something like the cepstrum transform from speech analysis).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Aren't we all?</comment>


How Men and Women Approach Open Source Differently - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/how-men-and-women-approach-open-source-differently/ <comment><USER2> It's important research. I'm not a believer in diversity for diversity's sake, but I still want my users to have the best experience they can have. Maybe a way to go is to offer multiple interfaces (though I wouldn't target genders, there's overlap; my father was just as scared of breaking something as my mother when I first introduced them to computers), so you can present your stuff in different ways to different people.

What I do wonder however: is [http://gendermag.org/](http://gendermag.org/) appealing to "female" patterns of interaction, or is it just bad? Because I find the presentation not appealing at all, and they have put effort into research and appear to care about the topic, so I doubt they've just thrown it on the web "because we have to publish it there as well, I guess". I'm not an academic, and my interest in it is mostly practical. I'm missing both practical advice and a well structured presentation that goes beyond "well, read the paper and look up the references".

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks surprisingly similar to the memo that got Damore fired. But perhaps only Nixon could have gone to China.</comment>