Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Create Partnership on AI - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/28/facebook-amazon-google-ibm-and-microsoft-come-together-to-create-historic-partnership-on-ai/ <comment><USER2> I was starting to get worried about the data collection already happening individually at these big companies. Now that they have announced a partnership which potentially combines all this data together, I feel so much better!

The funny thing is, the companies are ALWAYS going to put a positive spin on this. Not very different from the WhatsApp "we won't show ads, ever" messaging. Now I am in the camp which says "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me". Almost none of these companies can be trusted at this point. [1] Their refusal to ask OpenAI to be at the table really does not reflect well on them [2]. And the less said about the tenured professors who are now becoming company mouthpieces saying things like "we create products which cannot make profit but which is meant purely for data collection" the better [3]. And lastly, if these companies had such a sincere desire to "improve AI for the sake of humanity", how about they start by letting OpenAI (or a similar company) do a data audit of all the information they share so that we can actually be certain it is not just a data brokerage masquerading as a public service?

I wanted to say that I wish the AI community will boycott this effort completely. I find it a bit worrying that this community now resides almost entirely within the walls of corporate America.

[1] Interestingly, the only company which is even _making_ noises about user privacy is Apple. Is it possible they saw something in this partnership that they didn't like?

[2] [https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177](https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12428883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12428883)

<comment><USER3> Modern machine learning depends heavily on data. If you have 100x the data, your algorithm is going to outperform a superior algorithm in most cases, because the data is the source of the intelligence.

It's a big, scary barrier for startups, for innovation, and we're running the risk of creating data superpowers that can't be competed with. Some algorithms don't perform well until they have a threshold of data. When that threshold is attainable only by a company with XXX million users, you inherently get a system where only those companies can innovate on the most cutting edge in machine learning.

That's a bad thing for us, especially if we find those companies turning against us. Did Google start putting a liberal spin on search results to try to influence the election? We don't know! But we do know that they are using their position to manipulate ISIS recruitment, which means they aren't afraid to get their hands dirty with this kind of stuff. THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT! And you aren't going to get a search engine that can come close to competing with Google unless you can find a way to match their data volume _before_ you have something competitive. It's a massive barrier.

Facebook is enjoying the same sort of entrenchment. I've switched away from Facebook, and now I've lost touch with a lot of friends. They are my friends, why can't I export them? Why can't I export the data that belongs to me, and use it in some open-source format that allows me to reap the benefits of all the work that I spent tracking them down inside of Facebook's private garden?

As a society, we need to start addressing these things, or we are going to end up with Internet giants that we don't have the means to get rid of, and that aren't at risk of being out-competed.

<comment><USER4> "THERE IS NO OVERSIGHT!"

Should there be? I'm not quite sure. I mean, personally I feel a lot safer managing my own data privacy with what I give these companies, rather than having a government do it for me. And I'm not exactly a libertarian, I just think it's rational that this should be decentralized, the risk of a company turning against "us" is a lot less than a government, given history.

"I've switched away from Facebook, and now I've lost touch with a lot of friends. They are my friends, why can't I export them? Why can't I export the data that belongs to me, and use it in some open-source format that allows me to reap the benefits of all the work that I spent tracking them down inside of Facebook's private garden?"

You can. [https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph- api/reference](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference)

All those "What does your friend list say about your love life?" type surveys use it.

"As a society, we need to start addressing these things, or we are going to end up with Internet giants that we don't have the means to get rid of, and that aren't at risk of being out-competed."

We've heard this a lot over the years, but I've really never seen a case of a company that can't be out-competed. Who is it up to to "get rid" of an organization? On what basis? People stop using their services, and they stop making money is generally how it works. Otherwise, Antitrust law is the main mechanism today, isn't that sufficient?

People forget that Google didn't ask permission or get oversight or contact copyright holders when building a search engine. They hooked a couple servers on the web and started crawling it with their algorithm, and replaced other search engines pretty quickly because they had a better service. One could say that it's impossible to compete with Google, but I'm not so sure: Bing is doing fine (if small share), DuckDuckGo is growing, etc. Adding more oversight/regs to the Web just makes it harder to replace these companies.

I'm sure plenty wanted to "get rid" of Microsoft in the 90s because of their attitude and growing monopoly, and certainly they were fettered by the U.S DOJ., but looking back, the calls to break them up were a bit silly. No one would have predicted Apple was going to become much, much bigger (some still can't believe it).

<comment><USER5> _I just think it 's rational that this should be decentralized, the risk of a company turning against "us" is a lot less than a government, given history._

Last time I checked, Google search had 98% market share in Germany, Android had 78% market share worldwide. I don't see how you can talk about decentralisation given dominance like that.

Whether or not a de-facto monopoly is a bad thing can be argued, I guess. (I personally think it is) But if one is present, I don't see why handing the power to a government that is (in theory) regularly elected and bound to basic rules of conduct and transparency is _worse_ than handing the same power to a private entity which is bound to nothing except the expectation to grow and benefit their share holders.

 _You can.[https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph- api/reference*](https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference*)

Until facebook decides to shut down this api - which is at their sole discretion.

<comment><USER4> "Last time I checked, Google search had 98% market share in Germany, Android had 78% market share worldwide. I don't see how you can talk about decentralisation given dominance like that."

They're not legislated as the Official Search Engine of the EU. Microsoft too once had 98% market share. As did IBM.

Also, think of China, where Google has no market share. Baidu will grow and bide its time.

"But if one is present, I don't see why handing the power to a government that is (in theory) regularly elected and bound to basic rules of conduct and transparency is worse than handing the same power to a private entity which is bound to nothing except the expectation to grow and benefit their share holders."

If you want to entrench the western world to assume Google is a permanent fixture, you write laws and regulations that make that assumption and turn it into a publicly transparent utility. This is how Theodore Vail turned AT&T into a monopoly for nearly 80 years in the USA. It wasn't necessarily "bad", at least for the first 50 years, it consolidated and standardized service, and provided transparency. But AT&T eventually turned against us by blocking future competition, and it took 15 years of fights to break it up. Plus its "transparency" also developed the presumption of letting the government have access to its data carte blanche to spy on its citizens. Personally, I'd rather not have an organization possibly run by Donald Trump know too much about me.

We could also break them up, or put anti-trust fetters on them, but that requires serious scrutiny before doing, as it might lead to massively unintended consequences.

"Until facebook decides to shut down this api - which is at their sole discretion."

Unlikely, given that API is the only reason anyone pays them money.

<comment><USER5> _They 're not legislated as the Official Search Engine of the EU. Microsoft too once had 98% market share. As did IBM._

And then what exactly happened? Did competitors beat them on their own market because of superior performance or better regards for the interests of users? Nope. They discovered new markets and solved new problems which made the old markets less relevant. It's not clear to me that this is a process that you can trust will work in the future.

* Personally, I'd rather not have an organization possibly run by Donald Trump know too much about me.*

You mean like Trump Ventures which owns stock of Google, Apple, AT&T, and Tesla (among many others)?

 _" Until facebook decides to shut down this api - which is at their sole discretion."

Unlikely, given that API is the only reason anyone pays them money._

That argument makes no sense. I as a user don't benefit at all if some analytics company has a contract with Facebook that allows them to access my data. If users should realistically be able to migrate to another service, they need free and automatic access to their data - which Facebook is in no way forced to provide.

<comment><USER4> _" That argument makes no sense. I as a user don't benefit at all if some analytics company has a contract with Facebook that allows them to access my data. If users should realistically be able to migrate to another service, they need free and automatic access to their data - which Facebook is in no way forced to provide."_

That's not how it works.

You have rights and easy access to your data - always have. 3rd parties don't get my PII unless I let them. Heck, I can download a ZIP file of everything I've ever uploaded with a single click! It makes zero sense they would prevent you from getting at it, if they did, they'd be breaking their own value prop of a place to _share_ things, which by definition means people need to be able to get at it easily.

Again, this stinks of non-customers trying to interfere with Facebook customers for dubious reasons out of fear.

<comment><USER5> _You have rights and easy access to your data - always have._

And who would enforce such a right if we have no governmental oversight?

 _If they did, they 'd be breaking their own value prop of a place to share things, which by definition means people need to be able to get at it easily._

Facebook's value proposition is people sharing things _within the platform_. You can perfectly well provide that service and at the same time make it hard for users to migrate their data to a different platform. They already did it in the past. [1]

 _Again, this stinks of non-customers trying to interfere with Facebook customers for dubious reasons out of fear._

Indeed. In this case, the non-customers are Facebook's users and I believe the fear of entirely justified.

[1] [https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-blocks-contact- exporting-...](https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-blocks-contact-exporting- tool/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >>"As of today's launch, companies like Apple, Twitter, Intel and Baidu are missing from the group. Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of which are part of this new group."

It seems Apple's lack of engagement in the community [1] is really starting to hurt it. Did anyone else take away from this that the other big players are not including them at the table/considering them real competition?

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/apple-s- se...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/apple-s-secrecy- hurts-its-ai-software-development)

<comment><USER7> Why are you surprised that Apple isn't involved in a field that has no material impact on their business? Outside of Siri and related projects, I don't see where AI/machine learning has any immediate benefits.

Twitter and Intel missing seems like something to take note of, but I didn't even think twice about Apple. I'm more surprised GE is missing than Apple.

<comment><USER8> At WWDC they talked about how they put AI all throughout the system. It's not just when talking to Siri. It's things like suggested apps, photo tagging, deciding when to refresh apps in the background, text prediction, and probably lots of other stuff that I can't even think of because Apple's approach to AI is to make AI largely an implementation detail of the experience rather than a user-visible component.

<comment><USER9> Apple makes great stuff (typing this on a Mac), but I really don't get the adoration / mystic that surrounds them.

Those features have been on Android forever, but people don't call it "AI".

<comment><USER10> Right, which begs the question "What is AI?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What's the purpose of this initiative? Sharing technology? Hardly. The goal is probably to shape the discourse on AI and its implications on society and the individual in a way that's favorable for these companies. In other words, they will try to preempt, counter, and suppress criticism of their business models, i.e. the AI exploitation of user data in the service of advertisers and others. It's pretty obvious why Apple is not on board. They have previously taken the position that user data should be left alone and therefore pose a threat to Google, Facebook et al. whose financial success is solely built on the extraction of information from users. This has nothing to do with Apple falling behind technologically.

</comment><comment><USER12> Are LeCun, Corrado, etc. actually running this? They're pretty busy, and the website doesn't sound like them:

"We believe that by taking a multi-party stakeholder approach to identifying and addressing challenges and opportunities in an open and inclusive manner, we can have the greatest benefit and positive impact for the users of AI technologies. While the Partnership on AI was founded by five major IT companies, the organization will be overseen and directed by a diverse board that balances members from the founding companies with leaders in academia, policy, law, and representatives from the non-profit sector. By bringing together these different groups, we will also seek to bring open dialogue internationally, bringing parties from around the world to discuss these topics."

This sounds like it was written by some PR person. Google and Facebook are "IT companies"?

<comment><USER13> > _This sounds like it was written by some PR person._

It probably was. The article is pretty clearly a press release with some touch-up.

This happens a lot when the pressure is to be first to publish. Someone gives you a completely-written "story" and off you go.

<comment><USER12> That quote wasn't from the article, it was from the org website ([http://www.partnershiponai.org/faq/](http://www.partnershiponai.org/faq/)).

<comment><USER13> I sit corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To quote Pedro Domingos in "The Master Algorithm" [1]:

> But everyone has only a sliver of it [information about you]. Google sees > your searches, Amazon your online purchases, AT&T your phone calls, Apple > your music downloads, Safeway your groceries, Capital One your credit-card > transactions. Companies like Acxiom collate and sell infor- mation about > you, but if you inspect it (which in Acxiom's case you can, at > aboutthedata.com), it's not much, and some of it is wrong. No one has > anything even approaching a complete picture of you. That's both good and > bad. Good because if someone did, they'd have far too much power. Bad > because as long as that's the case there can be no 360-degree model of you. > What you really want is a digital you that you're the sole owner of and that > others can access only on your terms.

Does this mean that effectively all of Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft will have the whole picture? That makes me worried.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning- Machine/dp/0465065708)

</comment><comment><USER15> Who gives a sh!t that Apple was not at the meeting. I think the main takeaway is that 4-5 companies might control one of the most powerful technologies/ideas of the last 5 years. Its already hard enough competing with these companies how is this good for everybody else?

<comment><USER15> edit: "The group plans to make discussions and minutes from meetings publicly available." I guess that is cool. But what about the competitive advantage these companies have right now? Does anybody monitor that stuff? I am not talking robots and singularity crap but rather companies that have means and the ability to make every decision with ML and the data to create an insurmountable competitive advantage.

<comment><USER16> ...except for the secret meetings. Those records will be secret.

<comment><USER17> Those won't be called meetings but gatherings and exchanges of ideas,so they won't have to be publicly available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like it's oriented toward lobbying and keeping AI from being regulated.

<comment><USER19> Good, there's enough fear mongering about it when we don't even know where to start when it comes to building an AGI.

<comment><USER20> It's not fear mongering. Some of the ideas I hear from people on this forum, from academia, and the likes are just downright terrifying, and we don't even know what future AI will be capable of.

We have to decide as a society, and decide really soon how far we are willing to take AI research.

We built the nuclear bomb, but we decided when to stop. We didn't build more advanced bombs that could level entire providences, even though we very well could have. I know this sounds ridiculous, in that we aren't talking the same level of potential devastation, but it's the principle I am after.

<comment><USER3> AI is not a genie that can be kept in a bottle. Making a nuclear bomb is a huge engineering effort. You need to build huge facilities, acquire rare resources, and potentially test it somehow. It takes a lot of energy to get there.

Software on the other hand, my computer is running tens of millions of lines of code right now, and for stuff with heavy utility there's not much the government can do to get in the way. Cryptography is a great example of this. Cryptography used to be regulated, but because it's easy to pass around code + binaries + keys there was really nothing the government could do to stop people from using it. So it was deregulated, as an admission that if you banned cryptography, you get a population without it pitted against criminals who do have it.

I'm guessing that AI will end up much the same way. You do need a lot of data, certainly a lot more than you need to get strong encryption, but data is ultimately easy to move around compared to nuclear manufacturing facilities. And it's even more open when you consider how much data is available that might be useful to an AGI. If you give a human 500,000,000 hours to read + process + innovate using just Wikipedia, you are going to get something impressive. An AGI has access to any page that's reachable from a URL bar, and that data is not something that needs to be passed around with the AGI codebase.

Granted, I personally believe that AGIs are 30+ years away, and I don't think that Wikipedia is enough data for something like a competitive NLP machine using modern technology, but I think that's the direction we will be moving in. We should accept today that AI will be a part of the future, and prepare for the inevitability rather than try to run from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _The organizational structure has been designed to allow non-corporate groups to have equal leadership side-by-side with large tech companies._

Anybody know more details? As non-corporate entity the opportunity is very interesting due to the potential of having access to their infrastructure. The cost of running AI projects on the cloud is currently prohibitive and am forced to run on performance limited machines.

</comment><comment><USER22> As usual Apple is missing. Pleasantly surprised to find Amazon on the list of collaborators. They usually take from open source/communities and rarely give back. This is a good change.

<comment><USER23> I agree. As an Amazon SDE this makes me quite excited for the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's more information on their website: [http://www.partnershiponai.org/](http://www.partnershiponai.org/)

</comment><comment><USER25> > "We want to involve people impacted by AI as well," said Mustafa Suleyman, > co-founder and head of applied AI at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet.

Who believes that this is to favor users, believes in everything.

<comment><USER26> Actually, the DeepMind people seem quite idealistic. Whether they can maintain that idealism in the face of corporate pressures is another story.

The character of the founders and engineers matters. Would you rather have GAI developed by DeepMind / Google, or by Lockheed Martin?

<comment><USER27> Lockheed Martin, their revenue stream isn't based on mining your personal information and communications. With Google at the helm there is almost no chance this stuff won't be always executing on their servers rather than in your device alone.

<comment><USER28> _> revenue stream isn't based on mining your personal information and communications_

Oh, it is! Not only that, but their revenue stream is mining that data and handing it over to the government: [http://www.atl.external.lmco.com/business/ATL10.php](http://www.atl.external.lmco.com/business/ATL10.php)

<comment><USER27> Analyzing data given to them or public is not the same thing as exfiltrating data from your users devices in misleading ways (e.g. Sending wifi info back even when wifi is off).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is OpenAI planning to be a part of this?

<comment><USER24> Sounds like it: [https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177](https://twitter.com/OpenAI/status/781243032582578177)

<comment><USER30> Actually that sounds like some shade tossed on this endevour. i.e. They were either not asked, or had to pony up money that only a multibillion dollar megacorp could part with.

<comment><USER24> _> They were either not asked, or had to pony up money that only a multibillion dollar megacorp could part with._

Perhaps you're right, but at least it seems like OpenAI would like to join if/when invited. Judging from the press release it sounds like this partnership intend to invite non-corporate/non-profit members soon (and I think they'll loose a lot of credibility and support if they don't):

 _" Academics, non-profits, and specialists in policy and ethics will be invited to join the Board of the organization, named the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI)." ... "There will be equal representation of corporate and non-corporate members on the board of this new organization"_

[http://www.partnershiponai.org/2016/09/industry-leaders- esta...](http://www.partnershiponai.org/2016/09/industry-leaders-establish- partnership-on-ai-best-practices/)

<comment><USER31> Mustafa Suleyman has now added an encouraging reply: [https://twitter.com/mustafasuleymn/status/781244827669147648](https://twitter.com/mustafasuleymn/status/781244827669147648)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> should read

"Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft Create Partnership on marketing"

</comment><comment><USER33> Five companies that collectively have more data on US residents' online behaviours than all the world's governments, working in partnership on AI.

What could possibly go wrong ?

</comment><comment><USER34> If you are working for any of these companies, you should really consider if it is worth it, and possibly stop or switch to more meaningful and less evil endevours.

</comment><comment><USER35> Calling simple statistical clustering algorithms that are tweaked by lots of trial-and-error heuristics "AI" feels like calling those slow two-wheeled electric self-balancing skateboards "hoverboards". Sometimes marketing can be too dramatic.

<comment><USER36> Deep learning is not a simple statistical clustering algorithm.

Trial and error is a main way that people learn and it works.

<comment><USER35> > Deep learning is not a simple statistical clustering algorithm.

What is it, then?

In the 60s people used backpropagation to train neural networks. NN + BP is a _very_ simple statistical clustering algorithm. I know that when I worked on neural networks in the 90s we still used backpropagation. Are they using something different now?

<comment><USER37> >Are they using something different now?

Yes, why else do you think we've had such breakthroughs in the past six years?

<comment><USER35> No, I don't think so. AFAIK, deep learning is essentially the same 1960s algorithms[1] (possibly modified a bit) running on much larger networks. Most progress is due to better hardware (and ad hoc configurations, made possible by the larger networks afforded by better harder). Of course, SAT solvers, which have become extremely effective in recent years, are also still based on a 1960s algorithm[2], so use of an old algorithm doesn't imply lack of progress in effectiveness.

The two (NN and SAT solvers) share little theoretical progress (and certainly no theoretical breakthrough) in the past several decades, but SAT solvers aren't marketed as "AI" in spite of their seemingly magical abilities. I know that ML researchers usually cringe at the name AI and often try to disassociate themselves from the sci-fi term, but still, the marketing is extremely aggressive and misleading.

I realize that in every generation, marketers like associating the name "AI" with some particular class of algorithms, but it's important to understand that currently, assigning that name to this class of statistical clustering algorithms (regardless of their remarkable effectiveness in some tasks) is a stretch, just as it was when the term was assigned to other algorithms.

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Putnam_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Putnam_algorithm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sad to not see Baidu on there.

</comment><comment><USER39> I remember learning about oligopolies and cartels in high school economics. Pretty sure this is at its core, a form of collusion meant to undermine the competitive spirit of the market. Ethical implications of this strategy are quite dire at best. No one stood up to the robber barons then and likelt no can now.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hope they do not use that as an acronym.

<comment><USER41> PAI? PoAI? I don't get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The moment I saw the headline, I noticed Apple missing from the list, and it felt right! Facebook, Amazon, Google...Microsoft...IBM...all coming together to promote (sell) AI? This sounds like the coming together of the evil powers.

Apple, however successful it may continue to be financially, needs to focus on a wider penetration of its devices and services if there is to be any meaningful dent on the privacy front around the world. Being a market leader in one country (or a few) doesn't help much when billions of people around the world use Android phones where the default is "ask for any permission and it shall be given." For this to change, I believe Apple must go lower on the price front, even if that means lower margins. It also needs to push forward quicker on things that other companies don't consider, like differential privacy, and look for markedly different ways of doing things compared to the personal data hungry parasites like the ones in the title.

<comment><USER43> Good point. I find it funny to read other comments here of "who cares about Apple not being in the group?". Apple is just one of the most successful companies of all times and it demonstrates over and over to have a bit more integrity and commitment to guarding user's privacy. Kudos to Apple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Wow that's really sad that they have refuesed to use the OpenAi operating syestem which shows exactly how much the really care about there jobs reflections

</comment><comment><USER45> What could go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER46> Which is the best way to invest in the field of AI ? Can anyone recommend any specific companies / branches ? Thank you.

<comment><USER47> One way is through hardware that supports the current wave of innovation, i.e : GPUs.

Nvidia has been on a tear recently. I'd love others' input on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Would be great if OpenAI joins them.

</comment><comment><USER49> At the risk of ad hominem, this is typical techcrunch reporting:

>> "Though Apple is said to be enthusiastic about the project, their absence is still notable because the company has fallen behind in artificial intelligence when compared to its rivals — many of whom are part of this new group."

How exactly is it that TC knows that Apple has indeed fallen behind? Are they privy to the Apple ML roadmap? Are they using lack of open source activity as a metric to make this claim? Is there an unidentified source who can objectively measure the ML progress across these organizations, and using this objective metric, conclude that Apple is behind?

It's a claim without much substance, and paints Apple in a negative light. You could say that this is a marketing failure on the part of Apple, and you might be correct. For example, see the article floating a few weeks ago on Medium (I think) on how Apple was embedding ML in everything.

In the days of price performance wars in CPUs (and GPUs), there were more or less objective (err, almost objective) benchmarks that people could point to. This is not the case with ML/DL. It would be great if we could say: "Across image classification, the precision / recall is X, vs. Facebook's Y. Clearly, Apple has more work todo in image classification. But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead, with metrics A vs. B from Facebook..

What is happening with ML/DL/AI/whatever is that all companies are using the same bag of words to describe what they do, but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public.

</soapbox> </rant>

<comment><USER50> Honestly this comment reads like an emotional outburst, by someone who has zero clue about the domain.

Its very well known fact in AI/ML community, that Apple has almost little or no talent nor do they have any major efforts at organizational level (E.g. FAIR at FB, MSR, Brain & Deep Mind at Google).

>> But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead.

LOL where did you get this from? I am pretty sure that Google NTM which was put in production yesterday is the state of the art.

Also there are metrics e.g. in the report released yesterday you can find BLEU scores on WMT 2014 tasks, and the clear conclusion is that Google is way ahead. Also when it comes to Imagenet or Coco challenges, I don't think Apple has competed in any let alone placing anywhere at top, while FB, MSR and Google all have had top models. [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.08144v1.pdf)

>> but the popular press is not discerning enough to make heads or tales out of what they report on, and they end up mis-educating the public.

Sorry you are wrong, the sad reality (for Apple), is that they are truly 3-4 years behind FB, MSFT & Google.

<comment><USER51> "But in Machine Translation, Apple is ahead." was an example of a statement that could be made if metrics existed, he is not asserting that that is true.

<comment><USER50> I assumed that he was asserting it to be true, because as my updated comments shows, the metrics do exist. But Apple neither releases them nor does it discloses the architecture/technology (if any) used.

<comment><USER49> As others have mentioned, you are completely wrong in your assumptions. It is you who shows zero clue in reading comprehension and communication. I'm well aware of the benchmarks used by industry and academia. I've been working in the industry for many years, including multiple ML-based products used commercially and running in production serving a large number of customers. Machine translation was just an example, and there was no assertion that company A is better than B; I was in no way "asserting it to be true". I was merely providing an illustrative example to highlight the fact that * popular press * articles about ml, such as this one, are quick with subjective opinion, without providing in writing the necessary citation and metrics to back their claims. Furthermore, they do so at a generalized level, without going into specific subdomains. My initial post was intended as a constructive comment, so take it as such.

<comment><USER50> LOL Dude its "popular press" for a reason, otherwise they would be called "technical journals".

And frankly how can you be so clueless about Apple's lack of efforts in AI/ML if you claim to be member of the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Does all this fuss about AI mean the Lisp machines will come back? ;)

<comment><USER52> I'll add that I've owned both a Symbolics 3620 and a MacIvory. I was being a little glib, but I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of resurrection of the Lisp machine technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Oh, great. So all the companies that have recently had the most problems with ethics issues and user privacy issues are now collaborating in order to more effectively address those issues? Pardon me if my scoffing is audible.

<comment><USER54> IMHO ethics will effectively be _the_ defining characteristic of AI in the future. The companies who innovate AI, however, will probably never mention it except as marketing copy.

That leaves literally everyone else holding the bag in regards to judging the industries actions and holding it accountable for transgressions. I'm not sure how that will work out, but I'm not terribly hopeful...

<comment><USER16> A major book about ethics, "After Virtue", takes as half of is subject matter what the author calls "the interminable nature of ethical debates" and the failure of post-enlightenment ethical thinking.

I don't see how AI is going to suddenly make us capable of ethical reasoning on a large scale... unless... maybe AI could do the reasoning for us...

<comment><USER55> Are you talking about the AI we make which simulate a process we don't fully understand?

<comment><USER16> Yes. Maybe it can invent ethical reasoning that's obscure enough that people can believe it—like a new kind of priest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> 1\. These companies have been collecting our information for years now. Some have acces to what we write in are emails, but of course, they never read them, they just scan them for marketing purposes?

2\. Why do I feel certain people's information has been looked at, scrutinized, cross checked, collated, etc. by certain savvy insiders. Warren buffet, George Sorrows, any of the financial movers and shakers, information is sitting on a server somewhere, unless you're a Clinton. If I had access, I could help but look at it.

Before you made an investment, bought a stock, bought realeste, took over a company; wouldn't you be tempted to peak at some of that information?.

3\. I feel certain individual information has been used as research for financial gain.

3\. I belive it's basically insider trading without the other guy knowing he/she gave away any information.

4\. I believe it will be exposed, and will be the next huge Financial scandal.

5\. I believe this move might be a smoke screen. "We know some of us have already abused private information for personal/financial gain. Let's combine the data. It might put some reigns on what we all know some of our insiders have been doing. Let the people think we are doing this to better society.

6\. I don't have any evidence, I just have a hard time believing no one is looking at juicy date pouring in from some high profile people.

7\. I believe it will be on the front page of Forbes in less than a year.

<comment><USER57> If Foursquare can do this imagine what Google, Apple, or facebook can do.

[https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts- chi...](https://medium.com/foursquare-direct/foursquare-predicts-chipotle- s-q1-sales-down-nearly-30-foot-traffic-reveals-the-start-of-a- mixed-78515b2389af#.lqsjmrf79)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Tc needs to be banned on hn

<comment><USER59> harsh

<comment><USER58> Not really. Look at the comments on just about any tc article. It's a marketing website disguised as news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Sounds like an alienate means for Skynet to become sentient.

</comment><comment><USER61> Apple wants to be on the right side of the anti-trust lawsuit this time. /s

</comment><comment><USER62> Okay, which AI are they talking about? The term can mean various things. I mean if this were merely heuristic neural networks, one would think that Tesla would be included.</comment>


92% of Millennials Do Not Trust Financial Institutions with Money Matters - <AUTHOR> http://financeography.com/92-of-millennials-do-not-trust-financial-institutions-with-money-matters/ <comment><USER2> From what I remember of the Bible, the only act of physical violence Christ committed with his own two hands was turning over the tables of the moneylenders in the temple.

Looking at what Goldman and JP Morgan have done to our country, and to the world, it would be a beautiful thing if more people distrusted financial institutions.</comment>


DCP Networks, the pirate bay becomes its own ISP - <AUTHOR> http://dcpnetworks.com/ <comment><USER2> Most probably a false information.

Ok, the domain is registered to Fredrik "TiAMO" Neij ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrik_Neij> ). But it was already registered 04-dec-2007.

The website seems not to have changed a lot since 2008: <http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://dcpnetworks.com/>

I guess someone discovered whois and jumped to false conclusions. Also what stse said.

</comment><comment><USER3> They have been their own ISP for a long time, they even had their own data center before the raid in 2006.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like a very thin front, the 'about' and 'contact' pages are empty. There are prices listed but no way to 'sign up'.</comment></comment>


I'll Build Your MVP for $1k - <AUTHOR> http://mvpfor1k.com/

<comment><USER2> Random quick first-sight design feedback, how I would do it or at least what I would give a try:

"Based on your specifications, I'll personally make you a MVP and design it within a couple of days for only $999." looks blotchy in my Opera 11. Get rid of the shadow. Minor.

"Order now" button looks absolutely awful. The text beneath is unreadable on my screen, almost invisible. Major.

Text | Image and in the next line Text | Text. There is a shift to the left and it looks weird. Screenshot has a light blur line around the border.

"— HURRY UP, I'M ACCEPTING ORDERS UNTIL JANUARY 10TH. —" -> "- Quick, I am accepting <other color and link to order>orders until January 10th</> -" I would also move that line to the bottom. The user reads the page and then he might be interested. Also use a different link color, maybe green like the order button.

"Get a minimal viable product out there for only $999" -> "A Minimal Viable Product\nOnly $999"

Spaces before parenthesis in the "How does it work?" list.

Bottom lists need a different background. Something grey would work. Subtle texture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I agree, the design is horrible, heh, I even put that in the footer indicating that the site was a result of an idea and a couple of hours in photoshop + xhtml/css.

That being said, I'm going to shift the design, as I totally agree with your comments as soon as I'm done with monitoring over HackerNews for questions/concerns/etc... :)

<comment><USER2> If it was horrible I would not have bothered. It looks very good already, just lacking the polish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great marketing, although I'd argue that's not an MVP. MVP is a Minimum _Viable_ Product. This is some kind of minimum proof of concept prototype. Whether it's viable or not is really up to how good a guess your client made as to the user's needs.

Also, the MVP for getting useful in one industry can be very different than in another industry. $999 is too much for some industries and way, way too little for others.

That said, cool idea, I hope it works out for you!

</comment><comment> tomh- I'm curious, on what do you base your price? It seems impossible to me to realistically provide a fixed price on unknown specifications or are there any conditions (ex. max 40 hours of work)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question. There aren't any defined conditions, as this what I've put up is a MVP itself heh. As long as it's reasonable and can be built in rails3 is the initial condition;

Of course, after I get a certain number of applications I'll have to review them and contact each individually and a lot of people are obviously going to look at what they need and whether I can deliver that in a reasonable time frame.

Short answer: (and I hate to say this) It's relative, tho I won't spend more than 33 hours on a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know the founder of this site, so I trust him pretty highly, and in my past experience with FairSoftware, where people would meet for ideas but struggle to find someone to implement even an MVP, I think this site is a great concept!

The price sounds right to separate the fakes from the serious customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Alain, it was a pleasure working with you in the past.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I click Order One and get:

        Something is not right.

        Profile not found.

Not to be mean but that doesn't reflect well

<comment><AUTHOR> Very sorry! I just fixed it!

<comment><USER5> I want to publicly say thanks for the quick email you sent me to let me know that you replied and that the form was back up. I appreciate the responsiveness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much Simon; I'm pretty glad to see that you appreciate my response time! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is see with this is the people who are not familiar w/ the concept of an MVP. There are people who's idea of MVP is vastly different than your own. They basically will push for more and more and cannot imagine releasing a product w/o X feature and you will get scope creep. For some projects I think just sitting down and getting to the MVP feature doc will cost $1K.

I've built projects for people where they 'ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE' this feature and I try to tell them. They never listen, I do it, we launch and nobody cares. A huge part of this business I think will be education on the whole lean startup etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you also sign any NDA or anything that would protect your client's "IP"?

What if a client had a great idea, shares it with you, you say "NO" and then [conveniently] after a short while, the same idea is seen implemented elsewhere? I'm sure you are not into such things seeing what some people have to say about you, but I'm just curious how you go about protecting your clients' "ideas".

</comment><comment><USER8> You say

 _I code you an MVP specifically based on the specs(without any iterations)_

and then

 _Once I'm done and you're happy you pay me the rest($700)_

Are there actually customers out their who are happy with the product after a single iteration (no matter how good the specs are)?

Seems to me the choices are either: Built to spec, pay me when done

or

Pay me when you're happy. Multiple iterations may be required.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to rad on your idea, as I see what you're saying but MVP's should be, by their nature, a minimalistic approach to your product which you plan on extending down the road as you gather feedback and validate your ideas through your customers. That being said, when you have a vision of your MVP in your head, as it's minimal you can clearly go in depth with who you want certain parts of the app to work; For instance, if you strip down a lot of features(like you would with an MVP) you're left with a few core features with which you can specifically jot down how you want them to work to the point where you can say(for instance, for upvoting articles) I want it to send an AJAX request, etc. I hope that clarify's the point I'm trying to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had the opportunity to work with the founder (he gave me some ideas about the startup im running) and would recommend him as a very enthusiastic and talented young man. Thumbs up!

Design needs a final touch - the picture is too shadowy + cant read the letters under the order button.

ps. keep us informed about your progress

</comment><comment><USER10> Trust me, US$10k would be a lot more realistic and would probably get you more clients too.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, I love HN; One person saying how US$1k is toooo much and one going 10k is more realistic. I have already-built platforms which I build all my apps so it's relatively quick. Shifting my pricing to 10k would be kind of complicated, I'd have to buy a domain and tie in the hosting, resubmit to HN(afterwhich you guys would go..AH, this guy again!) so I'll just stick with 1k and see how it goes.

But of course, I wouldn't mind charging 10k, believe me ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> uh pretty cool, gonna contact you for a thing

</comment><comment><USER12> A nice idea, but you're going to find yourself in support hell faster than you can say "but I said no iterations". As soon as you develop anything for anyone you become their perpetual unpaid technology bitch, phoned at 4:30 AM to be asked how to reprogram the VCR or why minesweeper won't start up.

But seriously - whatever you do, make very, very, very sure that you have, in writing, a contract which explicitly states that once you deliver, you're done, or you'll end up in hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> heh, thanks for the feedback, never really thought of this. I'll keep it in mind as I progress.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pine – OpenTable for Massages - <AUTHOR> https://pinenow.com/

<comment><USER2> Jesus christ there are lot of 0 day old accounts commenting in here. Please go "disrupt" reddit or some other site.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it looks bad but that's not us! Please do your best to get past the new commenters... we would really appreciate your feedback on the site and product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this A/B testing for the other massage post on the front page? Or are you a different company?

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372392

<comment><AUTHOR> We are a different company, separate people and product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a back injury so tend to be a frequenter of massage providers. I've tried a bunch of massage services and providers and it's really hit or miss. But this seems way better than trying to book something directly with a masseuse/masseur which usually involves a lot of back and forth for scheduling, rates, clarification of service, etc. So I'm really glad that there is some disruption in this space to make this particular hassle easier. I also think that this model could possibly guarantee a better overall experience as there is someone on the other end that cares about converting you into a regular customer on their platform which may improve quality standards everywhere, and especially for the providers on the particular platform. In my experience, massage providers seldom care if you had a good experience and there is basically nothing you can do if you had a bad one. This is especially true if you go to get massage as a form of physical therapy rather than just someone giving you a relaxation rub.

I've actually used Pine a few times and I will say that the booking process is surprisingly simple via their app and website. Also, I've never been disappointed with the quality of the provider I got - seems like at the very least this startup has really good relationships with quality providers that they are able to bring onto the platform. Worth a try in my opinion.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We've been working on this for the last few months and would appreciate feedback. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> tried it, loved it. the mts are good but it must be hard for them to scale easily

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice site, will you be opening for other cities too? like DC?

<comment><USER7> Account created 12 minutes ago. :|

C'mon son!

<comment><USER6> Dear son, just created the account and will be active in this space! Pls visit my linkedin profile [http://www.linkedin.com/in/umarakram](http://www.linkedin.com/in/umarakram) Im not a bot but a human :)

<comment><USER8> It's not a question of being a bot, but of comments from brand new accounts that look like astroturf. Those are not ok here, especially when they coincide with suspicious votes trying to push the story up.

All: please don't try to promote your (or anyone else's) work this way. It's not in your interests: it will probably get both the submission and the accounts penalized, your fellow users will complain, and it's usually obvious anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great service, super personal.

<comment><USER10> Account created and commented within a minute. Solid, seems legit.

<comment><USER7> Obviously just a coincidence. :P</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Artist Hunt – An intuitive way to discover music - <AUTHOR> http://www.theartisthunt.com

<comment><USER2> Some feedback, mostly on the UX:

So I dismissed the instructions without reading them thoroughly. Everything was super confusing and it was unclear what up or down did, other than start playing different music.

It seems weird that up chooses a new artist and down chooses the next song. I heard a song I like, accidentally pressed down, and then up went, in an attempt to get back, but instead was sent to another artist. Super confusing.

The back button randomly changes artists. This is also super confusing. Couldn't you have a button for that?

When I click on one of the albums, the transition doesn't make it clear that it's now playing what you clicked on, and the previous list is now GONE. I assumed clicking would "select" the album. Also, once I've clicked an album, there's no way to get back.

And finally, my general feeling about the interface is that it's too focused on "power users", not being quick and easy to understand. I doubt this is something that needs really easy hotkeys, and if it does, it should be complimented with buttons that do the same things.

Don't let this feedback discourage you. I think you're solving a real problem, it's just hard to get past the UX. My advice would to to do some user testing. When you're building a super experimental UI, that isn't like anything else in existence, you probably want to verify that it doesn't completely confuse people.

tl;dr Do some user testing and you'll see most of these problems for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Super interesting feedback, huge thanks.

Some of the things you mention are actually relics from when this was a game, that limited how you can browse. (The initial idea was a game where you browsed as fast (ie few clicks) as possible from one artist to the other, but the feedback we got indicated that the discovery part was much more interesting)

But then again, we definitely get lost in our own (power user) perspective. We were dead set on using arrow keys as main browsing technique to start with, to get that mechanical and low friction feel. Not great for most users though, probably.

<comment><USER3> I was also confused.

I think the fact that you don't ask the user to put in an artist from the very beginning is what contributed to my confusion. I didn't know how to switch to a different genre/era of music so I thought I had to navigate there somehow. It took me a little while to finally see the "enter an artist" text. Once I put in an artist (I used Nirvana) it started to make sense to me a bit.

edit: played around with it some more and now that I get the hang of it and know that I can easily change my starting artist, it's really cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's difficult to call a website intuitive when you have to provide a _tutorial_ on launch.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, intuitive is not the right word. Mechanical and low friction (after a while) though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. I can't hear sound in Firefox. I am stuck running an older version at work (25) if that makes a difference. Maybe you don't want to support older browsers, so forgive me I'm nitpicking.

2\. So I gather the arrow keys help you find related artists. What do I do if I don't like an artist?

3\. It says I can jump to an artist by searching in the text field. Where the hell is that?

4\. The back button thing, previously mentioned.

It's good to keep directions simple, but you've gone to far. From reading the directions, I can't figure out what this does, why it's useful, or even how to use it (where is this text field?)

<comment><USER6> great site. took some time to look through the tutorial and love the navigation. the ux is completely OK for discovery and the value added is great.

Same problem for me in firefox (latest version): no text field, means I'm stuck with a certain style on initial launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To disagree with many of the other comments here, I found the interface pretty great. My only issue was that I couldn't figure out how to get a seed artist in a genre I liked. Once I realized the Artist name at the top was also a search bar, I was flying.

One feature I wish it had, were a way to go back down to the previous set of artist choices. Other than that, I've been enjoying exploring music with this.

</comment><comment><USER8> A site focused on UX shouldn't hijack my back button.

</comment><comment><USER9> Beautiful app. I'm not sure music should start playing immediately. I'll press play when I'm ready...

Where are you getting the data from?

<comment><USER10> One of the creators here. Thank you! We removed the playing song in the beginning! The data is from the Spotify web api! :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback everyone! Pushing the latest adjustments to heroku (yay for Meteor.js support!) as we speak.

</comment><comment><USER11> Where do you get the recommendations from? Where is the about page?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess an about page is on the todo list for 1.0 :)

We are using the Spotify Web API for everything: music (nicely cut 30s previews of songs), artist relations, images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> HOLY SHIT WHERE'S THAT MUSIC COMING FROM?!? [hits close button]

<comment><USER12> Yeah sorry, perhaps I was a little bit harsh but I had the volume up on my speakers! I do however think it's very rude of a web page to start playing audio when it's opened and I'm glad to see that it's been fixed.</comment></comment>


USG Trying to Make It Impossible for Reality Winner to Defend Herself in Court - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/12/05/reality-winner-trial-nsa-russia-election/ <comment><USER2> What happened to rule of law? Can someone older than me confirm my belief that the events of this century demonstrate an unprecedented level of contempt from the US government towards the rights of citizens?

<comment><USER3> The government has always had contempt for people under it. There has been a constant violation of rights that people have had to fight against since the creation of the United States.

The government seems to have wisened up and is now trying to remove people's ability to fight back

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be honest this sounds.. kind of reasonable?

She took a top secret document out of the NSA and leaked it. That is against the law, and all those saying "what about the rule of law" need to consider that.

The SCIF stuff is just the normal hassle of having to deal with classified information. There's no conspiracy here - information goes into classified areas and doesn't come out.

The stuff about not using news reports is the same thing as how people with clearance couldn't read Wikileaks: having clearance means you only access classified information you are authorized to have.</comment>


Hey, Hipster – "Ninja" Isn't Cool: What Developers Really Want to Be Called Is… - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologywoman.com/2011/11/18/hey-hipster-ninja-isnt-cool-what-developers-really-want-to-be-called-is/

<comment><USER2> My general impression is that whenever someone uses a title like "ninja" is that the company is either a super large, largely clueless enterprise which is unwilling to pay market rates or a super small, largely clueless start-up which is unable to pay market rates.

I'm a professional. I don't need silly job titles, or gold stars on my report card. I need my employer to pay market rate, trust my judgement and allow me to do what I do better than they do (which is what they are paying me for).

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on which kind of personality you want to attract. The immature state of an early stage startup could be seen as attractive.

By the way, there is no point in trying to be cool using the same terms 'ninja' and 'rockstar' over and over. HR, where is your creativity?

</comment><comment><USER4> That first graph is terrible. Making hate and love similar shades of purple.

I'm not even gonna pain my head to understand what the colored bands mean.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be just as turned off by a job posting for a "ninja" as I would be by a blog post addressing a "hipster." Why favor one buzzword over another?</comment>


Want to be a Great Investor? Become 50 Cent or Die Tryin' - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vuru.co/post/2730291346/want-to-be-a-great-investor-become-50-cent-or-die

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's impressive that he managed to do a pump and dump over Twitter and that 240% returns is a fantastic number, but it's an _illegal_ way to make money, it's the kind that earns you jail-time. Is that the sign of a great investor?

</comment><comment><USER3> >"Many investors can only dream of achieving returns of that magnitude by typing less than 140 characters."

For a second, I thought 50 Cent had become the new Jim Cramer. For all of 50 Cent's business tenacity, the article tries very hard to sweep his rap history under the rug as though it's just a coincidence to his success. If you ask any random person on the street "Who is 50 Cent?" a large majority of answers will be "a rapper" as opposed to "investor".

Many artists use their name as a brand to get endorsements:

His shoe line has generated over $70 million in revenue for Reebok -> Endorsement

His apparel line created in collaboration with Mark Ecko generates around $100 million in revenue -> Endorsement

Yes, he made a ton of money off of the Glaceau investment. What more was there about Glaceau that appealed to him? I think any serious investor understands that brand recognition and not hanging out with wankstas are key, but the article doesn't go beyond it. Also, not everyone gets to(or will, for that matter) hang out with Warren Buffet and Peter Thiel.

</comment><comment><USER4> I follow Vuru because (I thought) they were working on some Value Investing goodness and they tend to have some good insights.

From the title of this article in particular, I thought they were actually going to rip him a new one. I kept waiting for some snarky comments or a "GOTCHA!" and was disappointed to find none.

The fact is that "fitty" convinced a group of unsophisticated Twitter followers to gamble in the market by buying a highly speculative stock that they don't understand. He shouldn't be praised for getting a 240% return for that. He's a smart guy, but this H&H thing is a terrible example of investing to inspire an article.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys,

I'm the author of the article and would just like to explain a couple things before discussing the article in more detail:

1\. 50 Cent did not "pump & dump" this stock, as far as we are aware. We would certainly not condone that type of behaviour, as not only is it unethical but also illegal.

2\. None of the members of the Vuru team nor any associated parties own any shares in HNHI.OB.

@artmageddon

We weren't trying to sweep his rap history under the rug. The title of the article calls him 50 Cent... What we were attempting to achieve was paint him as more than just a rap star with an entrepreneurial streak. In our opinion, he's more an entrepreneur with a musical streak.

Even in his music, he's focused on producing mass market rap. The type that rings up millions in sales. He's not as focused on the art aspect of it. Compare him to Kanye West who is certainly more focused on the art of music. 50 follows a specific formula to create hits and encourages all artists on his label to do the same. He's about the money.

@andyparkinson

We are working on some Value Investing goodness and I'm glad that you do follow us for our insights.

In relation to the Twitter debacle, the article's focus is on the rules 50 Cent follows in achieving strong investment results. While we'd agree that uneducated investors shouldn't buy stocks nor should any investors buy pink sheets, we think it's unfair to crucify 50 for pushing a stock that he believes in.

As Jesse Eisenberg questioned, "Is what 50 Cent did really that different from what happens all day long on CNBC when professional money managers take to the airwaves to praise the stocks of companies they already own?" We believe that they are similar situations, assuming 50 didn't know any bad non-public information about the stock and touted it anyways.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for responding! Those are good points brought up regarding his music and how he seeks to sell as much as possible. Personally I'm a fan of his(for the most part), so admittedly my view is probably a little biased. I should perhaps clarify that I was hoping that there was more about what exactly sets him apart from other investors out there when it comes to the decisions that he makes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He also secured $200mm (!) for his movie production company to produce 10 movies. [http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/10/50_cent_just_go...](http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/10/50_cent_just_got_200_million_t.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hard for me to imagine why HNHI wasn't mentioned by name as the penny 50 was manipulating unless the author of the article is long it as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> How many people can say they made money the white-boy version of slinging crack rock, AND slinging actual crack rock?</comment>


Show HN: My iOS App, YouTunes Live, lets you stream any audio from YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/app/id519596476

<comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but I think that just using the audio from youtube videos is a violation of the youtube api terms.

You can read their terms here: <https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms>

Specifically they say it is prohibited to "separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API;"

and it is prohibited to

"promote separately the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API;"

Like I said, I'm not a lawyer so my interpretation could be wrong.

I think in a nutshell they want you displaying the video because they have their own ads in the videos, and just streaming the audio cuts into their revenue.

Hate to be a wet blanket but I recently built a service using the YouTube API (<http://chartbrain.com>) and so the terms were fairly fresh in my mind.

I think other services that used only the audio from YouTube have run into trouble - songza comes to mind, they were one of the first sites to do it. <http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2007/11/songza-turns-yo/>

<comment><USER3> I didn't realize that Songza used to do that, or that they'd pivoted their product as much as they have. Their current stuff is pretty great.

And yes, this is a perfect example of the types of use of the YouTube API that are specifically disallowed by their terms. They very much do not like when apps do this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks awesome -- downloaded. :)

PS -- I didn't realize you can fetch only the sound part of the youtube file without downloading the video... is that an accurate assumption?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is purely for streaming the audio of the video. You can even background the audio when the device is locked or when the application is not in the foreground.

<comment><USER5> I think he's asking if it only downloads the audio, or both the audio and video and strips the audio. I'd like to know too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, my bad, I guess I read that wrong. It downloads the audio and video content, so each streamed video comes to around 40mb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Neat app - I love the functionality and the smooth design, and the fact that it seems really intuitive.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was one of the goals to be extremely intuitive and easy to use, so I'm glad that that planning paid off. Some tips for lesser known features, swipe to the left on an item to remove it from your Library or playlist. Also, tap and hold on an item in your Library or playlist to see its metadata and information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good idea, great app.</comment>


Steve Jobs Finds Foxconn Deaths "Troubling" (shares views on Gizmodo episode) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/06/02/technology/tech-us-apple.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding Gizmodo, there is no doubt how Mr. Jobs sees it:

"This is a story that's amazing," Jobs said. "It's got theft. It's got buying stolen property. It's got extortion. I'm sure there's sex in there somewhere. Somebody should make a movie out of this."</comment>


Turkish government 'blocks Twitter and Facebook' - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ankara-explosion-turkey-twitter-facebook-ban-a6929136.html <comment><USER2> Why they blocked it? The images will be distributed anyway, what is the reason?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> is there any social network built on peer to peer?

<comment><USER2> Diaspora: [https://www.joindiaspora.com/](https://www.joindiaspora.com/)

It is peer-to-peer in the same sense as Usenet is peer-to-peer, users still need to login to some "pod", even if they own it.</comment></comment>


This Ex-NSA Hacker Is Building an AI to Find Hate Symbols on Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/9knqv5/this-ex-nsa-hacker-is-building-an-ai-to-find-hate-symbols-on-twitter?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> I would be concerned that this tool would also flag users who oppose these groups. What if someone posts a picture of a man holding a Nazi flag with the intention on identifying/calling out the person, and is then banned?</comment>


Learnings 2017 (by an anonymous account "Introvert Founder") - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@introvert_found/learnings-2017-a8cb700566ae <comment><AUTHOR> 80 some learnings from 2017 about being better self, building product, building a startup.

A few that I loved and that rhymes with me -

18\. The definition of a good team is — a team where you can blindly trust the next person. Having technical skills, having social skills, having network and connection, these are the skills that can be developed, but the trust is a tough one. 19\. Simple (is better than) Complex. Fast (is better than) Slow. Transparent (is better than) Opaque. 29\. Be driven for new ways to solve a problem. 30\. Be ready to jump in and figure it out. 31\. Trust! 39\. Don't give up, take a deep breath, sleep, rethink.

80\. Focus

Short and Interesting read.</comment>


Help Stop Xenophobia in South Africa, Report Incidents - <AUTHOR> http://reportxenophobia.co.za

<comment><USER2> Please enlighten those of us outside South Africa. What, exactly, is xenophobia? There is nothing in the "About" or FAQ" pages to tell me what this is all about.

There seems to be a world of hidden meaning here.</comment>


Show HN: Weekly Python Exercise - <AUTHOR> http://WeeklyPythonExercise.com/ <comment><USER2> $15 is pretty high for 4 python exercises, especially without any examples to show what they would entail.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm soon going to set up some sample exercises for people to see.

But even now, if you dislike it after the first month, cancel and I'll refund your purchase.

Or: Read any of my free e-mail courses ([http://lerner.co.il/e-mail- courses/](http://lerner.co.il/e-mail-courses/)), and you'll see the sorts of exercises I write.

Also: I'd like to think that it's not just exercises, but also the community of other solvers and my explanations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems cool. Subscribed.</comment>


Ask HN: Why don't we have tags on HN? - <AUTHOR> I, for one, cannot spend all my day on HN, but I still find it very useful to visit it a few times every day. I rarely go to the second page, though. To me, it would be very helpful to have a tagging system that I can use, for instance, to look for "programming", "machine learning", "leadership" etc. submissions. <comment><USER2> Not long ago someone posted this:

[http://www.taggernews.com/](http://www.taggernews.com/)

I'm not affiliated, just find it useful.

IIRC articles are tagged using machine learning.

<comment><USER3> Is there a way to help improve the machine learning algos by suggesting or flagging tags? When this first came out, the tagging was very inaccurate. It doesn't look to have improved a whole lot since then.

<comment><USER4> I second this, sounds like very good idea: Feedback for the algorithm so that it can update its internal model in supervised / reinforcement learning fashion.

Further ideas: users can suggest totally new tags for a given article, if the current tags seem to miss something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One person's "leadership" article is another person's "entrepreneurship" article is a third person's "management" article and a fourth person's "SAAS" article. For example, currently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14763111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14763111) is the top story on the front page. There are perhaps several dozen tags that might point to the bit or piece that one or another individual might find most interesting and each of them is going to be misleading or disappointing for another...think about the potential unfulfilled expectations that a simple |Go| might create.

For me, the only site that really has useful tags is StackOverflow and the price of those useful tags is massive moderation and (to a first approximation) no socializing or chatting or arguing or cathartic expressions of opinion. And complaints about the price of a useful tag system applied to fairly objective topics.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Flipboard, reddit, etc for categorized content.

On HN, I've noticed I read articles which I wouldn't have otherwise. You could argue /r/all is similar in that respect.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd welcome tags but they'd have to be heavily moderated. Over at Lobsters people commonly use the wrong tag (in purpose or not), and the site has far less users.

<comment><USER8> I may be missing a joke, but what is Lobster's people?

<comment><USER9> A much smaller, more dev-oriented site than here.

It's the OpenBSD to HN's Linux--more selective, more conservative, not being overrun by startup propaganda, politics, news, ads, and other pathologies of sites like this.

<comment><USER10> Looks great actually.

For the same reason I leave every community (namely digg and reddit), I'll have to leave this one.

Far too much politics and I get sucked right in. I find myself reading and commenting on stuff that's a complete waste of time and energy.

It's great that HN added "hide" at least. Nice way to quickly remove these politically motivated articles.

Does anyone know how to delete my account here?

edit: Just requested an account over at lobsters, but'll just lurk if I'm denied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At one point I began working on a Chrome plugin to accomplish just that.[0] It works for my personal use, but I haven't had time to get it to where users can share or +1/-1 others tags.

I initially started working on it to no longer read articles with paywalls, and could save time by just glancing at tags.

Eventually using machine learning to identify the tags would be ideal, but I stopped working on this awhile ago for no particular reason. It was a fun little learning project for Chrome plugins though!

[0][https://github.com/kzisme/HnTagger](https://github.com/kzisme/HnTagger)</comment>


Launched a website to prepare efficiently for interviews Feedback please :) - <AUTHOR> http://ambitionbox.com

<comment><USER2> Excellent. a very useful website indeed !!

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice website. All the best :)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you @iitmayur

<comment><USER4> Yeah, lovin the layout - very clean and refreshing.</comment></comment></comment>


USB 3.0 Promoter Group Announces USB Type-C Connector Ready for Production [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.usb.org/press/USB_Type-C_Specification_Announcement_Final.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm not an apple fanboy - but I do really like their magsafe & iPad mini connectors (whatever those are called officially). One thing I really like is the lack of "sticky-out-bit" in the middle of the connector, which all USB sockets seem to have, and which always feels kind of unstable or weak to me.

Is there a reason why all USB sockets - including these new diagrams - have a feeble looking centre part rather than it being part of the outer ring?

<comment><USER3> Hmm, while Lightning connector is rather nice, I don't like MagSafe 2 at all... it keeps falling out from the connection, especially if I use the laptop on a bed or similar surface.

The original MagSafe and the connector on my previous Dell M1330 were significantly more reliable while still providing enough protection.

<comment> X-Istence MagSafe 2 works without issues for me, and is plenty strong. There should be no way that it is "falling" out!

<comment><USER4> The issue I've had with MagSafe2 is that it's very sensitive to vertical force: If there is any tension at all on the cable and I rotate my rMBP more than 15 degrees or so around the axis between my head and the screen (say, while using it on the couch), the connector disengages. Not so if it's rotated around the vertical axis. It's not clear to me that there's any safety or durability justification for this difference, only that they wanted a connector that was much thinner along one dimension than the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The USB Power Delivery spec is pretty interesting too - up to 100W @ 20V over USB (presumably with modified cabling, too :P)

[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/172113-usb-power- delive...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/172113-usb-power-delivery- spec-demoed-for-the-first-time-can-provide-up-to-100w-and-usb-3-0-over-a- single-cable)

(a link from a link on this comments page)

<comment><USER6> Powering an external monitor from a laptop is appealing. One cord to the wall.

Even cooler, would be driving an external monitor from a smartphone.

<comment><USER7> You've got it backwards... powering your laptop from the monitor is the killer app, meaning an end to proprietary laptop power supplies.

<comment><USER8> Well, you've got one out of two already. :) Apple laptops can be powered by Apple external monitors.

It'd be nice to have a more "universal" standard -- where I'm sitting at work right now I see one coworker with a ThinkPad plugged into an Apple monitor, and another with a MacBook Air plugged into a Samsung monitor, and that means both of them need one more outlet than I do. But that's a meeting of the brands I wouldn't hold my breath for.

<comment><USER9> _> Well, you've got one out of two already. :) Apple laptops can be powered by Apple external monitors._

Well. Kinda. You still have to plug in two cables. This would allow to go down to one single cable powering the laptop and sending signals to the screen.

Though, honestly, I don't trust USB to be a good protocol for transmitting a high bandwidth and very lie latency signal with it's inherently polling architecture.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that the whole point of USB's isochronous transfer mode, where a peripheral schedules part of the total USB bandwidth budget for a regular transfer of data? USB 3.1's got similar bandwidth to Thunderbolt and HDMI 1.3, so that could work for many video applications, although not for uncompressed 4K/60Hz, although VESA Display Stream Compression could allow it to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Reversible plug orientation and cable direction

That's all I needed to read.

<comment><USER11> Now you only have to plug it in one time instead of three!

<comment><USER12> [http://cdn.thedroidguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/USB- pl...](http://cdn.thedroidguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/USB-plug-in- problems.jpg)

Source article actually relevant to topic: [http://thedroidguy.com/2014/04/next-generation-usb-type-c- ca...](http://thedroidguy.com/2014/04/next-generation-usb-type-c-cable-to- come-in-july-solves-usb-wrong-insertion-problems-88874)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds great! For anyone not sure of the context, right now Type-A is the "host" end and type-B is the "device" end. However since OTG was introduced that correlation isn't concreted and can reverse during the connection. I might have misunderstood but it sounds like Type-C will be a symmetrical affair (the cable will be reversible). I guess this opens the door for totally new use cases for USB? With extensions to the OTG system we could be connecting two hosts for e.g. transferring files between laptops. Again I could be wrong about that.

Also 100W power is great - The power delivery capability of current USB is really limiting.

And reversible cable orientation? We are entering a glorious new era.

</comment><comment><USER14> Where are the photos of the connector?

<comment><USER15> Some different connector configurations at the Ars article:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/small-reversible- usb-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/small-reversible-usb-type-c- connector-finalized/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Um.. wouldn't the small piece in the computer's end break easily since it is so thin.. and small.

And how does it delivery 100W of power with cable that thin?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing it does 100w only at 20v, which is 5A, which, with proper engineering, could be carried over 22-24 AWG wire according to [https://www.eol.ucar.edu/rtf/facilities/isff/LOCAL_access_on...](https://www.eol.ucar.edu/rtf/facilities/isff/LOCAL_access_only/Wire_Size.htm)

For an example of how thick 24AWG wire is (22 is thicker), your standard CAT5E wire is 8 strands of 24AWG, so with the current-standard USB wiring of VCC (5v DC pos), Data (neg), Data (pos), GND (5v DC neg), it'd be ~half as thick as CatV (but would probably have different shielding). However, according to [http://pinoutsguide.com/Slots/usb_3_0_connector_pinout.shtml](http://pinoutsguide.com/Slots/usb_3_0_connector_pinout.shtml) , the powered USB 3.0 connector has 11 pins, which would be ~lamp cord thickness, or probably comparable to those ~10ft USB printer cables.

Consider how thick overhead power lines are and how much power they carry in watts, and how thick + long your vacuum cleaner cord is with how much that carries (a Dyson DC33 takes 1190 watts): [http://www.cockeyed.com/science/power_use_database/dyson_vac...](http://www.cockeyed.com/science/power_use_database/dyson_vacuum_cleaner.html)

Here is a good primer on wire capacity and how it relates to volts, amps, watts, and wire diameter: [http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/WireCapacityChart.htm](http://www.rowand.net/Shop/Tech/WireCapacityChart.htm)

TL;DR totally possible with 20vdc to use a wire thinner than a BIC pen to deliver 100w ~6ft in addition to high-speed data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They also said it supports the USB PD to up to 100W (@ 20V) which is enough current (5A) to support stuff like a Macbook Air.

<comment><USER19> Its enough to support any laptop I know of. Very vew exceed 100W.

<comment><USER20> Pretty much the only way to exceed 100W is to be running a high end gaming laptop, while actively playing games.

A desktop equivalent(ish) quad core hyperthreaded i7-4700MQ that turbos up to 3.4ghz only has a 47W TDP, which is a worst case number, so even heavy duty number crunching isn't enough.

Even exceeding 100W, you'll still be draining the battery much more slowly than when unplugged. At 125W the battery will last 5x longer.

It's hard to imagine a real world situation where 100W would be insufficient, where the user wouldn't be very much better off using a desktop machine for gaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised they're not calling it ~"USB Smart" like Bluetooth: [http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/Bluetooth-Smart- Devices.aspx](http://www.bluetooth.com/Pages/Bluetooth-Smart-Devices.aspx)

The logo for "USB 3.1 SuperSpeed +" is very similar to the current "SuperSpeed USB" logo: [http://low-powerdesign.com/donovansbrain/wp- content/uploads/...](http://low-powerdesign.com/donovansbrain/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/superspeed-usb-logo-1.png)

EDIT: Here's the USB 3.1 logo (USB 3.0 logo above for comparison): [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Usb-3.1-l...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Usb-3.1-logo.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh joy, they still use that damn diving board design on the device side. I've broken 3 devices when that diving board breaks.

<comment><USER22> Really? How aggressively are you plugging in your USB cables?

<comment><USER23> I have the same problem. One faulty or aggressive plug angle, and you break some pins or the inner paddle cracks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One step closer to that glorious day when the back of my desktop has like 20 USB sockets and nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER25> This will be interesting, and its needed to keep up with the evolving use of USB. The downside is that once this is everywhere you will be keeping a drawer full of USB adapters (kind of like those USB/PS2 keyboard adapters that are everywhere, or DVI/VGA)

</comment><comment><USER26> Just as Randal publishes this...[http://xkcd.com/1406/](http://xkcd.com/1406/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't look at all like lightning connector :)</comment>


Ask HN: What brings you joy, without a relationship? - <AUTHOR> Healthy male, 38, financially secure. Being depressed about not having a relationship/wife/family, doing counseling for 3 months already. Rather than focusing on what's missing, I'm working on focusing what I could do on my own.
What activities which don't depend on having a SO bring you joy?
Thanks for sharing. <comment><USER2> Learning new things. Making things. Making the world better in some way. Doing something I wasn't able to before. Exercise. Seeing things I've always wanted to see.

</comment><comment><USER3> Continue your journey and walk the path of becoming the best person you can be. The further you're on it, the more people want to join you for a ride. It's not uncommon for men to start a family at 45, you have time; Face your emotions and wants head on & keep going!

</comment><comment><USER4> Making/building stuff. Be it home improvement or just some gizmo, it makes me feel free

</comment><comment><USER5> In my case it's playing guitar and practicing a martial art. I like these activities because I get some time _away_ from my SO and it has nothing to do with programming or tech so I get a break from work as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you have a friend(s) you can go do things with?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. I have 3 friends, all married with kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> maybe join a cooking class or something like that.</comment>


Ask HN: What killed IA-64? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Short answer: Linux on x64 CPUs from Intel and AMD.

I worked with HP-UX on PA-RISC and IA-64 (aka Itanium), IBM AIX on Power and SUN SunOS/Solaris on Sparc from 1996 to 2005. All three vendors were touting the advantages of RISC over CISC, i.e. Intel x64 architecture. The reality was that Intel / AMD CPUs were being manufactured in huge volumes whilst IA-64, Power & Sparc were niche products with correspondingly high prices.

It is also interesting to note that HP had its proprietary RISC CPUs in the form PA-RISC family. But due to the enormous cost of designing and building CPUs they formed an partnership with Intel to co-develop the IA-64 family.

Of course, Intel was making many multiples more money from x64 family so they didn't put the same level of commitment into the IA-64 product line. This in turn meant that for any given performance level a multi-socket x64 board was price and performance competitive with the HP-UX based systems. Systems, e.g. Integrity series allowed for vPars and other partitioning tricks along with using FC connected SAN. We are talking multi-million $ systems. It was during this time that Google and Amazon were publicising their commodity hardware based massively parallel cluster architecture.

</comment><comment><USER3> As well as the other answers here, an additional reason was that during the time from announcement to shipping silicon the performance of x86 had improved such that the Itanium chips were lackluster performers in comparison to a top end x86 being produced by Intel at the time Itanium shipped silicon.

Couple lackluster performance compared to x86 with a significantly higher price than the equivalent performance x86 CPU and you get an additional damper on excitement and corresponding sales.

</comment><comment><USER4> Two things come to mind: poor backwards compatibility and reliance on compilers to emit optimally ordered code (inherent in the VLSI system philosophy), which they proved unable to achieve, resulting in comparatively poor price/performance. Eventually x86_64 came along and provided an alternative that provided backwards compatibility, horizontal (PC/server) universality, and most of the purported benefits without the hassle, and the Itanium came to grief.

<comment><USER2> The C compiler on HP-UX was an extra cost item and it wasn't cheap. Porting programs to HP-UX often required some tricky changes because the C compiler wasn't as mature as GCC on x-64 systems of the time.

I recall that once Oracle acquired Sun, they gave priority to getting latest releases of Oracle RDBMS and JVM running on Sparc before HP-UX and AIX. In the corporate space Oracle and JVM were pretty much the main game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ivan Godard discusses the various positives and negatives of IA-64 in his description of the Mill Computer spread across many videos. (If you really want to dig deep at a architectural level) [https://millcomputing.com/docs/pipelining/](https://millcomputing.com/docs/pipelining/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I really miss Mike Magee ripping on this architecture regularly, it was great:

[https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1039092/how- intels...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1039092/how-intels- itanic-group-spends-its-time)

</comment><comment><USER7> Not exactly answering the question, but was not IA-64 also called as Itanium architecture? The architecture which promised taking base clock frequency to 10GHz?

<comment><USER8> NetBurst was heading for 10 GHz; I don't know that Itanic ever made that promise.</comment></comment>