"Deep Learning has outlived its usefulness as a buzz-phrase" - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/yann.lecun/posts/10155003011462143 <comment><USER2> [Text from post]

OK, Deep Learning has outlived its usefulness as a buzz-phrase. Deep Learning est mort. Vive Differentiable Programming!

Yeah, Differentiable Programming is little more than a rebranding of the modern collection Deep Learning techniques, the same way Deep Learning was a rebranding of the modern incarnations of neural nets with more than two layers.

But the important point is that people are now building a new kind of software by assembling networks of parameterized functional blocks and by training them from examples using some form of gradient-based optimization.

An increasingly large number of people are defining the network procedurally in a data-dependant way (with loops and conditionals), allowing them to change dynamically as a function of the input data fed to them. It's really very much like a regular progam, except it's parameterized, automatically differentiated, and trainable/optimizable. Dynamic networks have become increasingly popular (particularly for NLP), thanks to deep learning frameworks that can handle them such as PyTorch and Chainer (note: our old deep learning framework Lush could handle a particular kind of dynamic nets called Graph Transformer Networks, back in 1994. It was needed for text recognition).

People are now actively working on compilers for imperative differentiable programming languages. This is a very exciting avenue for the development of learning-based AI.

Important note: this won't be sufficient to take us to "true" AI. Other concepts will be needed for that, such as what I used to call predictive learning and now decided to call Imputative Learning. More on this later....

<comment> bra-ket it's really a pity that after 75 years of AI research the best thing we've got is still based on gradient descent, a brute force trial and error.

<comment><USER3> If you can't reasonably get at or use second order information, how else are you going to optimize arbitrary objectives?

Well, come to think of it it, why don't DL approaches use BFGS instead of gradient descent?

<comment><USER4> There is literature on Quasi-Newton and Krylov Subspace methods for training Neural Networks. For example, [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3104516](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3104516).

I think the primary reason that such methods are not used much in practice is memory and computational cost: each function evaluation is expensive and you need to solve a very large system at every iteration.

Also to reply to a sibling comment, you can add momentum and step length adjustments to second-order methods in much the same way as in steepest- descent to help escape saddles. The only difference is how the descent direction is chosen for the optimization.

<comment><USER5> This is correct - second order methods are great in theory, but they are generally computationally prohibitive for high dimensional problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You may have seen DeepMind's results last year where it trained 3D models to move through space in different ways, entitled "Emergence of Locomotion Behaviours in Rich Environments" ( [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.02286.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.02286.pdf) , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_bgoTF7bs&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_bgoTF7bs&feature=youtu.be)). If you have a look in the paper, the method they use "Proximal Policy Optimization" is a great example of differentiable programming that does not include a neural network. I actually realized this last month when I was preparing a talk on deep learning, because I thought it used deep neural nets in its application, but found that it didn't.

<comment><USER7> Scanning through the paper, I see this "We structure our policy into two subnetworks, one of which receives only proprioceptive information, and the other which receives only exteroceptive information. As explained in the previous paragraph with proprioceptive information we refer to information that is independent of any task and local to the body while exteroceptive information includes a representation of the terrain ahead. We compared this architecture to a simple fully connected neural network and found that it greatly increased learning speed."

It seems to me they do use neural nets. Proximal Policy Optimization is just a more novel way of optimizing them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish we could come up with a catchier name, but I LOVE the idea of calling this _programming_ , because that is precisely what we do when we compose deep neural nets.

For example, here's how you compose a neural net consisting of two "dense" layers (linear transformations), using Keras's functional API, and then apply these two layers to some tensor x to obtain a tensor y:

      f = Dense(n)
      g = Dense(n)

      y = f(g(x))

This looks, smells, and tastes like programming (in this case with a strong functional flavor), doesn't it?

Imagine how interesting things will get once we have nice facilities for composing large, complex applications made up of lots of components and subcomponents that are differentiable, both independently and end-to-end.

Andrej Karpathy has a great post about this: [https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35](https://medium.com/@karpathy/software-2-0-a64152b37c35)

<comment><USER9>
      I hate the name, but LOVE the idea of calling this programming...

What would you call it instead?

<comment><USER10> ∇programming

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe this paper by Marcus ( [https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1801/1801.00631.pdf](https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1801/1801.00631.pdf) ) earlier this week inspired this.

Edit: I don't mean Marcus inspired the term differentiable programming; he inspired LeCun to emphasize the wider scope of deep learning after Marcus attacked it. In fact, LeCun liked a post on twitter rebutting Marcus' paper that also talks about differentiable programming: [https://twitter.com/tdietterich/status/948811917593780225](https://twitter.com/tdietterich/status/948811917593780225)

<comment><USER11> I don't think so. LeCun seems to oppose Marcus's views...

Related: [https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/921409820825178114?lang=en](https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/921409820825178114?lang=en)

I think LeCun doesn't want a repeat of AI winter because of exponentially rising hype and expectations out of Deep Learning. There have been few examples like Selena which he seems to think that people are trying to ride the deep learning wave to generate false buzz (and cash!) for themselves.

<comment><USER6> He does oppose Marcus' views, but he also knows neural nets are only one approach to differentiable programming. The term is confusing though. It should read like "linear programming" does, but people are not interpreting it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Past HN coverage of Differentiable Programming:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10828386)

</comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Differentiable Programming is horrible branding. It's hard to say, not catchy, and not as easily decipherable.

2\. Isn't the evolution of Deep Networks more advance setups such as GANs, RNNs, and so on?

<comment><USER14> > Differentiable Programming is horrible branding. It's hard to say, not > catchy, and not as easily decipherable

Tell that to the people who deliberately popularized the term Dynamic Programming for something that was neither dynamic nor programming.

____

(From Wiki)

Bellman explains the reasoning behind the term dynamic programming in his autobiography, Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography (1984, page 159). He explains:

"I spent the Fall quarter (of 1950) at RAND. My first task was to find a name for multistage decision processes. An interesting question is, Where did the name, dynamic programming, come from? The 1950s were not good years for mathematical research. We had a very interesting gentleman in Washington named Wilson. He was Secretary of Defense, and he actually had a pathological fear and hatred of the word research. I'm not using the term lightly; I'm using it precisely. His face would suffuse, he would turn red, and he would get violent if people used the term research in his presence. You can imagine how he felt, then, about the term mathematical. The RAND Corporation was employed by the Air Force, and the Air Force had Wilson as its boss, essentially. Hence, I felt I had to do something to shield Wilson and the Air Force from the fact that I was really doing mathematics inside the RAND Corporation. What title, what name, could I choose? In the first place I was interested in planning, in decision making, in thinking. But planning, is not a good word for various reasons. I decided therefore to use the word "programming". I wanted to get across the idea that this was dynamic, this was multistage, this was time- varying. I thought, let's kill two birds with one stone. Let's take a word that has an absolutely precise meaning, namely dynamic, in the classical physical sense. It also has a very interesting property as an adjective, and that it's impossible to use the word dynamic in a pejorative sense. Try thinking of some combination that will possibly give it a pejorative meaning. It's impossible. Thus, I thought dynamic programming was a good name. It was something not even a Congressman could object to. So I used it as an umbrella for my activities."

<comment><USER15> >> Let's take a word that has an absolutely precise meaning, namely dynamic, in the classical physical sense. It also has a very interesting property as an adjective, and that it's impossible to use the word dynamic in a pejorative sense. Try thinking of some combination that will possibly give it a pejorative meaning. It's impossible.

Now I have to try:

      "Dynamic, multimodal failure" (fail).

      "Dynamic instigation of pain for information retrieval" (torture).

      "Dynamic evisceration of underage humans" (slaughtering of children).

      "Dynamic destruction of useful resources" (environment destruction).

      "An algorithm for calculating dynamic stool-rotor collision physics" (shit hits the fan).

Not terribly good I guess but I think not that bad either.

<comment><USER14> Even in your examples I don't think the 'dynamic' part is negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Remember back in 2017 when Deep Learning wasn't legacy? Those were good times

</comment><comment><USER17> "Google uses Bayes nets like Microsoft uses 'if' statements" -+ Joel Spolsky, 15 years ago

</comment><comment><USER18> If you're going to do a "rebrand" atleast use a better name. A six syllable word doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

<comment><USER19> differentiable.js.io

</comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo Just a rebranding, though necessary one. Deep Learning is not really all about 'deep' anymore, many successful models don't really need a lot of layers.

<comment><USER20> So it's still just neural nets? Cool -- we've seen that before.

<comment><USER21> Is a single SGD layer a neural net? Is an image filter or an audio filter a neural net? Is matrix multiplication a neural net? This would strain the intended definition even farther than it's already been strained.

But all of those are differentiable programming, and rightly so because they're all pieces that you use and compose together to make interesting learning mechanisms, including the ones that we vaguely refer to as "deep learning" now.

I like the terminology. It's not about what the original long-abandoned motivation for the design was ("neural"). It's not about how gratuitously complex you can make it ("deep"). "Differentiable" is about how it works and how we design it.

<comment><USER22> I'm not really buying your argument here. Neural networks are just a collection of artificial neurons. There is no requirement for multiple layers or depth of any kind.

<comment><USER23> > artificial neurons

Differentiable functions

<comment><USER24> Basically you're implying binary neurons, neuroevolution (which works on non- differentiable functions) etc. aren't a thing. Or at least they're not (working with) neural nets.

It's almost like SGD just made decades of AI research into neural networks just vanish.

<comment><USER21> I don't see that implication at all.

Nobody is claiming that the definition of "differentiable programming" should be identical to the definition of "neural net". The claim is, if you want to assign a name to the thing that TensorFlow, PyTorch, and similar frameworks do, it's "differentiable programming".

If you want to make a non-differentiable neural net, knock yourself out. The research still exists and nobody is stopping you.

But while we're talking about terminology, I'd encourage you to stop referring to the units as "neurons". The false analogy to biology just confuses people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> i remember people jokingly referring to stuff like word2vec (one layer, millions of dimensions) as "wide learning". this is definitely better branding than that.

</comment><comment><USER26> Darn! Just when I invested a lot of money and mastered Deep Learning!

</comment><comment><USER27> But differentiable programming would exclude deep neural nets trained by evolutionary methods/genetic algorithms since those are gradient free. With the term deep learning I think the focus is correctly on the "deep" (compositional) nature of these models and not necessarily the training algorithm, of which there are many.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does this mean programming language nerds get to play too, maybe after boning up on our calculus and topology?

<comment><USER29> They already are; e.g. Jeff Dean among many others. The question is will the PL academic community play as well.

Conal Elliott has done a lot of work in this area about 10 years ago. His work is beautiful but maybe before it's time.

<comment><USER30> Interesting comment regarding Conal Elliott. I've always thought there is some similarity between probabilistic programming (specify a probabilistic model as a graph), functional reactive programming (specify some reactivity as a graph) and deep learning (specify some linear algebra / calculus / optimization operations as a graph). Too bad the word "graphical programming" would be interpreted as "visual programming" (or programming using plots and charts!) and not programming using an explicit graph structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm seriously pondering what this means for PL research. There has been some work in probalistic programming languages, and a significant part of the community would like to avoid imperative features. However, it seems like this is a chance for some real invigoration in PL research agendas.

</comment><comment><USER31> "working on compilers for imperative differentiable programming languages"

what would be an example of such language?

<comment><USER32> Common Lisp without any changes: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/ADIL.pdf](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/ADIL.pdf)

Fortran with some changes required: [http://www.ens.utulsa.edu/~diaz/cs8243/adifor.html](http://www.ens.utulsa.edu/~diaz/cs8243/adifor.html)

C with some changes required: [http://www.ens.utulsa.edu/~diaz/cs8243/adiff.html](http://www.ens.utulsa.edu/~diaz/cs8243/adiff.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "See more of Yann LeCun on Facebook" popup, no access to the page. No, I don't want to create a Facebook account to read a blog post.

Perhaps links to walled-garden pages where you need an account and need to be logged in should be prohibited or at least discouraged.

<comment><USER34> this will get downvoted as all held, but I really think most socially apt people should have Facebook accounts these days

<comment><USER35> No. E.g. I'm fine with Telegram & Signal + WhatsApp & Skype for the elderly. Having no intention to become a public person, do I really need a public profile on a web site that's whole purpose is to spy on me everywhere, analyse my behavior and contacts, sell the data to others and show me ads?

<comment><USER36> I was recently testing video quality of video chats on a relatively shitty connection, and somehow Skype came out way ahead of Whatsapp and Hangouts.

<comment><USER35> I absolutely believe you. When I actually need to voice-call somebody (e.g. mom, granny or a client company CEO, all the other people I meet prefer texting) I use Skype - it does this much better than any of the competitors. So it sounds fairly probable it does video better than others too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Off topic. Yann LeCun really looks like Michael Moore who looks like Peter Griffin.

<comment><USER38> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>


SQL Server 2017 New Features - <AUTHOR> https://redmondmag.com/articles/2017/04/19/sql-server-2017-preview.aspx <comment><USER2> Graph databases, embedded Python and runs on Linux! SQL Server sure has come a long way in the 20+ years I've been working in it :-)</comment>


Study finds connections between birth month and health - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/blog/2015/06/08/data-scientists-find-connections-between-birth-month-and-health/ <comment><USER2> The linked article's title says "connection", the article says "correlation".

A phrase later in the articles shows that further study _may_ find a connection; implying that they don't have one already.

A more accurate HN link title is "Study could help scientists uncover new disease risk factors pertaining to birth date".

<comment><USER3> I am unaware of an applicable technical meaning of "connection". Does "connection" mean "causation" to you in a statistical context? If not, does it mean something stronger, weaker, or simply distinct? Is there a particular source for this meaning, like a style guide or technical work? (These are all honest questions; I like precision as much as the next scientific paper reader.)

<comment><USER2> I expect a usage of the word that means they had a evidence for a certain amount of the causation.

It's a complicated universe so full causal explanations are pretty much always unattainable in the real world, but I'd hope for some identification and discussion of a mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The risk related to birth month is relatively minor when compared to more influential variables like diet and exercise."

The most important information in the article.

<comment><USER5> Well, some diseases can't be influenced by variables. I have type 1 diabetes since I was 10 years old and it was caused by sheer luck. As for the study I was born in November. And I think you could categorize type 1 diabetes as a viral infection. For me it is accurate.

<comment><USER6> Well, that's not really true. Type 1 diabetes isn't caused by 'sheer luck' – there are a whole bunch of known and suspected genetic and environmental factors. The same applies to other conditions, and I'm not sure 'luck' is much of a contributor either way.

<comment><USER5> When I got first diagnosed they told me it was due to environmental factors, but they didn't know for sure. No one in my family had have type 1, so I ruled out the genetic factor. I know that if I had a child, he/she would have a higher risk of being sick. I am not an expert on the subject, but it seems like bad luck for me. I couldn't help not getting the disease. Type 1 has been around forever. In Ancient Egypt they defined it as the body eating itself. When I got sick, no one including the doctor suspected that a child could have diabetes. they had me tested for a lot of things, suspected that I had tuberculosis. These are my experiences anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised there's so much skepticism about this – it seems like an intuitively obvious result. The date on which a child is born will influence the environment in which they spend the early months of their lives – levels of sunlight exposure, temperature, allergens, pesticides and so on, both for the child and the mother. Given that, and knowledge that exposure to certain environments and chemicals can change the risk of health conditions later in life, it's hardly a big leap to demonstrate that correlation through a larger population-scale study.

I'd be far more surprised if there were _no_ link!

<comment><USER7> It says 55 conditions are correlated with the month, out of 1688. That's a rather small effect. The skepticism is well-warranted IMO. Also 39 of them have been shown to exist before this study so this is not strictly new knowledge either.

<comment><USER6> I don't quite understand your point – the number of conditions that are correlated isn't related to the effect size, is it?

I know it's not new knowledge – that's kind of why I'm unsure about the skepticism. We know that these effects already exists, and this is a wider- scale analysis of potential instances of those effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They assume it's an environmental factor but I wouldn't be so sure.

It's certainly possible that this bias is more related to parents behaviour. Some parents would conceive in August resulting in their children being born in May.... Other parents would conceive in January resulting in children being born in October. People which conceive during different seasons might be different both genetically and behaviourally which could influence offspring's health by means of genetic factors but also habits learned from their parents during childhood (dietary choices for example).

Or not.

<comment><USER7> Some of the correlations are based on environmental factors that change with the seasons, i.e. light, temperature, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Astrology makes claims that factors of life are correlated with birth month. This is a reasonable hypothesis to explore through studies. It is certainly possible that some correlations claimed in astrological charts were derived from observation and validation over a period of centuries.

Obviously astrology is bunk in that planets don't affect you. But it's conceivable that some claims in astrology are based on evidence that is actually correlated to birth month and seasons. We would expect to see inverse correlations for these factors in the southern hemisphere.

<comment><USER7> While on the topic of astrology, people might find it interesting to read about IMO the definitive study that shows it's bunk [1]. In it you can see that they took a lot of "time twins" (people born within a small time window on the order of hours or minutes) and measure if astrology had any predictive power over their lives. Spoiler: no, not really. Just a couple of quotes:

"The spacing of human births in a large population is described by a Poisson distribution, which shows that every year in a city of one million people about 4,000 pairs of time twins are born 5 minutes apart or less."

"Unlike the Roberts and Greengrass approach (count each time twin against every other time twin within one day, which would have produced nearly 600,000 pairs), serial correlation counts each time twin once only, thus minimizing the risk of artifacts. So the test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success. But the results are uniformly negative, see Table 2. The effect size due to astrology is 0.00 ± 0.03."

[1] [http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf](http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Dean.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ugh. Can we just stop using the word 'connection' altogether when what we really mean is 'an indeterminate and quite possibly coincidental correlation has been found between X and Y'?

A 'connection', to me at least, implies _causality_. No causal relationship has been found here.

<comment><USER11> Ugh. Can we just stop feeling like Gods of Statistics because we've read "Correlation doesn't proof causation" once?

<comment><USER10> Perhaps you should proofread your snark before posting, friend.

I never feel like a god of statistics. My complaint here wasn't even about statistics. It's not even a specialty of mine. Note my complaint was about _words_.

The meaning and usage of words, particularly the impressions and messages they convey to people--the ideas, beliefs, as well as the certainties they establish and invoke when spoken, written, heard, and read--on the other hand, most certainly is something I care very much about. There are many areas outside a probabilistically determined statistical model in which properly understanding, specifying, and communicating correlation and causality are useful and important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So, we are getting better with misuse of statistics and media (and probability).

</comment><comment><USER13> This could point to different epigenetic programming depending on conception date, right?

A similar environmental effect was observed with anyone born during the Dutch hunger winter being significantly more susceptible to certain diseases:

[http://www.news.leiden.edu/news/dutch-hunger- winter.html](http://www.news.leiden.edu/news/dutch-hunger-winter.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> It's certainly a statistical artifact. They probably haven't done cross validation.

<comment><USER15> The paper is linked and free, you could read it yourself.

But you're right, they didn't do full cross validation. They performed a smaller scale validation where they trained on 80% and tested on 20%. Their writing is a bit muddled here, but it looks like 12 of the 16 novel associations (those not previously reported in literature) were validated (as in passed the above test). They did not perform validation on previously reported associations that they confirmed - presumably because they drew from an independent dataset from the original publication, and so this test constitutes an independent validation of the original study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would there be any adverse effects on the world if people took note of this, causing the distribution of birthdays to change so that there was a significant spike during the May-July low-risk period?

<comment><USER13> This has only been tested in New York yet. It'd certainly be interesting if the high/low risk months varied depending on birth location or wherever mom spends her time during pregnancy.

<comment><USER17> > This has only been tested in New York

That's a very important point. The effect (if it were to be proved) could be reversed in the southern hemisphere, and completely absent in non-city environments. I'm plucking those hypotheses out of thin air, but it seems obvious that the risk goes up because of some underlying reason.

Perhaps being born in New York in October increases the chance that you'll spend most of your first few months of life in a damp-infested flat without much natural light. Perhaps it's because of increased stressed levels at school associated with being one of the oldest in your peer group.

Without knowing the underlying causes, this is just an interesting tidbit.

<comment><USER7> The conditions are correlated with the changing seasons so it's only logical to consider things on the other side of the equator. I suspect that all the effects will be gone around the equator where the differences between the months are quite small. I'm not sure about the city connections but I think there have been studies showing people in big cities suffer from more asthma and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The abstract didn't mention which hemisphere the study was run I'm assuming the northern hemisphere.

It would be interesting to see a similar study for the southern hemisphere.

<comment><USER7> From study[1]: "Our dataset includes 1 749 400 individuals with records at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center born between 1900 and 2000 inclusive."

They also compare some of their data to data from Denmark. So it's all Northern hemisphere, mid-latitudes.

[1] [http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org/content/jaminfo/early/2015/0...](http://jamia.oxfordjournals.org/content/jaminfo/early/2015/06/01/jamia.ocv046.full.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be interesting to see this study done for disease in just children since their birth month should correlate much stronger with weather and environmental factors

</comment><comment><USER20> Astrology might have a scientific basis after all...

<comment><USER21> With people in the past living a much more seasonal life, ones in which a diversity of nutrition can only be provided for babies at different times of the year, there is a scientific basis that has been explored. Along with food, babies of the past may have been granted more or less contact with parents depending on seasonal work loads and so on.

Interesting stuff to think about. Seems to be what this article is getting at. Imagine how magnified it was when agriculture played a bigger role.

<comment><USER22> I am a scientist and I don't believe in Astrology, and I was always suggesting this interpretation to my friends who believe in it. Generally, the answer was "yeah, okay, maybe, I don't really care where it comes from, as long as it's correlated with the stars". However, they always reject the further conclusion that in modern times all these effects must have virtually disappeared. Also, they always confuse statistical correlation with individual people. If someone is 55% likely to have some trait, while other people are 50% likely to have that trait, it doesn't really mean you can make a definitive conclusion about a single person you see. It will only apply if you see 1000 people and do the average. Just my thoughts. Thanks for yours!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I do hope they publish the sequel: "Study finds positive correlation between birth and death"

</comment><comment><USER24> So, zodiac signs have _some_ meaning after all? :D

<comment><USER25> No, because zodiac signs span on two months. :) They're useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It seems too early and too surprising to have a reasonable discussion about that topic to me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Naturally this comes to mind: [https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

Spurious correlation achieved by misusing statistics. Not to mention publication bias.

<comment><USER7> The authors of the study have done as much as they can to eliminate such effects. Not to mention that the correlation they find for 39 out of 55 conditions has already been demonstrated in the literature.</comment></comment>


Python in Excel [video] - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/53094126

<comment><USER2> What tool is that guy using? Anyone know?

<comment><USER3> Through careful squinting I determined he's using [https://datanitro.com/](https://datanitro.com/)</comment></comment>


Top 100 Instagram Account Losers #instapurge - <AUTHOR> http://64px.com/instagram/

<comment><USER2> chiragchirag78, down to single digits... wow, had that been a real person, that would have been quite a blow to the ego!</comment>


Apple Gives This Consumer the Business - <AUTHOR> http://comm-tech-culture.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-apple-slipping.html Apple business model: 36+ hrs to (not) respond to support request, 2 hrs to censor complaint on disc board. <comment><USER2> > _"Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions"_

It's good to see Apple has provided Winston Smith with suitable employment.</comment>


Lessons from NYC's improperly anonymized taxi logs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@vijayp/of-taxis-and-rainbows-f6bc289679a1 <comment><USER2> Whoa, whoa.... You're telling me there's a public data set of _all taxi trip geolocation data with GPS precision_? That's f'ing insane!

I think there's a MUCH bigger privacy issue here than what the author focuses on.

Couldn't you deduce many _passenger_ identities based on addresses? There's a lot of scenarios where passenger identities could be effectively de- anonymized, just based on GPS data. You could then use this data set to analyze their comings and goings.

1\. For people who live alone in a single family home, you can pretty much completely track when and where they went by taxi. From this you can deduce a lot about their interests, lifestyle, workplace and schedule, private life, etc. It's profoundly invasive.

2\. Even if there's a few people sharing an address, the other dropoff/pickup point can be used to narrow down the likelihood of who it is, especially when combined with other easily obtainable data.

For example if you knew an employee (e.g. that cute barista) lived in a certain neighborhood you could track their trips to/from work and deduce their home address.

Or if you knew there was only one senior citizen (or Muslim, etc.) living in a building, a regular trip to a senior center (or mosque) would reveal when their apartment is vacant.

Or if there's only one young man in a building, a single trip home from a gay bar could out them.

Holy shit.. can you imagine someone just plotting all the trips from a single gay bar? Listing off all the connected residential addresses? And not only that, _any subsequent trips home from those addresses the next morning_? Taking the walk of shame to a whole new level!

Likewise trips could be used to deduce affairs and other deceptions by fellow residents. "You said you were working late, but the only taxi trip to our building that night was from a bar."

This is just off the top of my head.. I feel I could go on for hours listing all the possible ways this data set could be exploited.

How is this not front page New York Times???

<comment><USER3> I think the way cabs actually operate in NYC makes this practically impossible unless you already have some details such as the lat/Lon of dropoff and pickup and time of the stops.

I'm assuming the data is for yellow cabs and the new lime green "boro cabs" you hail on the street, not "car service" cars where you schedule a pickup and dropoff to specific addresses.

Most bars in Manhattan are storefronts in 3-4 story residential buildings. There are apartments above and they are surrounded by other buildings with apartments and businesses. I don't think you could identify a bar. Now strip clubs on the other hand are required by law to be tucked away in isolated locations. Might be possible to identify a strip club.

When you hail a cab, and many times when you get dropped off, it happens on a corner, perhaps over a block away, where it is easier to find a free cab.

Most cabs are in Manhattan, not a lot of single family homes. Single family homes in the outer boroughs will have almost no yellow cab coverage for pickup and finding a cab that will take you out of Manhattan can be dicey, although I guess those lime green cabs are meant to address that. SI, the Bronx and huge swaths of Brooklyn and Queens pickups will be almost non existant, people going from the outer boroughs will most likely use a car service.

I will certainly be checking to see if I can identify any of my rides.

<comment><USER4> This. If you've lived in manhattan for more than a month, you'd know that pickup and dropoff locations are not precise, specifically:

1) you never get a cab on quiet single-family condo streets - gotta get to corner of an avenue

2) cabbies often click meter to off half a block before you actually say "stop right here please, between the drunken couple and the pile of garbage on the left side". They do this so you pay and get out quicker, clearing way for another passenger.

3) There are a LOT of "skyscrapers" in manhattan, with 300+ apts in each

What WOULD be interesting is taking credit card logs of someone's cab payments and cross-matching dropoff based on charge timestamp :)

<comment><USER2> Most of the comments here about pickup/dropoff accuracy and large buildings suffer from the same logical flaw: "often" is not the same as "never".

With comprehensive data set of literally _173 million_ trips, even if we limit ourselves to precise locations in front of small buildings and residences -- let's say it's a paltry 5% -- that's still _8 million trips_.

That's more than enough to invade the privacy of a very large number of people.

And that's just the low hanging fruit. With geolocation data you don't always need precise location accuracy or small buildings to see identifying patterns. Don't forget that time is also a very useful factor, and often precise to the minute. E.g. trips departing after 1am within a half-block radius of the only bar in that radius are more likely than not to be patrons. And trips arriving at an apartment building at at particular time may be relatively rare, making it easy to look up the single trip that matches it.

Thus, a neighbor or roommate who saw someone arrive and noted the time (or had a security camera) might be able to deduce the bar that they visited, address or block of the person they're dating, whether they were actually where they said they were... That's one of a zillion scenarios. Precise address-to- address trips are just the low hanging fruit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anonymization projects should really invest in an hour of consulting time with a cryptographer-- they would be able to see these flaws instantly.

Nit: this is a lookup table, not a rainbow table. Rainbow tables involve a clever optimization that compresses multiple passwords (in a chain) into a single entry in the table, saving a great amount of disk space.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for your nit. I always wrongly associated rainbow tables with the Rainbow Codes the British used to name their military projects. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rainbow_Codes](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Rainbow_Codes) [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_table)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> These are old lessons: in 2006 AOL [1][2] and Netflix [1][3] both released datasets that were supposed to be anonymized but were easily de-anonymized. There are older examples based on Census data[4]. It's difficult if not impossible to release a dataset that is both useful and truly anonymized; in Schneier's words:

 _The obvious countermeasures for this are, sadly, inadequate. Netflix could have randomized its dataset by removing a subset of the data, changing the timestamps or adding deliberate errors into the unique ID numbers it used to replace the names. It turns out, though, that this only makes the problem slightly harder. Narayanan 's and Shmatikov's de-anonymization algorithm is surprisingly robust, and works with partial data, data that has been perturbed, even data with errors in it._

[1] [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/12/anonymity_and...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/12/anonymity_and_t_2.html)

[2] [http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/286](http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/286)

[3] [http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11497](http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11497)

[4] [http://crypto.stanford.edu/~pgolle/papers/census.pdf](http://crypto.stanford.edu/~pgolle/papers/census.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Stop rainbow attacks peeps, salt your hashes.

[http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/1776/can-you- help-...](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/1776/can-you-help-me- understand-what-a-cryptographic-salt-is)

<comment><USER9> That applies for passwords (where you _hope_ the data is fairly random, and unknown) but there are only 13,237 taxis in new york, and you can download the list! You'd simply try each one. The author only took hours to crack the list because he generated hashes for all possible medallion numbers, without using the list.

Also, even these numbers only apply to queries where you want to discover all of the drivers for all of the data. It seems more likely to me that someone would want to know who was driving a particular taxi at a particular time, or what a particular driver was doing on a range of days. In both of these cases, the number of records you need to deal with is massively reduced, and the second attack implies you know the plaintext.

So no, salting doesn't help against abuses of this data when hashing is so fast, and even using a slow KDF won't help much against the second attack.

<comment><USER10> You're assuming that the salt would be public. In practice there is no reason for it to ever be. As long as it stays private, it would be impossible to reverse HASH(salt || taxi_id) back to the taxi id.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Suppose they had generated a random unique ID for each driver and used that instead of a hash throughout. If you had a record of a single ride you made with a taxi driver, you could still find that ride in the database (start location, time, stop location, time). Then you can take your driver's ID and track all other trips that driver has made. Is that truly anonymous?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very interesting question. In your example, finding the identity of one or two drivers might be possible easily, but finding the identity of many drivers would still be very difficult. I guess whether it's anonymous or not depends upon how strictly you think anonymity is defined.

<comment><USER12> Really interesting. It also depends what other datasets are available

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm sure Uber is busily crunching all of this data and will use it to figure out how to efficiently destroy the remaining taxi cab drivers.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would you consider anonymizing the data properly and re-publishing as canonical torrent for future analysis?

<comment><USER15> Is there any real point now though? The raw data is publicity available.

So anyone who _wants_ to remove the anonymous fields and get the underlying driver is free to do so.

Meanwhile anyone who is not interested in the anonymous fields can just leave it alone?

<comment><USER14> Information diffusion is a function of time. Some people have the data now. Many more will use the data over time. Most of those new data users will simply click on a link in a blog or google or HN. The data may also be stored in a canonical open-data location. Each of those instances can have anonymized data.

What's the difference between distributing open-source with a known vulnerability and distributing open-data that knowingly violates the privacy of many people? If this was source code, there would be "responsible disclosure" that allowed the software author time to issue a new release of software. One could similarly work with NYC citygov digital team to anonymize the data properly and have them reissue an official dump, possibly with additional data from 2014. That would provide some incentive for developers to use the newer data.

Yes, malicious analysts can find the old data. But that is no reason for non- malicious analysts to keep replicating data that violates privacy. If this were data where the loss of privacy had significant financial or legal consequences, then naive data distributors and analysts would be inadvertently contributing to those consequences.

One should try to do the right thing, even if it seems technically pointless. In this case, working with the people who shared the data to fix the mistake. Otherwise, one could imagine future citygov publication requiring much more slow and expensive review of data to be released, e.g by lawyers who still won't find the next technical mistake. It's in the interest of all parties to make this particular instance right, to ensure future openness of privacy- protecting data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is a really good point. I'm going to try to reach out to someone in the government on Monday. I don't really have many contacts over there, so if anyone has suggestions on how to navigate the bureaucracy, I'm all ears.

<comment><USER14> Might be worth trying the email address on the page of NYC Digital:

firstname.lastname@example.com [http://www.nyc.gov/html/digital/html/about/contact.shtml](http://www.nyc.gov/html/digital/html/about/contact.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At least they tried to anonymize the data. Someone in my hometown recently filed a FOIA request for information about schoolteachers' pension plans and the district gave him a straight dump of the database which included the Social Security Number of every teacher in the district.

</comment><comment><USER17> There's some interesting analysis going on over at:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/28ialf/173_million...](http://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/28ialf/173_million_2013_nyc_taxi_rides_shared_on_bigquery/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Can someone explain to me what the real privacy concern is? The way I see it, the drivers are on a job. To me it seems the same as mapping out the route which a bus driver took. It's not like the passenger's information is being made public.

<comment><USER19> Cabs are not always taking a predfined route like a bus driver. They are picking people up at home/work which makes it relatively easy to extract information about their personal life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > creating a secret AES key, and encrypting each value individually

This doesn't sound like a good choice. It's security through obscurity.

<comment><USER21> (In my unqualified opinion,) I don't think this qualifies as security though obscurity. It seems to be just as secure as using AES for encryption: a secret key produces a ciphertext that an attacker can read, without being able to decrypt it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hash without salt, you're at fault; use a nonce, you're not a dunce.

</comment><comment><USER23> Differential Privacy might help.</comment>


The agony of feeling no pain - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18713585

<comment><USER2> I had read this story a couple years back and the way Steven Pete remembers Child Protective Services is a bit different from how his mum remembers it:

        > Once, CPS told the Petes they wanted to remove Steven, then a toddler,
        > for two months of observation at a Seattle hospital.
        >
        > "I said to them, 'OK, but will somebody be watching him 24 hours a
        > day?' They said, 'Oh yes.' "
        >
        > In the hospital, "He broke his foot, and they didn't discover it until
        > a day and half later. They had no idea when or how it happened. Child
        > Services said they realized what we were going through. They worked
        > with us on it. They were really nice."

There's other stuff -- another sufferer and a lot more details -- in the article I'd read: [http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-00...](http://tdn.com/lifestyles/article_e230b156-b22e-11df-93d9-001cc4c002e0.html)

Anyway, this community, I think, cares a lot about pushing yourself to succeed, but knows the price of burnout that can be associated with that. These people just have this physically: rather than some sort of abstract 'laziness' we normally have 'pain' which slows us down, and while pushing past a little pain is usually good -- it gets you running and developing muscle -- there is serious pain which tells you 'something is wrong, you're about to injure yourself' which you fortunately can't easily push past. Well, these guys can, and it leads to real injury. There's a deep connection here somewhere between the mental fatigue and physical fatigues.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a concentration of people with "Norrbottnian congenital insensitivity to pain" in Norrbotten in northern Sweden: [http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan- presentatio...](http://www.slideshare.net/gejanmin/20090801-hsan-presentation)

</comment><comment><USER4> > _"If you're not in pain then you have no reason to be on any type of > assistance."_

So that's the qualifier for having a debilitating disability? Not medical bills, not the cost of equipment and care, but _pain_? Hell, I'm in pain all the time. Where's my check?

You'd think the qualifier for disability assistance would be having a disability that costs you money and keeps you from earning money. Pain is not automatically a disability, and lack of pain is not automatically the lack of a disability.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sad that the article didn't ask/answer one essential, obvious question: what about emotional pain?

From the article, I would guess that he feels it. But many studies have shown that emotional pain (e.g. the pain of losing a loved one) produces physiological reactions similar to physical pain. Does he feel emotional pain? Did he feel that ache and sinking feeling in the chest when his brother took his life? How did he feel it? How would he describe it?

<comment><USER6> There was an AMA thread on Reddit from a girl who couldn't feel physical pain. I can't find the link with (maybe she deleted it?) but I recall she did feel emotional pain.

<comment><USER7> Was it this one? [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9x8qc/i_am_unable_to_feel_pain_hot_or_cold_i_have_cipa/?sort=hot)

I also found one by a guy: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/e8g5e/ama_a_guy_that_feels_no_physical_pain_due_to_cipa/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> His concern about appendicitis is rather interesting. I wonder if preemptively removing it is something that has been considered. They do that with a keyhole operation these days if I recall correctly, so accidental injury during recovery would probably be fairly minimal.

</comment><comment><USER9> Curiously enough, there's still other conditions relating to pain. My own favorite obscure disorder is 'pain asymbolia': where you feel pain and know something bad is happening, but it's not _painful_. As far as I've been able to find out, it's not like this (or other nerve deadening problems like diabetes or leprosy) in apparently causing no serious injuries or self- injuries.

Relevant: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/51f/guilt_another_gift_nobody_wants/>

</comment><comment><USER10> As a pain sensitive human, I think the closest approximation I can come up with of this condition is being very very drunk. If I recall correctly, one of the most common cause of death by hypothermia is alcohol. It's also much easier to get injured badly when you are drunk due to decreased pain sensitivity (complemented by decreased judgement). And even then, I guess this does not even come close to what this man must have been living with.

<comment><USER11> Or just being given some serious painkillers.

I had my wisdom teeth out a year or so ago, and after that I chewed big holes in my lip and tongue because I couldn't feel that I was biting on them. I imagine that's more or less what happens to them, all over their body, all the time.

<comment><USER12> Yep. Had knee surgery recently and they gave me something that basically turned off the nerves in my leg. The brace they put on it afterwards trapped the skin near my backside and caused a huge welt which I couldn't feel.

My God it hurt next day though.

EDIT: Thinking about it - I actually _saw_ that the skin was trapped but didn't do anything about it because I couldn't feel it. Even though I knew I was on painkillers. It must be difficult to learn to respond to possible dangers without the pain motivator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's hard for me to understand how a person could have a sense of touch but not feel pain. It seems like touch is just a continuum where pain is where it crosses over into being unpleasant. I've always been similarly confused about how painkillers work. Pain must somehow be an actually different thing than regular touch, but I don't get how this can be.

<comment><USER14> Well then read some medical books!

Sorry about the snarky response, but when a comment like this is at the top, I can't believe so many people have voted up what is basically _F~cking Magnets, How Do They Work?_

<comment><USER13> Calm down, my comment was at 1 (now 0) because newly-posted comments are slightly favored for a little while before falling down the page to be in pure score order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That was an interesting read, but I don't really see what it has to do with technology or business.

<comment><USER16> Hacker news guidelines:

"If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

<comment><USER17> There's even been House episodes about this condition. It's not exactly obscure.</comment></comment></comment>


Bushfires in Australia so big they generate pyrocumulonimbus starting more fires - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.sg/australia-bushfires-generate-pyrocumulonimbus-thunderstorm-clouds-2019-12/ <comment><USER3> Carbon monoxide from the fires very visible right now on Windy: [https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration- cosc?cosc,-16.636,13...](https://www.windy.com/-CO-concentration- cosc?cosc,-16.636,132.188,4)

(with China looking like its usual, humdrum Mordor self)

<comment><USER4> I wonder what is the massive concentration in the middle of Africa.

<comment><USER3> It's fires there too, actually. It is the middle of dry season right now for central Africa.

Windy also has an "Active fires" layer: [https://www.windy.com/-Show---add- more-layers/overlays?fires...](https://www.windy.com/-Show---add-more- layers/overlays?fires,-15.284,41.660,3)

(but the pollution layers are often more fun, and more revealing)

which I think is data from Copernicus, but I'm not sure what the data is exactly.

<comment><USER5> Central African Republic looks like it is 98% on fire right now. But the CO display doesn't match nearly as well with the fires as it does in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm starting to think the least realistic part of every disaster movie plot is when the government recognises the crisis and acts. We've literally got people sitting in boats in lakes or the sea while their towns burn around them; this in a country with well developed fire-fighting infrastructure and well trained personnel. Action now won't kick in for a decade or two, best case, but that doesn't make it any less urgent.

<comment><USER7> To my knowledge over 90% of the firefighters are volunteers and they are not exceptionally well supplied. Australia has done a worse job than other countries with its vast resources could have done. But I agree with you: when has humankind ever truly united on something to pull together?

<comment><USER8> Banning CFCs. The UV index is already better than it would've been without the ban. By 2050 or so, it would've been TRULY bad, with significant rise in skin cancer. [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/WorldWithoutOzone...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/WorldWithoutOzone/page2.php)

<comment><USER9> Many years after hearing, and being inspired by the world's reaction to CFCs and ozone depletion, I read a piece in one of the main US papers - WSJ, NYT, WaPo, I forget which, that the main impetus for US action on CFCs was Reagan had had skin cancer. Which made it more personal for him.

<comment><USER10> Whelp, I guess that means we'll see a proper response right around the time Aspen has no snow over winter, Miami beachfront drowns, or some politicians family members pop their clogs die to something CC related.

Alas that'll be real late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem has probably been compounded by the fact that previous bushfires have always been actively fought and many were extinguished, thus allowing more combustible material to build up over decades, where without man's intervention, the bush would have burned in its natural lifecycle.

A lot of the plant material in Australia has evolved around fire. Take for example paper-bark trees which developed a fire resistant shell around their trunks. The blue gum trees especially thrive after files [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/40583-a...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/40583-australia- wildfires-eucalyptus-trees-bushfires.html)

BTW, I've witnessed an Australian bushfire up close once (standing safely at a beach). These gum trees really do explode as the descriptions say, its an incredibly ferocious fire. Perhaps that's their evolutionary trick - <USER2> everything out around them so that their seeds will have less competition to thrive for the next generation.

<comment><USER12> California, being a paragon of long-term planning, decided to import the pyrotechnic eucalyptus to the state, thinking it would be a good source of fast-growing lumber of railroad ties.

Welp, turns out eucalyptus makes terrible lumber, is unsuitable for railroad ties, lowers the water table, poisons the native flora, and can spontaneously ignite when sunlight shines on drops of the resin.

Oops!

<comment><USER13> Eucalyptus are also known to explode when set on fire. Another Australian flora/fauna that will actively try and kill people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the fine tradition of debunking click-bait headlines, I would like to make a somewhat unusual entry. All parts of this headline are true. The fires are big. They generate clouds/storms. I only call attention to a mere connecting phrase: "So Big (That)." Pyrocumulus and pyrocumulonimbus clouds are not unique to these fires, or even to fires this size. They've been generated by wildfires smaller than these. That is all.

</comment><comment><USER15> Let's put it in more perspective. So far in the 2019-2020 season (which is still going) we have lost 1011 homes and 5.9 million ha have been burned.

This is the single largest and most destructive fire season in Australian history. It is still ongoing and currently there are fires burning out of control across the country.

Our PM knew this was happening, but went on holiday. He at least came back. The NSW Emergency Services Minister took a holiday to Europe in the middle of it all. We still don't know if he is coming back.

<comment><USER16> Legitimately asking - what can the PM do to help the situation? What would he have done for the fires had he not gone on holiday?

<comment><USER17> Admit that Australian coal extraction is unsustainable and then resign? Admittedly that does nothing for _these_ fires, but without some change future ones are going to be worse.

Bringing that lump of coal into Parliament was a declaration that he wasn't going to care if Australia burnt to the ground so long as he got his share of the coal money.

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/feb/09/scott...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2017/feb/09/scott-morrison-brings-coal-to-question-time-what-fresh- idiocy-is-this)

<comment><USER18> Australia is about 1% of global CO2 emissions. I'm not arguing for being careless, of course, but either way it's not going to change much.

<comment><USER19> Australia supplies a large fraction of the coal burned by Japan, China, Korea and India. Mentioning the CO2 emissions of Australia itself is missing the point completely.

<comment><USER20> We are the largest global exporter of coal with over two hundred million tonnes sent to other countries to burn last year.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/29/chinas-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/29/chinas- policies-put-australias-5bn-coal-export-earnings-at-risk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Climate change is going to introduce new terminology to our lexicon.

Pyro-cumulonimbus is probably one of these new terms.

<comment><USER22> It's been a term for a long time. Do you mean in general usage?

<comment><USER21> Yes. It's not a term that I've ever heard before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wished such news articles would ways contextualize such news with a graph of the fire activity in previous years, if not in the entire recorded history. I want a figure how many standard deviations this is above the mean.

Edit: Something like this:

[https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/14...](https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/145000/145998/australia_vir_2019339.png)

Source: [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145998/fires- take-a...](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145998/fires-take-a-toll- on-australian-forests)

<comment><USER24> I can't help but ask if you have an agenda.. is it to say "See, the NASA graph shows it's not much worse than previous years, climate change is nothing to worry about!"?

The graph starts in 2014, that's not exactly a "pre-climate-crisis" year...

<comment><USER23> LOL, you guys have a really sensitive "climate denial sensor". I am about as critical of ignorant consumerism as it gets. For example I do not think millions of people need to travel >200 miles a day. But I am also aware that reducing consumerism is associated with a risk of mass unemployment and social unrest. Nonetheless I desire context. It's just my need as a nerd to get the full picture rather than "look at this scary context-less number".

<comment><USER25> You want the full picture, yet post a graph that starts at 2014?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So the world ends with fire, ash and brimstone after all

<comment><USER24> Heh, no need to travel to Venus, just go to Australia!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Arson as origin was always a possibility, (same situation in the case of California) but the hypothese gained a lot of support in the last days with 24 people detained accused of deliberately starting wildfires. It seems that Australia has waked up finally.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't help thinking of Peter Watts' _Echopraxia_.

</comment><comment> java-man Honest Government Ad nailed it:

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

</comment><comment><USER29> I woke up with a mouth full of smoke thanks to this. And they are a couple of hundred Ks away!

</comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone provide more context on why the NY Metro region is so high?

</comment><comment><USER31> Let's hope these aren't being started deliberately.

</comment><comment><USER32> 2 Peter 3:1-10

1 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. 2 I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

<comment><USER33> It's not hard to figure that those who've come from the front lines of fighting the fires, those who've helping the injured and those who have lost their homes are probably doing some hard thinking about their experiences right now. Fighting any confronting, seemingly loosing battle will do that, and it's human nature to be philosophical ("let me find a logical model that pattern-matches well to these specific inputs, but which is sufficiently complicated enough that I juuust can't quite logically verify the model itself properly") to cope.

But if I were going to pick a Bible passage that I felt was the most consistent pattern-match for this situation, I'd probably use Matthew 24:6-7:

6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

 _Shrug_ I'd file what's going on over here pretty unhesitatingly under "pestilences". I'm actually wondering where to move to in future; I'm currently a comfortable distance away from all the hotspots, and would (selfishly) like to keep that status quo. Such logistical considerations may become disillusioningly commonplace in future; hopefully not too distractingly so...

The reason I like the passage above is the bit about "the end is not yet". It's ironic: even as I do believe in the Rapture (or at least the vague, hand- wavy gist of it that the majority of denominations that are prepared to face the idea all agree on) and/or life after death, my soul's currently stuck in this specific body for now, and I have to figure out the best way to move forward.

Luke 19:11-13 comes to mind:

11 And as they heard these things, he added and spake a parable, because he was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear.

12 He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.

13 And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.

The end of verse 13 is my current focus at the moment, and helping me deal with some circumstantial depression that is causing me to lose sight in the value of the simple things. ADHD and concentration issues also make it easy for me to get distracted by details and lend me to top-heavy thinking and castle-building in the sky.

The thing is, beyond the simple understandings that are conveyed in the Bible, and the experiences of a few people that say they've visited Heaven (and who all have noteworthily consistent stories), I have no idea what happens Next™ - you know, after the end of the world. So trying to plan or schedule for or obsess over the future would be premature optimization - even as that leaves me with an absolute sense of "but wat even do I do now then????".

One final verse comes to mind, 1 Corinthians 13:12:

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Cross-referencing this with later verses in Luke 19 from before,

16 Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained ten pounds.

17 And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities.

Obviously my life goal is to figure out how on earth I'm supposed to "occupy" even while I can't even see what I'm doing properly because I "see through a glass, darkly" (mirror technology wasn't too great 2000 years ago; modern semantic equivalences might be 300k webcams, or JPEG quality levels below 40) so that, _beyond_ the end of the world, what I do retains value.

I officially have no idea what I'm doing.</comment></comment>


Kurzweil's Next Book: Creating An Artificial Mind - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/26/kurzweils-next-book-creating-an-artificial-mind/

<comment><USER2> I believe we're much closer than other commenters apparently. Here's why.

1\. The wetware is nifty but it's not what makes up intelligence.

The differences between sapient and non-sapient species are slight at the level of genetic code. The changes enabling intelligence are also very recent. The changes seem to be focused around the number and distribution of cortical columns in the neo-cortex, which are all remarkably similar regardless of the sensory input they are ultimately connected to. (This is why Hawkins' work is so exciting)

2\. A huge portion of what we consider intelligence is a product of language and culture.

Neglected and wild children are barely sapient in a way that we would understand (though with care they can become so). Our minds are largely constructs of a transmissible set of patterns external to our biology.

3\. The blue brain project is a ten year project

While I don't think we need molecular level or even synaptic level modeling to understand the software embodied in our brains, we have a hard target to be able to model, in large part, the human brain.

4\. The large numbers in the brain are no longer scary

100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic connections used to seem like an absurd scale for study. Now we regularly deal with billions of rows in databases and petabytes of storage. Not only that, the transmission speeds in the brain are _so_ slow, if we need to replicate anything like the connectivity of the brain we can do it over a massive and distributed area. There's simply no need to cram an intelligence into a single box or server farm.

5\. AI research has narrowed a great deal.

Whereas we had 50 tangents twenty years ago research is beginning to focus on two key aspects of learning. A. Large data sets for statistical analysis (e.g. Google) and B. Hierarchical representations of input. (e.g. Hawkins)

6\. PR2 (Willow Garage)

I'll go out on a limb here and say that a shared open source robotics platform is the best thing to happen to AI research in 50 years. People forget the sheer number of hours experiencing the world it takes for the brain to acquire sapience. By supplying a common framework for experiencing the world the PR2 will enable the kind of long term learning necessary for intelligence to emerge.

<comment><USER3> can you provide references for #2?

<comment><USER4> _can you provide references for #2?_

I'm not the OP, but Matt Ridley's book _The Rational Optimist_ , just released a few days ago, has much more on this. Selection here:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405274870369180457525...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703691804575254533386933138.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll take the time to read Kurzweil's book on building an artificial mind _after_ he actually builds one.

<comment><USER6> I might skip that, but I'd definitely read "How I Was Built" by Kurzweil's Artificial Mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do we want a "brain in a box?"

Note that this idea is distinct from computers that solve complex problems on our behalf. Creating something with its own desires, ambitions, and emotions, just like us, except vastly more powerful, is there any reason to think something good will result from introducing such a thing into our environment? Does it ever go well for a species when a more intelligent species enters its niche and competes for resources?

As smart as Kurzweil is, I am always shocked that he takes for granted that such a development will be good for humanity. He scarcely gives a thought to the philosophical ramifications of a human being crossing over into a completely digital reality.

I think the question of whether super human intelligence is good for humanity is at least as important as the engineering questions about how to build one.

<comment><USER8> Why is human supremacy a necessity? Why must a child be flesh and blood? If we want our children to be smarter, more powerful, and happier than us, why should we create children as feeble as us?

<comment><USER7> Our machines are not our children.

I know that's a metaphor, but I feel the better metaphor is another species. These machines are likely to be different from us in significant and important ways, and they are likely to have interests we do not share, and the ability to achieve those interests with or without our consent.

<comment><USER3> if we create them, then they are our children. oedipal perhaps, but children nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I quite enjoyed _On_Intelligence_ from Jeff Hawkins, interested to find out how the two books will relate.

<comment><USER10> I've skimmed through that book and looked at the API over at Numenta: <http://www.numenta.com/>. They are focused on practical pattern recognition applications. Kurzweil has always been about strong AI and almost sci-fi type scenarios in his books. It's a way more ambitious goal, but he has predicted a lot of things correctly before. I'd check out some of his earlier books beforehand, just to get a better idea of his mindset.

<comment><USER11> That's not really true, Hawkins theory revolves around prediction as it relates to intelligence. There is an entire section at the end of the book that explains why intelligent machines based on the neocortical algorithm he proposes won't resemble human intelligence/self awareness for a long time to come (if ever).

<comment><USER10> I'll need to take another look at Hawkins book. In any case, Kurzweil is promoting the idea we can have AI equivalent to human intelligence in a few decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm just reading 'The Singularity Is Near' at the moment and am finding it fascinating finding ideas, such as 'reversible computing' and interesting information relating to cellular automaton.

</comment><comment><USER13> The only way this can ever happen, I think, is if humans are able to model the building blocks of the brain (i.e neurons) and the processes that created it (i.e. evolution), because there's just no way we'll ever understand all of the emergent behavior of a human brain, as I see it. After all, don't you need something vastly more complex than the thing you're studying in order to understand it?

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the major problem to overcome is that current computers are based on a von-neumann architecture while I would argue that the brain is not as structured (at least not structured like in a von-neumann architecture).

tl;dr - I agree with Jeff Hawkins about the future of AI

<comment><USER3> not really. the supercomputers used for brain simulation are massively parallel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Kurzweils and Drexlers of the world make a living by claiming that amazing technological advances (immortality, molecular nanotechnology, thinking machines) are far easier than they actually are. When these things fail to get developed in the timescales they predicted, they blame the scientists who failed to make it happen.

<comment><USER5> His fundamental assumption that change will continue to follow an exponential curve because that's what it's doing now seems highly suspect to me. The problems you have to solve become exponentially more difficult as your tools become exponentially more powerful.

The human mind is the product of _billions_ of years of parallel computation and experimentation. Raw horsepower is probably the easy part.

<comment><USER15> But he's not saying "Because that's what it's doing now", he's saying "because that's what it's always done".

Human / animal muscles are also the product of _billions_ of years of experimentation, and a few decades of steam power research trounced them with ease. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's inherently incredibly good and hard to replicate.

<comment><USER5> Simple biological systems like bones/muscles evolved long ago and have mostly just been refined since then. Human-like intelligence is a much more recent and much more difficult development.

A lot of people seem to think that if you build a machine of sufficient raw horsepower that intelligence will magically emerge. Maybe, but I suspect it's not nearly so easy.

<comment><USER3> Kurzweil is not one of these people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ETA: Real Soon Now.</comment>


China's booming middle class is creating world's most dynamic consumer market - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21663328-booming-middle-class-creating-worlds-most-dynamic-consumer-market-wild-wild?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/thewildwildeast <comment><USER2> Anne Stevenson-Yang, a journalist and software executive who's worked and lived in China since 1985, and now a research director at an investment capital firm, has this to say about China's GDP: "actual Chinese GDP is probably a third lower than is officially reported"

[http://www.barrons.com/articles/anne-stevenson-yang-why- xi-j...](http://www.barrons.com/articles/anne-stevenson-yang-why-xi-jinpings- troubles-and-chinas-could-get-worse-1417846773)

"China is sinking into a deflationary recession that's increasing in speed and may take some time to run its course. Investors have lost faith in the property market, which alone comprises about 20% of GDP, when taking into account the entire supply chain, from iron-ore production to construction to related financial services and appliance sales. Employment and wage compensation will suffer. Consumption will continue to suffer. There's even an outside possibility that China's economic miracle could end up in a fiery crash landing, if a surge in banking-system loan defaults outruns government regulators' attempt to contain such a credit crisis and restore financial confidence."

She has a good video about China's economy here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2SStFt- k_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2SStFt-k_A)

<comment><USER3> Maybe the article represents a bit of wishful thinking; but the fact that this is the most up-voted comment is also quite revealing.

<comment><USER4> Why the strong anti-China sentiment on HN? I don't get it.

<comment><USER5> " _Why the strong anti-China sentiment on HN? I don 't get it._

That's quite odd, I notice the opposite. I notice many pro China pieces here on hackernews. Whether it's talking about their green energy, growing economy, financial markets or what have you.

Perhaps you've fallen victim to what's known as hostile media effect? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect))

It says that you tend to notice more negative media & chatter about something you care about or have an interest in, regardless of reality.

And I think this might actually be the case here because the original commentor above wasn't "anti-China" at all. He was stating a contrary viewpoint. Being realistic doesn't mean something is automatically "anti". If there was an article about the U.S middle class growing this year, and someone posted a comment which disputed that, it wouldn't be an "Anti-American" comment.

Speaking of, I see more "what's with the anti-China comments?" more than I notice _actual_ anti-China comments. In fact, I almost never see truly anti- China comments.

<comment><USER6> Being realistic is different from being contrary, which in turn is different from being a conspiracy theorist. Personally, I consider "Chinese government is fabricating economic statistics" a conspiracy theory territory.

You have a point that being mistaken is different from being hostile or anti, but we do call people "anti-vaccine" when they are just mistaken and as a result genuinely worried about vaccine. I think one should interpret "anti- China" the same way.

<comment><USER2> [http://www.wsj.com/articles/wsj-survey-chinas-growth- stateme...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/wsj-survey-chinas-growth-statements- make-u-s-economists-skeptical-1441980001)

"More than 96% of respondents to the latest Wall Street Journal survey of 64 economists–not all of whom answered every question–said China's gross- domestic-product estimates don't accurately reflect the state of the world's second-biggest economy.

"Official data are manufactured to fit the government's narrative," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities."

<comment><USER7> Which is exactly what you would expect in a communist regime with a neutered press.

<comment><USER8> That's what I'd expect from any middling-to-competent regime, not just the commies (though they of course do it too). For example, the Argentines are famous for making up exchange rates, and my own (American) government has a policy of systematically misreporting inflation and unemployment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everybody wants to have a binary outcome for China: China, is it an all dominating inevitability? Or a massive fustercluck? A or B!

And that's silly. China will grow tremendously over the next 30 years, and that growth will be filled with turmoil, booms and busts. Things are only black and white in comic books.

<comment><USER2> Or it could be like Japan and stagnate over the next 30 years, due to its similarity to Japan in demographics, exporting country's inability to transform to a consumer economy, massive internal debt, capital flight, etc.

<comment><USER9> China and Japan are about as different and opposite as two places can be (I've spent time in Asia). Their both very unique places in completely opposite ways. The differences are countless and I struggle to find even minor similarities.

<comment><USER2> I have lived in both. Cultural differences are not economic differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If its economy won't hit a hard-landing and the current reform is successful, then yes I think China will have a booming middle class by 2020.

But does the emperor have clothes on? No one can really say for sure.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was there on vacation one month ago and I have no trouble believing this article. The number of tourists paying European level entry fees to museums, parks and attractions is just too big (incredibly long lines everywhere, very few people from outside China). By comparison food is about 3 times as cheap as in western Europe and goods are as cheap as one expects from China.

Still, and I know this is not the point of the article, they are too many to live well, no matter how rich they become. Life there is a sequence of long lines. Three weeks there have reset my baseline for many things. When I came back home (Milan, Italy) I was surprised by how silent and desert it is and by how much sky I could see. Hardly the feelings one usually has when getting here.

<comment><USER12> for months after returning from China I marveled at the empty sidewalks in Arizona where I live. I understand totally what you are saying. China is a fascinating place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me the article written by a Lobbyists of CCP before Xi's visit

<comment><USER14> Or it could be just telling the truth.

<comment><USER15> Telling the truth?

Until Aug,2015 about 276 lawyers who help Chinese people protecting their human right have been arrested. But China still claim it is a country under the rule of law.

Another example is that recently an official media of China claim that China is the most democratic country in the world.

CCP is evil, never trust it!!!!!

<comment><USER16> From where do you get the ridiculous claim that human rights and the rule of law are preconditions for economic prosperity? There are many unfree yet rich countries, i.e. Singapore.

<comment><USER17> This question was answered years ago by the magna carta. Without rule of law, you get corruption and a dissatisfied population. Then you get economic stagnation and suffering by the masses. Finally, you get the French Revolution, the various Communist revolutions, and so on.

Rule of law is necessary for economic prosperity because without rule of law, entrepreneurs cannot confidently engage in economic activity without fearing that their property rights will be trampled and the wealth they generate will be taken away by an arbitrarily deciding government. Why should someone take so much risk and then be punished for their success? Without rule of law, there can be a temporary party for a few decades, but the party stops when the government starts getting out of hand and abuses its power. This is why Xi Jiping is making stamping out corruption one of his top public priorities, more so than any previous Chinese leader in modern history. He is also on record that he wants China to move forward to have proper rule of law.

I dislike it when people bring up Singapore as an example. Singapore is so small that it's really easy to manage compared to a large country with a large population. And besides that, Singapore doesn't have poor quality rule of law compared to other countries (yet).

edit: I get the impression that you equate rule of law with democracy. But you didn't actually say that, so please confirm for me whether or not that's what you really think. Rule of law is something else entirely: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law)

<comment><USER18> _This is why Xi Jiping is making stamping out corruption one of his top public priorities, more so than any previous Chinese leader in modern history._

And/or this campaign is destroying rivals to his power....

 _He is also on record that he wants China to move forward to have proper rule of law._

And if so, we'd better hope he's a 2nd Lee Kuan Yew. Except as you note, the scales don't even vaguely match, trying to effect such a policy change without well neigh unimaginable reforms all the way down to the local level strikes me as equally unimaginable.

One of the reasons to equate the rule of law with "democracy" is checking the power of local potentates; hard to see how a huge, all powerful state like the PRC can do that from the top down.

<comment><USER17> Yes, definitions and platitudes aside, feasibility is a completely different matter. It would be interesting to see whether the PRC really can implement proper rule of law from the top down, and it is quite possibly not feasible. That doesn't necessarily imply that the desire and effort are false.

Xi Bolai was an example of a campaign to destroy rivals to his power using the claim of wanting to clean up corruption. He had goals to achieve not yet achieved. Xi's already at the top. It would be very difficult to remove him from power, given the way the Chinese government operates. It would be tantamount to revolution. If revolution happens, I can't see it being because power rivals plot it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I was young I remember the world used to be beholden to the demand of the american consumer. What they wanted drove the export of entire economical regions in Asia.

Now it seems the giant in the room that everyone needs to accommodate is the Chinese consumer.

<comment><USER20> The world has been beholden to US consumer demand since the end of the Bretton Woods system (which ended when Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold in 1973) up until the collapse of the US center of gravity in 2008 (from which we haven't really recovered). Prior to that it was the opposite: Demand came from the periphery, and the US was the world's factory. Where we are now is uncharted waters. US demand is required to fuel the Global Surplus Recycling Mechanism. With its absence, China does not have enough domestic demand to replace the US and does not have enough power to start its own GSRM.

<comment><USER19> Is that you ? Is it the former greek finance minister ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read in Yanis Verofakis last book that Chinese consumer demand has been falling off since 2012 or so. I can't find good data on this out there though.

</comment><comment><USER21> What is the potential for enterprise software in China?

<comment><USER22> Having your software stolen after they request a 30 day trial.

<comment><USER23> That's the Far East for ya. We gave a Korean company a 30-day evaluation copy of our software in the early '90s. They decided not to purchase, and a few years later we dropped the product entirely.

In 1999 someone from the Korean company called up and asked if we could certify our software to be Y2K compliant.

<comment><USER24> Was there no killswitch after the 30 days? Is that not common in these "company trials"?

<comment><USER23> Oddly, no. We're not a software company, and we don't normally sell our software. It's developed for in-house use. One of the managers thought this particular application would be pretty lucrative if we sold it overseas (our customers are all in the US), so he got permission to do so. But we really didn't know what we were doing, i.e. we had a useful application with thousands of internal customers, but on the business side we were making it all up as we went along.

In the end the product was dropped because there's a lot of effort that goes into making an application a product you can sell to other companies, and we would have had to grow our organization more than the higher-ups wanted to grow it. Things like fancier interfaces, license enforcement, documentation, packaging, 24 hour support, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The fact that China's booming middle class is creating world's most dynamics consumer market, is why we need ethics in creating dynamic consumer market.

</comment><comment><USER26> Driven by paper money boom.</comment>