The Complexity of 'Simplicity' - <AUTHOR> http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/simple-design-is-complex

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I wonder if we would be better off with some mandatory complexity. Most people simply don't appreciate the miracles they see around them every second of every day. Miracles that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. Miracles that happen everyday on a consistent basis. Miracles that they curse and abuse.

If people could just see and understand how complex one Google query actually is then maybe the world would be a better place.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. It is for this reason that I vociferously advocate that all cars return to using carburetors in place of fuel injectors. If you had to spend a few hours once a month adjusting your idle screw and WOT switch, you would appreciate all of the miracles in your car's engine.

All sarcasm aside, let's not forget that technology is not an end unto itself, it is a means to an end. It needs to _help_ people accomplish things, not hinder them.

<comment><USER2> That's true and my concept is terribly wrong, but there is a problem at work over here. To quote Carl Sagan;

>>>We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.<<<

<comment><USER3> That I can agree with, but I think the fix is in education.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that education must be at such a massive scale that it's hard for one person to make an impact beyond locally. Just designing a curriculum doesn't work, because if teachers don't understand the pedagogy it won't ever get taught. With the current trend away from critical thinking and towards high-stakes testing, with the scary "anti-elitist" (anti-science, anti- empiricism) tendencies of broad swaths of the Republican party fundamentalist christian base which exert tremendous pressure on primary candidates & the textbook choosers in large influential states &c., and with the increasing involvement & influence of very large businesses in education whose bottom line is not necessarily closely related to the quality of instruction, it's hard to see where proper science education is going to slot itself in.

One of the big reasons I spent a year working as an intern for One Laptop Per Child is that I strongly believe that getting as many kids as possible even a bit of exposure and experience with programmable computing environments (and ideally then also with some simple hardware hacking such as plugging various sensors into the audio in jack) is a sure way to plant the kind of approach to problems that is required to understand modern technology or work in science.

* * *

It's somewhat off the subject, but I've been reading Darwin's _Voyage of the Beagle_ , and it's truly wonderful to see his mind at work. Not only is he constantly carefully observing the culture, geology, weather, flora/fauna, fossil record, etc. that he comes across on the trip, but also for nearly every observation he provides at least a speculative hypothesis and references various other people's theories which are supported or contradicted by the observation in question, and also usually suggests further experiments or observations which would test or corroborate the hypothesis. (Occasionally there's even a footnote explaining that his hypothesis at the time was later shown to be false.)

It's the scientific method as clearly and purely as I've ever seen it working, and the result is that nearly every page has some kind of insight. I'm left with tons of my own questions in response, even in subject areas I'm not especially experienced in and don't usually think much about, and the reading is quite exciting, even apart from the amusing situations he finds himself in.

I don't know what the best way is to provide that kind of spark to children, but I'm completely sold on the notion that it's desperately needed, and the most important thing a school could teach.

<comment><USER3> What if you could launch a school, instead?

This is probably my favorite problem. I think about it every day. It started a few years ago when it really began to dawn on me that almost every single sociological problem that a society develops can be traced back to errors in its educational system. I began to imagine -- as realistically as possible -- just what kind of societies might develop based on different kinds of educational systems.

There's a neat sub-problem though that you allude to: since we assume that education feeds into sociological tendencies which feed back into education, how can you dramatically alter the direction of an education system once it has been moving in a particular way for several decades?

I think the answer is best exemplified in games of strategy, like Go. In general, any time you're faced with an overwhelmingly powerful opponent, you try to find a niche they don't care about, you establish a small, self- supporting base in that niche, and then you grow it as quietly as possible for as long as possible. So, for example, if you tried to attack the current education system head-on, in the form of essays or books or school boards or legislation, you will probably fail. But, what if:

1\. You start with one or two after-school, extracurricular activities;

2\. You develop some rigorous, detailed, well-thought-out goals and methods for teaching them;

3\. You slowly add on more programs;

4\. You centralize them into a single facility;

5\. You begin to offer a not-worthless certificate at the successful end of each program thanks to (2).

Well, now you've just gone and launched something which can push against the current educational system a little bit. If you make this successful, you can begin to -- a little tiny bit at a time -- publicly ask questions like, "Why don't public schools have programs like this?"

It may be slow, but after spending a lot of brain time considering a large number of various ways of changing an educational system, this is the approach that I think has the best chances of success.

I've been putting a lot of energy recently into growing my business, so that I can finance a small store in the next 9 months or so, so that I can have an appropriate space to offer a fun, basic mechatronics program next Summer, which is my step #1.

<comment><USER2> Awesome.

I've been thinking about doing something like this too. Albeit not in the concrete way you've put forward, but something analogous to it.

If my startup takes off and I am at a stable plateau then I think that I can run a program like this on the premises. I could ask the people who are working with me to tutor/mentor kids by building stuff with them. Further, by having a hiring bias I can choose people with a personality that makes them more suited for such a thing.

In the longer run wouldn't it be awesome to fund a Xerox PARC that doubles up as a school? It's an amazing way to create long lasting partnerships with a community. You are giving back and receiving precious talent in return.

P.S. - Is there anyway I can help you out with your project?

<comment><USER3> > _P.S. - Is there anyway I can help you out with your project?_

I had to think about this for a day. The short, immediate answer was "Yes! absolutely!", but I wasn't really sure in what ways.

I think I need three things right now:

1\. Links to people with experience in mechatronics and/or teaching such things to small groups of kids age 12 to 16 (or thereabouts). I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron, reasonably proficient at programming, and have taught rock climbing to groups of kids that age. So, I think I've got all the pieces, but any hints would be appreciated. I intend to use Arduino and the course syllabus will involve making a small, automated, maze-navigating robot over the course of a couple of months in the Summer. They will get to keep their robot. I will build one of my own starting early next year to make sure I have a good idea of what to expect in assembling it.

2\. I really need "help finding help". I've got that affliction where I'm used to being self-sufficient and providing help to other people. As a result, I'm not very good at finding or getting help with things. F'r instance, I have no idea how to motivate someone else to be interested in what I'm up to, and I don't know how to ask for help, or how to respond to offers of help.

3\. Finally, the same old yarn about needing resources. I didn't have any savings when I started my business a few years ago. I've grown it literally out of nothing, and it's pretty healthy, but its growth potential is limited mostly by my lack of capital resources at the moment. So, if you know of anyone that might have a passing interest in helping me sort that out, that would be nifty.

Thanks for your interest! I'll post an update to HN once this thing gets rolling, hopefully in a few months. The main focus right now is to get my hands on a small building, which is requiring me to step up my revenue a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The classic line from St. Exupéry's _Wind, Sand, and Stars_ (in French, _Terre des hommes_ ) is "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove."

For any who have not read that book, I highly highly recommend the whole thing, and for hackers especially the chapter containing that quotation (it's somewhere near the beginning). St. Ex. provides one of the most insightful/"true ringing" defenses of technology I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER5> What were the results of Google's experiment?

</comment><comment><USER6> A good example of the authors specific notion of simplicity, can be our own Hacker News. On one end of the HN machine you submit a post or a comment or a question and around 2000 people see it in a day. After that you receive a nice little discussion (if your original input was good enough), as the output. A little noisy sometimes but has a form of natural filtering.

<comment><USER7> And a simple little number next to the topic or comment donating its worth. Karma is a wonderfully simple concept with remarkable outcomes - its a teacher, a rewarder, a punisher, an encourager...it helps make the community work (a very complex problem) but is wonderfully simple.

<comment><USER3> Downvoted. ;-)

That point number that everyone seems to want to attach to everything these days has absolutely nothing to do with measuring worth.

It is merely a measure of popularity, and popularity doesn't even correlate well to value.

<comment><USER8> Ah, but popularity has everything to do with measuring value.

As an analogy, gold would be a worthless piece of metal, if it wasn't for its popularity. Worth is an illusory, human-defined concept and just like anything "the worthiness of something" is ecided by majority. Perhaps because those who don't subscribe to majority's value system are weeded out in the process of evolution, unless their value system offers some incredible evolutionary advantage. And by incredible I mean "everyone is dead and unable to reproduce except for those who think that karma points are bullshit".

In reality, reality is merely a construct of our minds, and all value systems are created by consensus on which hallucinations are advantageous and which are disadvantageous. Thus, if we decide by unspoken consensus that karma points are worthy of construction of smart comments then karma points are valuable.

<comment><USER3> You're clearly a subjectivist, a philosophical position which I as a pragmatist find useless.

I would love to sit here and debate this with you, but I have a Saturday lunch meeting in a few minutes with my old high school's football captain and prom queen. I hear that they've accomplished some amazingly valuable things. We're probably going to eat at McDonald's. We will probably spend some time discussing the latest Dean Koontz or Danielle Steele novels. After that, I will come home and watch Fox News for a few hours, followed by some sitcoms.

Gosh, it's a good thing all these are so popular! Otherwise, I would have no idea what was valuable and what wasn't.

Oh, and by the way: gold would not be worthless. It has certain intrinsic properties -- like its resistance to corrosion, its malleability, its conductivity, and its low melting point -- which have made it valuable for many uses.

<comment><USER8> So, would you disagree with the statement 'value is subjective'? What about different value systems? How do we decide which one is more valuable than another, considering we ourselves certainly have a very odd and rare value system, which considers philosophical discussions to be of a high value. Reality check: most people don't spend their time on HN discussing pragmatism and subjectivism.

As an extreme example, consider value system of a heroin addict, for instance. He or she values heroin above all. You might say his value system is inferior to yours, but how would you defend that statement? Speaking from utilitarian point of view, it's not necessarily that a heroin addict decreases society's happiness or pleasure, if he uses it as a constructive stimuli.

Speaking from a physiological point of view, we are not much different from heroin addicts. My opinion is that value systems are psychological routes by which we can get an endogenous high. Our brains have built a series of quests for us to accomplish, after which they reward us with various pleasurable chemicals.

Some people get high watching Fox News, some people get high debating philosophy, some people get high from heroin. The value of each activity is (non-verbally) agreed upon, by spending time on that activity and hanging around people who spend their time on the activity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Package thieves ambushed by an engineer's 'glitter bombs' not all real robbers - <AUTHOR> https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/12/22/us/glitter-bomb-creator-staged-video-footage-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18734421)</comment>


Foursquare Searching for Data Scientist - A Sign of Things to Come? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/foursquare_searching_for_data_scientist_-_a_sign_o.php

<comment><USER2> I certainly do not think 4sq needs a data scientist to build a basic recommendation engine at this point. Instead, hiring a social psychoanalyst might help to find ways to encourage people to check-in.</comment>


Crowdfunding success from Finland – Yoogaia - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2014/06/12/crowdfunding-success-from-finland-yoogaia <comment><USER2> Somehow it feels unbelievable that yoga related activities is a $100B market in total?

<comment><USER3> Despite the colossal popularity of yoga pants and gym memberships, that does indeed sound wrong, especially considering that "the global fitness and health club industry generates more than 75 billion U.S. dollars in revenue according to the 2013 IHRSA Global Report"[0]. Yoga related activities should be a subset of the fitness and health club industry, right?

[0] [http://www.statista.com/topics/1141/health-und-fitness- clubs...](http://www.statista.com/topics/1141/health-und-fitness-clubs/)</comment></comment>


HyperLogLog and MinHash - <AUTHOR> http://tech.adroll.com/blog/data/2013/07/10/hll-minhash.html <comment><USER2> For those interested, here's a nice HyperLogLog implementation in Scala: [https://github.com/twitter/algebird/blob/develop/algebird- co...](https://github.com/twitter/algebird/blob/develop/algebird- core/src/main/scala/com/twitter/algebird/HyperLogLog.scala)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love that every month or two someone who missed it the first time rediscovers this article, has the "holy crap!" moment, and posts it to HN. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you point me at earlier conversations? I'd love to see what the HN hive- mind has to contribute to this. I've only found one previous submission[0], and that has no discussion.

Thanks.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6460048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6460048)

<comment><USER4> Try HN search - [https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/hyperloglog](https://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/hyperloglog)

But I take exception to hive-mind; this place really isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link to search, but I've already done that, and you serve to confirm my point. Unless I'm mistaken, that search shows lots of items about HyperLogLog, but exactly one previous submission of this specific subject wherein the facilities of HLL are extended to include intersections. And that item has no discussion.

This submission is not about HyperLogLog - it's about an extension that has more capability. When Harimwakairi said:

        > I love that every month or two
        > someone who missed it the first
        > time rediscovers this article,
        > has the "holy crap!" moment,
        > and posts it to HN. :)

... they were, quite simply, wrong. More, that comment may have served to make people say "Oh, I've seen that before" and ignore this one.

      > But I take exception to hive-mind;
      > this place really isn't.

I guess this is a case of terms carrying different baggage in different places. In my circles the implication is more that of "collective intelligence" rather than "group-think". I intended the former - it's a compliment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We recently open-sourced the algorithm described in the blog post here:

[https://github.com/AdRoll/cantor](https://github.com/AdRoll/cantor)

Btw, we are hiring! Feel free to ping me at email@example.com if you find topics like this relevant to your interests.

</comment><comment><USER6> Streaming algorithms, or sketches, are a fascinating topic. Some of the results are virtually indistinguishable from magic.

I can recommend this blog for those interested: [http://research.neustar.biz/tag/sketching/](http://research.neustar.biz/tag/sketching/)</comment>


When we take turns speaking, we chime in after a culturally universal short gap - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/the-incredible-thing-we-do-during-conversations/422439/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I've had it pointed out to me that there's something weird about the show _Gilmore Girls_ in the actors' delivery of lines. The actors don't seem to be speaking particularly _fast_ , but something about the structure of the dialogue still seems to be perceived as very "dense" by most people. I'm guessing the effect is from the actors shortening the conversational gaps between their line deliveries. It seems like the each reply comes near- instantly after the actor "heard" the previous line, which may be a super- stimulus for making the portrayed characters seem extremely "witty."

I also have a feeling that actually increasing verbal velocity would _hinder_ this effect; you wouldn't get the impression of a witty character, but rather a manic one.

<comment><USER3> They talk about this in one of the special features on the DVDs. The average script length for a typical "hour" show (42 minutes, running time) is one page per minute. Gilmore Girls episodes were closer to 80 pages. They even talk about bringing in a speak coach for the actors so they could learn to speak faster while still being clear.

<comment><USER4> Do they explain why they did this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's some interesting things in this article, other than the "universal" gap. Tidbits like this:

> "The brevity of these silences is doubly astonishing when you consider that > it takes at least 600 milliseconds for us to retrieve a single word from > memory and get ready to actually say it. For a short clause, that processing > time rises to 1500 milliseconds. This means that we have to start planning > our responses in the middle of a partner's turn, using everything from > grammatical cues to changes in pitch. We continuously predict what the rest > of a sentence will contain, while similarly building our hypothetical > rejoinder, all using largely overlapping neural circuits."

Makes sense. I (and I'm assuming everyone) will have stories/anecdotes/arguments at the ready during a conversation, and they'll vary and change based on what the other parties are saying. I just didn't realize that this was a necessary thing.

<comment><USER6> I think we typically already know how we are going to respond to the earlier section(s) of the other person's dialog, and this is why our response is ready so quickly. If your counterpart speaks 3 sentences, I suspect that in many cases, your response really only takes into account their first and maybe the second sentence. Their third sentence likely often adds extraneous details that don't require you to adjust your response. Or, in the case of debating (ie: your response is a rebuttal in an argument), we often largely ignore what the other person has said and ramble off a response that doesn't even address the new information given to us by the other party. I find a lot of conversations to be more like two separate one-sided discussions where each person is selfishly just pushing their own talking points, rather than wrapping the other party entirely within the discussion.

Unfortunately, something about my wiring doesn't seem to match these timing cues up with my peers. In a group discussion involving three or more people, I'm desynchronized from the others. Far too often when I begin to speak, I get pre-emptively cut off by someone else who "beats me" to the cue. I think I take a little more time to plan what to say before I open my mouth, whereas my peers are ready to ramble unpolished responses the moment someone else stops speaking. Too many people just like to hear themselves talk and be the centre of attention the millisecond someone else's moment in the spotlight is finished.

>> a sign that we're spending most of our "listening" time actually prepping what we are going to say (As Chuck Pahlaniuk once wrote, "The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.")

The article covers my beliefs with this quote, but then goes on to say this study proves otherwise. I guess I'm a pessimist.

Edit: As a side anecdote, I am 30 and have a _much_ easier time hanging out with and speaking with 45+ year olds. Conversation flows naturally and my timing cues are much more in line, as opposed to the rush-to-be-first situation I run into with people my own age.

<comment><USER7> Your anecdote is inconsistent with the "universal" short gap, and I think you are more correct. The "universality" comes from averaging that smears away individual differences

<comment><USER6> I suppose if you're going to draw a bell curve for the gaps people exhibit, _someone_ has to fall on the outer edges. I'm one of the outliers on the right side of the graph in terms of milliseconds. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you intentionally prolong the gap, you can force the other side to feel discomfort. Also known as awkward silence. Most people will instinctively fill the gap by starting to talk again, even if they don't have anything more to say.

You can use this in negotiations. After someone makes an offer, they'll stop and expect you to respond. If instead you act as though you're thinking and hold the silence, they may get the natural urge to fill the gap and start speaking again, sometimes offering better terms.

One time I used this technique at a negotiation but the other party was an MBA grad so they might've known about this. This resulted in _very_ long pauses, maybe several of 20-30 seconds each, where we both waited for the other person to fill the gap. If someone were watching us they'd think we're both crazy.

<comment><USER7> A simple way out of that trap is to self-followup with "Take as long as you want to think it over", or "Do you have any questions about my proposal?", or the aggressive "Any objections, or do we have an agreement?" or of course the 21st Century [take out your phone while you wait].

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly I've read that people conversing in sign language don't leave gaps in the same way, since "talking" doesn't get in the way of "listening", so both participants tend to "speak" simultaneously. This dovetails with the article: the limiting factor is not how long it takes us to think of our replies, but how much we can convey through speech without it becoming unintelligible.

<comment><USER10> Along similar lines, though on a longer timescale, people on IRC or similar text-based chat mediums commonly take part in many real-time conversations simultaneously, and don't have any trouble mixing them up.

In theory, if you didn't mind breaking cultural norms, the same thing can work with speech.

<comment><USER11> Uh, I don't know: IM chatting is anything but "instant". It's pretty slow, actually. I don't really feel it while in conversation, but if I look at times each message was posted afterwards — it's easy to notice that conversation of the same volume would be done much quicker verbally. Waiting for everyone to respond on the top of it would be so slow it would kill the conversation.

I don't speak sign language, but I observed others doing that and it seems to be almost as fluent as talking verbally. While both parts are involved in conversation most of the time — it's something we do as we speak verbally as well: making facial expressions, nodding, saying "uh-huh" and inserting little jokes.

I never actually noticed that deaf people really _tell stories_ at the same time: one of them usually seems like listening. So, I'd actually want some reference that would prove that deaf people really do "speak simultaneously".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And this is one of the main reasons I hate talking on cell phones. Those have a latency up to a quarter of a second, which totally confounds this turn taking.

<comment><USER10> Or having cross-continental calls, which introduces similar latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am not so sure how universal this is if it varies between 7ms and 470ms, the article says "there is variation but it's minuscule", to me a two-order of magnitude variation is all but small.

And growing up in Europe and moving to North America I can definitely feel that the "polite" amount to pause in a conversation here feels way longer, it might be small in terms of milliseconds, but if you are used to, say, 50ms, having to pause for 200ms is very, very noticeable

<comment><USER10> > I am not so sure how universal this is if it varies between 7ms and 470ms, > the article says "there is variation but it's minuscule", to me a two-order > of magnitude variation is all but small.

Agreed completely. Given the scale, and the mention that the average conversational segment lasts 2 seconds, 7-470ms seems like a major difference.

It also doesn't seem like "the minimum human response time to anything", as the article quotes, if it has that much variation. Humans across all cultures can react far faster than 200ms.

> And growing up in Europe and moving to North America I can definitely feel > that the "polite" amount to pause in a conversation here feels way longer, > it might be small in terms of milliseconds, but if you are used to, say, > 50ms, having to pause for 200ms is very, very noticeable

I've had the same experience in reverse: if you've come to expect longer conversational pauses, short ones give the conversation a very different tone.

And on the flip side, the necessary pause can grow noticeably shorter between people who know each other very well.

<comment><USER14> Looking at the data, it is not that people are reacting in 7ms, but that people sometimes start talking before their partner has finished, and the mean ends up at 7ms. It seems that the Japanese are more prone to interrupting others: [http://www.pnas.org/content/106/26/10587/F2.expansion.html](http://www.pnas.org/content/106/26/10587/F2.expansion.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my original family this gap is negative: we start speaking before the other person finishes the sentence. But even as a child I understood that this is not a norm and learned to adjust to other settings.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article is about culture, but I'm more interested in brain chemistry. Do people on the autistic spectrum have the same gap? People with ADHD? People with Alzheimer's?

</comment><comment><USER16> > "It's the minimum human response time to anything...It's the time that > runners take to respond to a starting pistol—and that's just a simple > signal"

i.e. the gap is typically exactly as long as it takes for us to react to the "simple signal" that the other person has stopped speaking and now it is our turn.

It does prove that we must be planning our response before the other person has finished speaking, but I wonder if that's such a surprising thing to prove: words and sentences take a lot longer to say out loud than they do to comprehend.

</comment><comment><USER17> > "It's the minimum human response time to anything," says Stephen Levinson > from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. It's the time that > runners take to respond to a starting pistol—and that's just a simple > signal.

This seems to match the front end world where CSS and JS animations are typically set to a number between 100-200ms.

</comment><comment><USER18> I understood that some aboriginal American speakers had 'conversational timers' that were in the minutes. That is, when somebody (an elder?) stopped talking, you waited for 5 minutes of silence before you could be sure they were done talking. Navaho perhaps?

<comment><USER19> I like to give a little thought to the words that I speak. The conversational gap timing may be the reason I never seem to get a turn to speak in some conversations.

Sometimes, when speaking with the spouse, I sense a "your turn to speak" gap, but by the time I actually start speaking, I apparently missed my turn, and I get dinged for interrupting the continuation. Then, later, I get double-dinged for not being communicative enough.

I never quite got the hang of "seizing the conch" (as in __Lord of the Flies__ ) and holding onto it with a continuous stream of priority-holding conversational nulls while my brain works out what I actually want to say next. I'll sometimes pause to take a breath and before I am able to resume, someone else jumps in.

So I'd love it if I had a cultural conversation timeout even just 15 seconds long. I might actually get to talk _and_ finish a line of thought without someone else trampling over me.

Edit (sibling post): So maybe I should try to get some Finnish friends, then? But it's been a while since I've been to Minnesota or da Yoop, doncha know.

<comment><USER20> I've definitely learned how to maintain priority with conversational no-ops when it's a situation I want/need to have my say. I dislike doing it, but it's a necessity given the bias our culture has towards fast conversation.

Hopefully your spouse can learn that's your conversational style and adapt to it. Once my partner was made aware of it she started waiting longer before answering. She even apologized once for "cutting me off" during a long pause between thoughts!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wish they had included India in their study - after watching a panel debate on NDTV (a major news channel there) I'm not so sure this turn taking short gap would be considered 'universal'. I hope no one finds this offensive but it is perplexing how anyone can understand what is being said when everyone is talking at the same time. I wish it was universal, and I am guessing it is true in most places.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not as a universal trait as to be present in my family. One needs to talk louder and interrupt one another to be allowed for a turn.

</comment><comment><USER23> I fail at this, miserably. Some of us are on the other end of the spectrum. Tending to wait "too long" to respond thus end up talking over someone.

I think this is because some of us prefer to take time to actually think about a response, rather than just react.

<comment><USER24> This is why we have verbal cues for conversation that indicate that the listener-now-speaker has understood what was said and is formulating a reply: "hmmm, I see. But have you considered, perhaps, that..."

Conversation, as opposed to written text, has a lot of "filler" designed to give the conversant time to formulate their words.

Your implication is that people who respond "on time" have thought less about their response than those who do not. More likely, they have just a better intuition for conversation that allows it appear that way.

<comment><USER23> That's a fair point but it's hard to take seriously the suggestion that someone who puts more thought into a response isn't likely to have a more insightful answer.

I cut out most filler words out of my vocabulary years ago as I find them annoying but occasionally do use the "mhm" hum. That said, I will fully admit I'm a traditional nerd at heart and do lack intuition for nonsensical, "how's the weather" conversation.

But if you want to speak about something meaningful? A conversation that would flip the roles and leave the majority of the public at a loss for words, you would probably prefer to speak with me.

Most of my social interaction is at places where naturally curious people gather (like user groups / meetups).

This is why in most situations I let most people do the talking, and I focus on questioning them. I can judge what level they're on intellectually and as a bonus, people like to talk about themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, in Brazil there is no gap :D

The conversation is just an endless stream of word from several sources.

<comment><USER26> There is no discernible gap on my wife's side of the family... they are Colombian. Further, the volume tends to increase (rapidly) as they speak over one another. I am surprised to find they are actually communicating with understanding.

<comment><USER27> same with my puerto rican wife's family. could be a hispanic thing.

slightly tangential, but on the loudness part of it, funny theory I have is that, and I noticed this when I've visited her family in their hometown, since they live outside of any big city, nature itself is so loud, they have to talk louder and louder to hear each other! ;-) especially at night, there are so many noises coming from nature itself. here in mainland US, in so many places I've been to, from Maine down to the south, from El Paso to San Fran, night time is so much more quiet! anyway, that's my theory until proven otherwise haha :)

<comment><USER23> I've lived all over the world and I suspect it's a class thing. Downtown Chicago people tend to talk over you nonstop with no regard for courtesy. Where I've been in France and the rest of Europe, it's more what you'd expect (a pause). In my rural midwestern working class background there tends to be a pause, we didn't talk over one another. My wife's family is from Guadalajara, were privately schooled and in the Mexican government's "political class", they don't interrupt.

It's ingrained in me enough that if someone talks over me, I'll just stop talking to them and subconsciously consider them to have a low standard of manners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's why any site should load in under 200ms.

</comment><comment><USER29> not so coincidentally, human conversation protocols (at a high level) look a lot like some communication protocols:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_sense_multiple_access_with_collision_detection)</comment>


Data firm boss suspended amid Facebook row - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43480048 <comment><USER2> Why not the source title? ("Cambridge Analytica: Facebook row firm boss suspended")

</comment><comment><USER3> What was he really suspended from? [https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/976199917915033601](https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/976199917915033601)

</comment><comment><USER4> Here comes the scapegoating.

<comment><USER5> Good time to short FB in the short term. Makes me wonder if anyone knew about this before hand also would have the same idea.

<comment><USER6> zuckerberg has been unloading stock.

<comment><USER7> source

<comment><USER8> [0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/zuckerbergs-facebook- stock-s...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/zuckerbergs-facebook-stock- selling-dwarfs-all-other-insiders.html)

[1] [https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=fb](https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=fb) (check "insider trading") towards the bottom half of the page</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Companies with a female CEO has lower profit margins - <AUTHOR> http://www.dn.se/debatt/foretag-med-kvinnor-som-vd-har-lagre-vinstmarginal/

<comment><USER2> In English thanks to Google Translate:

Simplified debate . The discussion of gender equality in business should not just be about board seats . Our analysis shows that companies with women CEOs have lower profit margin than those with male CEOs . It can have several causes. Regardless of the problem must be taken seriously , writes Enterprises CEO Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist .

Simplified debate . The discussion of gender equality in business should not just be about board seats . Our analysis shows that companies with women CEOs have lower profit margin than those with male CEOs . It can have several causes. Regardless of the problem must be taken seriously , writes Enterprises CEO Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist .

The debate about gender equality in business easily degenerate into a debate for or against affirmative action in exchange boards . It's a simple question with opposites and it's easy to take a stand for or against . But we want to achieve true equality when it comes to economic power in society must deepen the debate and tackle the much harder questions than that.

Ahead of International Women's Day on 8 March, the entrepreneurs made an analysis of the percentage of female CEOs in the business and how profitability looks in enterprises run by women and men. Our intention has been to give strength to the argument that more women leaders lead to increased profitability and that companies themselves thus should have a strong economic incentive to tackle the issue .

But the result was the opposite. Our analysis of the profitability of more than 125,000 companies divided into female and male CEOs gave an unambiguous result . Companies with female CEO is 12-17 percent lower profit margins than companies with male CEO . Concretely this means that companies led by women have on average 7.0 percent profit margin while the company headed by men , on average, 8.4 percent. The profit margin is a good comparative measure since it measures the profit a company makes before interest expenses in relation to sales. Thus does not affect leverage and firm size analysis, which is based on the latest available financial statements (in most cases 2012 or 2013). We also tried the obvious explanation that it could be due to its age, solidity, what industry it operates in , the number of employees or where in Sweden it seems . The result stands up and is stronger than if one does not account for these variables.

For those of us who want an egalitarian enterprise , it is a serious discovery. Differences in profitability not only affects the owner's personal finance by return ( most businesses are owned and managed by the same person). At the economic downturn, companies with lower margins more vulnerable , which means that more companies are led by women were threatened with closure or bankruptcy.

The profit margin also affect the potential for expansion. In seeking new capital from outside investors or from the bank 's earning capacity one of several important factors that investors are looking at. Generally lower margins in women's business means that more capital will be channeled to companies headed by men .

To present such a clear result is of course not without controversy . There are certainly those who take it as an excuse not to address the issue of gender equality. But it is not : we have only investigated the CEOs, not management teams or boards . There is solid research showing that companies with a true diversity, not only with men and women, but also in terms of different levels of experience , age, origin , geography , and other products are more profitable than homogeneous companies.

On the other hand, will surely discovery to be criticized by those who consider that the publication impedes equality. To them I would say that I , as a feminist and a member of the government delegation for equality in the workplace , is convinced that achieving gender equality and must, to be credible and win in the long run , based on solid facts and not filtered through political glasses.

The discovery puts his finger on a fundamental question : Why is it that female CEOs on average have lower profit margins ? In answer to that question are probably many important discoveries to make about how we work with gender equality, not only in business , but in society at large.

I do not sit on the answers but want to highlight some possible explanations , all of which require further analysis and debate.

One obvious possibility is that women are inferior to men on charging for the same product or service. My experience is , for example, that many women starting and leading welfare business comes from operational activities where care is more important than financial considerations. Many men in the industry will, however from the outside with a firm financial perspective from day one.

A less obvious possibility is that it actually has to do with how men and women are treated in business. It's something I've experienced , where I sometimes considered " young woman " or mother , despite a long career in politics and business , and with two children approaching adolescence. The same is likely to occur in business transactions . With men on both sides of the negotiating table , so bondar man and lands in a "good business deal ." With a woman as a counterparty becomes different expectations and the search for consensus smaller.

A third possibility is that the profit margin is lower because the female CEOs , for example, invest more in their staff. We know nothing about from our investigation , and if it is then it could of course be a real business decision. But if the result is a lower long-term earning capacity can also be any such benevolence be problematic.

Whatever the explanation , the problem must be taken seriously. It's not a bold guess that a lower profit margin in the long term will have major repercussions on the desire to start and run businesses . It is unfortunate for equality itself. But the real tragedy is the many good business ideas , innovations and new jobs that will be lost .

I have long felt an aversion to the simplifications made in the debate on equality in the business world , which is often reduced to be about changing a total of 270 board seats in Swedish listed companies. By raising the issue of profit margins , I want to help deepen the discussion. Not least , I want gender equality to act also on the more than 70,000 women who are CEOs, and in many cases the owners of companies that are not publicly traded . Do we want to achieve real equality in the business world , so we have to make the leap from listed companies' boards to discuss how women's businesses to become as profitable as that of men . Then we really start to reach the core issue of how we equalize economic power .

Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist , CEO of Sweden's largest entrepreneurial organization Entrepreneurs</comment>


Three reasons why Google should acquire RIM right now  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/three-reasons-why-google-should-acquire-rim-right-now/article2121024/singlepage/#articlecontent

<comment><USER2> _"On top of this, developers are able to very easily repurpose their Android apps to run over QNX"_

Am I missing something here? When was Android ported from Linux to QNX?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are most likely referring to the rumored Android emulator on QNX.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: 3 must do things for building user base? - <AUTHOR>

We are building a userbase for our new product teamgum, which is a saas tool for link sharing & knowledge management.<p>At this point we are looking at kick starting the mission to create a user base. But if you were to list top 3 things that worked for you & 3 things that you did but did not work, what would that be? <comment><USER2> 1) ad words

2) follow a bunch of people on social media, start some chats, and then release your product.

3) email a bunch of authors (blog or media) and tell them a little about yourself and your project, ask if you can send them a demo key or link

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your insight. will try & apply.</comment></comment>


Facebook M – The Anti-Turing Test - arik-so https://medium.com/@arikaleph/facebook-m-the-anti-turing-test-74c5af19987c <comment><AUTHOR> Can M wade through phone support menus and cancel Comcast subscriptions? I look forward to a darkly-humorous future in which we pit poorly-paid third- world citizens against each other in wars of call center attrition. Better, once we equip them with those sound-board UIs that play pre-recorded answers in native English-speaking voices (can't find the link), English can become a transmission protocol that few people deal with directly.

<comment><USER2> > I look forward to a darkly-humorous future in which we pit poorly-paid > third-world citizens against each other in wars of call center attrition.

This sounds like a 10 page side story in a Neil Stephenson Book. I love it.

<comment><USER3> It's very nearly part of the strategy of one of the players in Stross's Accelerando ([http://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles- Stross...](http://www.amazon.com/Accelerando-Singularity-Charles- Stross/dp/0441014151)).

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth this book (which is excellent) is also published as a free ebook under a Creative Commons license ([http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)).

The author is also a relatively prolific HN poster ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I'm AI but humans help train me"

The implication to me is that the chat is with a human, who is using an AI tool with the intention of training that tool. What better way to train a new service than to launch it, then answer all the weird, unexpected questions with humans? Gradually more of the questions get answered, the AI gets better trained, and the human-AI becomes increasing more AI.

Further, as the AI gets better, the human working with it has to do less, so they can roll out the service to more users without requiring more staff. Perhaps eventually, no human is needed.

<comment><USER6> The AI can assist the human as well. It may not be confident that its response is accurate and the human just clicks send.

<comment><USER7> Great point -- if a system has a good probability estimator it can send questionable answers for review to raise accuracy up to the commercially useful level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a new angle on the app-outsourcing-to-low-paid-contractors "technology": it's so dehumanising that you have to pretend to be a computer while you work!

It's also strikingly similar to the original "mechanical turk".

<comment><USER9> >It's also strikingly similar to the original "mechanical turk".

That's what the M stands for.

<comment><USER10> No, it's not. Unless you have a citation...?

<comment><USER9> It's a joke.

<comment><USER11> I still want a citation.

<comment><USER12> Cite: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10538766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10538766)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is this even a question? According to Facebook itself, it's mostly human- driven.

[http://recode.net/2015/11/03/facebooks-virtual-assistant- m-i...](http://recode.net/2015/11/03/facebooks-virtual-assistant-m-is-super- smart-its-also-probably-a-human/)

<comment><USER14> > "The opinion is split as to whether or not it's a real AI, and there seems > to be no way of proving its nature on way or the other."

Clearly, the author didn't even do the most basic fact checking. Since, Facebook clearly told everyone that M was going to be AI that was assisted by humans.

It's literally in the announcement post: [https://www.facebook.com/Davemarcus/posts/10156070660595195](https://www.facebook.com/Davemarcus/posts/10156070660595195)

> "It's powered by artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by > people."

<comment><USER15> But that's exactly the point: _is_ it AI trained by people, or people aided by AI tools? It's not the same.

<comment><USER16> See [http://www.wired.com/2015/08/how-facebook-m- works/](http://www.wired.com/2015/08/how-facebook-m-works/)

<comment><USER17> Yes, the article is explicit: "For more complicated tasks, such as making a driving test appointment at the DMV, the humans will do most of the heavy lifting. They'll actually place a call to the DMV."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Facebook's strategy here is to build an AI brand before they have the actual technology, which could make a lot of sense. At the same time the interactions between M's team and its users will provide meaningful data to train the AI on.

<comment><USER19> I've never heard vaporware characterized as something that "could make a lot of sense"; how could it?

Plus I'm doubtful whether the data would be very meaningful. A bunch of people adversarially trying to figure out whether the AI is real is not representative or generally useful data.

<comment><USER20> Microsoft Windows was vaporware for years. They famously did a "demo" that was just a manipulation of graphics. But Bill Gates correctly grasped that the future of the business rested on it and set about building the brand.

<comment><USER19> How does your N=1 anecdote show that vaporware makes a lot of sense? I'd say they got away with it, but not that it was a crucial factor in their success.

<comment><USER20> Because that N became the dominant computing company for a generation?

Apple was way ahead of Microsoft with windowing technology. Gates even offered to help Apple port it to the x86 architecture. He was content with being the dominant application developer, not the OS.

Jobs blew him off so he seized the opportunity.

Around the same time IBM was working on OS/2, which was a much better technology than Windows. Microsoft worked with IBM on OS/2, but then gaslighted them by "debuting" Windows 1.0

Edit: And don't forget how me VC pitches are about "what we're going to build" vs. "what we've already built."

Vaporware is not an optimal strategy, but in many cases it works.

<comment><USER19> Look I can see that it worked out well for them in the end. What I'm specifically disputing is whether the vaporware-thing was a causal factor contributing positively. If they actually had the software already and didn't need to fool anyone, things might've worked out even better. In that case things worked out _despite_ the vaporware, not _because of_.

<comment><USER20> I think if you have the foresight to see a multi-billion dollar opportunity, and you're behind schedule, then you do everything in your power to grab that opportunity, including vaporware.

 _If they actually had the software already..._

No one sets out to lie. Gates would've preferred to demo the real thing. But in the context of that market, "we'll release that in two years" is worse than vaporware if you want to actually own that market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just had the perfect idea for a test, but then I went back to the recent discussion on Mimic[0] and double checked my favorite example[1]. Google has already updated their support, but there is a chance that Facebook M is still behind. Test them now before it is too late:

"When is the next Τаylοr Ѕwіft concert in my area?"

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437619)

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=Τаylοr+Ѕwіft](https://www.google.com/search?q=Τаylοr+Ѕwіft)

</comment><comment><USER22> Bad typing is definitely not enough to measure if an AI is really a human. As a teenager, I wrote a chatbot for an online text based game. I have it knowledge of a QWERTY keyboard layout, and when "typing" it had a small random chance of pressing the key next to the key it wanted to press. It would also sometimes transpose characters. Sloppy typing can be simulated.

Might be an interesting test to do a statistical analysis of your subject's mistakes against a corpus of real human mistakes, since there are many common mistakes humans make, and a random AI might make inhuman mistakes, but this would of course not be conclusive.

<comment><USER23> Simulating bad typing is only necessary to fake a human. Here, having bad typing when faking an AI is stranger.

That said, AIs trained through the chat transcripts of a large number of conversations may produce mistakes. I remember reading a paper that gave good results that way, with the side-effect that it produces typing mistakes as a result. I cannot find that paper again, unfortunately.

Edit: found it! [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.05869v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.05869v1.pdf)

<comment><USER24> I wonder if there's code available, from that paper. Results look promising.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Clearly there are _some_ humans behind M that are doing things that Facebook would rather entrust to humans (like making phone calls). However, the phone call only proves that this specific aspect of M is human.

In the end, though, I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm going to guess that the ultimate end-game on M is for Facebook to collect advertising/affiliate revenue from recommending things. For example, if someone asks for a Chinese restaurant, plumber, dentist, lawyer, etc. in their city, the one they suggest could be the one that paid Facebook for it. As long as these types of fees make it profitable for Facebook, it doesn't matter if the service needs to be powered by millions of humans. In fact, that would be great - it would mean millions of new jobs.

Larry Page famously told an early investor that Google wasn't yet sure how it would make money, but that search was the only situation in which people would tell a computer what they wanted, and that there had to be a way to make money from that. M is exactly the same - a way to get people to tell Facebook what they want, and it puts them in a great position to monetize it.

<comment><USER26> Basically what GoButler or Magic are already doing, just AI based. But this is the goal for all similar services, otherwise it will not scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if you can ask M to use fewer exclamation points. From the conversations I saw in the article, it's a little too chirpy (or should I say "clippy") for my taste.

<comment><USER28> I had the same sentiment. Similarly - when I ask Siri what time it is on my new Apple TV, after midnight it always says Zzzz... as if it's judging me for staying up late.

I'm not a huge fan of AIs fake emoting all the time. Occasionally, it's amusing, but all the time it just rubs me the wrong way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder how many years it will be before a real AI can compete with Facebook's AI?

I guess by the time that's possible Facebook's pretend AI will already have cornered the market.

The public will only be able to see that you were the late entrant and that while your AI is faster it's occasionally incorrect in peculiar ways...

This seems like a fairly solid plan by Facebook to crown themselves the winners of a race that hasn't yet finished.

<comment><USER30> Pretending you have a working technology when you don't has been a recent theme in the startup world.

<comment><USER31> Thomas Edison claimed to have a long lasting light bulb before he actually did. He showed it to reporters one at a time in a booth. Between observers, he would change out the light for a fresh one. Source "How We Got to Now: Light" (on Netflix currently, at least in the US). Found the clip on PBS. Skip to 2:20 for the specific part: [http://www.pbs.org/how-we-got-to-now/big- ideas/light/](http://www.pbs.org/how-we-got-to-now/big-ideas/light/)

<comment><USER32> I thought Edison had mostly been dismissed as not even remotely as great an inventor as most people thought he was?

<comment><USER33> He was a businessman, who hired people to invent things. He was certainly useful, but it's always been surprising to me how much credit he got for inventing things.

<comment><USER34> Capitalism and Personal Branding at its finest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Can you solve this CAPTCHA for me?"

(provided the CAPTCHA is sufficiently OCR-resistant)

<comment><USER19> If you want to avoid giving information about whether you are an AI or human, you simply respond "No."

Besides, the CAPTCHA's that are sufficiently hard to solve for computers are already hard for humans as well.

<comment><USER36> > Can you tag for me all photos in my album that contain a kitten, but not a > dog, with "kitten", and those that contain a kitten and a dog, with > "pets<3"?

That should keep it busy.

<comment><USER37> This approach is backwards. This is the kind of problem that is easy for a person, but not for an AI. So if M was an AI pretending to be a human, you could use this to determine that. But in this case, the suspicion is that M is a human pretending to be an AI - and they could simply decline to attempt the task, or pretend to be unable (or do a bad job deliberately), and you'd learn nothing from negative results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't get the part about the reverse number lookup. Couldn't they be using a disposable phone number that is allocated to Facebook? That's what Handy, Airbnb, Uber, etc. do. Why would they have to block their caller id? And how does either method prove or disprove that M is human?

<comment><USER39> That doesn't prove that M's human, what prove's it's human is that a Human voice called. The fact it says Facebook is just evidence that it was indeed from M, and not just him getting his friend to call him and pretend.

<comment><USER33> > The fact it says Facebook is just evidence that it was indeed from M, and > not just him getting his friend to call him and pretend.

It doesn't really prove anything, since caller ID is extremely easy to spoof (I used to call my mates from the emergency number for kicks when I was younger). Not that I have any doubt as to the credibility of the story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This reminds me of the Focused people in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky", slaves that were integrated into the computer system to provide function that surpassed the computer's built in intelligence.

<comment><USER41> I've not read that. Personally i felt we're one step closer to the "cookies" in Charlie Brooker's "White Christmas" episode of Black Mirror.

From the article :

"Our test participant was impressed with how much M could do, but was sometimes disappointed at how long it took," UserTesting's report reads. "He concluded that it would be very useful if he could set it to perform a non-urgent tasks for him while he worked on other things."

That made me shudder. One person tutting at the poor performance of "it". It seems plausible that robot-powered tasks would complete rapidly, and humans power the slower processes.

So the participant didn't know it was human-powered. If anything, that makes things worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Has anyone tried to hack a script that put in communication two M chat sessions?

</comment><comment><USER43> Tihs is uslulay how I tset wehther i'm tlaknig to an ai or not

<comment><USER44> This is always impressive to me, I didn't realize a thing until "tlaknig"! Although I suppose you could specifically train an AI to recogize this.

<comment><USER45> To be clear, this is applying the classic observation that if you keep the first and last letter correct, humans are really good at unjumbling the center.

<comment><USER46> Slpmiy jnilbumg the iennr cretcarahs tlsuhy rrednes tihs "ooitavresbn" qlbanoitseue, imo

edit: 'Simply jumbling the inner characters thusly renders this "observation" questionable, imo'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Regardless of wether M is currently more human than AI, we could project that in the not-so-distant future (after it's trained), M will be mostly, 99% AI.

The technology itself will become more and more available and other companies will also use similar AI tech to work with customers.

The ultimate moment will be when the AIs start talking to each other in human language, each 'thinking' that the other is a human.

That will be the moment when the machines have decided something for you and while at first you'll think that _you_ triggered that, at some point it will become unclear - is the human triggering the AI or is the AI triggering the human.

Pretty soon, everything we consume and everywhere we go will be controlled (and, a bit later, predestined and programmed for us) by the AI.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's a human using Siri to answer your questions.

<comment><USER49> Based on punctuation analysis, word choice, tone, its not just any human but a mid 20s white female. Probably front ending google.

Real comedy would be going to mturk to try and find the task to communicate try to crack it recursively "M find me the mechanical turk task for this request".

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> So how well does this scale, if all of Facebook's users are using "M" like this?

<comment><USER51> Launch is limited to selected users in Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER50> That explains why Facebook.M has such knowledge of the local area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Imagine if the 1.3B Facebook users were eligible to be called upon by the AI on a Quora way to answer a question the AI couldn't answer alone...

<comment><USER53> I think the quality of the answers would be along the lines of Yahoo Answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Did the author ask it about how we can avert the heat death of the universe?

<comment><USER55> There is insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What a silly conclusion. The fact that a human called his land line does not mean M (the thing in messenger) isn't an AI. At best, it proves that M has humans who work for M making phone calls.

I don't have any insight or opinion about the question of how human M is, but this article seems makes a bunch of assumptions that make the whole investigation somewhat silly.

<comment><USER57> I think the distinction is a philosophical question. Are they humans who run errands for the AI, or is the AI a tool the humans use?

Perhaps better to think of them as coworkers, each specializing in their strengths.

The question is, just how much of the workload is the machine capable of handling? Because I think that's the big indicator of scalability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Humans working at facebook scale! Would be interesting to see how many people are employed to do this...Are they Googling?

<comment><USER59> The reference to Google Maps was a surprise to me... Does't FB typically relies on Bing maps?

<comment><USER58> Indeed, they do. Facebook has traditionally been inclined towards Microsoft than Google. Probably because they are the lesser rivals in business.

<comment><USER60> Microsoft was an early investor in Facebook

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> But Facebook publicly admitted that the service is powered by real humans:

[http://www.wired.com/2015/08/facebook-launches-m-new-kind- vi...](http://www.wired.com/2015/08/facebook-launches-m-new-kind-virtual- assistant/)

</comment><comment><USER62> So basically the suspicion is that M is a concierge MVP? From reading the chat excerpt I'd agree.

Edit: It would be interesting to devise a way in which you can make two Ms talk to each other (or have M talk to Siri etc.). Maybe "can you pretend to be a customer for my XYZ business"

</comment><comment><USER63> As much as I appreciate the effort, I don't think proving M has humans behind it is any of help.

We write AIs. We try to make them act just like us. We teat them in everyway we can imagine and we expect them to act like a human would in response. Providing an algorithm for this is not always useful or maybw not even possible.

My theory on this is that Facebook is powering M with both people and some sort of AI software that not only analyzes and sometimes finds the best response, but it also analyzes the conversations people on both sides made.

Now this can be useful on several levels. Facebook can improve it's AI algorithm in less time, the AI can help people on their job in the meantime (by analyzing their work and commenting on it)

</comment><comment><USER64> This guy is hilarious. If you're reading HN comments you know that AI isn't quite there yet right? We're easily 5-10 years away from anything you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER65> >The most noteworthy aspect of this reply is that "Google Maps" wasn't capitalized, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, a human typed it out in a hurry.

Or they're smart enough to add random mistakes. When I started a project for setting up multiple ways to say the same form letter, I thought of adding a random-typo feature to make it look like humans were writing it. I'm sure these guys are at least as cheeky as me...

<comment><USER66> But they don't try to convince you M is a human. Indeed the opposite. So it would be rather stupid to add typos to an AI, when you want people to see it as an AI

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I don't think there has to be a huge controversy here. It's perfectly plausible to build a system that contains a hybrid of human and machine intelligence, where the humans work on the more fuzzy questions that cannot be directly answered yet, and the interactions used to fill in the gap as the AI is improved for later.

<comment><USER68> Yep! There's a lot of research going on in that area. For example, [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702416](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702416)

Some recent work on fusing machine learning with Mechanical Turk workers to create "sensors".

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> For something with a similar flavour, see [http://dangermouse.brynmawr.edu/csem/coffeehouse.html;](http://dangermouse.brynmawr.edu/csem/coffeehouse.html;) start reading where it says "Post Scriptum".

<comment><USER70> Didn't like that semicolon.

<comment><USER69> Ugh. Here's the URL without punctuation after it: [http://dangermouse.brynmawr.edu/csem/coffeehouse.html](http://dangermouse.brynmawr.edu/csem/coffeehouse.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Do you guys think one person, working alone, can develop an turing passing AI?

</comment><comment><USER72> Is it me or all the photos are blurred? I can't read them

<comment><USER73> It's not just you. It's basically unreadable on Firefox on Android (and what's worse... the page prevent arbitrary zooming, unless you "request the Desktop page").

It's depressing how a supposedly well-designed platform like Medium still falls short of providing an usable mobile interface.

<comment><USER74> Can confirm, it's perfectly readable on Safari on iPhone.

Also zoomable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Thanks for this. Fascinating. A really interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER76> Most likely it's mostly AI, that redirects to a human when it's confused. Most of those responses look pre-programmed.

</comment><comment><USER77> Does anyone know how can I try it ? I can't find a link or something like that.

<comment><USER78> Looks like a limited roll-out to users in the Bay Area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Reminds me of the chat bots I used to write for AOL and AIM "progz".

</comment><comment><USER60> Human or AI the level of service provided seems pretty amazing

</comment><comment><USER80> Is M currently for USA, it did not appear in my contact yet.

</comment><comment><USER81> It ends so many sentences with exclamations!

</comment><comment><USER82> this might be one of the worst jobs ever</comment>


Pilot who spotted famous Tic Tac UFO breaks silence after 15 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ufo-tic-tac-flying-saucer-chad-underwoord-dave-fravor-a9254671.html <comment><AUTHOR> _"It was just behaving in ways that aren't physically normal. That's what caught my eye. Because, aircraft, whether they're manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some source of propulsion. The tic tac was not doing that."_</comment>


Scott Galloway Says Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Should Be Broken Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NyFRIgulPo <comment><USER2> Like AT&T was?

The Baby Bells got back together after two decades. The customer was not better off as a result of it.

They almost did that to Microsoft in 1999.</comment>


Russia's Amazon for Prisoners Offers Online Shopping and E-Mail Behind Bars - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/russia-s-amazon-for-prisoners-offers-online-shopping-and-e-mail-behind-bars <comment><USER2> Maybe we rethink the laws putting people behind bars or the legal system that so inefficient that some public defenders have literally only minutes to devote to each individual case before we spend resources figuring out how to get them "subscribe and save".

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. As a society, we need to figure out who's truly dangerous and lock them up, and provide rehabilitation or community based correctional options (probation, community service, jail) to those who we're really mad at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome concept. I want to help build one for the prisoner system in the US.

<comment><USER5> The biggest problem might be the lack of a "prisoner system in the US." The US has a Federal prisons system and 50 different state prison systems. Each system makes their own rules.

Federal prisoners may have access to send and receive email, through a system called CorrLinks. I think it is standard across all BOP facilities. At the state level, JPay.com does provide a means to contact inmates via email. Inmates cannot send email.

There are several companies which provide a means for friends and families of inmates to go online and order items for inmates, at least on the state level. Access Securepak ([https://www.accesscatalog.com/](https://www.accesscatalog.com/)) may be the largest. You pick the state and only authorized items are listed, packages are restricted to X times per year, a certain weight or dollar amount, etc. I think Texas runs their own online commissary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I suppose drone deliveries would be perfect for this too!</comment>


Decoding meteor-m2 weather satellite images with a $15 DTV dongle - <AUTHOR> http://sdr-radio.livejournal.com/355.html <comment><USER2> It seems that the "hard part" if I wanted to try this at home is getting or building the right circular polarization antenna.</comment>


Ruffle – Send an Anonymous Picture Message to Any Friend's Phone Number - <AUTHOR> http://ruffle.us

<comment><USER2> >Unless you send a photo of your face, they will have no idea who sent it.

Or unless your camera embeds metadata that they can match up to other photos.

Or unless they can otherwise identify you through other things in the photo, or other features of the photo.

Or unless we have a bug in our service.

Or unless your your internet connection leaks information they can get at.

Or unless we are bugged by any one of any number of governments.

Or unless we are hacked.

Or unless this site is a sting or scam of some sort.

Or unless there's a court order.

Or unless there's an extra-judicial surveillance in place.

Or unless we change our Terms and Conditions.

Or unless someone else buys us and changes our Terms and Conditions.

Or unless we are lying.

Nah, I wouldn't trust this. Not that I need such a site in any case.. I can't really imagine it being used for anything good.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is your retention policy on uploaded photos? Do you keep them forever?

<comment><AUTHOR> They have a TTL policy on S3, so they automatically disappear after about 24 hours.</comment></comment>


Announcing s6-rc: an s6-based service manager for Unix systems - vezzy-fnord https://email@example.com/msg01005.html <comment><AUTHOR> Mmh, binary configuration blobs. No, thanks.

<comment><USER2> _Text_ configuration in individual small files, described at length in the doco, merely _compiled into a database_ for runtime use; just like /etc/pwd.db and /etc/spwd.db (compiled with pwd_mkdb from /etc/master.passwd) /usr/share/misc/termcap.db (compiled with cap_mkdb from /usr/share/misc/termcap) /usr/share/terminfo/?/* (compiled with tic) data.cdb (compiled with tinydns-data from data) nsd.db (compiled with zonec) /etc/postfix/virtual.db (compiled from /etc/postfix/virtual with postmap) and so on and so forth.

<comment><AUTHOR> passwd is accessed by multiple programs and fast lookups are a reason to implement binary formats. Same for termcap, timezones, etc (though I wouldn't call those configuration files...). Postfix might also need fast lookups and doesn't keep in-memory state.

For a service manager however these reasons do not apply. Having it use a binary configuration database makes no sense as there is only a single program accessing the configuration that doesn't need fast access to these. And no, I don't think claiming that it's just "compiled for runtime use" makes this much better[1]: it doesn't help with having the proprietary binary format and its source go out of sync, requires special tools to debug (rescue systems might not have s6-rc's compiler installed[2]) and so on.

      [1] That's like saying the Windows registry is just "compiled for runtime use" from *.reg files ;)
      [2] Yes, one might be able to use the compiler via a chroot, but why should I have to spend more effort?

<comment><USER3> As Jonathan said: the reason for the compilation phase is efficiency. The information in the compiled database is organized for fast loading and immediate access to the complete dependency tree.

And yes, efficiency is important. The point of s6-rc is to provide a dependency-based system manager with _minimal overhead_. Time a s6-rc run against an equivalent openrc run, and you will see a notable difference. strace both runs and you will understand why: OpenRC performs all its dependency analysis at run time, _every time_ you run a script, and it has to read the whole database of scripts to do so. s6-rc performs the "read a zillion scripts, do the dependency analysis" part only once, and offline.

There are also other benefits: for instance, simple checking - when you write an invalid set of services, the error is detected at compile-time, not at run- time when it could prevent your machine from properly booting.

The database format is not proprietary. It's undocumented, which is not the same thing; and if people insist, I may document it. In the meantime, the code that reads it is in src/libs6rc/s6rc_db_read.c, a function that you can use in your own code, or that you can analyze to understand the format. It's not a complex one.

Going out of sync is not specific to s6-rc. It's a risk as soon as you compile something. It may happen with OpenRC too, if you forget to rc-update. It may happen with your binaries, if you forget to make install. "Things may go out of sync" is not an argument against compiled designs, it's an argument in favour of paying a little attention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A play case: add/delete object detector during transcode - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Xingtao/FFdynamic/tree/master/apps/dynaDnnDetect <comment><AUTHOR> It loads dnn models via OpenCV api(caffe, darknet, tensorflow, etc) and feed video streams to various detectors. Support run time add/delete detectors. Just for fun.</comment>


Why Twitter Hasn't Failed: The Power Of Audience - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/10/why-twitter-hasnt-failed-the-power-of-audience/ <comment><USER2> If TechCrunch had 13 pages of posts about MY startup (or any startup for that matter), it wouldn't be failing either.

<comment><USER3> The close geography of the twitter team to techcrunch (or vice versa), and the fact they often attend the same parties seems to have a lot to do with the coverage volume(?).

Maybe it would help if you were based near them and hanged out a lot with them.</comment></comment>


A solid-stone desk with built-in tech to get more done - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/norm-1 <comment><USER2> "acrylic stone", ie plastic with powdered alumina filler. Possibly like Corian kitchen counter material.</comment>


Survey: Simple iOS Forms library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wess/Survey

<comment><USER2> Nice work!

Some other iOS forms libs:

\- QuickDialog / <https://github.com/escoz/quickdialog>

\- ELCTextFieldCell / <https://github.com/elc/ELCTextFieldCell>

\- IBAForms / <https://github.com/ittybittydude/IBAForms>

\- FormKit.m / <https://github.com/brunow/FormKit.m>

I suggest you submit it to <http://www.cocoacontrols.com/controls/new> as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Submitted to Cocoacontrols, thanks for the suggestion!

<comment><USER3> And here I was about to add it to my site... thanks for saving me the trouble, and thanks for the submission! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks well designed and useful, but whenever I see a new project like this my first question is "What makes this different?"

There are a number of existing form libraries for iOS* that have been around for a while at differing levels of complexity. Could you give a brief summary of why you wrote a new library instead of using one of the existing ones? Putting an explanation like that in the readme would be a great way to explain why you did all this work.

*: <https://github.com/chrismiles/EZForm> <https://github.com/escoz/QuickDialog> <https://github.com/ittybittydude/IBAForms>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is cool :) I've actually created something similar for a work-related project, but it's specifically based off Core Data entities and uses QuickDialog for creating and managing the elements (so supporting all the Core Data attribute types is easy, and you get the benefit of the QuickDialog style provider/skinning support). For customisation and validation I use Core Data's user info on properties, which means it's easy to create fully-fledged forms with all attribute types and entity relationship types, predicates, and lots of other little things I've needed with basically zero coding.

It's kind of turned into a DSL specified within the Core Data model editor, but with the nature of the project it was for it's saved me a lot of time. I'd love to open-source it if there was interest, but I'd have to look into the logistics :)

</comment><comment><USER6> A screenshot of the included example <http://i.imgur.com/hJHYq.png>

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool! What about supporting some sort of visual indicator for invalid fields?

<comment><AUTHOR> Was thinking about that, but different people like different things, suggestions are welcome. Maybe i will add "errorView" property to SurveyField.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really cool but it would benefit from a nice demo page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I want to put together a really nice page for it, with very involved docs and example usage. It's coming, just wanted to get the lib out ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> not so cool in only supporting text fields...

<comment><AUTHOR> It supports any field type you want, SurveyField has a property of fieldClass, so you can set it to [UITextView class] and it will do it's best to use it</comment></comment>


The AI Community Needs Fo Take Responsibility for Its Technology and Its Actions - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/articles/241640-the-ai-community-needs-fo-take-responsibility-for-its-technology-and-its-actions/fulltext <comment><USER2> No, companies need to take responsibility for what they sell, and how.

Also, unfortunately, when I hear "The algorithms pushing content online have profound impacts on what we believe" I can't help but also hear "so we must take control of these to help pushing our agenda. For the greater good![1]"

[1] (tm) Gellert Grindelwald

</comment><comment><USER3> It won't, though.

Companies that use it won't, without law requiring it. Police departments won't either.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "There's no such thing as a neutral platform,"

This is a very weird, and pretty clearly false, statement. There is absolutely such a thing as a neutral platform: A completely un-moderated forum is a neutral platform. We may or may not like what the outcome of that is, but it is neutral.

<comment><USER5> No, unmoderated online platforms can easily become biased via some dominant groups of members that exhibit intolerance against views they don't share. The result is implicit moderation.

<comment><USER6> The platform is still neutral, in your example, even if the community causes self-censorship or self-exclusion to "outsiders" by its dominance.

The platform is the carrier, not the message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is a pity that she mixed the gender issues and technology issues and it makes a lot of sense why she normally wouldn't.

Is the focus here the technical observations or the #MeToo observations? Because one of those is fairly noncontroversial and likely to promote generally nodding and murmuring. The other is going to start a flamewar about cases like Stallman's.

</comment><comment><USER8> Indtead of wishing and throwing a tantrum when the world isnt what one would like to be, i would very much like to propose another way, which is the only one proven in history that works to actually change it. Its called "taking action".

Open AI was a good consequence of that premise. If you are not happy about then create another one.

</comment><comment><USER9> If I become an author of an algorithm or trained network that can break the world (do a Big Bad) and upload it to GitHub claiming that it can break the world and you absolutely must not use this can I be held responsible?

</comment><comment><USER10> Copernicus was also guilty of wrongthink.

Why is it necessary for walled gardens to enforce political standards on a supposedly decentralized Internet?

</comment><comment><USER11> Re: _The AI Community Needs fo Take Responsibility for Its Technology and Its Actions_

"Fo take" is probably a typo but "to fake" doesn't really fit either ;-)

</comment><comment><USER12> First, the AI community would need to understand its technology itself ;)

</comment><comment><USER13> never trust a psychologist with epistemology

</comment><comment><USER14> The AI Community Needs to FAKE Responsibility for Its Technology and Its Actions</comment>


Building an Immersive Game with A-Frame and Low Poly Models - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/03/immersive-aframe-low-poly/ <comment><USER2> I'm the original author. I'm happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> I was wondering if it's possible to use A-frame without the HTML stuff so to speak. Can I sort of just hand meshes and a camera position directly to A-frame? I am writing a video game currently in "fake" 3D with JS and Canvas and once I have the gameplay mechanics down I intend to rewrite it with WebGL and I was wondering if A-frame could then give me the ability to let people experience my game in VR.

<comment><USER4> I'm not 100% sure, but looking at the documentation, you can manually use/tweak the three.js objects underneath A-Frame. [1]

They seem to discourage it though, or, it seems like they'd rather you use the markup implementation.

[1] [https://aframe.io/docs/0.8.0/introduction/javascript- events-...](https://aframe.io/docs/0.8.0/introduction/javascript-events-dom- apis.html#retrieving-position-and-scale)

<comment><USER5> Actually, on the contrary, we prefer A-Frame be used as a framework over three.js, and not trying to abstract it. It's sort of a way to organize/encapsulate three.js code as a declarative ECS framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A-Frame is incredible, it is both powerful and flexible thanks to its component system. You can start a simple project and as complexity goes up you can quite easily put React or Vue in the equation since it is all HTML.

React + A-Frame is my favorite game/3D programming experience and thanks to A-Frame we will see many 3D web apps. Last year I prototyped a Facebook/Youtube browser with it and right now I am working on something bigger with those tools and I absolutely do not feel limited by them.

If you are interested by the idea of a 3D web you should definitely try A-Frame !

</comment><comment><USER7> We software people roll our eyes at marketing's appropriation of our terminology. I wonder if builders and engineers roll their eyes at ours? (jk. The A in A-Frame has a different root.)

<comment> King-Aaron They do, however one of the funnier responses is from my brother in the military when I talk about 'deployments'..

<comment><USER8> The entire population of California is rolling their eyes when a developer uses "roll your own".

And don't get me started on _actual_ developers and engineers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice article Josh! I'm one of the co-creators and current maintainers of A-Frame. Let me know if you have questions as well!

We're currently part of the YC batch as Supermedium, we built an entire VR browser using A-Frame. [http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/803010/Supermedium/)</comment>


Enabling rich(er) interactions in the Clojure REPL - <AUTHOR> http://cemerick.com/2011/10/26/enabling-richer-interactions-in-the-clojure-repl/ <comment><USER2> Now I'm really looking forward to the next release of CCW...

<comment><USER3> Me too! :-)

I think Laurent et al. have some other stuff in the pipeline that will probably go out before this does though. I still need to get the REPL UI up to snuff (at a minimum, a dropdown or something so you can specify which content types you're interested in getting back, etc).</comment></comment>


Books you should read (that aren't about software) - <AUTHOR> http://codewithoutrules.com/recommendations/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm planning on updating this list over time, so would love suggestions for potential books to review.</comment>


Bind, unit, and all that - <AUTHOR> http://erl.nfshost.com/2010/09/05/bind-unit-and-all-that-2/ <comment><USER2> A really cogent explanation, I feel.</comment>


ScreenCastle Records Your Screencast without Software - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5207762/screencastle-records-your-screencast-without-software

<comment><USER2> "click the big red button, and ScreenCastle will load a small Java control application"

sounds like "software" to me. With a title like this, I was expecting screencasts made with play dough or something. But alas, its just software.</comment>


The Shareware Scene, Part 4: Doom - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2020/06/the-shareware-scene-part-4-doom/ <comment><USER2> > By transparently shifting the processor between its real and protected modes > on the fly, Rational Systems's "DOS/4GW" could make it seem to the > programmer as if all of the machine's memory was as effortlessly available > as the first 640 K.

This describes EMM386 expanded memory manager. This is not how DOS/4GW extender works :/ DOS/4GW is a manager between your program and DOS Protected Mode Interface (DPMI) (or bare metal MMU in case DPMI host is not loaded). You run your code in flat linear address space protected mode all the time.

<comment><USER3> I think the "transparently shifting the processor between its real and protected modes on the fly" part was referring to how a DOS extender had to switch modes, and copy stuff between low and high memory, when calling out to DOS (e.g. INT 21h). It was basically like the switch between user mode and kernel mode in an OS today, except that ironically in this case, it was the "kernel" that was limited in its access to memory.

<comment><USER4> I think Jimmy Maher set out to be a historiographer rather than a tech writer. He's damned good at it, too.

<comment><USER3> He's definitely a good historian. But, as shown in his book about the Amiga, The Future Was Here, he's also pretty knowledgeable about programming.

<comment><USER4> True, but a book from MIT Press benefits from considerably more editing ahead of time than a blog post. It's like the mention of network "broadcast packages" in talking about how Doom's netcode destroyed LANs - yeah, I get that it's not technically accurate, but I also know what he's talking about, and that his commenters will catch it and he'll fix it in post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Such lovely nostalgia. I recall excitedly going to my friend's house - he ran a pirate BBS - and playing one of the early beta releases of Doom (likely Doom v0.3). It was nothing short of astonishing that this could run on his crappy 1992-vintage PC, which was a low-end 486 model with something like 4MB of RAM.

<comment><USER6> 486 was not that bad for 1992. The only better thing you could have was a 486DX2 that was released that year.

The Pentium came only the next year, 1993.

<comment><USER7> Low end in 1992 would have been a 386, which might still have been capable of playing DooM, albeit with the window size reduced and if you were lucky enough to get 4MB of RAM on that box. Low end boxes might still only come with 640k.

<comment><USER6> In 1992 I had a 286, and while some software would not run on it, you could still run a lot of games on it, in VGA mode if you had support for it.

As well as WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Quattro Pro, QBASIC, Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, dBase, Clipper, etc.

Also, Windows 3.1.

<comment><USER8> And Wolf3D!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Read the book "Masters of Doom" for more detail than this article. Great book on the rise and fall of id software.

<comment><USER10> > Great book on the rise and fall of id software.

I think one of the nice things about the id story, is that they never actually fell; they didn't fail or collapse. They just kept on with making games. Romero didn't do well with Daikatana & ION Storm after departing, however id went on to make Quake 2 next which was also successful. They never again quite hit the high level of importance they had reached in the industry with Doom & Quake, however they sold for $150 million to ZeniMax in the end and were still fully operational as a game making company (despite spending six years on Rage).

<comment><USER11> I like the band analogy best:

The core creatives eventually went their separate ways. Some started new bands, some changed industries, and some stayed together under the original name.

But like a rock band id will be forever defined by the creatives involved in each era. The Keen, Doom, and Quake eras all had slightly different members, and it shows strongly in their product.

Then most of the remaining band left, and John Carmack kept touring with studio musicians.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Man, I remember playing Wolfenstein on a computer at work (kids, don't do this today). I could last about 15 minutes before I had to stop from motion sickness.

<comment><USER13> I remember quite a few concerned discussions by the adults about how playing Wolfenstein could mess up your balance permanently. Well, and about how the violence would destroy society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just now diving into the contemporary Doom scene. Seems very lively and fascinating.

Can recommend this podcast I listened to today: [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/inthekeep/doom-is- dead](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/inthekeep/doom-is-dead)

<comment><USER15> i recently started playing doom online with doomseeker. i was pretty disappointed that it was mostly modded to hell and back and all the good deathmatch servers were in russia with 200+ ping. still fun, you just can't really aim right. . .

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone should port Doom properly to Nintendo, just to stick it to them.

<comment><USER17> There's a Doom cartridge/game for Nintendo 64, I remember playing it say 20 years ago. Think it's still around here somewhere, I can take a photo if you want...

Edit: found it here [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1148590/DOOM_64/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1148590/DOOM_64/)

<comment><USER18> It is actually considered an excellent version of Doom! Not done by id themselves tho, so true to the story in the article.

<comment><USER19> It's just been remastered and re released on consoles I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Read the book</comment>


Show HN: DIY robot to physically replay the mobile motions of users - <AUTHOR> https://remotion.cs.brown.edu <comment><USER2> The robot is really cool, I would like to have one just for random shenanigans! But I guess showing the 3D model would suffice for understanding what the user is doing, or is it easier to understand when actually observing the phone being manipulated in space by the robot?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question, we tested how people interpreted the motions on both, and the hardware version was a bit easier to understand (but nothing statistically significant). The paper has a figure with the comparison results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Neat! Any plans on adding a 'finger'?

</comment><comment><USER4> That's interesting! Would you mind if I share it on [https://weeklyrobotics.com/](https://weeklyrobotics.com/) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, please do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Colf stuff ! What will be next in your project ? Is it just a side-project or do you want to get more involved into it and, for example, try to sell it as a product to companies ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! For this project, we had a lot of ideas how to improve the build that we learned while doing it. We'll try to make those changes. But more exciting for us, is we've used some of the techniques here to build an augmented reality system that runs on smartphones. I'll try to post a video in the next couple of weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's amazing actually. Cool stuff! Looking forward to the data that comes from this

</comment><comment><USER7> I was going to write a sarcastic comment about how great this is for me as a user, but I can't do it.

How is this not a total violation of users' expectation of privacy? Why doesn't the page even mention the ethics of subjecting people to total surveillance to sell them more crap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi tobr, thanks for your thoughtful comment and for not writing a sarcastic reply.

This platform is for remote usability testing [[https://www.usability.gov/how- to-and-tools/methods/remote-te...](https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and- tools/methods/remote-testing.html)], so all parties are usually aware of what's going on. It requires the user to install client software on their phone.

The current alternative is video recordings, which is more invasive. This is mentioned on the website, and described in detail in the paper on the website.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for clarifying this, and sorry for jumping to conclusions. To be honest, the website is written more like you're targeting users in general:

> Remotion is a new way of replaying behavior of people visiting your website > or application.

If it is done with informed consent in a research situation, that's not a problem, but this read to me like a way to play back web analytics.</comment></comment></comment>