Research finds repressed memories don't exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/09/06/3003364.htm?section=world <comment><USER2> > says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people > reliving experiences they would rather forget.

I don't see how this contradicts the notion that there could be people who would repress memories. If anything it seems to suggest that repression would be a successful strategy if it could be managed. By their argument there could be a substantial population or 'successful repressers' that never seek therapy and could resist all efforts to stimulate memory of repressed events. It would only be the population of 'unsuccessful repressers' that they would ever get to see. That could, of course, then be further confused by a population of people who, for whatever reason, experience faked memories.

<comment><USER3>
      If anything it seems to suggest that repression would be a
      successful strategy if it could be managed.

Eveolutionary memory repression would be a bit like feeling no pain: increased risk to get hurt again.

<comment><USER4> That argument can go both ways. If the pain of the memory is causing you to be hurt more, then repressing it is to your benefit.

Given what depression does to people, based on that argument alone, I'd say evolution _strongly_ favors repression of any rare trauma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting observation. Though it demands what exactly is considered repression and the degree to which it is done. Person's memories are malleable over the time. A memory of an event 10 years back _will_ be modified over the course of 10 years based on other events during that period. Rashomon Effect is not just among people or in a society, it also applies to a person and his internal loop. Also - correct me if I am wrong here - degree of repression if any also depends on the age (and thus mental setup of the person then) of person involved. There may be memories of trauma a 4 year old may have endured and long forgotten by his conscious mind but may surface in the form of unnatural phobias/fears. But as mentioned before, it is not hard for someone to plant an idea into someone else's mind or tamper with his/her memory and inject false ideas, particularly in a patient-doctor relationship.

Conclusion: Basing legal judgements or decisions purely on a person's memory is wrong. Our insight into memory is not deep enough to be making such decisions. Diagnosing a person who may be experiencing depression/fears purely based on his own memories sounds absurd.

</comment><comment><USER6> Article headline is misleading, but so are the comments on here.

Repressed memories, by definition, are memories that you block. As the article states, the research showed it's simple to overcome so-called "repressed memories" and therefore the traumas associated with them.

The solution assumes that all people block the memories, because of their adult-perspective on the events and what that event means to them now that they're adults.

I think we should take away one thing and one thing only: Majority of the population can be coerced into changing how they perceive a situation, depending on how it's explained to them.

Exxageration--

DR: Oh Sally, you're saying that because you were raped as a little girl, that's why you sleep around so much? Well, you're an adult now. What happened when you were little no longer matters. What matters is how you respond to what happened to you.

Sally: Oh. That's a good way of putting it, doc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what results a study into the differences in brain function (eg fMRI scans etc) between recalling normal memories and "fake" memories, perhaps using machine learning, might turn up? I wonder if such techniques could distinguish between real memories and fake repressed memories...

They've had success with "mind reading" already [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the- mechani...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-mechanics-of- mind-reading)

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure that there is no actual difference. Reconstruction is how memories work. To find the difference you have to look at the content of the memories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If anyone's interested in another analysis of the problem of repressed memory (particularly in legal context) I would recommend checking out some of Robyn Dawes' work.

This is a good starting point: [http://books.google.com/books?id=LvbnRn78ywsC&lpg=PP1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=LvbnRn78ywsC&lpg=PP1&ots=c38PMvzFVj&dq=robyn%20dawes&pg=PA157#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER10> Even better is Elizabeth Loftus's _Myth of Repressed Memory_ from the late 1990s ([http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Repressed-Memory-Memories- Allegat...](http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Repressed-Memory-Memories- Allegations/dp/0312141238/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283787919&sr=8-1)). Loftus specializes in memory research and has been an expert witness, _Witness for the Defense_ [http://www.amazon.com/Witness-Defense-Accused-Eyewitness- Exp...](http://www.amazon.com/Witness-Defense-Accused-Eyewitness- Expert/dp/0312084552/ref=pd_sim_b_1) about legal cases she was involved in and _Eyewitness Testimony_ [http://www.amazon.com/Eyewitness-Testimony-new- preface-autho...](http://www.amazon.com/Eyewitness-Testimony-new-preface- author/dp/0674287770/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c) which was originally written in 1980.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a shitty headline and article itself.

The much better idea to consider is that people are re-creating (re- constructing) their traumatic memories again and again, unable (or unwilling in some part) to let them go. So, what they get is a recollection stored on top of recollection and so on. When we re-construct the memory we re-create it and then store (alter) the result.

I think I can remember my own childhood traumas (I had many) but what I actually can fetch from my memory is the reconstruction I used to have.

The cognitive therapy is working exactly because I can alter (re-frame) my memories, by reconstructing them, altering them and storing back. In particular I can reduce the intensity of the emotional "color" attached to my reconstruction. I had such and such crap. Ok, no problem. It's done and it's gone.

In Buddhist terms it sound as "the karma is already applied" - your past personality was already changed by those events, but since then you got a lot of another changes. Actually, any thought alters you, and that is why Buddhist people says that thought and deeds are the same. Your thought actually is a your deed.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure that anything you're saying there contradicts what was in the article (or the headline), though thank you for detailing what the article calls just "new therapies that work".

The article seems to have been written in the context of the numerous people who have been sent to jail solely on the testimony of people who thought they had repressed memories which psychotherapists were able to recover. See wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse></comment></comment>


Stephen Hawking: 'There is no heaven; it's a fairy story' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/may/15/stephen-hawking-interview-there-is-no-heaven <comment><USER2> I don't believe in God or afterlife. My partner does. It makes up for some very interesting but open conversations. Finding open minded religious people is really hard. I'm guessing it's because the beliefs are ingrained from the day they were born.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the > chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary > fallacy" of logic.

That's funny in so many ways.

</comment><comment><USER4> this just triggered a little thought in my head, who knows if is hes actually saying these things himself at interviews etc, i mean could you hack Hawking? in fact that could be a potentially interesting one for something like defcon. i wonder if hed be up for something like that, hes always seemed like a guy thats game for a little fun</comment>


Google: Our stand for digital due process - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/our-stand-for-digital-due-process.html

<comment><USER2> This is big and falls right in line with their stance on China in my opinion. They must be having some very long and serious discussions over at Google about responsibly handling the data they collect. It has always been bizarre to me that companies are obligated to hand over data vs every other type of investigation request (physically) needs to be via a warrant.

Edit: I'd like to elaborate that I also feel the service provider should have the option of providing the data if they so choose on a case-by-case basis. I think there is much to be said of "physical" illegal activity online being easy to stamp out (with regard to child porn, rape, stalking and other morally heinous things).

<comment><USER3> > It has always been bizarre to me that companies are obligated to hand over > data vs every other type of investigation request (physically) needs to be > via a warrant.

If you print the data out (perhaps as pages of easily re-scannable 2D barcodes) and then proceed to wipe it from your more magnetized storage, do they need a warrant to search your barcode filing cabinets? What, then, defines "data?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> funny thing google has all that practically by default from android users</comment>


Show HN: 2048 Tetris - <AUTHOR> http://prat0318.github.io/2048-tetris/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea, but I suspect it's impossible to complete on a 4x5 grid.

An interesting addition might be the ability to wipe a line out if it's all of the same number.

edit: gah. this is really annoying me now because the controls to slide squares left or right only works about 50% of the time so I end up with lots of the same numbered squares adjacent to each other and no way of merging them. Which makes chaining a few squares together virtually impossible because at least 1 of every 3 left-right slides will fail:

[http://www.armyofcrabs.com/rand/2048.png](http://www.armyofcrabs.com/rand/2048.png)

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's impossible, you just need to combine as much as you can in your limited time in a move.

<comment><USER2> That's what I was trying to do. Hence the screen grab :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At this rate somebody needs to create a 2048 homepage with links to the various versions.

<comment><USER5> I have a feeling your wish will come true!

<comment><USER6> [https://2048.ycombinator.com/](https://2048.ycombinator.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When ever I want to grab one of my super awesome platform specific tools I tame my enthusiasm and say to myself: Yes, JavaScript and HTML suck, but we all suffer for a greater good - we can build platform independent solutions and not discriminate anybody for their processor architecture, operating system or browser. And then somebody slaps it directly into my face: _IMPORTANT: This game only works on the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome browsers._

</comment><comment><USER8> Economist Article from 2016: Some economists think that the startup bubble burst in 2014 due to the sudden appearance of games based on the number 2048, which caused nerds everywhere to drop their startups and merge powers of 2.

</comment><comment><USER9> Possibly inspired by the current xkcd comic (note the alt text)

[http://xkcd.com/1344/](http://xkcd.com/1344/)

Edit: Whoops, it was put on github beginning 10 days ago. Just a coincidence, then, I guess.

<comment><USER10> I think you are mixing up cause and effect. XKCD is based on this game.

<comment><USER9> Based on this particular version of the game?

<comment><USER11> He misspoke. The xkcd comic is based on the original 2048, not this Tetris version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm, combining blocks by sliding in below the top a stack can leave the top of the stack floating in space when the new combined block merges with the block below it, and this feels weird. Then if you combine something with that floating block it will fall, closing up the gap and then potentially combine with the block it landed on.

<comment><USER13> A similar weirdness is that it doesn't feel like it should be possible to ever have two of the same number stacked vertically. Feels like the rule should be essentially that "down" is pressed at the end of every turn until it stops compacting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not really tetris...

[http://monosnap.com/image/llgAGJy1bAhtENWnPL8rKpIHMeAcET](http://monosnap.com/image/llgAGJy1bAhtENWnPL8rKpIHMeAcET)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, but you could have slided the 32 formed left or right to make it 64 and continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> YCombinator asks for solutions to the world's water, food and energy problems. Instead they get 37 incarnations of 2048.

<comment><USER16> And poetry, prose, movies about aliens and smart-ass comments.

:)

Even people without regular meals sometimes tell jokes or play snakes and football.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, but you don't have to do it _here_.

<comment><USER16> I agree, it's ironic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A first approximation for a strategy would be to follow a boustrophedon, and keep 2, 4 and 8 near the top, e.g. something like this:

        .   .   .   .
        .   4   2   .
        8  16  32   .
      512 256 128  64

<comment><USER2> This is what I tried to do, but you need to get the timing perfect after doubling up the right hand 64 to link that left 3 times. So perfect, in fact, that you'll only manage it roughly every other time:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436184)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty cool, I assume it is possible to win because a good strategy in the original was to only use 3 directions anyway. I might try it soon, but unlike 2048 you can't wait to think once things get tight.

</comment><comment><USER20> The timing seems horribly inconsistent - most good combos depend on "sweeping" your collapses, but it seems to "drop" the block without my request sometimes during merges.

<comment><AUTHOR> It always tries to collapse downwards whenever a merge is possible. I thought this way to avoid any floating blocks. Any better ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Possible bug report: [http://i.imgur.com/XwEiPVI.png](http://i.imgur.com/XwEiPVI.png)

The bug is the two "4"s sitting on top of each other in the left column.

I did that by first sitting a 4 on top of a 2:

      4
      2
      64 16

Then dropping a 2 down on the column to the right:

         2
         v
      4
      2
      64 16

Then finally sliding that 2 left one before it had a chance to settle:

      4
      2  2<-
      64 16

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the report. Fixed the bug now.

<comment><USER9> Has it been updated on the site? I keep having the same issue, although I'm not sure it's a bug since gravity doesn't matter anyway...

Awesome game, by the way!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, i had pushed the changes. It will be awesome if you can give a screenshot.

<comment><USER9> Working now, but thanks for drawing me back in for another fifteen minutes... :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Neat take on the game but if you get a low numbered piece stuck on the bottom row and then covered with higher number pieces it's impossible to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the left right merge is still possible, just that the action is to be taken quickly, as the falling block freezes very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I finally managed to complete it! I was very proud too - I managed to complete it with no residual blocks. Here is a bit of proof:

[http://imgur.com/2fSkkNT](http://imgur.com/2fSkkNT)

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.contraryki...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.contrarykid.twos)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update: Thanks for the response guys, I am seriously overwhelmed. I have added easy/hard levels to the game. [Hard level needs some really quick finger movements].

</comment><comment><USER25> Please implement a pause! Love it though. This really fundamentally twists both 2048 (threes) and Tetris.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added now. Thanks for the suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why alter the spacebar to be start over? It's the common key in tetris to drop the block!

<comment><AUTHOR> I kept the controls similar to 2048.Was not aware of space thingy in tetris while writing the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't wait to see someone mix in a bit of bird-flapping action.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is by far the best. version. yet.

</comment><comment><USER29> First, we kill the 2048 clones.

</comment><comment><USER30> That was fun.

</comment><comment><USER31> this game is addicting. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I loved this the most!

</comment><comment><USER32> They slide.

<comment><USER33> Usually.

<comment><AUTHOR> On going down, i am accelerating the freezing of the block. Hence, it is harder to slide as block reaches down.</comment></comment></comment>


Exploratory Data Analysis at UN (Google+ Hangout on Air) Nov 10 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://unite.un.org/techevents/eda

<comment><AUTHOR> On 10 November, the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) is pleased to present an event on Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) in honour of Dr. John Wilder Tukey who pioneered this technique. This area of statistical research is used in almost all statistical reports. EDA has been extended to theory and applications in Computer Science (AI and Machine Learning), Data Journalism, and Data Science.

This is an online event that will be webcast through the Google Hangout at: [https://plus.google.com/events/cj68mces4jggki4c7b4clvj7tak](https://plus.google.com/events/cj68mces4jggki4c7b4clvj7tak)</comment>


From Gmail to FastMail: Moving Away from Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2012/03/from-gmail-to-fastmail-moving.php <comment><USER2> A month or two ago I migrated off Google Apps for similar reasons. I've been very impressed with Zoho for email, calander, contacts, etc. The main reason I chose them was that their paid plan provided push email through Exchange/ActiveSync accounts, which means push email on my smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Been using this for some years, hope the service doesn't go the way of the dodo and I have to join the megaconglumeratti just to read email.

</comment><comment><USER4> Happy FastMail user here, too.

I like their file storage, too. I host my website there for now.</comment>


Apple Sues Polish Grocery Store Over A.pl Name - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409669,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03069TX1K0001121 <comment><USER2> because Apple needs the money...</comment>


DARPA wants to speed up computers by over 1000 times while using less power - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/darpa-wants-to-speed-up-computers-by-over-1000-times-while-using-less-power.html <comment><USER2> Yields would suffer, I suppose. What else prevent us from doing it?

<comment><USER3> Nothing, just some R&D into optimizing 3D structures, like what was done with 2D. 3D chips have been an obvious step forward since the first 2D wafer, it just happened that making stuff smaller was easier, faster, and as long as Moore's law held true, also good enough. Now that we're reaching its limits in pure 2D, comes the time to go full 3D... and DARPA wants to be the first one.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing)

</comment><comment><USER4> ... doesn't everyone?

<comment><USER5> Sure, but not everyone wants it as bad, plonking down $1.5B.</comment></comment>


Fermat's Unfinished Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/11/23/fermats-unfinished-business/

<comment><USER3> Another sense in which it's not over is the question of what the weakest system is which will prove FLT. Various people have suggested that it should be provable in PA. Colin McLarty has been working on this and has managed to reduce the requirements substantially. There's a preprint available of a paper to be published in the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, although he may have progressed further since writing that.

<http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/phil/Proving_FLT.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER4> When Andrew Wiles's wife finally thought it was over...

</comment><comment><USER5> Great time to raise something I've long wondered about:

N[0] = 2

N[i] = 2^N[i-1] - <USER2>

Does _that_ generate only primes?

<comment><USER6> That's not yet known. It's not even known if that sequence contains infinitely many primes or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Conjecture:

For each set of numbers 2^2^n+1, 2^2^2^n+1, 2^2^2^2^n+1, etc., none of these sets contains exclusively prime numbers.</comment>


Building fences online. The inevitable rise of the gated community. - <AUTHOR> http://digitalmash.com/journal/articles/crappy-club-for-jerks

<comment><USER2> People that want exclude others are boring uninteresting consuming people that think they are the real deal while they are not.

I agree with Groucho...

</comment><comment><USER3> ex. Something Awful forums, $10 registration fee since 2001.

Pros: It creates a community sense and people used to give out ridiculously cheap web hosting deals just for being a goon.

Cons: Extreme procrastination hazard</comment>


Crime sprees during California blackouts? - <AUTHOR> Do you have roving criminal gangs that take over when the power is shut off?<p>Scary! <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


Startup Will Apply the Secrets of the Web to Industrial Sensors - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/12/08/samsara-launch/ <comment><USER3> Piece is pretty skimpy on how/why Samsara is different than any other company providing low-cost, brownfield-targeted sensors.

> "The goal is to make it really simple so the web site is in plain English > and we make it easy to buy and deploy, Biswas said.

Piece was provided by Andreessen Horowitz, who was the only series A investor w/ $25m in May 2015. It's basically just marketing fluff.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. All of these startups are trying to smooth the provisioning and access part of IoT, but there's nothing esoteric about this. What are the "secrets" of the web? HTTPS? Give me CoAP if you really want to be modern.

And it's all going to be standard hardware. Helium is trying to push their own radio and hub to make setup simple, but I see a lot of customers (like myself) sticking to hardware they can source on the open market.

But I'm not fooled. This company will get acquired just like the last one and everyone will make out wonderfully, all for off-the-shelf tech.

<comment><USER5> Over the years I have realized that a scalable, successful business is not only about technology - I think that technology is ~50% of the equation. There is so much more to a successful company - marketing, customer service, distribution etc... And what if they use off-the-shelf technology? - <USER2> doesn't mean ithey are not a worthy company...</comment></comment></comment>


The 10 Best Things about Mac OS X Snow Leopard - <AUTHOR> http://www.andrewmachado.com/blog/the-10-best-things-about-mac-os-106-snow-leopard/

<comment><USER2> I'd much rather have my disk space "wasted" and retain PPC support, even* on a laptop.

Still, I'm surprised that some kind of single-platform preening of the "universal" binaries was never an option from Apple.

* Perhaps, rather, I mean "especially," since 1440x900 would be a sad step backwards from the 1440x960 of my 15" PB G4. My 17" MBP just doesn't work as a laptop, having too large dimensions, being too heavy, and having a lid that too easily closes when my lap approaches vertical from the horizontal, the latter making for terrible typing posture if I'm reposed on the couch.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you as a user prefer? - <AUTHOR>

What would you prefer to have in a local product search results?
a)Search results coming from 5% of total local retailers (9 out of 10 of them big box retail shops) with non-guaranteed in-stock info
OR
b)Search results coming from 30 times larger total amount of local retailers (including majority of small shops, mom-n-pops, all big box, malls, small outlets) with "almost" accurate in-stock info coming from big boys and no or little in-stock info from small shops (but you can call and check) <comment><USER2> In any case I'm only going to look at the top 5 or so results returned, so the method used for ranking the results is much more important. Do (b) and show me the closest two matches to my current or given location and the closest two with in-stock info along with local travel times and opening hours for each.

It'd be nice if closest was in travel time, be that by car or public transport, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be able to show closest and cheapest the service will need to include more stores obviously, correct? Cause if you use (a) then the potentially you're missing vast majority of stores closest to you

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> depends on whether i'm looking for generic goods or hard-to-find items. also, is price a primary concern?

typically, i think the 5% should cover the necessary items...but are you going after a specific niche market?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, all categories of products (except cars maybe :) )

<comment><AUTHOR> And yes, price and distance are important of course.

<comment><USER3> it really depends on your niche. are you trying to be the aggregator of the best deals in town? you'd probably want to be as comprehensive as possible in that case!

for example, if you're trying to satisfy a number of different markets, i'd say the top 5% would probably suffice.

good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> b) why on earth would i want to avoid a chance to spend my money on a local mom n pop instead of sending my money directly out-of-town to some conglomerate?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Still the same product, but is probably cheaper and closer to you!

<comment><USER4> _And_ its better for the local economy, which matters to me as much as price.</comment></comment></comment>


Who will cash in on Canada's love for online video? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/04/27/tech-090427-online-video.html?ref=rss <comment><USER2> I don't know who will be the first, but I hope that the new video streaming services will open the eyes of the major Canadian ISPs and force them to move away from the ridiculous bandwidth caps we have up here. With caps as low as 20GB/month, you can't watch a lot of TV shows and movies before getting over the limit. Hopefully services like Hulu will help ISPs realize that.

<comment><USER3> >At _CRTC_ hearings in March on the regulation of new media, _Rogers_ proposed an online video platform similar to Hulu as a means of ensuring Canadian broadcasting content has a home on the internet. _The proposed service would require a Rogers' cable subscription for access_

Nothings going to change as long as our regulators hand off everything to Rogers or Bell. If the government decides to regulate an online video platform (HULU), Rogers will likely make MORE money and further establish their oligopoly in Canada.</comment></comment>


Authentic Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebookoflife.org/authentic-work-2/ <comment><USER2> Word. The Book of Life, never heard of it; but we could use some emotional intelligence in this mess. Comparing the kind of code I write when I'm free to follow passion and intuition to the kind of software I used to be paid to write tells the same story. I could barely force myself to cobble working websites together when employed, but cut me some slack and magic comes out the other end:

[https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis](https://github.com/andreas- gone-wild/snackis)</comment>


Drupal 7.0 Alpha 2 has been released - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmscritic.com/drupal-70-alpha-2-released/ <comment><USER2> "We've also fixed a number of issues since the previous alpha, most importantly one that caused all files to be deleted after six hours."

<comment><USER3> When i read the title i wondered if this was HN material. This quote makes it worthy i guess :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actual notice has more information: <http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0-alpha2>

Also, this is just a copy+paste from drupal.org.

</comment><comment><USER5> Any one tried the RDF support?</comment>


How to Convince People to Join Your Start-up - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/how-to-convince-people-to-join-your-start-up/ <comment><USER2> My response, in two parts:

\- Whatever

\- Pay me

Here's the baseline: pay your people what they are worth and build something worth building. Everything else - free beer, foosball, catered lunches, tall ceilings, hardwood floors, is just details.

This may be my curmudgeon coming out (I'm in my 20s, WTF), but this really rubbed me the wrong way:

> _"The Possibility of Making a Lot of Money"_

This is a myth that needs to die, and founders need to stop perpetuating it. It's insulting to be approached like that, with the assumption that I'm going to be so wowed by your beanbag chairs and artisanal coffee that I lose the ability to do basic arithmetic.

The amount of equity I see being tossed around to employees - even relatively early ones - is pathetically little, while many founders strut around as if they're writing your yacht check personally with a 0.1-0.2% offer.

If the amount of equity you're offering is supposed to trump cash, you better be bringing a _lot_ of it to the table. But guess what, you're probably not.

If you're not willing to pay market salaries, you can either bring >1%+ equity to the table or GTFO.

> _"In a successful start-up, the potential financial upside that comes from > stock options can far outweigh a low base salary."_

 _LIES_ [1]

[1] Barring Black Swan events.

<comment><USER3> > It's insulting to be approached like that

You are smart you won't but many kids will. You'd be amazed how much free lunches, and free espresso can do. The job needs to be cool because they need to be able to tell themselves that they work in a cool place and tell their friends that they work in a cool place. That story is worth quite a bit.

Not only will they believe it, they will also work 60 hour weeks to make it happen.

They only way I can see a trade-off is if they give me a lot more vacation time. Not 2 or 3 weeks but 6+. Can't pay me enough? Ok, good, let me have free time at least so I can relax, travel or work on my won projects then.

<comment><USER4> Working on your project regularly(as in everyday, not even every week) is entirely different from working on it every six months or each month using one of those extra leave days or weeks. So, the extra leave is hardly a worthwhile compensation if you are being paid less and working insanely more hours than _normal_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How to convince me to join your startup: be an interesting person and do interesting things.

This could include:

      - making an office that's actually a nice space to be in
      - creating an environment that respects constant learning and
        knowledge exchange
      - structuring the environment around well-considered principals
      - writing, and fostering a community of writing (structured thinking)
      - being funny, and fostering a community of humor (enjoyment of life)
      - having a story about why the problems you are solving are important
        and constantly repeating it
      - being harshly critical of your mission, constantly re-evaluating
      - actively studying philosophy, economics, psychology, business, art,
        literature, religion, science, music, etc.

I didn't read the article.

<comment><USER4> Things like "number of working hours" and "free weekends" - you didn't find important enough they are part of one of your points?

>> _\- actively studying philosophy, economics, psychology, business, art, literature, religion, science, music, etc._

It's like the free lunch thing pitched by start-ups, isn't it?

It's very simple. _Give me money and I'll decide what to do with it because I know better about myself than you do_.

<comment><USER5> Good sir, it is my intention to have a good life. I may achieve a good life by purchasing freedom on the dime of my master or by associating with righteous causes in the company of great people. Of course I would prefer to have both, but given a choice, I would pick the latter.

As for "number of working hours" and "free weekends", if one is prepared to make a sacrifice in the name of their beliefs, working many hours and losing weekends can be judged to be a necessary part of that sacrifice. During the few times that I've been able to align my beliefs with my work, I have readily dedicated the majority of my time to the task at hand.

For those who are not willing to make such a sacrifice, I suppose I would think it too obvious to mention. Of course you should never accept such conditions. I've never been forced to work more than 40 hours, nor have I known anybody who has, and so honestly the possibility of such a thing happening doesn't come readily to mind. Civilized countries have laws protecting people from such things.

I would agree, however, that most if not all startups are not truly a "righteous cause" worthy of personal sacrifice, and that is why I don't work at a startup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the same article that is posted here every week by a different author.

The author always explains how health insurance, pension, benefits, child care, vacation and competitive salary are not important, because those are not things their start up wishes to offer. What the reader is told should be important to them is teamwork and an opportunity to work on something "meaningful", which means what the author is working on and personally interested in. In addition, this is "altruistic" or "nonprofit". And then, stock options will make you rich at this altruistic nonprofit endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've got a real problem recruiting smart people to my ideas. Here's the issue from my point of view:

Lay people are easy to convert, you can simply answer questions intelligently. Someone with no interest or experience in the area isn't very emotionally invested either way, and can be convinced with ease.

On the other hand, those with real knowledge or experience are _also_ easy to sway, but once you show them a glimmer of potential, credibility is on the line. The inevitable response to a good idea is a quick reactionary criticism. "Yeah that's a good idea, but it would be much better if you did X". It seems like a kind of flexing, or posturing to one-up your concept. I've encountered this several times now.

My reaction is to exhaustively answer questions and politely offer answers. This tactic seems to be met with defensive resentment, and it really sucks the excitement out of the conversation.

This is a real communication problem for me, I'd appreciate any advice.

<comment><USER8> Why are you treating what they say as a criticism? You are explaining how your ideas are level 10, and they are saying how to take it to level 11. Note that it builds on what is there, and they are excited and positive. To them it probably sounds like you are rejecting what they are saying hence the downward spiral.

A great way to counter this sort of thing is not to reject it, but to pencil it in for later. "That is interesting. Our plan is to get an MVP out the door and find market fit, and then we will be in a better position to do X." You can then discuss whatever is in common between their X and your existing stuff.

<comment><USER7> Well I could have worded that differently. Sometimes it's a good addition like you suggest, I think I handle that gracefully.

More often the response is more "The problem with that is..." which I counter with "here's the answer to that" which after a while gets frustrating, I suspect. I don't do half-baked ideas, I over-plan if anything.

<comment><USER8> There is always the possibility you are actually wrong :-) You also realise you don't have to "correct" them or get the last word in? Smile, thank them for their feedback/input and move on. And if you are so confident you are right then why even talk to these people?

If you are trying to recruit them then you are doing a sales job, and you'll likely encounter the same things when dealing with prospective customers, partners, investors etc. Sometimes people just need to think out loud, so give them enough space to do so. You may find them coming around given a little time.

Also realise they are trying to work _with_ you. If you shut them down then they'll realise they'll just have to follow your orders (ie not a collaboration) in which case their experience has little value to you, as does the relationship to them.

<comment><USER7> That's reasonable. Thanks! I'm going to re-examine some existing relationships because of this advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Aside from the official interview, we often take candidates to drinks, dinner, or coffee to get to know each other in a more casual environment, and we make sure they have the chance to get to meet multiple members of the team."

I really like this one, mainly because it seems to be overlooked by so many companies today. Recruiting smart brains is one thing, but recruiting smart brains that will work well in your company's system, in and outside of the office, is just as important. Meeting in a casual setting is far different from having a business casual interview. Not to mention, taking interviewees out also shows them that the employees also have fun and that is something that everyone their cares about, not just says on their Jobs page.

<comment><USER10> Although as an add-on to that, many people abstain from alcohol for a variety of reasons (not because they're "no fun" or stuck up) so I'd leave that out to avoid making potential candidates feel uncomfortable.

<comment><USER11> I don't drink (and for a variety of reasons), and I don't associate going to a bar with drinking alcohol. Yes, I understand that drinking alcohol is the main profit center of a bar. But if people want to go to a bar, fine we'll go to a bar and I'll have soft drinks or non-alcoholic beer (as long as it's not sucktacular O'Douls or the like).

I can see the recently-sober recovering alcoholic being the sticking point here, and I don't have a good answer for that possibility. So maybe you have a good point. But for the religious/philosophic/recovering-but-far-enough-along- to-go-to-a-bar I don't see a problem.

EDIT: now that I read the actual quote, it occurs to me that one can just throw out multiple options: drinks at a bar or coffee? The smart candidate picks coffee, drinker or teetotaler, to avoid the influence of alcohol in front of a potential employer. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article would have been incredibly insightful if it had been written in 1994.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd add, the possibility to be part of a community greater than any one company, if you're in a tech hub and recruiting someone from corporate

</comment><comment><USER14> Not crashing my mobile browser (ie not using OnSwipe) would be a start.

<comment><USER11> I didn't bother reading the article because of that stupid sidebar thingy that chases you down the page. Maybe I'm the only person that finds it annoying, but there is nothing on the web I need to read so badly that I'm willing to put up with it these days. And, yeah, OnSwipe's starting to get on my nerves, too.

And in a pathetic effort to remain on-topic, I'm unlikely to work at your company, either. Such window dressing over substance (I gather from comments that the article wasn't much) gives me a possible hint that my compensation may suffer the same fate. Bean bag chairs and a kegerator don't add to my 401K.

<comment><USER14> I assume you don't mean _my_ company. We're not really hiring right now, but we'd be big on good working environment (private offices and/or wfh/remote+trips), great hardware, fun/meaningful stuff to work on, and either great pay+find-your-own-benefits or good pay+good benefits.)</comment></comment></comment>


The Age Gap in Religion Around the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/the-age-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/ <comment><USER2> At least in my experience, as a gen-X person in the US:

For at least a generation now, organized religions have been doing a poor job of addressing people's personal spiritual needs, while at the same time being the bastion of various sorts of social conservatism with justifications that often don't hold up in the context of modern scientific knowledge.

Now, I do think this is sometimes quite unfortunate, as it sometimes leaves these people easy prey to even less rationalistic religions and cults. (A certain amount of practice at various sorts of critical thinking may also immunize you against these things as well.)

<comment><USER3> > being the bastion of various sorts of social conservatism

Aren't they conservative out of necessity? You cannot rapidly change interpretation of the holy texts, and keep the congregation assured that you are true to the hundreds/thousands years of tradition/the words of the prophet.

<comment><USER4> Social progressivism does not require willingness to change holy texts. If you look at the Christian New Testament, most (though possibly not all, I don't claim encyclopedic knowledge of it) of the teachings Jesus line up quite well with social progressive values in the US today—things like caring for the poor, the sick, and immigrants and refugees.

The fact that the "religious right" is a thing in the US today doesn't particularly indicate that this is the natural order of things. While I'm no longer religious myself, much of my family still is, but identifies as part of the "Christian left," and pushes very strongly against the view that religious must necessarily equal Republican.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This text focuses on the religiousity of generations, and the comments below demonstrate that religiosity is a really squishy term.

I would be more interested in the more general notion of "values." Every generation goes through some sort of rebellion against its previous generations. I'm interested in the general question of "to what extent does a younger generation hold/cling to the values imparted from their parents, including amongst others, traditions, religion, philosophies about governance and civics, etc."

</comment><comment><USER6> The article does not make much sense as it, at least for France.

We have a tremendous difference in the adoption of religions by age depending on the religion. There is no "average".

When I was a child in the 80's, I have never heard of Ramadan. My children, same age same school know everything about it. Same for hallal food.

When I see people of my age (mid-40) who as Muslims, their religiousness is medium to poor. The next generation is very much different, way more religious.

Atheists are more or less the same.

Catholics are in decline, except in some places where the tradition is strong (Versailles for instance).

So averaging "religion" over a whole country does not yield any sensible results in some countries. In other maybe.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's tempting to view this as being about trends, but there's a maturity element as well. Young people tend to want to try different things. They also haven't experienced much hardship or given much thought to (life after) death. For many people, religion only comes into the picture when life gets serious.

<comment><USER8> The data in the study broadly contradicts the insecurity argument - belief/adherence to religion is generally higher the lower the lifespan/education level/economic disparity/GDP across a country's population. The long term studies of the USA referenced (because that is where they have the data long term) shows young people have not always deviated from old people in their religious convictions, either, so maturity is not a complete explanation.

<comment><USER9> But the study specifically says that the data may indicate that people become more religious as they age.

<comment><USER8> I read all of that as hypothesis, are you talking about this part?

"Another theory is that differences in religious commitment reflect change during the life course. Although young adults often start out less religious than their elders, they tend to become more devout as they age, have children and begin to face their own mortality (or so the theory suggests)."

They have a lot of hypothesis that could all be true - i.e. the younger people who started off with a lower percentage religious as measured would end up with a higher percentage religious if measured as a group later, but still less than the current age group measured right now.

Or maybe this one?

While not ruling out the influence of other factors – such as when and where people live – one research team argued that "life course trajectories may trump generational placement as predictors of religious behaviors and orientations."

Lastly, they have the caveat that America is kind of special case with several contravening indicators, with some conditions among the best and among the worst.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Japan, religion is only very important for 10% of adults

Yet Japanese spend routinely 20 000 to 30 000 USD to have a religious (Buddhist) ceremony for their dead family members. Very generic statistics about vague opinions don't explain everything.

<comment><USER11> The ceremony might be a matter of culture, and less about religious belief.

<comment><USER12> What's the difference?

<comment><USER4> One can spend large amounts of money on a wedding without having a priest present to conduct the ceremony. That, too, is a cultural phenomenon, not purely a religious one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is this [flagged]? May whoever flagged this come forth with an explanation?

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be fascinating to see a meta study that ignores the traditional definition of organized religion and instead looks at "religious" characteristics. What are the behaviors that make Buddhism and Islam both religions?

Beliefs that a person holds deeply, holds on faith without requiring proof, bases their life choices on, and evangelizes as the truth.

By that measure, aetheist San Francisco is the most religious place I've ever lived. The religions focus on the right way living or eating, and the evangelism is off the charts.

I would argue that the younger generation isn't significantly less religious, but rather that they're all inventing new religions or following scattered and informal tribes online. It's like a new philosophical primordial soup from which I suspect we will see organized and "formal" religions emerge given sufficient time.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _By that measure, aetheist San Francisco is the most religious place I've > ever lived_

You've constructed a loose definition of religion that approximates the common definition of culture. The term "religion" is generally reserved for "claims to relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements" [1]. (That said, "there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.")

A better term for the behavior you describe might be "zealotry."

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

<comment><USER5> I consider a lot of the arguments that come out of modern hype movements to be based on near supernatural reaches of selective logic and rationalization.

Also, I think that while parsing religion from culture would be a handy classification, they don't really decouple that easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _near supernatural reaches of selective logic and rationalization_

Near is not at. Conspiracy theorists aren't religious. They're just zealous. People become zealous about many things. What differentiates religion is the explicit invocation of supernatural causes. That delineation is meaningful, to the person making the claim as well as in society's treatment of the claim. (Particularly in the United States, where the Constitution treats religious zeal differently from secular zeal.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On most days, I think people should allow to worship however they want. And then there are days when my government quote the Bible to support laws that are otherwise indefensible.

<comment><USER15> It's true that religion has engendered a great deal of evil throughout history. It seems like almost every major atrocity has been religiously motivated in some way.

However, if you look at Georgia for example, you'll see that suppressing religion doesn't do much. Even if you took the harshest anti-theist position, you'd have to admit that people simply need to choose to stop being religious. It's difficult or even impossible to force the issue.

So even if you dislike religion, the answer is still a secular society with freedom of religion and a healthy religious tolerance.

<comment><USER9> Don't gloss over all the atrocities committed by the Soviets and Chinese in the name of aetheism.

Evil people will harness whatever philosophy is convenient to justify their actions.

<comment><USER16> They didn't commit them in the name of atheism, they committed them in the name of economic and social revolutions of which atheism played a relatively small part compared to communist ideology. By comparison with "in the name of god" there is no honest comparison.

 _@Jumpcrisscross: One can make similar arguments for the Crusades._

Then why not make that argument? Remember to put "Deus Vult" in that context.

 _Of course they did since the pretty much first they did was to imprison in concentration camps the clergy, and destroy all religious buildings as well._

"Pretty much" is doing yeoman's work there, bravo. I like how it also glosses over the fact that _most_ of what happened was anti-money, anti-status, and anti-intellectual.

<comment><USER10> > They didn't commit them in the name of atheism,

Of course they did since the pretty much first they did was to imprison in concentration camps the clergy, and destroy all religious buildings as well. This comment is so incredibly naive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Young people have a lot more perspective these days. God is less necessary in a world where the answer to any question is only a Google search away.

That said -- just because young people don't claim religion is "very important" to them doesn't mean they don't have any sense of spirituality.

<comment><USER18> Or we can think of Google as tier 1 support for God. I think there are still a lot of questions Google can't answer.

<comment><USER19> Shrugs, There are lots of things we don't know, that doesn't mean you wedge God in when we don't know something because eventually we probably will know that thing and then God is pushed back again.

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

I personally don't believe in God nor do I have any objection to other people believing in god _except_ where they think their belief gives them special powers to influence things beyond 'one person, one say' then I get annoyed - fortunately I live in a largely secular country (and becoming more so) so it's not an issue I run into with much regularity.

<comment><USER20> Knowing more about the natural world doesn't eliminate God. It makes the unexplainable parts more amazing.

It's similar to how holders of doctorates say that their achievement makes more clear what they don't know.

<comment><USER19> On the other hand the more we understand about the way the universe works the less need is there for God as an explanation.

There simply isn't any evidence for his/her/its/their existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just because younger people don't worship God doesn't mean they don't worship other things now, their new God is consumerism and their new Gurus and guides are celebrities and pornstars

<comment><USER17> It's not like young people are praying to Kim Kardashian for a healthy crop season.

<comment><USER22> No, they're just looking up to her for lifestyle guidance...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I spent two years at a Catholic high school. The most important lesson from that experience was the maxim that "you have to believe _something_ " \-- that class (senior religion) encouraged us to examine our beliefs. Many people adopt their parents' explanation for the world we live in. Others prefer the scientific explanation du jour ("of the day").

The old religions have become stale, but the hunger for spirituality persists.

Science has "true believers" too. These prostelytizers proclaim that that there is no need for spiritual hocus-pocus anymore, that Science has explanations for everything now, or at least they'll have it all figured out soon. This has been the Physicalist's sermon for ... maybe 170 years.

Spiritualism maintains that the life force is separate from the physical world we inhabit: the life force is what "animates" the bodies we take on for a while.

      YODA: Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
      You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you,
      me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Yes, even between
      this land and that ship.

People have experiences that cannot be explained by 'physicalism' all the time: out of body experiences, 'intuition', memory, telepathy, imagination, etc... My comment on this subject from 12 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17238552)

<comment><USER24> It may be comforting to believe in something. That doesn't make it true. There is no evidence that any of the experiences people have that can't be explained are a result of supernatural causes.

<comment><USER23> When I was taxi driving, I found it useful to believe that I had an itinerary, and that my job was to be in the right place at the right time to meet the people who I was supposed to meet that day. Mr. "Who are your lifelines" [0] was a case in point. I was parked at a Quik Trip gas station, he asked if I was available, I took him somewhere, he saved my number. I later bailed him out of jail, and am going to be using his story to push for change in our criminal justice system.

[0] [http://www.taxiwars.org/who-are-your- lifelines/](http://www.taxiwars.org/who-are-your-lifelines/)

> There is no evidence that any of the experiences people have that can't be > explained are a result of supernatural causes.

This is slander for phenomenon which are not very well understood by the present state of knowledge. Radon/radiation poisoning would have been classified as "supernatural" by pre-1896 scientists ("science advances one funeral at a time"; I don't know how long it took for the possibility of 'radiation' to permeate the scientific culture).

<comment><USER24> > Radon/radiation poisoning would have been classified as "supernatural" by > pre-1896 scientists

That is exactly my point. A lot of phenomena that were once the purview of religion are now explained by science. The reverse is never true (nothing explained by science has subsequently found a better explanation in religion)

<comment><USER23> > The reverse is never true (nothing explained by science has subsequently > found a better explanation in religion)

1\. Scientific explanations are often found to be incorrect.

2\. Scientific explanations are often found to be incomplete.

3\. Scientific explanations are often found to build on assumptions.

My posts in this thread are not so much about Religion, but about _what do you believe_. Everyone believes something. Why do you believe what you do?

<comment><USER24> Scientific explanations are always incomplete and approximations of an objective reality. Yes all Science has to make fundamental assumptions to function, we all have to make assumptions to function in the real world. There are fewer fundamental assumptions with Science then with religion. I am fallible, but I try believe in things based on evidence.

<comment><USER23> > Scientific explanations are [...] approximations of an objective reality.

There's one of your beliefs: that there is an "objective reality". I believe in a shared reality, and that each individual has their own subjective reality too. Everyone has their own experience of an event, and their own inner world (dreams, imagined experiences, etc).

I would also posit that there is no one "Science". Science is a process. Every individual who investigates the world forms their own conception of what has already been discovered, and what is worth investigating. 'Scientific Consensus' is an agreement about what good scientists are to believe. Simple matters are easy to form a consensus about; complex matters are still under discussion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


News.YC Feeds: Comments on 'Ask HN' submissions... - <AUTHOR> http://ycfeeds.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Comments on 'Ask HN' submissions that are directed to you now show up on your reply feed.</comment>


Suggest to HN: 1 downvote should cost 2 karma. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> Why? I don't think there's a problem of too much downvoting. As far as I can tell, the comment quality has actually improved recently with better comments bubbling to the top while not-as-constructive ones fading away.

If anything, link submissions or comment submissions should deduct karma so as to curb spammy (and possibly unsubstantiated) behavior. Of course this lends itself to issues of new users not being able to engage as much.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe people should have to explain why they are downvoting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be better if users were required to leave a comment along with their downvote.

</comment><comment><USER5> Either a) no one will downvote because the impact of the downvote is negligible or b) downvoting will continue the same since 2 Karma really isn't that much.

This is not a Nash equilibrium.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe a doing downvoting should lead to a five minute timeout from reading HN.

<comment><USER5> Then why would anyone downvote if there's a punishment _for the person doing the downvoting_?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cause people can downvote with impunity. It's like a society where it's OK to punch someone.

<comment><USER6> Would you please stop this? The HN guidelines ask you not to complain about being downvoted.

Everyone gets downvoted. It isn't interesting, and it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't help but wonder how many downvotes this is going to get.

<comment><AUTHOR> So annoying to get a downvote without explanation.

In the real world there's a price to pay if you hit someone. Not on HN - <USER2> people with downvotes and no comeback or explanation or cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice downvote.

<comment><AUTHOR> That should have cost you 2 karma.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did NASA make reliable software if they didn't invent unit tests? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I used to work in aerospace as a hardware/software engineer and while my team did use unit tests that wasn't how software was tested and qualified.

The process in aerospace is vastly slower and that can be signified by the fact that on average a programmer doing aerospace produces just 1000 lines of code a year. There is a clear reason why aerospace engineers produce a lot less code:

\- Documentation - You get a pile as tall as your desk for a few thousand lines of code, the software is designed to the degree of knowing precisely what the maximum N can be going into a function and its exact runtime, every function has a fixed maximum and minimum values and a runtime associated with it preallocated before anyone writes code. Then the code is checked against the documentation.

\- Bench testing - We had a complete dev/test environment in which all in dev hardware/software could do missions and had all the different teams and their avionics device within a network interacting. You then flew countless "missions" (real cockpit parts but swivel chair + simulator) testing all the different scenarios and what you just did.

\- The wider team of engineers working on the avionics software would print out the entire code and all branches and "walk" the entire system from beginning to end with documentation in hand. Every line is validated by someone from a different team and every decision scrutinised.

\- System test - multiple phases of. Completely separate teams would test every new release to death rigorously, against the clients specs, against the documentation produced and also with their own independent simulator and cockput setup. Not only that but there was a second team doing the same thing trying to catch the first in missing something.

\- Then it spends years being tested in prototype vehicles before finally being signed off as ready.

End to end it took about 10 years to get 60k lines of code released working full time on one avionics device. We had unit tests but only for the purpose of testing the hardware not really for our own software beyond startup tests.

All of that is the rigour coming out of one principle, every time you find a problem in the code at any point its not the individuals fault its the teams fault and you work out the genuine cause and ensure it can't slip through again. Everything must be testable.

There is quite a lot of parallels with unit testing and indeed it could be a better way to capture tests for aerospace, potentially a slightly less man intensive way as to run all the tests everytime a new release is produced, but it wouldn't look anything like what your typical commercial company does as to them its not worth reducing the 10 bugs per 1000 lines of code they currently have down to more or less 0. Unit testing in aerospace would be about efficient repetition of running known tests much as it is in the commercial space but not driving any form of design process, but I could see test definitions being produced from the function lists. We did a lot of specification testing and limiting of language to allow that to occur and make the code more straight forward.

<comment><USER3> The only problem with producing 1000 LOC per year is that your brain will rot from being so narrowly focused on this one thing.

It could be a tolerable job with a programming hobby on the side (FOSS projects or whatever) in which you produce another 15,000 lines to get your "coding fix".

<comment><USER4> The process described is not narrowly focused. It's full system design, implementation, and validation. Engineering is more than just coding and can be much more satisfying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unit Tests are not the one and only metrics for software quality. Believe it or not, before unit tests were coined, we managed to build reliable software too. Actually a lot of the internet was actually built that way.

But your assumption is very interesting, because it states a very common misconception of quality (whatever that means, reliability, maintainability, resilience, etc):

* "Unit tests imply reliable software". Well, it does not, you'd need reliable unit tests for that, and from what I've seen in the industry, not every unit test out in the wild increases reliability.

* "Without unit tests, you can't have quality software". That is just not true either. First, not all tests are unit tests, end-to-end (integration/functional/whatever) test are extremely useful and raises the quality too. Even without any automated test, the quality of documentation, contract programming, manual testing, etc also help a lot.

Also, note that apart from testing, a lot of different practices contribute to reliability. Separation of concerns, the language level of abstraction, the overall experience and involvements of the developers, and many others.

<comment><USER6> Could to into more detail about what techniques NASA specifically used to achieve quality software? I'm honestly very interested. I feel like you didn't answer the spirit of the question "How did NASA build highly reliable software" while pigeon holeing on "without unit tests".

<comment><USER7> Their hardware was essentially fixed, well defined, and limited in scope.

They reviewed every single piece of code many, many times.

They were draconian about memory handling, loops, preprocessor directives, and recursion.

All functions had to check all return types from other functions.

No more than one level of pointer dereferencing.

All code bodies had to fit on a piece of paper.

/edit should add, they used their tools thoroughly: compilers were run on max warning levels and absolutely no warnings were accepted, ever. They also used several static analysis tools on the code (under-appreciated these days!).

<comment><USER8> I'd also add they had excellent, mature coders.

None of this crunch time bullshit, though I'm sure it happened.

I've been on one of those binges. If another coder hadn't seen my errors, due to diminishing sleep, I'd probably keep banging my head against the wall. Just compounding the situation.

<comment><USER9> I can't count how many times I stayed late at the office working on a problem for 6 hours straight, and then after a good night's sleep found and fixed the issue after 20 minutes at work the next day. Sleep is king.

<comment><USER8> I have latent dyslexia which seems to emerge after too many hours at a computer screen. I've come back from a good nights rest to find variable names that are just slightly misspelled, recursive loops that are unreachable, and functions that are incomplete because I was distracted by a bug hunt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unit testing is not a method of achieving reliability, but of accelerating development. They do not prove that a system functions correctly, which is more in the domain of systems and integration testing.

Also, testing is only one small part of building reliable systems. Instead, reliability requires actual engineering practice, which is non-existent in the software world except in a few life-critical domains.

NASA and their contractor's software engineering practices have been covered extensively elsewhere. Here are some links.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right- stuff](https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)

[http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html](http://history.nasa.gov/computers/Ch4-5.html)

<comment><USER11> My takeaway from reading the fastcompany.com article is that it's not process improvement per se that provides quality software, it's money. NASA has invested a great deal more time, and therefore money, into developing software than a typical commercial software company can afford. We will need quite a lot more programmers necessarily getting paid a lot less if we want commercially viable software production within spitting distance of NASA quality expectations.

<comment><USER12> That's just it. If a bug in software can cause death you're not going to use agile. You're going to use a waterfall-like process, and you're going to have stringent quality gates at every single transition - from envisioning, through requirements analysis, design, development, test, release, and into operation. It's the only way. I know because I built a military guaranteed messaging system. Tech aspect was small, but it took 24 months.

<comment><USER13> Then again, agile has some relation to lean (which of course is a _production_ method, not a _design_ method) - and cars probably have a much higher chance of killing people than space craft do.

I think it is more a case of "what you can get away with" in terms of domain knowledge and risk: If there's only some money on the line - taking a hit from time to time from bugs, bad design etc - will often be cheaper than slowing down the design and production process. Especially if a system with (some) bugs can start earning money on day X, while a "perfect" system would require some N > X days more to start earning money.

Waterfall is a perfectly valid process - but for it to work, it puts a very high demand on the domain knowledge of those involved, as well as information management. And in _reality_ I think very, very few large projects get away with _no_ iterations for sub-modules.

I was working with a crew that was refurbishing deep sea drilling platforms - originally built in the 70s. One particular task was moving anchor winch engines, along with ventilation (vent-hole had to be displaced due to moving the engine(s)). On the design the crew got from engineering, the hole was just moved some 10 meters. But the engineer was clearly working from out-dated drawings - moving the hole as indicated would have lead the team to cut through half of a fuse board, some computer controls for some other sub-system and through an interior supporting strut. In the end the solution turned out to be prototyping a longer shaft with pvc pipe, and then welding the thing in place, in pieces. The one-day job turned into a two week job - so the cost of the single mistake on a drawing cost an enormous amount of money (but of course, there were many such mistakes, so who knows how early the rig could've been out of dock anyway...). On the other hand, it got fixed.

I absolutely agree that you need more than "just agile", though. You need (a probably multi-stage) verification process, for example. In the example above, the welding and angle of the pipe was inspected first by the crew leader, and later by external inspectors -- that particular system didn't directly affect life or death, but as it was venting from from propulsion engines (I think) - an error leading to rust or system suspension would be very costly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In addition to everything else mentioned here they spent a TON of money[1]. For example they spent what would be 3.6 billion 2016 dollars on Guidance and Navigation. If your current project could drop a few hundred million on QC I bet quality would go way up regardless of automated testing or not.

[1][http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_...](http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-16_Apollo_Program_Budget_Appropriations.htm)

<comment><USER15> I think your number includes design and building one of the first solid state computers.

<comment><USER14> The "few hundred million for quality control" number still stands. In addition they were able to draw on everyone from the people designing the transistors through to the programers to debug problems. Not something many modern projects can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article by Walter Bright (creator of D, also hangs out on HN as 'WalterBright) might be illuminating as well as instructive:

[http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/safe- systems-...](http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/safe-systems-from- unreliable-parts/228701716)

</comment><comment><USER17> Your submission falsely implies that unit tests create reliable software. But that aside...

Avionics software is subjected to multiple rounds of peer review (often by different companies), integration testing, and in some cases multiple different implementations are developed and black box tested against each other for different outputs given the same inputs.

</comment><comment><USER18> Back in the times when we counted in bytes or kilobytes, programs were simpler to manage. One person could overview all code. Now we have programs with million lines. Nobody can oversee that.

<comment><USER19> "One person could overview all code." Not sure that's true. Imagine reviewing the code of the Apollo Guidance Computer, just to take an example from the 60's. The stack of paper containing the source code printout is more than five feet tall: [http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31602/is- this-a-...](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31602/is-this-a-photo- of-margaret-hamilton-standing-next-to-apollo-project-code-that-s)

<comment><USER20> It's on GitHub:

[https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11)

Reviewing it would be non-trivial, but in terms of absolute code size, it's not much larger than a moderately-popular open-source project today. It's significantly smaller than React, for example:

[https://github.com/facebook/react/tree/master/src](https://github.com/facebook/react/tree/master/src)

Edit: Downloaded both repositories. 'wc' puts the AGC at roughly 60K LOC, while just the 'src' directory in React is 70K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unit tests aren't really about testing (in the validating sense) software. They in fact are quite deficient in that role. No integration tests, no end- to-end tests, no fuzz testing, etc.

Unit Tests are foremost a software development tool. They force (in order to be unit testable) separation of concerns, definition of interfaces (i.e. the "contract" with function's users), etc. Mechanically, they also enable validating that internal refactoring has not violated that contract.

<comment><USER22> As big of a fan as I am about unit tests, I find their value somewhat dubious. They take a long time to write, and when they fail, it often means the unit test needs to be updated. Mocking interactions among objects takes a long time.

What I find has a better ROI is using the same unit testing tools, but writing what unit test purists will call integration tests. Basically, using unit test tools where most of a program is instantiated, but I/O is mocked, is much more useful. When these tests fail, it usually indicates a bug instead of a part of a unit test that needs to be updated.

<comment><USER21> This is why/how they are a development tool. "Mocking interactions among objects", often breaking, taking too long to write (I expect to spend 30% dev on units, 30% on code rest thinking, planning, etc). Those are all indicators that your code/architecture is bad. Too complex, too coupled, too much concern, not layered into clean interfaces, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A while back someone posted some programming guidelines issued by nasa. It detailed requiring assert statements at least every 10 loc. It spoke of many of other things as well, but that was one that stuck in my head.

<comment><USER24> Is this it this: [http://pixelscommander.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/P10.pd...](http://pixelscommander.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/P10.pdf)?

If so it looks like functions can't be more than 60 lines (rule #4), and that the "assertion density" (rule #5) must be two asserts per function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> According to this, unit tests are one of the least effective ways of catching bugs.

[https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/the-best-ways-to-find-bugs- in-...](https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/the-best-ways-to-find-bugs-in-your- code/)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think you mean to say "automated, script-based unit tests". You can test code manually.

<comment><USER27> Back in the day, people used to do something called "desk checking".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> From [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01845743#page-1](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01845743#page-1) 1) Integration testing, 2)Systems testing, 3)load testing and 4) user acceptance testing. This would have been done with simulation tools alongside manual testing. Think about the way hardware testing is done and extrapolate those techniques to software.

<comment><USER29> This is right on money.

The test engineers as well as the implementation engineers also have a lot of experience within their specialized areas. This provides a lot of insight into expected results when running these different types of tests and scenarios.

Also, these tests are long duration. Multiple iterations of simulations can take years to complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cacti had a nice summary. Some of their methods are also detailed in NASA's Software Safety Guidebook that was recently posted. My comment below tells you which pages have good stuff plus, as usual, has a link to the PDF itself.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016046)

Here's a recent comment with so-called Correct-by-Construction methods for software development that knock out tons of defects. Usually don't have unit testing. The cost ranged from being lower (eg some Cleanroom projects) due to less debugging to around 50% higher (eg typical Altran/Praxis number). Time- to-market isn't significantly effected with some but is sacrificed for others. So, you don't need several hundred million in QA as some suggested.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081603](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081603)

</comment><comment><USER31> Some thoughts I have:

\- I think they did apply methodologies of reliability that worked in hardware, to software (e.g redundancy, automatic fault detection/tracing/correction)

\- Also, in the early days, software was so tied to hardware, and hardware was faaar less complex, so they probably _could_ understand everything that was happening in the system at a given time

</comment><comment><USER32> I think it's important to remember that the kind of software written for any kind of flight control or guidance system are very very very far from the kind of dynamic software normally done today.

There where more likely to be hardware errors than software errors, thats how close to the hardware they wrote.

</comment><comment><USER33> Really? Because, how could quality assurance, software testing, and formal verification have existed before some hipster buzzword for a particular approach to it came about?

</comment><comment><USER34> This is an article about the team writing code for the space shuttle, it is not so much about how they tested but more about the (insane) amount of time and energy spent on making sure everything worked.

[http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right- stuff](http://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff)

</comment><comment><USER35> Talk by Dr. Gerard Holzmann (leads the JPL Laboratory for Reliable Software): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6yDubV3a9I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6yDubV3a9I)

You can also search for the paper/final report: "NASA Study on Flight Software Complexity" to expand the topic.

</comment><comment><USER36> Margaret Hamilton

<comment><USER30> I suggest always including links when you drop her name as significance will be lost on many.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_\(scientist\))

[http://htius.com/](http://htius.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Thank you for the links

<comment><USER30> The lessons learned from Apollo article and 001 features should show how badass they were. Note recent and future tooling in model-driven tooling aim for what hers already did two or more decades ago. One of first, high- assurance toolchains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> To create really reliable software you either use formal methods (seL4 kernel, CompCert etc.) or you spend a huge amount of money and work really slow. NASA is spending a lot of money and working really slow. In other words, they are not in any way state-of-the-art. Just brute force.

</comment><comment><USER38> By writing unit tests? Unit tests existed decades before they were popularized. Nobody "invented" them.

</comment><comment><USER38> The funny thing is it's not just "NASA way back when". Even now, the _most_ critical code (e.g. implantable heart defibrillators) likely has less "unit test" than advert code that posts junk to your facebook wall.

Waterfall is still the more sensible approach in some industries.

</comment><comment><USER39> My wild guess is just a lot of testing. Rigorous testing. Note a lot of early NASA code were assembly.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think they spend a lot of time doing very detailed code reviews.

</comment><comment><USER38> Who invented unit tests? Does that person have a monopoly on highly reliable software?

What an _awesome_ patent trolling opportunity that would be!

</comment><comment><USER41> Code review.

</comment><comment><USER42> Asserting about involved variables each 10 lines of code (:

</comment><comment><USER43> Process too.</comment>


Robots Can't Dance – Why the singularity is greatly exaggerated (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/robots-cant-dance <comment><USER2> Reads like an article written 5-10 years ago, not to mention it doesn't mention neural networks (by name) even once. _Forget the singularity... the article doesn 't mention the singularity except in the title. This is a "computers aren't special they can never be like us" article, based on an interview with a single person who seems more focused on robotics than neural network research._

It doesn't prove anything about the future of AI to give anecdotal examples of computers failing at being intelligent (nobody has claimed that they are human-level at most things, yet), and then draw conclusions from that biased data.

It's more like a half-interview half-essay of a discussion with an AI skeptic who doesn't bring up any of the modern (as of 2015 when the article was published) approaches to AI, and goes on irrelevant tangents like the uncanny valley (which has to do with HCI, not the singularity or AI creativity, which are the subjects of the article).

<comment><USER3> Every article claiming we're on the cusp of the singularity reads identically to those written 10-15 years ago too.

This reads this way because computers haven't made large strides in any creative endeavor in the last 10-15 years. Why should that be a point against the argument?

<comment><USER4> Computers can now take images and produce output in the style of major artists eg. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the- style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431718)

You may say that's just an algorithm but it's way better than I can do personally. That was all figured out within the last decade.

Also the computer art was produced by artificial neural networks, my attempts if I made some would be done by regular neural networks. Who's to say the computer stuff doesn't count as creative but mine does?

<comment><USER5> Computers cannot take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you think they can, give them realistic art and watch them embed eyes from the source image into your mouth.

This is not to say that it can't ever be done, just that right now it isn't done by people claiming they can do it. That articles with results similar to 100x cheaper random texture synthesis from 15 years ago get published and hyped in the general press tells you how much of an AI bubble we live in right now.

<comment><USER6> Yup. The linked image gallery is actually a pretty good argument against computers being able to take images and produce output in the style of major artists. If you asked a human to paint the Golden Gate bridge in the style of Matisse's "Woman with a hat", they probably wouldn't interpret the request as "make part of the sky look like a hat"[1]. If you asked a human to draw a group of buildings by a canal in the style of JMW Turner, they wouldn't make the buildings look like abstract waveforms[2], even if they were only familiar with his stormy seascapes and had never seen how he actually drew groups of buildings by a canal[3]

[1][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the- style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431606) [2][http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/1184...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture- galleries/11848836/Computer-algorithm-creates-Instagram-like-filters-in-the- style-of-famous-artists.html?frame=3431572) [3][https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=l...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jmw+turner+venice&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjc0KGvlYjPAhVHBMAKHfrvC5sQ_AUICCgB)

<comment><USER7> heh a decent point, but to be fair the task really isn't "make a picture in the style of <artist>" but "make a picture in the style of this one other picture". I'm not particularly convinced an otherwise naive human could separate style from motif in such a limited setting.

It mainly demonstrates that the network learns rather abstract characteristics of the original picture, to be possible to factor them out. Hardly a way to create new masterpieces, but a nice demo of computer vision advancement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is so sad that this very important discussion keep getting sidetracked by strawmen.

Anyone who can't explain how they at one side have no problem believing in evolution which took us from non-biological material into biological creatures who can think and create computers, but somehow have a problem believing evolution could continue via technology I have no interest listening to.

The reality is we don't know what happens but we do know that we are seeing more and more complexity in technology which via ex. the internet is following it's own network effects and is showing increasing capabilities of intelligent behavior.

Whether machines will be self-aware and push us toward the singularity or this increasing intelligence just become a danger by it's sheer computational power is mostly academic.

The fact is that the Singularity _can_ happen and we would be wise to think about how to deal with this.

<comment><USER9> Fine, let's say the singularity could happen. How do you know what form it will take and thus how to prepare for it? We don't have any evidence or examples of artificial human intelligence or something beyond us. Everything we humans build falls apart, there is nothing remotely resembling self- perpetuation of any sort. Where is the evidence that tech can do this? This singularity talk sounds, at best, like imagining flying ships in the 14th century. It might happen. But we have a long, long way to go and we have no idea how it will work.

<comment><USER8> What evidence was there of humans before they were around?

We can see there is emerging complexity, we can see there is increasing ability to solve more and more complex tasks, we can see that machines can learn, we can see that they are able to work together in ever larger networks and across all devices, we can see that it's happening at an accelerating rate and we kind of know what exponential curves do, I don't see anything but evidence that this is a likely future scenario.

And unless you are saying it requires an intelligent designer to create intelligence which would make you religious I have a hard time understanding exactly what you are objecting to?

What we do know is that it's going to happen through technology and that's where we have the most ability to actually attempt to do something to steer this in the right direction.

<comment><USER6> > And unless you are saying it requires an intelligent designer to create > intelligence which would make you religious I have a hard time understanding > exactly what you are objecting to?

Aren't the opponents of the belief in a technological singularity saying the precise opposite: that a designer can't possibly hope to mimic the effects of billions of years of biochemistry in reaching the little-understood goal of general intelligence in self-replicating organisms by designing computation machines and deciding on what outputs they'd like the evolutionary algorithm they've written to optimize for.

<comment><USER8> I am talking about the omnipotent/omniscient intelligent designer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This reminds of a scene from I, Robot.

Detective Del Spooner: Human beings have dreams. Even dogs have dreams, but not you, you are just a machine. An imitation of life. Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a... canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?

Sonny: Can you?

Detective Del Spooner: (Doesn't respond,looks irritated)

EDIT : this a scene from the will smith movie

<comment><USER11> Which is the annoyingly weak answer. Rather say:

Spooner: No. But some humans can. Can any robot?

And see how it plays out from there.

<comment><USER12> I don't see how the fact that some human can do it can be used to justify the properties of another human. Are you rich because Bill Gates is rich?

It doesn't matter if all robot can't or that some human can, because we are judging an individual. So if Spooner can't do it, yet he still thinks he has some value than the robot, then clearly it's not ability to compose symphony that matters.

<comment><USER13> The creative faculty is much more than just composing symphonies though, the simple act of speaking, is a creative process. Every time you speak your utterances can be arbitrarily long, and unique - have probably never been expressed, in that particular order. So that's something all humans can do.

<comment><USER14> And something AI does too

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/10/google-deepmind-ai- waven...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/10/google-deepmind-ai-wavenet-text- to-speech/)

<comment><USER13> It can mimic a human voice but not synthesise novel sentences of arbitrary length - which are actually meaningful - the creative process of speech.

Check Noam Chomsky on AI and the singularity, interesting viewpoints. This video is good. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kICLG4Zg8s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> D-Coder "Do airplanes fly?" They don't flap their wings or have feathers or eat bugs. But they do something similar to birds, and useful, so we call it "flying."

"Do submarines swim?" They don't propel themselves with their tails, or extract oxygen from the water with their gills. But they travel underwater, so... one could use that word.

"Do computers think?" They definitely won't "think" the same way humans do. But some day they will generate results that look more or less like thinking, at least in some useful areas, so...

</comment><comment><USER15> What? Robots have been dancing since the mid-80s at least:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xyz42OBQOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xyz42OBQOQ)

<comment><USER4> Call that dancing? Now this is dancing [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51vQo- imc4Q&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51vQo- imc4Q&feature=youtu.be&t=35s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some the examples given in the article are about creativity in relation to art forms intended for human consumption.

If I try to program a robot to create art that humans will appreciate, my robot has the disadvantage of not having immediate access to a human response to the art in question, because my robot isn't a human.

Whereas a human artist painting a picture can immediately and continuously judge the artistic quality of his or her efforts so far.

</comment><comment><USER17> Strikes me as weird to ask a robotics expert about an artificial intelligence question.

<comment><USER18> Robotics is a very diverse field with a lot of different problems. There's plenty of people in it who do hardcore AI. A lot of the time, the results developed by roboticist can be used more generally, they just picked robotics as their application domain. Robotics also has some different constraints that can make problems interesting -- namely computation time and safety requirements.

<comment><USER17> I agree about robotics being a diverse field, but from his history it didn't sound like he had any serious AI experience. I can't think that if he did, the article wouldn't cite it right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> robots are far from doing art interesting to us, but what's exaggerated? "singularity" is only mentioned in the title...

We would need to define interesting art too though. Robots can draw likable patterns and flowers, just not the more intellectual or personal stuff.

For my personal definition of interesting art: most anyone can do it, even some robots, but only few can do it on purpose. Like the difference between accidental, surreal moments in strangers conversations and the dialog in a Kaurismäki movie.

<comment><USER20> To me the interesting question isn't whether what the robot is doing is "good art" or "really art", but rather whether it's really the robot doing it or whether it's actually the robot's creator(s) doing it by means of the robot. In other words, the question of agency and responsibility.

Can robots be truly independent and responsible for their own actions, or are they always nothing more than extensions of their creators?

<comment><USER19> I'm often scared how much of me is clearly my father...

And you know how google was afraid to use deep learning for search results, because they could not understand what it actually does and how it comes up with decisions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know.. every other day when you open hacker news, suddenly something out of science fiction or fantasy raises its head, blinks back into the light and dances out in the street. Sometimes company get disrupted, that where there predecessors ruptores not a year ago. I'm actually a little bit scared of the singularity, in particularly the pressure it puts on humanity to speed up (with ampethamines, trainings (begining in kindergarten) and soon to come implants). So i would cheer on anyone having proof its not happening - if it where not for the fact, that failing and falling back into linear acceleration, would mean a catastrophe for a world of 7 billion either. If i have a choice between the likes of ISIS piling heads in the streets and skynet piling heads in the streets, i rather choose skynet- at least there is a little chance for humanity.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would dance with a robot, and then the Singularity could be greatly under- appreciated.</comment>


WorkRamp (YC S16) builds software to help companies train its teams - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/06/workramp/ <comment><USER2> One of the founders from WorkRamp here. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER3> how come you dont have a video tour, you only have the option to get a demo

<comment><USER4> Ted here from WorkRamp.

Sorry about not having a video; we haven't put the final touches on our video tour yet.

Happy to do a short 10-15 min live demo if interested. My email is email@example.com if you'd like to set up some time in the near future.</comment></comment></comment>


Reaction-Diffusion Tutorial (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.karlsims.com/rd.html

<comment><USER2> Source code available for rendering the images?</comment>