A new Venezuelan ID, created with China's ZTE, tracks citizen behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/venezuela-zte/ <comment><USER2> Please no.

> The technology Daquin and colleagues learned about in Shenzhen underpinned > what would become China's "Social Credit System." The still-evolving system, > part of which uses "smart citizen cards" developed by ZTE, grades citizens > based on behavior including financial solvency and political activity. Good > behavior can earn citizens discounts on utilities or loans. Bad marks can > get them banned from public transport or their kids blocked from top > schools.

<comment><USER3> > Good behavior can earn citizens discounts on utilities or loans. Bad marks > can get them banned from public transport or their kids blocked from top > schools.

Whatever it takes to herd the cattle.

"First they came ..." is a poem written by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in the English language. It deals with themes of persecution, guilt and responsibility.

The best-known versions of the speech are the poems that began circulating by the 1950s.[1] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum quotes the following text as one of the many poetic versions of the speech:[2][3]

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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

<comment><USER4> How is this different from credit scores?

<comment><USER5> Credit scores aren't based on your political activity or used to deny you from boarding transit.

<comment><USER6> China didn't ban all the transit boarding for those with low credit, just planes and first class HSR. You can take the normal train, which is still quicker than most countries.

No planes though. Planes are considered a luxury.

<comment><USER3> In May, enforcement of China's social credit system spread to the travel industry, restricting millions of Chinese citizens with low social credit scores from purchasing plane and train tickets.

[https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2018/06/18/chinas- so...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2018/06/18/chinas-social- credit-system-spreads-to-more-daily-transactions/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Modern national ID cards are invariably designed for surveillance. Consider the case of Aadhaar (the Indian national ID card). No words can better describe the kind of services it has enabled than what is illustrated in this image -- [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnWQpoTW4AARm2t.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DnWQpoTW4AARm2t.jpg) (The image illustrates an app that claims to provide personal information about a random individual by way of facial recognition made possible by use of Aadhaar APIs.)

<comment><USER8> What about Estonia? Their nation ID card seems pretty secure and privacy- concious

<comment><USER7> Ever wondered why such "secure and privacy-concious" national ID cards only find place in third-world countries.

"Citizens of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK, and the US successfully opposed biometric national ID schemes." [https://www.eff.org/issues/national- ids](https://www.eff.org/issues/national-ids)

<comment><USER9> Because the defacto IDs, e.g. SSN (US) or NiNO (UK) are so much better! They have no identifying features, so it's trivial to commit identitiy fraud. And once that happens you're fucked because they cannot be changed. But sure is better than one of those nasty ID cards that e.g. Germany, one of the most privacy-conscious nations, uses. (/s)

<comment><USER10> SSNs have been terribly abused by private industry. They were never meant to be handled by private companies, but here we are with a non-consentual credit scoring system based atop it.

Should people be required to hold a national ID card? It may have been rammed through in Germany, but many are not happy with national IDs. Its a basic consent of the people problem IMO. Passive acceptance is not consent or support, but merely dealing with the situation at hand.

<comment><USER9> What's your point? People have driving licenses, a passport and never think twice about using credit cards or loyalty cards. But somehow an ID card is uniquely dangerous? I don't buy it. The status quo is already worse!

<comment><USER11> Its because its so open to abuse by the police and reminds people (sorry germany) the Gestapo - that's why post ww2 the UK rejected ID cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Governments everywhere seem to be increasing their surveillance efforts. Finger prints on id cards. The Indian Aadhaar madness. Chinese "social credit scores". The list goes on.

I guess we have to get used to the new world order, where citizens don't matter, surveillance is everywhere, and there is no obvious way to fight this madness.

<comment><USER13> You fight it by taking the personal hit and run for office yourself. From my experience, the only thing you can really control is yourself. The problem is running for office is a pain and most people don't want their personal lives going public.

<comment><USER14> democracy used to be the optimal system because it processed information faster than authoritarianism. advences in technology reverse this relationship. whoever gets to the steering wheel has the potential to stay there for a long while with a very efficient (in terms of policing behavior per person employed) police. this all sounds like a bad joke but it is happening as we speak in china.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > "It's blackmail. Venezuelans with the cards now have more rights than those > without."

Take note, this is the exact same vector that could happen even in first world countries.

<comment><USER16> First the carrot, then when enough people are on board, the rest get the stick, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> In addition to be another dictatorship tool to have more control over the population, they're trying to implement low Gas subsidies to citizens-only in the border with other countries, they're probably losing +4B yearly in contraband.

</comment><comment><USER18> >"We don't support the government," he said. "We are just developing our market."

Considering the potential oppressive ramifications of such a system this could support the government a great deal.

<comment><USER19> Standard response from Chinese companies, "We are just doing business!" (We got families to immigrate to first world like party officials, need to make money fast!)

PS. Ctrip Founder levels with you: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kF8yBZeSFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kF8yBZeSFU)

Our middle and upper management members all sent their kids abroad, do their best to come by a (foreign) passport. Poor people don't mind, all they want is an apartment in Shanghai. It's not safe here, American education, air, and hospitals are just better.

<comment><USER15> It's also a standard response from American companies making compromises to do business in China. Just look at the proposed Google search there.

<comment><USER20> Is YC involved in NEOM in Saudia Arabia? I know Sam Altman is involved. It's another example of profits over human rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would the criticism go away if they called it a credit score?

<comment><USER22> >Would the criticism go away if they called it a credit score?

would the criticism go away if they called it a _happiness_ score?

for all the faults credit scores have, the only factor that they take into account are your credit events. they don't track every aspect of your life.

<comment> munk-a Credit score tracking is privately managed and incredibly inaccurate, it can lead to people being unable to qualify for mortgages when their financial situation is quite solid. Additionally credit score calculations are all proprietary and may have begun taking your social life into account (there are mixed reports) but given that health insurers are already upping the pressure to gather more of your personal data I doubt they're far behind, the difference is that health insurance is a much more highly regulated field so we have proof they're doing it, credit score trackers do all that stuff behind closed doors..

<comment><USER22> >Credit score tracking is privately managed and incredibly inaccurate, it can lead to people being unable to qualify for mortgages when their financial situation is quite solid

The first thing I did was say was that credit scores aren't perfect, so I'm not disagreeing with you on this. as for the "incredibly inaccurate" claim, are you talking about accuracy as a whole, or people on edge cases being screwed because they have a bad score? because I highly doubt lenders would bother paying for a worthless risk model.

>Additionally credit score calculations are all proprietary

And you think the citizen score isn't going to be?

>may have begun taking your social life into account (there are mixed reports) [...] credit score trackers do all that stuff behind closed doors..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act) ? Also, you can opt-out of social media, not so much the government.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do by pointing out how bad credit scores are, because citizen scores are clearly worse, considering they can collect everything credit bureaus can, but more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If Venezuela asked Google to build a censored, surveillance-oriented search engine, would they do it? my understanding is that they've already agreed to do it for China, so doing similar work for other dictatorships should be standard, even if not as profitable, business.

<comment><USER24> Probably not. There isn't enough revenue to counteract the detriment to their goodwill and other hits the company would take. China offers over a billion reasons to reconsider one's positions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Funny that they're printed using Datacard SD360. These ID's can be duplicated with ease.

</comment><comment><USER26> I know it sounds naive, but maybe an organized boycott towards ZTE could help?

<comment><USER27> In Europe, the Venezuelan crisis is largely ignored. Where I live (Spain), our current government is more or less on friendly terms with Maduro's government and there is little insensitive to do anything about it. The left-leaning media has, for the most part, ignored the topic (El Pais for one...), despite the increasing number of Venezuelan asylum-seekers arriving in Spain each year, and any meaningful efforts to boycott anything would need the media/government's support.

<comment><USER28> _In Europe, the Venezuelan crisis is largely ignored_

Venezuela is still considered the ideal role model by certain British politicians...

<comment><USER27> I wouldn't say it's considered the "ideal role model" by some British politicians (as it currently stands), but they definitely stand on very similar ideological grounds. People like Corbyn simply think that if it's _them_ who run the machine, things will run smoothly. That is, there is nothing inherently wrong with their ideology, the only problem with it is who gets to be the supreme leader. In Corbyn's eyes, he can do better. By the way, Podemos is the third largest party in Spain, and it supports Chavez/Maduro and it blames Venezuela's ills on US sanctions. Videos of the leader of Podemos supporting the Venezuelan dictatorship and its ideals aren't rare. Unfortunately, HN has the last years turned extremely left. They are like children who must experience pain before they understand. As a Cuban, I see through people like Corbyn and Iglesias as if I were Casper. The implications of their ideology are something the US/most of the West has not experienced yet, and as such, they're entirely ignorant about it. "The Open Society and Its Enemies" isn't a popular book among people here, I can tell you.

<comment><USER29> I'm not a Corbyn fan, but I think this is a gross misrepresentation of the current labour leadership, and their likely actions in government. I often see these kind of analogies being drawn based on a selective reading of the wide variety of regimes leftist politicians in the UK admired (or once-admired in the context of the Cold War). Can you point to any recent commentary from Corbyn or other senior labour figures (excluding Ken Livingstone, who is increasingly senile but thankfully out of the loop these days) that expressed admiration for Chavez and Maduro?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> DJI or other drone companies could be the solution to Venezuela's problems. Almost happened a few months ago.

<comment><USER31> I don't know. These guys arrived in power through free elections. Don't underestimate the economically self-destructive force of South American public opinions.

<comment><USER32> All it takes for a perfectly democratic country to elect a terrible leader (who will probably erode democracy away) is to have a previous leader not pay attention to the voting masses. Anger is a very bad advisor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I do wish that Social Security cards in the USA had a photo on them. It would make fraud much more difficult. The Social Security number's original intention was for census purposes then the IRS took it for their own purposes.

<comment><USER34> The Social Security Number wasn't created for census purposes, nor was it ever meant (and still isn't) to be fraud-proof. It was created, for _Social Security_ benefits. It wasn't meant to be truly secure, as the worst you can do with someone else's Social Security Number with the Social Security Administration is paying more into their Social Security account.

It is true the IRS used it for their own purposes too, and thus broke the original purpose, but it'd be ridiculous to make the Social Security card more secure and turn it into a national ID because of that. In most government applications anyway, your driver's license number has taken the place of the SSN. Your SSN isn't supposed to be sensitive.

Furthermore, it sounds like you're advocating for the creation of a "National ID" of sorts, which is quite the slippery slope.

<comment><USER33> I think everyone should have easy and free access to personal identification that is valid for voting, air travel, opening a bank account, etc. I don't think it should be mandatory. I think if the government is going to require it, they should provide it.

I'm confidant that the census bureau created those numbers which was soon taken over by SSA or for SSA. That also isn't really the point I'm trying to make which is becoming a tangent.

<comment><USER35> A passport / passport card comes pretty close to your stated goal.

<comment><USER33> Far as I know, a passport card does exactly what I want it to do except be free. There are people that are at the poverty level or below, and some right above the cut-off, who can't afford $100+ dollars in fees.

<comment><USER35> I've got mixed feelings on this as well. It feels like a passport should be a service received on the basis of being a citizen, but I also accept that ~$100 is a nominal processing fee and that government doesn't offer any services for free. As another poster pointed out, it's still cheaper overall than the cost of a driver's license, which potentially brings with it the cost of training, insurance, not to mention an actual vehicle and its costs assuming that was the reason for getting a license in the first place.

<comment><USER33> They give you things like your SSN and Birth Certificate for free, I believe. I think my overall point is, the average guy I work with at a shelter or volunteer gig doesn't have the financial flexibility to spend money on an ID at least for the explicit purpose of voting. If a citizen is expected to vote, but must have identification doesn't that mean you're having to pay for the right to vote in a free democracy? It just doesn't sit right with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> You'd think they'd have bigger fish to fry at this point.

<comment><USER37> Depends on what you think their game is. If you think their game is to fix the economy, yes, they definitely have bigger fish to fry. But if you think their game is to stay in power, then it makes perfect sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder if have a little slider on a GUI somewhere that some Venezuelan government official uses to determine the minimal social credit score that lets one get to eat.

</comment><comment><USER39> Well, that was an interesting and disturbing read, what are you supposed to do if you don't have the facilities to flee that country? Bend over apparently..

</comment><comment> mAEStro-paNDa It's incredibly disappointing the amount of ignorance and political whataboutism being thrown around here in this comment section.

</comment><comment><USER40> Also this is a great lesson to the younger generation that seem to be wooed by the Ocasio-Cortezes and Sanders of the world. Unfortunately the world needs a reminder every generation or so that socialism doesn't work, it never has worked, and it never will work.

<comment><USER41> Isn't Sanders a proponent of a social democratic system, like the Nordics? These countries are the most successful / least failed states in the world by a multitude of metrics. Comparing social democracies to Venezuela is of course just dishonest.

<comment><USER37> I seem to recall that Sanders' proposals could not be funded at current tax levels. That was the start of Venezuela's road to ruin. They proceeded to raise taxes to try to get the revenue, but it wasn't enough. So they started expropriating (taking) corporate property. So companies left, and revenue went down. So they funded the government by printing money, and inflation went out of control.

I'm shooting from memory here about Sanders' proposals, and can't cite a source, so someone feel free to correct with hard data if you've got it...

<comment><USER42> > I seem to recall that Sanders' proposals could not be funded at current tax > levels.

The main focus was on Medicare-for-All, which could not but would also (even in analysis by hostile sources) reduce total public + private health costs.

> That was the start of Venezuela's road to ruin.

No, it wasn't.

Venezuela did not enact policies that cost more than it could supports, then try to raise taxes for revenue, and then turn to expropriation as a revenue measure; expropriation and high taxation were adopted deliberately as part of an overt policy of aggressive redistribution of wealth, not because revenue for social services was unavailable elsewhere but because redistribution from the rich was an independent goal.

Venezuela's road to ruin was based on overdependence on oil revenue combined with failure to invest to diversify (or even maintain production) which led to falling production masked for a while by soaring prices and the whole house of cards collapsing when oil market prices collapsed.

<comment><USER37> > > I seem to recall that Sanders' proposals could not be funded at current > tax levels.

> The main focus was on Medicare-for-All, which could not but would also (even > in analysis by hostile sources) reduce total public + private health costs.

So there's a deal available there to be done where everybody wins (except perhaps politically). Medicare-for-all _without_ the deal could be a disaster for the government finances, though.

But Sanders also proposed free college for all, which would also have to be funded somehow. And it seems like there was another big one, but I don't remember what it was.

> Venezuela did not enact policies that cost more than it could supports, then > try to raise taxes for revenue, and then turn to expropriation as a revenue > measure; expropriation and high taxation were adopted deliberately as part > of an overt policy of aggressive redistribution of wealth, not because > revenue for social services was unavailable elsewhere but because > redistribution from the rich was an independent goal.

On reflection, that's not very comforting. We are at a place politically where "redistribution from the rich" has become thinkable as an independent goal.

<comment><USER42> > But Sanders also proposed free college for all,

He actually proposed that public colleges and universities should be tuition free, which is not the same thing.

> On reflection, that's not very comforting. We are at a place politically > where "redistribution from the rich" has become thinkable as an independent > goal.

Redistribution wasn't what caused the collapse, being more dependent on oil while producing less of it (and thus becoming supersensitive to price was.)

I only mentioned redistribution as an independent policy goal to explain why the narrative social spending -> funding needs -> effort at raising taxes -> expropriation was wrong. That sequence simply didn't occur. Venezuela relied on raising oil prices for revenue, and collapsed when oil prices did; expropriation was adopted early on when things were going relatively well, because of high oil prices, not in desperation over inadequate revenue.

<comment><USER37> Didn't redistribution (plus expropriation of businesses) lead to a bunch of businesses that weren't oil leaving the country, leaving them more dependent on oil? And they were fine with that, because oil was going up, so who cared that other business left?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > The card is increasingly linked by the government to subsidized food, health > and other social programs most Venezuelans rely on to survive.

I really don't understand how Venezuelans haven't revolted and given up on their failed socialist economic experiment. Typically lack of food has been the spark that starts these revolutions, but the failure of even basic services there has been going on for years now. How much more authoritarianism without any economic gain can these people take?

Are enough regular people really getting enough handouts from the government to not want to get rid of them? Is the propoganda machine working that effectively to blind them?

<comment><USER44> When the government takes guns away from the masses it gets a little harder to pull off. Venezuela is a narco state at this stage too.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco- state#Venezuela](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-state#Venezuela)

First article I found on it on Google: [https://www.activistpost.com/2016/05/did-you-know-that- venez...](https://www.activistpost.com/2016/05/did-you-know-that-venezuela- banned-guns-for-private-citizens-only-4-years-ago.html)

BBC Link about the ban: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin- america-18288430](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-18288430)

<comment><USER45> If the US army turned on its citizens do you think it wouldn't go through ANY resistance like a hot knife through butter?

<comment><USER46> I live in the southeast. There are pockets here that would be _very_ tough to take. It would be a Vietnam situation. So, yes. The 2nd amendment still has deterrent power.

<comment><USER47> I've no doubt that guerilla resistance would continue for years, but the imposition of petrol rationing alone would curtail almost all rebel attempts to hold anything of any importance within about two weeks.

<comment><USER48> If you can successfully blockade an interior group, sure. But that interior group has the ability to strike back and away from their interior that they want to hold. America's infrastructure is totally not hardened. The millions in prisons also make for a potential pool of manpower. All I'm really saying is any actual conflict would play out a lot different than the real civil war we had, or any of our foreign continent excursions where the enemy can't really strike back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> From an internet infrastructure/network engineering point of view as well, I'm concerned that US embargoes and trade restrictions are not helping things when it comes to autocratic regimes.

For example if an ISP in an autocratic regime, right now, wants to buy new core, aggregation and edge/customer premises routers, for a major network upgrade, they're going to be looking at ZTE or Huawei. Whereas the better technical solution might be some combination of things from a US company (Cisco, Juniper, Brocade). Or if they already have people who know JunOS on staff for core routing, they'll have to make a business risk decision to buy grey market Juniper through a third party, without any official support.

ZTE and Huawei and other Chinese companies involved in Internet censorship and the GFW are happy to sell equipment and consulting/contracting services to these sorts of countries.

<comment><USER50> You need UN in these cases, a real UN, not the one build for a postwar scenario that doesn't exist anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Truth is, historically human civilizations has always been based on some kind of authoritarian rule, slavery, serfdom, etc. Democracy is just temporary anomaly created by the fact that during industrial revolution the need arose for mass education (to have factory workers that could read). Now that appropriate tech (online banking, smartphones with GPS tracking, AI, etc.) is in place the things will soon revert to the natural order, i.e. totalitarism.

<comment><USER52> > _Democracy is just temporary anomaly created by the fact that during > industrial revolution_

How does this explain Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic? (Or, for that matter, Sparta's elected ephors?)

Totalitarianism is the novelty. It has never, before recent decades, been feasible for a state to completely monitor all its citizens.

<comment><USER53> At least for Rome and Sparta, it was a small group of elite families that lorded over the mass of people. In addition, the Greeks and Romans considered their representative form of government to be the exception among their neighbors and took great pride in it.

<comment><USER54> but Rome's plebe still had a role and vote in politics. It's not SPQR for nothing.

Also, the venetian republic lasted for a thousand years and for about half of that it had a mostly democratic system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> This is why the 2nd amendment is absolutely crucial in ensuring that American citizens have the right to self-defense once these types of policies become more popular in America. Anyone still in Venezuela who has not planned to leave is utterly screwed.

<comment><USER56> I can't wait to see people shooting their rifles and handguns at fighter jets, tanks, drones, and bombs. Really good self defense plan there. And it's going to seem so patriotic when you're shooting at your own government & neighbors.

<comment><USER55> This has always been a really stupid argument. You realize that the army would split up because people from the army would join the resistance and lend a hand, right? And you realize that guerrilla warfare is highly effective even against superior weapons, right? Basic history shows us this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So HN is upset that Venezuela has a national ID card which can be used to apply for government services, can be used for mobile payments, and the government has a "database" (in scare quotes) which lists the political party of the citizens.

Man, you guys are going to be really upset when you find out about the NSA and FBI.

If we had a press release like "Amazon announces mobile payments card with integration into government services", you guys would eat that up, right? "Mr. Bezos said the card would allow holders to easily apply for government programs such as food stamps."</comment>


Why Hoon - <AUTHOR> https://urbit.org/blog/why-hoon/ <comment><USER2> I've tried to get into urbit a few times over the last couple of years. The jargon and the pretense-esoteric nature of it always causes friction, even while trying to read the docs. May it's just not for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love it!</comment>


PyPy 2.5.1 released - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2015/03/pypy-251-released.html

<comment><USER3> > NumPy which requires installation of our fork of upstream numpy...

At some point in the past, there was a "numpypy" \-- does that name still describe PyPy's fork?

Does the numpy team see a forward path where they can take some of these changes back upstream (presumably some/all of the changes could support CPython and PyPy)?

Anyways, keep up the great work! I'm always happy to see my code scream on PyPy for a "free" speed boost.

IMO numpy support is probably one of the few barriers other people see to utilizing pypy more.

<comment><USER4> IIRC the reference implementation is optimized for readability rather than speed, so I doubt this will happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's great that they are splitting the RPython docs out from the PyPy ones.

One thing I found lacking while writing a simple BrainFuck interpreter in RPython is lack of documentation on the best practices with regards to speed. Should I use classes, namedtuples or even just tuples to pass data around? Using a list seemed to slow things down a lot in some places but not others etc.

Apart from that I highly recommend people give PyPy a go if you're going to be writing an interpreter.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any resources for this? I was thinking of looking into that but don't know where to start.

<comment><USER5> BrainFuck is a great place to start because it's pretty simple. I started with this post on the PyPy blog: [http://morepypy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/tutorial- writing-inte...](http://morepypy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/tutorial-writing- interpreter-with-pypy.html)

This repository helped as well: [https://github.com/thoughtpolice/bf- pypy](https://github.com/thoughtpolice/bf-pypy)

Getting a basic interpreter working wasn't hard, but I attempted to add a few of the optimizations listed here[1], which meant adding some form of AST and stuff to manipulate it. This is where I got a bit stuck with regards to performance as some of my optimizations meant the program should have been faster, but instead it slowed down.

1\. [http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/01/07/optimizing- brainfuck....](http://calmerthanyouare.org/2015/01/07/optimizing- brainfuck.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "We continue to asymptotically approach a score of 7 times faster than cpython on our benchmark suite, we now rank 6.98 on latest runs".

<comment><USER8> This is obviously as meaningless as it gets, since it's an average on really a random set of benchmarks. But it generally means we're getting faster (with number 7 not meaning anything in particular)

<comment><USER9> Would love to see run-once, latency, and memory benchmarks. The benchmarks don't show many of the GC improvements, or track how quickly the JIT works for example.

<comment><USER8> This is yet again, a multi-month project that I simply don't have budget for. Would love to see a business model where writing such parts would be somehow monetizable

<comment><USER9> Ok, some things that I've done...

Get a high paying python contract, and then donate some proceeds to other cheaper developers. You should be able to get $200K-$300K as a contractor for one years work (or more).

Somewhere in big data, finance, games, or other places that pay for performance - that also use python a lot.

Once you are embedded, it is much easier to do sales for other pypy related contracts. eg. if one of your team were at facebook, dropbox, or google - <USER2> may have been your team who got those VM projects. This is a sales tactic that many consulting shops use.

A sponsorship approach seems to work for some FOSS projects. As does conferences.

Helping students with grant proposals can also bring in a lot of effort. This is something the pypy project does of course. But just mentioning it for other people who may read.

If your goal is helping the pypy project these could all work. For me, I've used these approaches for FOSS projects with some success.

speed.pypy as a service could probably be sold. For example as a devpi project that others could use. Reduce server costs by helping the development team speed up their code. It's got a pain point, a cost saving, and pretty graphs.

<comment><USER8> it's all A LOT more difficult if you don't live in America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great, but I personally can't wait for Python 3.4 support due to asyncio!

<comment><USER11> Have to agree here! We're working on a server I'd love to run and optimise for PyPy, just need to wait 'til 3.4 and asyncio ships.

Also great work on the project in general, PyPy has made Python work as a platform for a few previous projects where standard Python wouldn't have been usable.</comment></comment>


Fedora: Trademark defense -- you can help - rw- http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/announce/2010-August/002856.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The creators of the Fedora repository software are playing the world's tiniest violin for these guys, I'm sure.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(software)#Trademark_dis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_\(software\)#Trademark_dispute)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is asking for some fairly specific items - curious that no specific suits are named though, instead of the vague reference to the "occasional defense". Seems like they are having trouble in China. I wonder what the real story is.

I haven't researched international trademark law, but here's the registration for the Fedora mark - filed in 2003, registered in August 2007: [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4005:60...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4005:60fgb2.2.1)

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope Red Hat is successful, as I don't want to see what tacky name they might come up with to replace it. (Like RHEL, which is pronounced "R Hell" even by people who like and use it.)</comment>


How to quit your job: An Employers opinion - <AUTHOR> http://akhil.me/2012/how-to-quit-your-job-an-employers-opinion-2 <comment><USER2> I know how you can get your desired behavior much more often, follow this guide as the employer:

Tell me as early as possible – Provide a policy that any employee who quits will be guaranteed to be paid for up to 4 weeks (or whatever time period you want notice of) after they quit.

Finish what you have started & Don't slack around – Tell your leaving employees how much you appreciate them working for you and remind them that you really count on them ending strong until the end.

Complete the paperwork - Make the paperwork as easy as possible. I'm not sure I have ever had to fill out paperwork when leaving a job.

No outbursts please – This should go without saying.

Give honest feedback – This isn't realistic and shouldn't be asked of quiting employees. It just makes the next point that much harder. As a manager/owner of a small company it is your responsibility to keep a constant dialogue going with employees, if you fail at that you will not know what is going on. Asking for employees to fill you in on what is happening is a problem.

Stay in touch – As the former employer, the street goes both ways. Send an email every once in a while.

<comment><USER3> > Tell me as early as possible I would advise people not to always do this.

I work for a consulting company and am currently not doing any client work. I accepted a job offer 2 weeks ago, but didn't tell my company until this past Friday. When I put in my 2 week notice, my company informed me that I would only be needed for one week. They effectively stole a weeks worth of pay from me because I tried to give adequate notice.

Now I understand that since I was currently not with a client that I was costing the company money, so I see their point of view from a financial stand point. But the message the company said to me was that I shouldn't have given them advance notice, and should have told them the week of that I was quitting.

I would advise people to give 2 weeks notice and not a week more if they are not heavily involved in a critical project.

Posting under a throw away since my account has personal information and I don't wish to bad mouth my former company.

<comment><USER4> That's the frustrating thing about threads like this. Employers list their expectations for what you should do for them, and they seem fairly common sense, but they dont have the common sense and self awareness to think about the situation from the other perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice post, OP. Now let me tell you about those times when your suggestions are _exactly the opposite_ of what you should do:

 _Tell me as early as possible_

Why? So security can show me the door today and I'm unexpectedly without a paycheck for weeks? Although OP may not do this, lots of place do. Beware.

 _Finish what you have started_

The more I leave unfinished, the greater my revenue opportunity (via consulting).

 _Don't slack around_

OK. As long as you pay me and thank me for all the extra work and overtime. Oh wait, that may be one if the reasons I'm leaving.

 _Complete the paperwork_

"Paperwork" is your albatross, not mine, so I simply don't care.

 _No outbursts please_

This should always be true anyway.

 _Give honest feedback_

Be careful. "Honest feedback" is high risk, low reward. There's a good chance you're leaving because your "honest feedback" has been ignored before. Why should now be different.

 _Stay in touch_

Pay me to. See "Finish what you have started" above. You're in business. So am I.

Frankly, if I was inclined to be nice enough to comply with OP's requests, I'd probably be staying on. Too many employers are in a time warp, creating situations that force good people to move on and then pretending they never happened with posts like this. It's too late for this, soon-to-be ex-employer. Better to just let lame ducks finish their commitment and focus on their futures.

<comment><USER6> >> Tell me as early as possible

> Why? So security can show me the door today and I'm unexpectedly without a > paycheck for weeks? Although OP may not do this, lots of place do. Beware.

This happened to a friend VERY recently, and it changed the way I think about this. I had always assumed it happens, but I had never met someone who it happened to.

Myself though, I had previously worked at a 4-person company and gave them 4-weeks notice (the company I was going to was OK with this, and even saw it as a good thing that I wanted to tie up loose ends and ensure a smooth transition).

Really, it all depends on the situation. Just make sure you know the situation.

> Be careful. "Honest feedback" is high risk, low reward. There's a good > chance you're leaving because your "honest feedback" has been ignored > before. Why should now be different.

Could you elaborate? I've never understood the risk, except for the possibility of losing out on a reference (though, you may have allies in the company would give you a favorable reference anyways)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with all points except one thing: NEVER GIVE HONEST FEEDBACK.

When you are leaving, never, ever give honest feedback. Say everything is great, and you just wanted a change. Employers say that they want honest feedback, but they really don't, because the truth hurts.

Case in point, I left a previous company because the founders screwed up a potential acquisition. I had no confidence in upper managment, and I thought they were running the company into the ground. I had worked there 3 years and I gave them honest feedback as to why I was leaving. Not rude, mind you, but I told them exactly that I was leaving because I felt like upper management wasn't good enough to run the company, and that I needed to leave because I was worried there was going to be subsequent layoffs. I ended up being right on both accounts.

Recently, there was a drastic change in management, and I felt like the prospects for working for the company had changed, and I thought just for fun I would re-apply and see if there were any jobs that I would be interested in. I got only one phone screen, despite applying to a bunch of different areas, and in the middle of the phone screen, the interviewer had mentioned some of the things I had said in my exit interview. So it was obvious the exit interview was added to my employee file, and to some degree, I was "blacklisted".

I'm fine being blacklisted, I knew the consequences of being honest with my feedback, and I'm not owed anything, but my point is that there is no benefit to being honest EVER to your employer. It's much better to simply say everything was great, and to move on. It's to your advantage to keep all of your options open, and by giving honest feedback, you are closing out some of those options. The best you get by giving honest feedback is you get to temporarily scratch an itch, and you never know when in the future you might need to play those cards.

<comment><USER8> In your case, it was wasted effort to give honest feedback but that one case isn't enough evidence to say "never".

There isn't a right and wrong answer here. Sometimes it's best to give honest feedback, sometimes it's best to lie or avoid the question. It all depends on the person asking for feedback and the company's culture. It's never a good idea to burn bridges and if giving honest feedback cannot happen without burning a bridge, avoid it.

Additionally, there are probably opportunities to reshape your criticisms in such a manner to not offend. Some people are naturally good at this and others are naturally terrible at it. If you're not good at it, it's a fantastic skill to work on.

<comment><USER9> We can see there's a potential downside to giving honest feedback - is there any upside, from the employee's perspective?

<comment><USER8> The upside is maintaining a good and respectful relationship with your past employer and/or past boss. Just because you're leaving does not mean you don't want the company to succeed without you. If the person you're giving feedback to (assuming the feedback is given thoughtfully and respectfully) is going to be thankful and receptive to it and it has the potential to do the person and the company some good, there is value to you.

<comment><USER10> Another upside is that your feedback might make things better for your ex co- workers, some of whom may be your friends. And if the company is afraid enough of losing more people, they might actually take your feedback seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the thing.

I've seen many rounds of layoffs in different companies. I've been laid off once.

None, not one, of the people laid off were "told as early as possible" they were about to be laid off. Almost all of them were told 2 hours before they were shown out the door.

I will never tell my employer I'm quitting "as early as possible". I will them them only after I have the next job contract signed and I know my start date. And I will tell them at the last possible moment, so that when they escort me out of the office, as they VERY often do, I will minimize the disruption to my income.

<comment><USER12> If the company has a histoy of escorting people out the door you should not give notice. Everything listed in this article is professional courtesy. If the employer has earned it then by all means you should treat them right....there may be other reasons that you are leaving, but they are still good people. On the other hand if your previous employer treats departing empolyees poorly then they day you give notice is your last day. That is the double edged sword of having no employee protections in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I agree with everything except the first and possibly second points. It's worth pointing out that just as many employees don't do these things and it is disrespectful, many employers do not take their equivalent social obligations seriously. If an employer had a track record of making decisions that impacted me and only telling me after the fact, I would not trust them to suddenly take my well-being into account after I decided to leave - and I would make the decision to leave long before I told them. I would tell my current employer if I was thinking of leaving and I would change my plans to suit their needs, because they have always been very transparent with me and taken my career goals into account when making decisions. Being respectful gets respect in return.

<comment><USER14> I had pretty much the same reaction... although I disagree with #6, too ("Give honest feedback in the exit interview"). It's a rookie mistake to use your exit interview to "get even" or "fix all the broken stuff". Smile and gush, "I am _so_ lucky to have worked for a brilliant boss like you...in fact, the only reason I am leaving is I feel the need to share you brilliance with the rest of the world...it's my mission." it will be the last thing they remember about you.

<comment><USER13> Good point. I think any feedback that is constructive enough to share in an exit interview could / should have been shared while you worked there. You might have been able to reap the benefits yourself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm all for playing nice with your employer ... stayed late on my last day at previous client because they scheduled an install for the project I was the technical advisor for that weekend! Yes, really. Sigh. It went well in the end.

The problem is that my observations of corporate America leave me very cynical about your requests. After 23 years of seeing the exact opposite behaviour, it gets harder to believe that the company cares about what you think or feel. I have learned that when the words and the actions don't sync, you believe the actions.

Now, HN is likely mostly populated by young hipster developers who work at fun trendy places where playing nice is appreciated, so I'm just an old dinosaur roaring off in the distance. I accept that as my role. :-(

<comment><USER16> I'm all for employee self interest. Yet I still think it makes sense to follow (most of) the article guidelines. Even in companies that treat employees poorly.

Here's why: it is in your own interest to leave good impression, for the obvious practical reasons. A hearty _"screw you, idiots!"_ might feel good for a moment but it won't do any good and ultimately hurts your own interest. Jerks do not change because of feedback, they might change in response to people mass quitting.

If you want to get even do it by a) being awesome somewhere else and b) keeping the bozos unaware of the reasons why people leave in droves.

Yeah, b) contradicts the article - IMHO honest feedback should only be given to those who can take it and what's even more important, you should only consider quitting after your feedback falls on deaf ears.

<comment><USER15> I completely agree with a default plan of not burning bridges anywhere. But it is still possible to do that without tipping your hand to the employer.

If the employer needs more than two weeks to be ready for an employee to leave, then the employer needs to be better organized or they need to ask for longer resignation timeframes. Of course, the two times I was ever "let go" (both from re-structuring), I had zero advance notice, so that doesn't seem very balanced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Tell me as early as possible

Nice in theory, but some employers will walk you out the door as soon as you tell them you're quitting, so you better have a good idea what kind of company you're working for before you do this.

> Give honest feedback

this has been beaten to death. Don't do it. Its like breaking up with somebody, everybody wants to know why you're breaking up with them, until they actually know then they'll think you're an asshole for telling them. Human beings are just weird like that.

Stock answer, "its just a better opportunity for this point in my career", vague enough to make everybody happy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I agree with everything except being "friends."

As an employee I am not your friend. I'm leasing you time out of my life to get your work done. Being polite and amicable is part and parcel of ensuring that transaction goes smoothly but do not be mistaken: you're not getting an invitation to dinner and we're not going on a camping trip together. The deal is in the contract and my obligations end there.

More often than not I tend to go above and beyond the letter of the contract but I've worked for employers who take it personally when I chose not to. I don't have the time or patience for such petulant behaviour and let those bridges burn. My advice to employers is to not get personally invested in your employees; anything beyond the contract is a bonus and you should never expect it. The contract is the contract and as long as everyone is doing their part there's nothing more to it than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi agentultra, I run a small team of developers and designers. Though we are 2 yrs old, we are still in the startup mode where we pull all nighters together and go out for drinks together. Maybe this is the reason i find being friendly with my colleagues ( i dont like the word employees very much) to be beneficial. I understand that your feedback comes from experience and experience is something one cant deny. I too have experienced similar things when i was working. But this is what is working for me. And I feel that this can work for most of us. I really appreciate your feedback

<comment><USER18> Well I was specifically talking about _employee/employer_ relationships. An employer has a need for a skill that an employee can provide and pays said employee a salary under some contract. Nothing unusual there.

If you're talking about "colleagues," then I assume everyone involved has significant first-class equity in the venture. This is a completely different work dynamic and requires much more care if one tries to leave the relationship. In such a case even more attention to the details of the contract is required.

That being said you should reconsider working "all-nighters." Chronic sleep deprivation has some significant deleterious effects to your mental and physical health. As my intellect is my money-maker I do everything I can to preserve and enhance it. One of the easiest things I can do is get a good night's sleep.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Original thread: How do I leave a company?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815>

Found with: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3Alea...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3Aleave&sortby=create_ts+desc)

</comment><comment><USER20> As an exceptionally loyal employee, I've been released to rejoin the workforce more times than leaving on my own accord. The first time I got the shaft, I tried to be courteous, but the employer (Fortune 500 co.) wasn't interested in feedback or anything other than the bottom line. The second time I was dumped, I was trying to be a good person and follow all of the author's recommendations.

IMHO, the linked article is good for an individual leaving a positive situation with positive experiences and positive opportunities, likely surrounded by positive people. Many commenters seem to be stating that most situations are not all win-win situations. Many times employees or employers are disgruntled at best, angry/fed up/desperate at worst. The article is great for situations where all is hunky dory; in reality, that's usually not the case. YMMV

</comment><comment><USER21> "Give honest feedback" is the one that made me laugh out loud. If you, as an employer, have no idea what made the employee unhappy enough to want to leave, then you most likely didn't do your homework.

Exceptions exist, of course. For example, maybe you knew beforehand what was wrong but were either unable or unwilling to change it. Not much to do there, either.

All in all, "honest feedback" at the end of the relationship is a little too late.

</comment><comment> one-man-bucket When I quit my first job, my former employer made a point of conducting all exit interviews with someone who was in no way an authority figure for the person quitting (I did mine with the receptionist).

I was of course very polite, I didn't want to burn any bridges and could still consider going back there some day, but I also was honest when telling them that main reason (that was in their control) for me quitting was that there was no development process (i.e. scrum) and the first thing on their to-do list should be to hire a good head of development.

They did this a year after I left and from what I've heard they have kept the rest of my team and even attracted some new talent. Maybe there are cultural factors at play as well (I'm in Stockholm).

They invited me back later for beers and starcraft 2, so I guess they don't hate me too much :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I try to treat employers with the courtesy I would like to be treated with. I also realize that employers may not alway return the favor. Just because someone is a jerk to you does not mean that you must be a jerk. In short, act like a professional even when your employer/client acts unprofessionally.

Here is a solution to the situation where your newly ex'd employer wants to march you out the door:

 _Arrange with your new employer to start as early as you can when you accept the job offer._ Most employers I've interviewed with would like you to start as soon as possible. When they ask "When can you start?" tell them that you can start no later than 2 weeks but depending on when you can wrap up stuff with your old employer, you can start earlier.

</comment><comment><USER23> How, then, to reconcile the fact that your employers have taken the lion's share of the profit you have produced for them? Modern employment is inherently biased towards business owners. They take the vast majority of the fruit, they get to build assets as the business grows (unlike employees who are for the most part paying for liabilities - rent, food, etc), they have more mechanisms available to evade tax (again, since they can afford them).

If you want your employees to be nice to you, stop shafting them at every turn. If somebody works somewhere, then a fair percentage of the business should be owned by them. Level the playing field and there will be no need for articles such as these.

<comment><USER24> I don't see what the parent post has to do with OP's blog post, but in any case, employers take the lion's share of the profit because they took the lion's share of the risk. If you don't like the deal, then walk away and find another employer.

Also, if you are worth it, the employer will share the profit with you, AKA equity, stock options, profit sharing, performance bonuses, etc.

<comment><USER23> The thing it has to do with OP's blog post, in my opinion, is that it addresses some of the root causes of the irriation that an employer may face from his (now former) employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone have comments or thoughts on point #4: "complete the paperwork"?

Obviously, it makes sense to formally quit, and finish any tax and payment related papers. But is there a good reason why the employer should request signing any other lengthy contracts at termination? "Our legal department told us to" is the worst kind of argument - lawyers typically push to protect whoever is paying them from anything possible, not to clear up things in a balanced and reasonable manner. And if the employee is leaving, there should not be any loose ends that require additional contracts.

</comment><comment><USER26> I quit my job a few years back. The HR exit interview was all but a joke. I quit on good terms, but was prepared to give some feedback on how things were in my team/organization etc. The lady was not interested in anything I had to say. She asked no follow up questions, or never noted anything down. She just nodded and it seemed like she just wanted to tick the box to complete the HR procedures. So after a while I just stopped talking and figured we'd get this over with. I think if employers want honest feedback, just implementing an HR procedure doesn't cut it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sheri, Even though we are now 2 yrs old, we still consider us as starups and as startups go improvement is the key to survival. I wrote this post as a concerned employer who want to make sure that those who work with him are happy and if and when they go, they leave with a smile. I know it is hard to keep everyone happy but one must try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The referenced AskHN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815>

</comment><comment><USER28> There are a few very high expectations of employees here.

(note: I'm not US based)

"Tell me as early as possible" - most of the time you'll get exactly the amount of time that is contractually obliged. If you want more, write it in the contract. Employees want their own flexibility and few people want to stick around after they have pretty much told their employer "I don't want to be here". Most employers don't like people hanging around either (they are likely to start encouraging others to leave too).

"Give honest feedback" - Its incredibly hard to phrase feedback (in a constructive way) without directly referring to people as the source (which nobody wants to do - burning bridges and all). If an employee finds a way to do this for you, it is pretty exceptional. If you are lucky, you might, after asking some pointed questions, get some short outbursts of "I don't like being managed by person X" or "company process Y pains me", and you'll have to do the hard work of figuring out what it means. Thats if you are lucky. Most of the time people will just rather not say anything at all.

<comment><USER29> Actually, I found both of those suggestions to be perfectly reasonable. I try to shoot for 4 weeks when giving notice. If my employer doesn't want me hanging around that long, see point 3. Note: I've never been contractually obligated to give any notice.

As for feed back, the fact is, you're leaving for a reason. You're, so to be, former employer really is, generally, interested in the reasons for your decision. Especially if it's "I don't like being managed by person X." Sometimes it's just an isolated personality conflict, often, though, there's bigger issues and your employeer isn't interested in loosing more good employees due to poor management.

I've also been in a situation where one of the reasons was "I don't like being managed by person X," and conveying that in a polite, non-judgmental, way wasn't difficult. While my exit interview was with that manager, I also requested a meeting with the CEO (small startup, so it really just a matter of "Hey, <CEO>, can we do a one-on-one before I leave).

In fact, I would argue that the most important point on this list is the one about feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Never burn your bridges. I couldn't care less if your boss is an ass and treats you like dirt. Rise above it and remember you're leaving and won't have to tolerate him/her for long. You never know when you may need to use that bridge again.

<comment><USER31> >Never burn your bridges.

I disagree. There absolutely exists not only a time to burn bridges, but to nuke them from orbit -- _just to make sure_.

Sorry, but I've seen people go through some toxic employment situations (i.e. breach of contract, health and safety violations, discrimination), and sometimes there is absolute merit in ensuring that you'll never have to deal with certain individuals again while still going about it in a professional manner (i.e. hiring a lawyer). It's a harsh measure, but it's also guaranteed to get the desired result.

Moreover, there are a number of situations where the bridge is often burnt by default, no matter how pleasant you try to be in the situation. Usually when a lawyer becomes involved, the bridge is often immediately burnt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _Last week there was a very nice "Ask HN" on Hacker News where the person asking had stated that he had decided to move on to a new job and to do that had to quit his job_

Could anyone post the link to that _Ask HN_ post the OP mentions? I can't find it, but I'm interested in reading the discussion.

<comment><USER19> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4932755>

Actual link: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4908815></comment></comment>


Amazon Recorded Video of a Seller's Face for Identification Purposes - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-tests-facial-identification-with-a-seller-and-people <comment><USER2> They have nothing to verify the provided facial image _against_ the claimed ID anyway. They could be just scraped from Instagram for all they know.</comment>


Steve Wozniak: 'I've given up' on Level 5 - <AUTHOR> https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/apple-co-founder-ive-really-given-level-5 <comment><USER2> > Autonomous vehicles would fare better, he said, "if we were to modify roads > and have certain sections that are well mapped and kept clean of refuse, and > nothing unusual happens and there's no road work."

He's talking about trains and other modes of public transit. Which makes sense. Of course, even those have occasional problems.

Personally, I'd love to simply find a way to make "mass transit" more workable.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if anyone's considered making a kind of modular way for vehicles to connect to something like a train.

<comment><USER4> We have those; they're called parking lots and they're usually found at commuter train stations.

Snark aside, I don't think it makes much sense to try to merge cars together at high speed. It's a very complicated maneuver, requiring all cars behind the intended merge point to back up and make room, and the consequences of an accident have unlimited catastrophic potential. We could see hundreds of cars destroyed in a massive collision.

Besides that, the costs seem astronomical: actually developing the technology, making sure all car manufacturers comply with the standard, and replacing every single car on the road with a compliant model. Wouldn't it be much easier to put all of that money into building high speed railways? We've already perfected that technology.

<comment><USER5> Docking wouldn't have to occur at high speed, or moving at all, for this to be useful. For example, I live in Massachusetts and I have a car full of gear that I'd like to have for my vacation in New Hampshire or New Jersey or Michigan. So I drive down to the local train depot, where my car is docked (or even just loaded onto) a train, I get in the passenger compartment, we're reunited at the other end. Already more efficient than driving, and more pleasant too. Now start adding tweaks like loading only the passenger compartment, which is already a separate thing in electric vehicles. Or running rails along one lane of existing highway, with docking/undocking at existing rest areas. Once the basic "dock instead of driving" idea gets established, it's possible to iterate on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand this obsession with achieving level-5. What would deliver tremendous value for many people, is simply the ability to drive autonomously on highways. Highway driving is so radically simpler, and can be achieved in a fraction of the time. In addition, time spent on the highway is the majority of people's time driving. Being able to sleep or read a book for 30-60 minutes everyday, while commuting to work on the highway, would be a tremendous boon. Being able to sleep overnight while your car drives you to your parents' city 500 miles away, would be a godsend. It would be great if we could focus on making highway-autonomous cars mainstream, before worrying about level 5.

<comment><USER7> The lives of the disabled and the impartially abled would be made astoundingly better with such level 5 cars. Greater freedom of movement for those with illnesses, mental disabilities, vision impairments, amputations, etc would greatly improve their lives and thereby the lives of their caretakers and loved ones too. No longer would your legally blind uncle need your help to get to the doctor or to the store.

It's not obvious, but there are medical, familial, and personal liberty implications to such self-driving cars too. I think that these implications should be better championed by their engineers. Such cars can be wheelchairs for the blind, etc. It would hit an emotional nerve better than the meme of people sleeping on their way to work.

Level 5 will be a very very big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the politest way possible to Mr. Wozniak - this reminded me of the first of Clarke's three laws:

> When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is > possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is > impossible, he is very probably wrong.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

<comment><USER9> He says in the linked interview:

> "I don't even know if that will happen in my lifetime."

Not that I wish for Woz's death in any way, but he is 69 years old. The average male life expectancy in the US is 78. Now, he's wealthy, so I would expect him to probably live longer than the average, but 15-20 years would be doing good.

15-20 years is also my personal expectation for when we will start seeing truly autonomous self-driving vehicles.

Moreover, I think it will be incremental growth, not immediate massive availability. I would expect the technology to be adopted in certain controlled situations first, and in places where it makes economic sense. And considering how long it can take for people to replace cars and for the technology to filter down to more economic models, 40+ years before the majority of cars are self-driving does not seem like an unreasonable estimate.

<comment><USER10> > 15-20 years is also my personal expectation for when we will start seeing > truly autonomous self-driving vehicles.

Came here to say the same things. Woz is awesome, but not a Spring Chicken. I'm 42, and I tell my 13 son I expect him to see it in his lifetime. If I get it when I'm old and can't drive anymore, I'll be really happy. And if the industry beats expectations, all the better!

<comment><USER9> Same. I'm 38, and I've told my 7 year old that I would expect that her grandchildren's generation probably won't need drivers' licenses. I think that period from about 20 years from now until then will be a somewhat uncomfortable overlap period where people will still need to know _how_ to drive, but that computers will be doing more and more of the actual day-to-day driving.

The only thing I could see that would shorten the interval is legal approaches. Such as, if the technology proves sufficiently adept, for it to be declared as a mandatory safety feature on par with seatbelts and airbags. But even then there will still be non-autonomous cars on the road (just as there are still cars on the road without seatbelts and airbags) for many, many years. Again, unless you take the extra legal step and ban them from the road.

That doesn't mean it isn't worth _doing_. Something that we fail at a lot in the modern world is thinking long-term, beyond our own lifetimes. Just because something might not get done during my lifetime doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it, just that others may have to finish the work we started. Ultimately, society will be better for the investment we are making now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This on the same day Waymo cars seem to be roaming around entirely with nobody in or around them on public streets[1].

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_1YLHW65M8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_1YLHW65M8)

<comment><USER12> Honestly, the Yandex self driving experiments seem much more credible than what Waymo is doing.

Waymo is testing its cars in a situation without any snow, rain, mostly without street parking, without pedestrians, in a city so hostile to pedestrians no one's walking around.

99% of the work isn't in getting the self driving to work in perfectly controlled sunshine conditions as Waymo has it working right now, 99% of the work is in getting all those edge cases working.

It's gonna be decades before waymo cars can handle small mixed use streets with children playing on them, pedestrians, cyclists, and street vendors in a european city.

What they're doing is amazing given the tech they have — but it's not enough to reach actual level 5. It's the same issue why most self-driving solutions only work on highways.

<comment><USER13>
      It's gonna be decades before...

Citation needed.

We can very accurately identify children, pedestrians, cyclists, and street vendors with machine vision. And with the LIDAR that Waymo is using, very accurately tell where they are and more importantly _where they 're going_. Stopping for those things is pretty low on the "problems that need more work for Level 5" agenda.

<comment><USER14> That's not something you'll find a citation for. As someone who has worked in the industry it's not as simple as "see child; stop". What's also happening behind you? Beside of you? Do you swerve? How quickly do you stop?

You're very right that OD works great, that doesn't mean you can train a neural network to make the right decision though.

<comment><USER13> You barely even need NN for this - it's basically pathfinding.

Find the path to where you want to go, avoid the parts with negative weights.

<comment><USER14> Great idea, maybe you should call Waymo.

<comment><USER13> It's not a great idea because it's already done.

Again, the hard part is not "here is a human, avoid it". That part is done (in Waymo's case).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been skeptical for a while now, perhaps overly so, about the prospects for "real" autonomous driving, i.e outside of Californian highways.

I wonder when the public / the press is going to start question the story about full self driving coming "soon".

AFAIK Musk is still saying that the autonomous Tesla ride sharing service is planned for mid 2020, and that full self driving will be at least beta tested by end of this year.

But if these promises are not delivered on, someone ought to start questioning how fully autonomous cars really are progressing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hm, "self-driving car roads"-exclusive roads or lanes don't seem like a bad idea, [edit] they could really help in adoption of self-driving cars, and cars supporting automatic chaining into a "train"-like construct[/edit]. Except maybe that roads are expensive and require plenty of space; after all, cars are a highly inefficient mode of transportation :(

</comment><comment><USER17> It is really interesting to think about how arbitrarily difficult the problem of self driving cars becomes when they must be backwards compatible with existing infrastructure and co-exist with it for quite a long period of time, decades probably.

As Wozniak alludes to here, it might just be intractable (within a few-decades timeframe, probably not on a longer one) without concessions to adjusting the infrastructure to make the problem space smaller and solutions simpler and more practical.

Banning or limiting human drivers on certain roads, repainting surfaces with thick white lines for tracing, automated checking for obstacles and cleaning, sensors along the side of highways, networking self driving vehicles, reducing speed limits -- all things that could vastly reduce the complexity but doing them or getting people to want to spend money on them might be very hard.

</comment><comment><USER18> I m seeing this as a general trend in investment: they seem to have doubled down on certain moonshots such as robot cars, space travel, quantum computing, virtual reality , lab grown meat to the detriment of more reachable tech such as CRISPR or tele-work or even fusion

</comment><comment><USER19> > There is simply too much unpredictability on roads, he said, for a self- > driving car to manage.

What does an autonomous vehicle need to do in response to a highly unpredicted case on the road? Stop.

Can an AI offer a confidence score as to how well it understands a situation? Yes, that's how they work.

Can an autonomous vehicle brake to a stop in response to an unrecognised situation? Based on the above, yes.

I mean, I wonder how hard Woz has been trying to create an autonomous vehicle prior to announcing that he's given up. Or is he just trying to tear down those that are actually turning this into a reality?

<comment><USER18> Stopping can be just as dangerous, from causing accidents to blocking an ambulance.

<comment><USER19> It wouldn't really happen all that often though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> First, not a dig at Woz, but he's 69 and average male US life expectancy is 78.7. Saying he won't see level 5 in his lifetime is not a very bold claim.

Second, I don't understand people's fixation on Level 5 in particular. There are vast numbers of human drivers who cannot meet that criteria, perhaps even the majority of drivers. Despite this, they drive (in situations they feel comfortable), and have a profound impact on how society is structured. Woz will probably see both level 3 and level 4 cars and they'll have similarly profound impacts.

<comment><USER21> > First, not a dig at Woz, but he's 69 and average male US life expectancy is > 78.7

You need to add about 6 years, because he's 69. As you get older, your life expectancy goes up. For an average US male at 69, they can expect 15.09 more years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > "I don't even know if that will happen in my lifetime."

The man is almost 70, so that's not that unlikely.

<comment><USER23> Tbf AI hype and failure like this has been around for long enough for even young people to confidently make that assertion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It is not necessary to be able to deal with unanticipated situations, only to be able to recognise them as such. For self driving taxis, a remote human operator could then intervene.

<comment><USER25> What do you think the typical delay would be between identifying an unknown situation, and a remote operator assessing the situation and taking positive control of the vehicle?

If your answer is more than a small fraction of a second, I have some concerns.

<comment><USER26> You can relax the time requirement if the vehicle stops on unexpected conditions. If it finds roadworks and successfully identifies it as unknown, it stops and requests manual operation for traversing the obstacle.

<comment><USER27> If it _gets out of the way_ and stops, fine. If it just says "screw it, halting right here", it's going to quickly find itself the subject of public outrage and be banned until resolved I'd think. (I think figuring out a possibly creative way to "get out of the way" might be approximately as hard as the rest of the self-driving challenge.)

Imagine every hundredth car during rush hour detour just stopping for no human driver valid reason.

Imagine areas where you've driven where you can't even keep a voice call connected, let alone the data rates needed for remote piloting assistance.

Imagine Boston's Big Dig and these not-quite-autonomous cars facing an unknown situation en masse inside a tunnel under water...

I'm 2/3rds of Woz's age and don't expect level 5 in my or my kids' lifetime. Level 5 is a very high hurdle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you have enough training data cars encountering "new" situations should be very rare. I don't think it's a deal breaker for level 5 autonomy.

<comment><USER29> "Very rare" doesn't cut it for modern safety standards.

<comment><USER13> It does if it's a lot better than human drivers.

If your new standard is _safer_ than the existing "standard", nobody says "well actually that's not _enough_ of an improvement".</comment></comment></comment>


Gamers lend support to widow of Heroic developer - <AUTHOR> http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/gamers-lend-support-to-widow-of-heroic-developer/1410899

<comment><USER2> Damn, when did my office get this dusty?</comment>


Notch succeeded in creating an absolute clusterfuck of an ISA in his new game - <AUTHOR> http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2012/dcpu-16-review.html

<comment><USER2> I am amazed at all the passion that 0x10c has generated, whether among folks who have immediately started implementing VMs, assemblers, compilers, and such, or among folks who dislike Notch for whatever reason, not to mention everyone else in between.

The headline here, incidentally, is a little inflammatory and doesn't reflect the article's polite and technical tone. That's unfortunate, because the article itself is worthy of a read.

</comment><comment><USER3> unkoman, don't editorialize headlines.

Who says that all new architectures must be easy targets of C? Perhaps this is part of the fun.

I am convinced that alternatives to C will produce much more compact programs.

I am enjoying the rash of assemblers, compilers, emulators that this architecture has generated. It is tickling an key aspect of hacking that has been underrepresented here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm not convinced its so bad.

The 16bit-ness seems hardly a problem.

The overflow thing seems a hassle.

Forth cries out.

Lets remember what this CPU will be used for - it'll be a way for the programmers to optimise their space-ships, and everyone else will have to cut- n-paste the scripts they find out there.

So someone port factor...

<comment><USER5> Agreed. The 16-bit char won't be a problem because this isn't really a "general-purpose" CPU. It will only be used in one game! "Eight 16-bit registers are also not enough to perform 64-bit operations entirely in registers." The whole premise of the game is a mistake manipulating 64-bit numbers. The author talks as if this were physical hardware used in production systems. And the section on timings completely ignores that fact the Notch pulled some numbers out of thin air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty long way to rant about how hard it will be to write a C compiler for it :-) I'm guessing that ships with high level language code will under-perform hand coded ships but that is just a guess.

It is interesting to read this guys rant though, he has used PICs (he should also check out the 8051 or 8048 some time) so clearly he knows that an instruction set architecture (ISA) can be successful even if it is hard to make a C compiler for it, not everything is a PDP-11.

The rant about bytes was particularly amusing, dealing with 'odd address' errors on the PDP-11 wasn't fun. But the DEC-10 architecture (36 bits) had a really interesting 'byte pointer' kind of thing where there was a way of iterating over 'strings.' (They also had SIXBIT a 6 bit encoding standard for text, go figure, and SKIPE which was in instruction that never skipped (thus a NOP)).

</comment><comment><USER7> I haven't programmed for the "CPU" but I'd wager that certain things are designed to be slightly difficult for the sake of game difficulty and the inherent fun of pulling off something non-trivial with it.

</comment><comment><USER8> From a game design sense, there are actually pretty good reasons for making the architecture somewhat hairy. If it's an ideal candidate for C, writing a new backend for a popular compiler is a few weeks of work at most, and then much of the motivation for dealing with the gritty details of the ISA evaporates. As we've already seen, there will be C compilers available for the DCPU-16, but there are enough tough nuts to crack that programming in assembly (or Forth?) will provide a competitive advantage for some time to come.</comment>


Kickstarter's Zano drone fails to fly - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/34787404 <comment><AUTHOR> Ivan Reedman, the engineer driving the design of the mini-drone, resigned.

</comment><comment><USER2> Company needs to speak to the community. Instead it shuts down the forum</comment>


Pfizer CEO gets 61% pay raise–to $27.9M–as drug prices continue to climb - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/amid-drug-price-increases-pfizer-ceo-gets-61-pay-raise-to-27-9-million/ <comment><USER2> His pay is salary of $1.96 million, and a $2.6 million bonus. The rest is in equity of various packaging.

Look, this is pretty much clickbait/outrage-oriented reporting. Sure it sounds ridiculous to most of us but the CEO salary is a drop in the bucket on Pfizer's P&L and it is not the reason that drug prices are high/increasing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would there be an article talking about Pfizer raising drug prices if they increased the hourly salary of every employee by $0.06? I seriously doubt it, but that amounts to the same $10.3 million [1]. The amount is insignificant when compared to the revenue of the company. The real story is how a certainly class of people managed to convince all the relevant parties that their work is a hundred times more valuable to the company than that of everyone else.

[1] 96,500 employees, 240 working days per year, 8 working hours per day

<comment><USER2> > how a certainly class of people managed to convince all the relevant parties > that their work is a hundred times more valuable to the company than that of > everyone else

Well, because that is the case.

A line worker in a Pfizer manufacturing plant, can (within reasonable limits) be just about anyone, given necessary training.

The CEO can't be just anyone. Therefore he/she gets paid more.

<comment><USER3> That is the point that I doubt. Sure, it is certainly easier to find someone for the production floor, but I see no evidence that CEOs have such exceptional skill sets that there wouldn't still be millions of people who could do the job.

But even if that would be the case and people with CEO skill sets would be extremely rare, I would still have a problem with CEO compensation because then their compensation would be, so I argue, based on demand and not value provided for the company. The success of a company depends on all the people working together, without CEO the people on the factory floor don't know what to do, without the people on the factory floor the CEO doesn't get any product out. Neither party gets to claim that they are a hundred times more important than the other one.

Even if you agree that the compensation is mostly driven by scarcity, you will of course tell me that that is just how markets work, if good CEOs are rare and in high demand, then I will obviously have to offer a lot of money to get a good one. And I agree with that insofar, that this is how it currently works, but I consider it flawed. I would like to see, at least in some situations, prices not influenced by scarcity. If you now want to point out that this would ruin market mechanisms, that without scarcity increasing prices we would lose an important signal hopefully increasing supply, I also agree with this.

If I had a finished solution, I would have written it up and collected my Nobel prize in economics years ago. But that doesn't change the fact, at least in my opinion and at least in some situations, that prices are used for both, to measure the value something provides as well as how scarce something is, and that this link is sometimes desirable and sometimes not.

<comment><USER4> It is hard to see what is happening behind the scenes. Such a mega corp needs top officials with good political connections around the globe and wide range of network with corporations at such size. Such relationship is the scarcity, not the character business or industry vision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article states that the board needed an incentive to keep the CEO on since he was going to retire at 65 otherwise. Wasn't this an entirely foreseeable outcome? I mean what will be different next year for example? I looked for some market force or exigency that would force the board's hand but didn't see any in the article.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps the board is made up of other extremely high paid CEOs who have a hard time believing other people could do their jobs, for far less?

<comment><USER5> That certainly was/is my initial bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand the frustration with profit-making companies in a space where human lives hang in the balance. I would prefer instead of attacking the CEOs of these companies, the entrepreneurial sorts who hang out on these boards start competing companies.

I don't expect them to compete with Pfizer at the start, Martin Shkreli showed how its possible to get into the drug business for relatively small sums. But instead of jacking up the prices, this new class of founder could show how it's possible to drive costs down using better management and less greedy business models.

Bonus points if these startups could release new drugs at OTC prices. My guess is after a few years, founders will start to understand the pressures that guide pharma in a more sympathetic light. What was once seen as wasteful marketing might more charitably seen as cross-subsidy of new drug development.

There's a decent amount of waste in the pharma business, but it's also the closest thing modern society has to a goose that lays golden eggs. Sovaldi is going to transform what it means to live with Hepatitis-C. It's incredibly expensive now, but in a decade when the patents expire, there will be a race to the bottom, price-wise.

If you don't believe this is the kind of problem that can be solved by startups, perhaps we should consider alternative arrangements. E.g. Could Harvard, with its world class science, business, and law departments turn their talents and $30B endowments towards developing new drugs? Maybe, maybe not, but I'd prefer we build up new models for regularly producing wonder drugs before we tear the old one down.</comment>


Millennials have a higher opinion of socialism than of capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/02/05/millennials-have-a-higher-opinion-of-socialism-than-of-capitalism/ <comment><USER2> Well, of course.

Humans have a tendency to either agree wholeheartedly with what they're famikiar with (or what their parents did), or completely avoid it. For instance, if your dad was a staunch Libertarian Capitalist, you'd probably be inclined to jump immediately to either Libertarianism or its opposite, Socialism. This is usually done without thinking about it, so you may wanna sit down and consider your own views.

Further, most millenials grew up in a "Capitalism" that's kind of terrible. A lot of the problems associated aith "Capitalism" are really problems of oligarchy.

</comment><comment><USER3> "millennials" are also more likely to know 'who lives in a pineapple under the sea', than who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania ave.

...also, hard work is too hard.

</comment><comment><USER4> Was nobody paying attention to Greece last year?

<comment><USER5> Or to Lenin, who said "the goal of socialism is communism"?</comment></comment>