Tyler Cowen picks five books on Information - <AUTHOR> http://fivebooks.com/interviews/tyler-cowen-on-information

<comment><USER2> What an outstanding idea. Generally, finding book recommendations is a serendipitous process of happening upon a page where someone knowledgeable has put together a list of books they like on a topic they happen to know something about. Or clicking around on Amazon hoping to find something good.

I see myself going to this site often, either looking for recommendations on topics of interest, or just looking at recent recommendations to find something I didn't even know I was interested in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I assume this is your website?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not sure why you would assume that. While I thought the book recommendations were _okay_ , the main reason I shared this is the concept of the fivebooks site. Lots of other interesting topics on there.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ask HN: For 2013 - Emacs users on OS X, what's your setup? - <AUTHOR>

Updates from this 2009 question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465858
I'm just switching from Sublime Text to Emacs.
For OSX users - what does your Emacs setup look like? What distribution do you use? <comment><USER2> Here is mine: [http://www.zmjones.com/mac- setup.html](http://www.zmjones.com/mac-setup.html)</comment>


Do Students Really Need Practice Homework? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/practice.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a lengthy and carefully argued chapter from a book, not a blog post, nor a quick, casual read. It's about math, but I think much of what it says may apply almost as well to programming and CS.</comment>


Concorde Trip Report (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.samchuiphotos.com/Concorde/ConcordeTripReport2.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I remember when this was posted on FlyerTalk. The author of the post read that British Airways would cease to operate the flights, and promptly booked one with miles just for the experience. I wished I'd done that.

The last Concorde flight took place 11 years ago today.</comment>


Show HN: Miimic – Let your friends text for you - <AUTHOR> http://www.miimic.me/

<comment><USER2> You should pivot to an 'uber for conversations' where at any point you can tap a button, get billed $5, and have a professional screenwriter finish your conversation for you.

You could have 'peak' rates trigger at night to satisfy demand for all the people scrambling to get laid.

Lots of unemployed screenwriters, lots of people wanting to get laid, that is a market waiting to happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is precisely our target state vision and where we are making significant progress in development (including an innovative pricing strategy). We would love to talk if you're interested, please feel free to email us at email@example.com

<comment><USER3> I'm not entirely sure but I am pretty certain siliconc0w was being sarcastic...

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if he was, we aren't :)

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> If anyone ever pulled crap like that on me during a conversation, I would be done with that person forever. I wouldn't care who he or she was.

If somebody is disrespectful enough to engage in behavior as pathetic as that, then I want nothing to do with that person. Maybe "hipsters" would be fine with such shabby treatment, but I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking it's an extremely distasteful thing to do to somebody you're conversing with.

<comment><USER5> What, to pay for advice to the question of "oh no, what should I say?!" Its unusual, but I wouldn't find it offensive.

<comment><USER4> No, to be the person on the receiving end of such a manufactured or deceiving message. Although, now that you mention it, spending good money on something so pathetic is kind of distasteful, too.

If somebody truly can't think of what to say next to me (or anybody else) in a conversation, then ending the conversation or admitting to not knowing what to say is much more sensible and preferable than spending money on getting some third-party to create a response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An email version of this would be quite useful for team interactions with sensitive partners/clients/contacts.

<comment><USER7> I completely agree. IMO email is the correct platform for this service, not text messaging. I often perform this exact workflow manually by walking over to a colleague's desk: "Can you look over this email to <sensitive client> before I send it?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You've just invented CaaS: "Cyrano as a service".

I'm not sure what this says on the state of Western civilization, but it's the sort of app that could easily be covered by mainstream newspapers, so you must be onto something. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, toyg!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is this text flirting for awkward people who can't come up with their own responses or is there another use case? I liked @spartango's idea of an _email_ version for team interactions with sensitive partners/clients/contracts... but I can't see why anyone with even average social skills would use this. I'm not sure text messaging (where each message is relatively low-value and usually to friends who don't care) is the most effective media/platform for a service like this. Anyone have thoughts?

<comment><USER9> If it shows extended message history I could definitely see some use in it. there have been times when I wanted to share texts I sent to one person with another.

It might also be interesting in situations where you want to introduce soon- to-be friends momentarily -- making them exchange numbers so soon might be unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You should up the contrast on the up/down arrows for users like me with a poor quality display. I missed them completely at first. They just looked like two white circular cutouts.

</comment><comment><USER11> I could see executives with secretaries being a serious market that would pay for this service.

<comment><AUTHOR> CxOs and senior level executives are another piece of our target market and we have been engaging heavily with them as we move forward

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And if your recipient uses the app as well, the two of you can talk to each other while not talking to each other! :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Friend has been asking me to build this for them for ages (unfortunately, I'm not a mobile app developer).

He's pretty insightful when it comes to these sorts of things, the kind of "idea guy" that actually makes an excellent product designer. People want this app.

Thanks for saving me the hassle! (of future conversations about how I should build this, rather than actually building it - procrastination's a killer).

</comment><comment><USER14> extreme scroll triggered animations make it impossible on my tablet to read much..

Edit: what's the use case, why? Who would use such an app, any use cases you think of?

<comment><AUTHOR> Diminish, it's no secret that texting has become the primary and preferred channel for dating. The texts you send are the only thing that make or break you after you receive someone's phone number and it's obvious that some people are better at texting than others.

Often times what you will see is young men and women giving their phones to their friends to text someone special for them. We hope to solve this by opening texts up into a more collaborative space.

We will fix the animations. Thanks!

<comment><USER15> Interesting idea. Why not put your comment on the website somewhere? I scrolled through several screens of animations and still had no idea what your app did.

<comment><USER16> I agree with this suggestion. It wasn't immediately apparent why I'd want to use this, but upon reading the above reply it made complete sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All flirting jokes aside, this would be a fantastic service for communications within government and corporate environments.

For those in marketing, managing people on the street that are handing out flyers, promotions, etc from one number would be a fantastic asset.

For groups of friends who wholesale stuff on craigslist, having a single point of contact via text would also be great.

Nice concept.

</comment><comment><USER18> The magnifying glass on the last panel has the same color like their background. The icons are very whitish and difficult to see.

Not sure if people would use this, i can imagine friends of mine asking me to 'help' in their conversations.

And i fear those 'was it really you?'-questions. Im not sure what kind of social consequences the usage brings.

</comment><comment><USER19> Relevant: the recently shut down Starpilot. [http://xorph.com/starpilot](http://xorph.com/starpilot)

An explanation: [http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/digital- projection/C...](http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/digital- projection/Content?oid=10729671)

</comment><comment><USER20> @OP can I use this way:

Set all my message to be served to specific contact. That contact can reply to all message?.

Use Case: My parents do not know to use mobile properly and many times they get Income Tax pin, etc ( IMP message) via SMS. And they come to me to reply them properly. Instead using your app I can do it from distance.

<comment><AUTHOR> techaddict009,

We are working on features for that because of similar situations to the one you just described. Right now, your parents would have to 'miimic' each of those messages over to you for your reply.

Please feel free to sign up for our newsletter to stay updated (bottom of page). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this is a cool idea and maybe even something I'd use, but the landing page has what I find typical, cliche, sluggish load-on-scroll animations at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER22> Collaborative flirting! Love it

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. Given that texting has become the primary channel for flirting, we feel that making this a collaborative effort makes it more fun for everyone.

Thanks for your comment!

<comment><USER23> does "everyone" include the prospective date on the receiving end of behavior that violates basic social norms & assumptions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Also relevant but not really talked about on HN much: [http://www.crowdpilot.me/](http://www.crowdpilot.me/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Also see [http://www.wingflirt.com](http://www.wingflirt.com) which also attempts this

</comment><comment><USER26> Tie up with Tinder. Way for people who get replies faster to earn money from those who don't.

</comment><comment><USER23> got a couple of suggested improvements:

1\. make "Lie and Get Laid" yr slogan

2\. reëvaluate yr entire understanding of ethics/communication/human beings

<comment><USER27> I understand that some may view this as violating the "ethical code". But when you really think about tinder or these other popular dating apps, is there no violation there where the intent is generally sexually driven and where communication is not a neccesity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nintendo may not like the use of "Mii"...

</comment><comment><USER29> Applications in customer service, sales and CRM.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our background is in sales, service, marketing strategy :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How bizarre.</comment>


The Worst Colleges in America - <AUTHOR> http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/08/worst_colleges_in_america_2008_part_1_01.php <comment><USER2> I'm not sure that's a fair criticism of Hamburger U. Isn't it really just a training facility for McDonald's managers? As far as I know a) it has no pretensions of being a real college and b) McDonald's is a wildly successful global corporation, they must be doing _something_ right.

</comment><comment><USER3> I heard from a non-Mormon who went to BYU and said the intolerance there was so awful, that students would walk up to you and ask, "Are you a Mormon?" and if you said no, they would just walk away like you didn't even exist.

<comment><USER4> Disclaimer: I don't speak for BYU.

I went to BYU. I'm sorry to hear that your friend had that kind of experience. I believe that everyone I went to school with would have considered that very intolerant and rude indeed. I hope that's far from the experience of all students there who aren't LDS.

Some of the points in the blurb about BYU are accurate, but some are misleading and false. BYU is a private religious institution, and it therefore has stricter rules about conduct, appearance, and behavior. These rules, together called the "Honor Code", are accepted by every student before he/she attends. These standards are a big part of the reason for the students' desire to attend BYU. Abstaining from tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs is already part of the LDS belief system. The idea that students are required to abstain from flirting is ludicrous, and reveals that the author(s) must either be ignorant or must have misinterpreted their information. There is no end to flirting at BYU, unless you define flirting to include crudity and lewdness. "Sexual comments" was an interesting addition to the list. As a student at BYU, you are expected to use clean language and adhere to high moral standards, and so I suppose if by "sexual comments" they mean "vulgar or crass sexual comments" then this is true. These are all things that may perhaps be labeled as "intolerant" by some, but which I agree with.

The facial hair rule I think is old-fashioned and unnecessary. I and a lot of others think that blocking YouTube on the campus network is disgusting and verging on communism (I can't stand forced web filtering of any kind). Tunneling worked though, and the CS network didn't block YouTube, so that was nice.

<comment><USER5> A cousin of mine explained the dietary restrictions to me. For the full effect, please indulge me as I enter a brief bit of real dialogue with the names stripped:

Me: "So how is BYU, _____? Enjoying your first semester away from home?"

Her: "It's great, I'm having a lot of fun. But I don't think you'd like it very much."

Me: "Why not? I went to college too, you know. Is it because I'm not mormon?"

Her: "There's that." _pauses to open a can of Coke_ "But you're also required to abstain from things like tea and coffee. You'd have to give up caffeine, and I know you'd hate that."

Me: _looking pointedly at her can of coke_ "You have to give up drinks with caffeine in it?"

Her: _pausing again to drink her soda_ "Yes. The Honor Code says we can't drink tea, coffee or anything with alcohol in it."

Me: "But soda is okay?"

Her: "Yeah, unless it has, like, drugs in it or something."

I checked the BYU website. Coffee and tea are verboten, Soda is not. I even found pictures of people drinking coke on campus. Way to go, BYU. Your dietary restrictions are super-good.

<comment><USER4> It does get pretty silly sometimes. There are only a few things that are "outlawed", and therefore people think that as long as they abstain from those substances, they're in total compliance with what their religion expects of them. The root reason of the dietary restrictions is a principle of respecting the body and keeping it clean, but people misapply it by interpreting it verbatim and then gorging themselves on junk food, soda, or anything that isn't healthy but isn't technically "forbidden".

I think it's a good thing that the church doesn't forcefully regulate which sodas we can or cannot drink, because that would be controlling and ridiculous. However, these slightly arbitrary rules can end up encouraging a group of people who do the minimum required just to remain in good social status. That will be the case anywhere.

Another example of this is R-rated movies. There was a church leader a long time ago who at one time at a general conference warned against viewing R-rated movies. This seems perfectly acceptable, except that it ended up creating an unwritten rule of sorts among LDS members. The principle is that we should avoid movies that don't meet the standards we're expected to have, but it inevitably created a group of people who were perfectly okay with seeing any movie regardless of the content as long as the MPAA didn't put the magic 'R' on it.

It's hard to know where to draw the line when you know that some people are just going to get as close to that line as possible. You just hope that most people are listening to the underlying principles rather than the base requirements.

I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else available. I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I think that whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or nothing to do with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

<comment><USER5> > I occasionally drink caffeinated sodas if there isn't anything else > available. I don't consider this to be especially damaging to my health. I > think that whether or not I drink a caffeinated beverage has very little or > nothing to do with what I consider to be my spiritual standing.

The point of my story wasn't to say, "Haha. Here are these goofy mormonians." I think you can pick out goofballs from any religion. My point was, "Here is someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able to read the ingredients on their soda can." Or more directly, "BYU is a school that seems to be failing at teaching students how to think and reason."

<comment><USER6> _My point was, "Here is someone going to college that doesn't seem to be able to read the ingredients on their soda can."_

Ahahahahahahaha. I knew several folks at BYU who could recite, in milligrams, the caffeine content of various soft drinks. Caffeinated sodas are left to the discretion of each individual.

I went to both the University of Wisconsin and BYU, and honestly I much more prefer the atmosphere of "Dr. Pepper as excess" to "Alcohol to excess."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm from San Diego, and somehow I knew I'd find SDSU in this list!

<comment><USER8> With half of College Avenue getting rich off cocaine, yeah, they had this coming. The 17% four-year graduation rate is impressive, too.

I also remember Chico getting epic on Halloween, until the police cracked down on it a few years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not very empirical but immensely entertaining. The piece on Trump University alone is worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER10> The quality of the quotes goes way up for Drexel and Harvey Mudd -- I wonder if some alumni on the _Radar_ staff couldn't resist a little articulate bashing of their alma mater.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure Harvey Mudd really deserves to be on that list, though.

<comment><USER10> It wouldn't show up on a list of worst schools by multiple criteria, but I think that section of the article is _just_ about the appearance of the campus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My state of California, doing America proud.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see what the author has against the book Jews Without Money. It's one of the most important pieces of American literature.

</comment><comment><USER14> Has anyone heard anything positive or negative about Penn Foster College?</comment>


Income mobility has been rising fastest in Britain - <AUTHOR> https://gavinkellyblog.com/where-has-income-mobility-been-rising-fastest-britain-179e168189be <comment><USER2> It's just really difficult to understand what this means.

The first big caveat is that 1990s to 2010s stops at the financial crisis. Due to austerity the UK has since then seen the greatest period of wage stagnation of all the advanced nations except Greece. But employment has remained high. So whilst the report is a picture of time before the crash its not clear to me what has happened since.

Second - Yes I think I do care more about the overall level of poverty and inequality. I'm not happy if people are moving in and out of destitution.

Third - I really don't understand how to square this analysis with the obvious fact that half as many people own their own home now as in the 80s. For 25-34 year olds its gone from 65% to 27% during the period of this study . What's that downward income mobility? I sthat a good thing? Or does that not count as it's not income?

.. I just don't really know what this is saying..?

<comment><USER3> > 25-34 year olds its gone from 65% to 27% during the period of this study

back then people used to be in full time work from 16-21. Education has assumed the role work once had. Most people I know are in Education untill mid to late 20s. 1/15 into their 30ies on and off. further to that 100 years ago home ownership was in the 15% area. Standards of living where "worse" by modern metrics (of course that's not true per se IMHO).

<comment><USER4> The jobs that are available now for 16-21 are subsistence jobs. It makes more economic sense that they spend the time in school and get out of the sub livable wage jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article doesn't touch upon education much at all, which I believe is a central part of social (im)mobility. Problems arising in society later on will simply stem from the early life of members of society, not afterwards. It's a common principle that education is the key to societal equality, in some way.

All I can offer is my story on this. I've lived in the UK all my life in all sorts of regions from those of lower working class (my hometown) to my recent years where I've lived in rather upper-class "lawyer-doctor-business owner" regions. The difference in education between the lower and upper classes is stark. Let me explain.

Upper-class children are enrolled in schools of like-minded high-achievers full of entrance exams and interviews (provides a non-zero floor to student "intelligence/quality" at the school), and strict rules/discipline. They are further pushed towards degrees leading to higher paying careers - Finance, Medicine, Law, by their families and the schools themselves. Their families purchase extra tutoring, they have smarter parents (this is a positive feedback loop across generations!) to guide them, and so on...

Compare this to lower-class children, who, in the UK (and i'm pretty sure everywhere else essentially) are enrolled in "state schools" (free). These schools have no entrance requirements (there is zero floor for student quality), the families almost never purchase extra tutoring, and are much less pushed towards "meaningful" degrees. The schools offer equal environments to the best and the worst of students.

This imbalance in education (and by extension upbringing in general) is what seeds everything else. And indeed, in the past few years the UK government has recognized all the above. How they plan of solving it? The reintroduction of "Grammer Schools"! These are state schools (still), but _do_ have enterance requirements, thereby allowing lower-class students of high intelligence/quality a chance to separate from the worst students in state schools and enroll in a more challenging education. There is much debate in the UK whether this will work, or will simply just allow children of rich families to more-often/further separate themselves from poor families. Time will tell.

That's my 0.02c anyway: Education.

<comment><USER6> If grammar (you spelt this incorrectly) schools were effective at improving society as a whole, you'd be able to measure an effect in the places in the UK where they were retained. Especially Northern Ireland.

Instead you have to address what happens to the 50% of people who _don 't_ get into the selective schools. You can't improve overall quality through rejecting students, because there's no "away" to reject them to!

People who are actually involved in education are more likely to tell you that the key factor for most of the lower-achieving students is obstacles, especially out of school; are they getting enough sleep and 3 square meals a day? Do they have at least one parent around who's engaged in their education? What obstacles does that _parent_ face? Is the child being bullied at school or home? etc.

<comment><USER7> I find it interesting that the non-Grammar "comprehensive/secondary modern" schools in areas with Grammar Schools actually perform better than Comprehensive schools (such as the one I attended) in areas where Grammar Schools have been abolished.

Does this mean that such schools apply more focus to issues such as the ones you list in order to better compete?

<comment><USER6> Possibly. The key issue is the politics; selective public schooling allows the schools to be treated unequally by the resource allocation system, where the one with the worse performing pupils gets less resources and is less preferred by staff, reinforcing the cycle.

<comment><USER8> If I understood correctly, you are taking the opposite view from the parent post?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gavin Kelly is associated with Downing Street. It's in the conservative government's interest to downplay social issues caused by its policies.

I smell a conflict of interest.

<comment><USER10> He worked at Downing Street until 2010, under the Labour government at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reads like an opinionated piece which is cherry-picking it's stats.

The report he's citing most heavily is indeed about social mobility, but social mobility isn't always "up", social mobility measured by OECD is the state of flux and certainly by itself does not correlate at all with improvements in social class from the lower levels.

The author also talks about "more equal" not equating to "more mobile" and he/she is absolutely correct, however the way it's phrased makes me believe he/she is intending to change the mind of the reader as to whether more equal is a good thing.

Overall I'm not coming to the same conclusion as the author from the source material. Flux is bad if you're middle/working class are ending up in the poor class. Which is happening from what I can tell anecdotally.</comment>


What makes a competent software engineer? Let's find out - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@trustrachel/what-makes-a-competent-software-engineer-let-s-find-out-aa05f9187888#.4ybtkey83 <comment><USER2> It annoys me that the questionnaire equates productivity with lots of lines of code.

Productivity is providing value. Functionality is an asset. Code is a liability.</comment>


You're doing rubber duck debugging all wrong - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/blog/my-guide-for-rubber-duck-debugging-a-better-process-with-no-rubber-ducks <comment><USER2> One good tip I got to rubber duck debug without another human was to write your questions / explanations in an email or a chat.

I found that indeed, writing an email explaining a problem to a colleague was helpful to solve it despite me never sending the email.

<comment><USER3> This. That's one of the reasons I'm glad I work in a team with competent colleagues. Not just because I would expect them to answer such an email/message/bug report comment competently, but I feel encouraged to reach out _and_ feel it necessary to already myself go into detail and explain all assumptions I have, everything how I see it, hypotheses etc. With "dumb" colleagues (which includes a rubber duck), I'd never do it on this level.

So, often times either I solve a problem while writing all this down to them (or for me/others to read later), or after one or two cycles of them pointing out something that they didn't understand or didn't follow. I'll then have to go back and clarify and maybe refresh/refine my own knowledge and it turns out that that's where the problem was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article offers some useful elaborations on the "rubber ducking" or "Spaniel Method." I blogged about this in [https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/09/25/asking-questions- fr...](https://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/09/25/asking-questions-from-a- caring-perspective/) and found an earlier description in a paper published in ACM SIGPLAN in December 1998 "Literate Programming and the 'Spaniel' Method" by Nick Hatzigeorgiu and Apostolos Syropoulos. Note that this is a year before Pragmatic Programmer came out. They relate the following advice on "The Spaniel Method" a professor offered Apostolos Syropoulos in response to a request for help debugging a seemingly intractable problem in a program that he was working on:

"As is often the case with baffling errors it is really quite simple. We tend to fixate on incorrect assumptions, and overlook the obvious, surprisingly frequently. I have found that one way to break through such barriers is to use the 'Spaniel' method: Carefully explain the program to your dog. Since the dog knows nothing of programming, you must justify every statement you make. In the process you will often discover the mistake." W. W. Waite

I traced a connection to the Quaker Clearness Committee model, which suggests that the best way for a small group of people to help an individual navigate a thorny problem is not to offer advice but to ask questions designed to uncover greater clarity about the situation.

But this article was useful in drawing a connection to what is also called "Brainwriting" (a model for brainstorming that starts with everyone writing their ideas down first and then comparing them pairwise before moving into a group session) or the 1-2-4-all method from liberating structures [http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/)

Essentially you use an escalating series of techniques that expose your problem/ignorance to wider audiences, wasting less of other people's time because you frame the problem more clearly as you go--and you may solve it before you ask a large audience for help.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is simply a methodology for getting the debugger to explain what the problem is in a clear and concise way. It's a variation of the 30 second elevator pitch. In other word, if you can't explain the problem then do you know what you're trying to solve?</comment>


A Surfboard Made by a Rocket Scientist - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/surfboard-made-rocket-scientist <comment><USER2> This reminds me that the coinventor of the Windsurfer* Jim Drake also worked on stuff like the X-15 which might count as being a rocket scientist.

* ie the actual Windsurfer(tm) that built the sport rather than its more obscure precursors.

Back to the article though, it's always surprised me how conservative surfboard construction has been compared to other sports. Hopefully that won't stop this new construction succeeding.

</comment><comment><USER3> Went to his sister's wedding the other weekend. He's a great guy and I really don't think this is his hoorah- much more to come of him. Way to go Edison!</comment>


Will Ad Blocking Break the Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nber.org/papers/w23058 <comment><USER2> No, but ads will.</comment>


A keyboard for your back - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tartavull/thor-your-next-keyboard-20b9ce7dd2b1#.8740gcgm7 <comment><USER2> I'm personally really interested in starting with chorded keyboarding, this reminds me of another product I saw once that I for the life of me just can't remember. But it reinvigorated my desire to search for it, so I'm quite thankful

<comment> ryan-c Perhaps this, or a previous iteration of it? [http://twiddler.tekgear.com/](http://twiddler.tekgear.com/)

The default layout sucks, looks like someone made a new version of the "TabSpace" layout: [http://ivanwfr.github.io/Twiddler3-Layout/](http://ivanwfr.github.io/Twiddler3-Layout/)

<comment><USER3> That one looks really cool, I wish you could use two of them at the same time</comment></comment></comment>


China Rips Off The iPad With The iPed - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/5549865/china-rips-off-the-ipad-with-the-iped

<comment><USER2> This is why Android is so incredibly important. The Chinese can build good hardware at ridiculously low cost, but they just can't do software, as anyone who has ever used an iPhone knock-off can testify. Android massively cuts R&D costs, putting the agile and efficient Chinese manufacturers at a distinct advantage.

Android will take the whole of the Chinese and Indian smartphone market by default, unless something else comes along which is more open, versatile and easy to implement. The markets are sufficiently price sensitive that $7 extra for a WinMob license is a dealbreaker, let alone the vast premium the likes of Jobs or Kallasvuo charge. They have peculiar demands that western manufacturers just aren't attuned to - when have you ever seen a Nokia or a Motorola with dual sim card slots?

Western hardware companies should be sweating about their local markets too, but not because of the threat of generic clones - there's a much bigger scare on the horizon and it looks suspiciously like HTC. They have gone from generic manufacturer to big brand in a few short years off the back of WinMob and Android; There is a tide of companies seeking to do exactly the same thing.

Mohandas Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.". I hope we all get our enjoyment while the joke is still funny.

<comment><USER3> I am sick to death of hearing "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win" used as justification for anyone's pet technology subject always winning.

Just because Eric Raymond cast himself as the Gandhi of the OSS movement and used that quote doesn't mean we should copy him.

<comment><USER4> Well it only really applies if you _are_ ignored, then laughed at, before it becomes an actual fight.

Despite his appearance in their ad campaign I don't see many Apple fans considering themselves ignored or laughed at, nor using that as justification for their assured future victory if they are. On the other hand it seems to fit the Christensen disruptive model very well: "The reason big new things sneak by incumbents is that the next big thing always starts out being dismissed as a "toy."

<comment><USER5> How old are you? How's your memory?

Before the iPod dominated the market, before Apple's re-ascent to glory was completely undeniable, Mac users were _always_ the butt of jokes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's really weird to me that so many people at Kotaku seem so excited about this. How many times has there been some radically cheaper Chinese knockoff with a similar name that turns out to be a piece of absolute shit? Were these people excited about the Vii? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vii>

Apple is successful in large part because of attention to detail; this thing can't even seem to decide whether it's an iPed or an APad. And it's not really a clone in any sense: it's only a 7" screen, yet apparently _still_ heavier than the (arguably already too heavy) iPad. Really, what are the chances it's great at $100 when most people were surprised Apple was able to get the iPad (perhaps manufactured at the same factory) down to $500?

Be excited about the future potential of Android tablets using cheap commodity hardware, sure, but I don't see anything exciting about this particular device from what little info is here. What an example of not getting why the iPad is successful.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one annoyed by "China Rips Off"?

China is a country. Some folks in China did something.

Unless said folks are govt, "China" didn't do anything.

<comment><USER8> I don't think this product could be legally brought to market in the United States. The Chinese government's trade policies enabled the creation of a $100 Android-running iPad lookalike.

<comment><USER9> So what? U.S. government free speech policies allow citizens to say most whatever they like, including things that cannot legally be said in Islamic theocracies. When a U.S. resident inevitably exercises his freedom of speech in a way that offends Muslims, would someone in Saudi Arabia therefore be justified in claiming that "the U.S. insults Islam"?

No, of course not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was going to comment that it's going to be revolutionary when these guys combine forces with Android, but it says in the story that this _is_ built on Android. Interesting times.

<comment><USER10> It also says it's running on an Intel CPU, which has got to be wrong. Android doesn't run on the x86 architecture as far as I know. Take the info with a grain of salt.

[Edit] Well, it seems like there may be some unsupported (by Google) Android-x86 work going on, so maybe it's possible:

<http://www.android-x86.org/>

I wonder if the fact that Android software runs in a JIT-compiled runtime mean that binaries for Android-ARM are compatible with Android-x86. [/Edit]

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Chinese doesn't have culture for innovation, they have always had culture of replication. Even from within innovation has been something that as suppressed for many centuries.

China is a world's factory. With disregard for copyright and intellectual property its hard to see when their own people will get motivation to invent and develop technologies.

<comment><USER12> Japan followed the same story line initially.

Camera manufacture started as either junk, or as cheaper copies of German (Leica) bodies and lenses.

Car manufacture was in one case initially intertwined with licensed designs from the UK.

In both these cases, Japan grew to become the leader in cameras and amongst the leaders in automobiles.

The interesting thing is whether China can do the same thing with computers, but as software has such a cultural dependence, I highly doubt it. Aside from Matz, has Japan even produced any really notable software or operating systems?

<comment><USER13> Nintendo's doing pretty well, and the DS and Wii can be considered innovative. I don't think their games aren't software in the way that you mean, but they've broken new ground there many times, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems that China has already built the $100 tablet the OLPC wanted to build...

<comment><USER15> The one with the dual colour/sunlight readable screen, clockwork power, mesh networking and introspectable software?

Where?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Combine this with some interface and packaging cleanup (something one really talented designer could do), and some decent marketing, and they could make a fortune off this thing. I would still keep my iPad, but I'd probably buy a few of these for guests to use, and as additional interfaces around the house!

<comment><USER17> Battery life might be the deal breaker on this device. But yeah, if that isn't terrible, why have a $500 picture frame, home theater controller, and toy for the kids when you can have a $100 one that fills those roles just as well?

How soon till a proper reviewer can get their hands on this and put it through some paces? Engadget, how about putting that checkbook journalism to some good use?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is quit unsurprising, I suspect, in a few months there will be dozens of increasingly iPad looking devices running some version of Android.

First butterflies are already here: <http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.39169>

However, one has to keep in mind that the CPUs currently in these devices are very underpowered(instead of 600mhz ARM actually clocking in at 300mhz).

User experience is very unPad like to say the least..

I am puzzled though, why they do not go for more powerful CPUs as the price difference should be only a few $.

</comment><comment><USER19> In a case like this, what steps will Apple take to quash the IPed?

<comment><USER20> It's not legal to sell them in US. They will be happiest if they can have 1% of the market share of iPad.

Apple has more important things to bother about. Like innovating, the iPad mini, for instance.

<comment><USER21> The iPad mini... you mean iPod Touch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Well for 100$ i want one

</comment><comment><USER23> iPed is a better name than iPad :-)

<comment><USER24> Yeah, doesn't make you think it's a tablet for pedophiles.

Did for me, though.

<comment><USER25> Funny, it made me think it was a tablet for walkers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I never understood it. How can they churn out cheap knock offs so fast. Either they are really smarter than the whole R&D department of Apple combined or they have a very vast and well developed espionage market.

<comment><USER27> It's not that difficult to build a copy when you are building the original as well. =)

<comment><USER28> It's also not that hard to build a slightly nodded copy after someone else has already spent millions on R&D figuring out all the difficult bits.

And of course this appears much more of a physical/appearance clone than anything. I'd like to see some 3rd party reviews of durability and battery life and so on.

In the end, it is no different than cars and other consumer goods. Some people appreciate a product with real design and innovation, and some just want the cheapest thing possible in a given form factor. I think there are markets for both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Now isn't this nicely symbolic of the ghetto that Android has become? :)

<comment><USER17> If by "ghetto" you mean not limited to the first world market only... sure, I guess.

<comment><USER29> No, by "ghetto" I meant "ecosystem of knockoff products fraught with quality issues". Android desperately wants to be the low-cost alternative to iPhone OS, yet low-cost also means compromises in usability, responsiveness, etc.

I have an Android phone, and though I like the Sprint service better than AT&T's, compared to an iPhone using the phone itself is an exercise in clunkiness and awkwardness.

I just flashed it to 2.1 (itself an exercise in unnecessary foldirol) and it feels somewhat smoother, but not Apple-smooth.

<comment><USER30> Compromises. That's the keyword. 90% usability for 20% price - it's a good deal for 90% of the people. The other (upper) 10% get the iPad, they can afford it.

<comment><USER31> I don't think usability works that way.

90% usability may be a good deal, but only for the 20% of people who put the effort in to find benefit from the technology. Everyone else would have spent less, but gained less as well -- as they ignore large swaths of features, spending only enough cognitive time to use one or two core applications.

E.g. Note the incredible flexibility and power of desktop PCs and how that's been almost completely ignored by 90% of users, who barely know enough to do email and the web.

And that's a particular issue in the case of a mobile, secondary-computing device such as tablets, where having the functionality isn't anywhere near as important as actually improving the experience of using those functions.

i.e. They have passable email on their desktop and/or phone, so you need more than passable email to sell a tablet. If 'almost' having good usability was good enough, we'd have been hip-deep in windows tablets for the last decade and Palm PDAs before that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bringing African Shoppers to the Global Mall - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/business/bringing-african-shoppers-to-the-global-mall.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to see a successful example of a cross-continent, online-to-offline e-commerce startup. That Mall4Africa ships 4.5 tons of goods to Africa _weekly_ reflects the massive and growing potential of oft-ignored or maligned W. African consumer markets, especially Nigeria.</comment>


Hidden Procrastination - <AUTHOR> http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2012/02/hidden-procrastination/

<comment><USER2> I disagree with labeling work on less-imporant tasks as procrastination. I think it's often (but not always) more effective to breeze through less important tasks that you're itching to do instead of slowly trudging along the highest priority task that you detest. The unpleasant topmost task becomes much less daunting once you've built momentum with a few easy wins and can see yourself as a producer instead of a procrastinator.

There's also the idea of structured procrastination, [1] which turns procrastination into a productivity tool. It's based on the insight that an unpleasant task may become attractive when seen as a way to procrastinate on something even more unpleasant. For a true procrastinator it means working productively on tasks #2..n instead of reading Hacker News thinking "one last article and then I'll start working on task #1". It's an excellent way to avoid getting stuck in a vicious cycle of procrastination, and calling it "hidden procrastination" is unnecessarily negative.

<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty much an ad for the author's software, but it got me thinking about the most defining factor of procrastination: importance of a task. How can one define what is really important?

For example, I've been working on a project for a few months, with hopes that it might become a steady source of income after it gains some traction. However, in the meantime I need to work as a freelancer, and I'm always facing the dilemma: which is more important for me. Is it my freelance work which pays for rent and alimony? Or is it working on my project which has a possibility (but not certainty in any way) of a large return in a future? Or is it spending time with my young sons? Or is it spending time with my friends, whom I don't have that many any more? Whatever I do of these things, it seems that other stuff is way important and I should be doing that instead...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Berislav,

This is what I would do -

1\. Get your basic needs covered by freelancing, but don't do more than you need.

2\. Schedule time for your friends and sons. Think quality, regular time. It's not about quantity.

3\. Build your business/project as much as possible in the time left. It should be a lot of time.

The logic is simple - 1 is a must, 2 is something that you really want, and when you do 3, you won't feel guilty, because you know that 1 and 2 is taken care of. This is inspired by "Unschedule".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html></comment>


Better RxJS code with pointfree style - <AUTHOR> https://codewithstyle.info/Better-RxJS-code-with-pointfree-style/ <comment><USER2> In my opinion (as a non Haskell user) pointfree style is less readable than the using the normal lambda syntax. In the latter I see at least for each step the amount of input parameters for a function and how they are used. With pointfree style I would need to look up which parameters a function consumes, and what the previous step actually delivers. Type systems at least make this safe, but I still think readability suffers, and the only gain is a bit smaller code.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this completely. This demos well... "I took this 'mess' and turned it into two clean limes!"

However, actually trying to figure out what the hell the code is doing in pointfree style is an order of magnitude (or greater) more difficult.

This is a maintainability nightmare, no thank you.

<comment><USER4> that's why you need a typed compiler for this kind of stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hasn't that been like that since rxjs 6, for more than a year? I have been using this for a loooong time. Don't get me wrong, its awesome, and more blog posts about rxjs is good. I was just expecting something new. Also I never heard about pointfree before, only about pipe and pipeable.

Good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, pointfree style has been present in RxJS since version 6 but on a different level. The article is about using `pipe` for composing functions that you pass as arguments to RxJS opertators. RxJS's `pipe` is about composing the operators themselves.

RxJS's pipe: `stream$.pipe(map(x => something), filter(x => something)`

The article: `stream$.pipe(map(pipe(something, somethingElse))`

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pointless style is nice in a statically typed language like Haskell if you don't take it overboard, but it's a disaster in a dynamically typed language like JS. Without the types, it is almost impossible to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's possible to use Ramda with TypeScript, although it's not perfect. It actually shows some weaknesses of TypeScript's type system as it's not possible to properly type some functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks similar to Spark implicits. For example, prop('foo') in Spark is $"foo".

Although Spark needs it for building computation DAG, tofigure out what columns are needed before processing it.</comment>


Why LaTeX is Superior to Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/07/16/why-latex-is-superior-to-office/

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, X > Y shows up too commonly online, which really serves as a call to declare partisan allegiance rather than an invitation for discourse.

LaTeX is superior to Office how? To my eyes, LaTeX produces more attractive typesetting than Microsoft Word does, and it behaves better in most version control software (though you have to remember to manually wrap your lines if you use an editor that does soft wrapping and you don't want a one-word change to mark the entire paragraph-in-a-line as modified). However, Word is certainly easier to use, and tasks such as inserting an image inline can be done through a few clicks rather than Googling to determine the best package for floating images, creating some code, and continually recompiling into dvi to see if the result is acceptable (and then copying and pasting the ur- example into new documents for the rest of time).

(Perhaps an actual competent LaTeX programmer would disagree with the above, but that's how I and most of the people I know use it).

I prefer LaTeX over Word (or OpenOffice, since I run Linux), but this is because I tend to create documents in plain text first, and if I decide they need to be presentable it's easy to throw some boilerplate around that text and produce a nice-looking document. But is it superior? I really don't even know what that _means_.

<comment><USER3> Word is easier to use, but some of the document processors built on top of TeX/LaTeX (like Lyx) alleviate a lot of the LaTeX pain. And you still can go down to LaTeX if you need to fine-tune the output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see why the pedigree of the creators of Tex/Latex/Word was relevant to this article. Perhaps mentioning the clout of Knuth and Lamport was excusable, but I don't think it was reasonable to pick on the creators of Word for being less distinguished.

</comment><comment><USER5> > You write a really long document using one citation and formating style, and > then you find out the journal requires a completely different style. ... If > you are changing to a known style such as IEEE for example you can simply > download appropriate templates, toss them to your project directory and add > one or two lines to your document.

It's another question entirely if you have to create your own style.

This is one point where Word wins, but it's a big one. The learning curve for LaTeX is already pretty steep, but it goes vertical once you start to mess with layout. It works in academia and publishing because there are a relatively limited number of templates everyone conforms to that are written by LaTeX gurus.

<comment><USER6> Actually I've created custom styles by modifying existing ones, and it isn't nearly as hard as it seems. Indeed, most academic styles are not more than a few hundred lines of code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Contrary to what the article says Word (2003) does both kerning and hyphenation. I didn't bother to read the rest of the article.

<comment><USER8> I agree, there is a lot here that is not well researched, right down to not correctly capitalizing LaTeX and TeX. However, to your point, it's an unfortunate thing that neither kerning nor hyphenation are on by default in the versions of Office that can do it: Word alone has tons of poor defaults (and most people don't know how to change them, even I shudder at the thought of messing with Normal.dot). It's the usual reluctance of MS to break with the past.

Also, while we're at it, why is paragraph spacing NOT prominently accessible from a toolbar or the ribbon? In Mac Office 2011, I can only find it in the Format Paragraph dialog box, straight from 1995, as there is no more formatting palette. It's like they are begging everybody to continue hitting Enter twice between paragraphs (you know who you are, stop it already!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my favourite reasons why it's superior to Office is that LaTeX documents are VCS friendly.

Definitely helps when working on SRSs and SDDs in my final project course (being that it's a group of 7 makes it even more valuable).

</comment><comment><USER10> When writing my dissertation I burned a couple of days trying to get up to speed with LaTeX as it came so highly recommended by smart people I respect. However the tooling let me down. Now I understand one of the joys of LaTeX is the ability to write with any text editor but there were a many things I wish made my life easier. Like an editor that actually ships with Spelling, tag completion, helpers and importantly... good documentation for how the UI works.

I was constantly frustrated. What about inserting a picture? I was pointed to packages to try to locate for my OS & install, perl scripts to convert my PNGs to whatever format my tex distribution uses. I wished whatever editor I used had a simple Insert->Picture menu that could do all of the work behind the scenes.

So I ditched that and bought Office 2010 Student edition for €69 and wrote my dissertation in Word. I got the formatting just how I wanted it within a few hours. The Navigation View was fantastic for visualising the structure of my document. I was able to drag and drop paragraphs, sections, chapters around with ease and even though I spent a few hours fiddling with the styles, I was able to turn out a PDF that looked absolutely terrific that had none of the formatting mess in that article.

I will take the time to learn LaTeX better in the future, but if minds are to be won, better intuitive tools need to be built that HELP the writer, not writing long articles saying why it's the best.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow I thought this was a humor article but the guy is serious. Anyone remember @Scribe ? Now don't get me wrong, I love LaTex, especially for math, and I've actually heard Don Knuth speak on what he was going for when he started TeX.

But to compare LaTex to Word is like comparing playing Chess to playing Halo 3. Sure they both have strategies and different pieces have different strengths and the goals are similar and you can use them to burn up a couple hours of your free time, but they are targeted to completely different audiences.

</comment><comment><USER12> The first examples are unfair:

* Latex with indentation and justified-paragraph >looks better than> Word without indentation and left-align-paragraph.

* Latex with hyphenation >looks better than> Word without hyphenation.

I use both regularly, and I know that there are things that are impossible to do in Word and that I have programmed in a Latex package. But Latex has also some horror histories:

* Add the [spanish]{babel} package to a perfect working document. [spanish] does a lot of tweaks and like changing the roman numbers and making active <, >, ", ', ~ (perhaps not all of them in all versions)

* In particular the xy-pic package has problems with the redefinition of > in the [spanish]{babel}.

* In the {color} package you should remember to put the curly braces in the right place (i.e. Why \color{Red}{Hello} doesn't work?)

* If you change the .dvi file from a computer to another, weird things may happen.

* If you want to see your graphics in the .dvi, .ps ans .pdf files, you should put many copies of the graphics in the all the necessary formats.

</comment><comment><USER13> LaTeX superior to Office? Not for most people... for most people it's complicated, convoluted and a pain to install, learn, and maintain. And good luck sending a document to someone else to look over and mark up. Unfortunately, the author doesn't come around to this point till the end of the post.

</comment><comment><USER14> Everyone here is assuming that Word is easier to learn than LaTeX, but, IMHO, people are misinterpreting familiarity with intuitiveness. Word has a very steep learning curve that people don't see because everyone they know has already learned it. I've mostly managed to avoid using word processors for nearly a decade. I've recently tried to do some things using Word, and I found it to be incredibly difficult and frustrating. I've seen people with no experience using computers have similar experiences.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just 2 hours back I though of writing my project report in LaTex, but then after 1 hour of tinkering I switched back to MS Office because I needed to get work done today.

May be if I'll have some spare time, I will learn it and write my next report in LaTex.

</comment><comment><USER16> I really wish people would frame these in terms of what they perceive as strengths of X vs Y rather than trying to make some blanket statement. It makes it much easier to have a discussion.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'll be sure to give a copy of LaTeX to my father and see how easy he finds it.

I have no doubt LaTeX is very good for certain applications, but superior? According to what yardstick?

<comment><USER18> Now that you mention it, I think that I could give Latex to my father and he would probably pick it up fairly quickly. As would anyone who remembers wordperfect. Most people back then learned the "view codes" mode of wordperfect because it sidestepped the problems of wysiwig editing. Even my mother, who is entirely non-technical used the codes view at times.

<comment><USER17> Ok, well your parents are much more clued in than mine! My Dad can figure out Word and Excel, but if he was expected to write codes I think he'd struggle. Maybe I'm being too harsh on him though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's hilarious and ironic that Simonyi helped develop Bravo, the predecessor to Latex, and then went on to oversee the development of Word, the main competitor.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, I prefer TeX to LaTeX because (1) with TeX the documentation is just Knuth's 'The TeXBook' but with LaTeX the documentation is in at least two thick books each with several authors none of whom is Knuth, (2) TeX is rock solidly frozen but LaTeX is not, and (3) LaTeX makes assumptions about what is wanted and, then, is easier to use within the assumptions and more difficult otherwise.

I have over 100 macros I wrote for TeX for tables of contents, cross referencing, verbatim output, putting TeX text on figures as annotation, automatic chapter, section, figure, and table numbering, putting a frame around foil pages, etc.; those macros go back over ten years; due to the fact that TeX is frozen they still run just fine.

But for both TeX and LaTeX, I'm looking for darker fonts, especially for the TeX and AMS math fonts. Any ideas?

For the emphasis on plain text in the article, sure: I do nearly all my typing just into my favorite general purpose text editor KEdit.</comment>


Something Is Coming (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://drobinin.com/posts/something-is-coming/ <comment><USER2> I just love surfing. Unfortunately they destroyed our wave in Graz, so I moved away and starting doing something else. Good times</comment>


Making babies without eggs may be possible, say scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37337215 <comment><AUTHOR> Where does the line of "playing God" and "not-playing God" lie?

If we divert rivers we are changing the way the World was originally created/developed to serve our needs. Is a beaver then messing with nature when it builds a dam?

If we use fire to create alloys out of metals is that principally different to creating synthetic plastics out of oil-based chemicals?

When we selectively breed animals and crops for our satisfaction is that more natural than selectively breeding at a cellular level?</comment>


A Python package for getting information about country - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/porimol/countryinfo <comment><AUTHOR> Country Info is a python package for getting information about country such as ISO, calling codes, capital, currencies, states, area, border and others.

You may have a look and give feedback(s).

Github repo: [https://github.com/porimol/countryinfo](https://github.com/porimol/countryinfo)</comment>


Google Plans Pay-Per-View YouTube Movie Rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1685786/google-plans-pay-per-view-youtube-movie-rentals?partner=rss <comment><USER2> It is inevitable, It's a surprise that they didn't do it till now.

But that $5 rental fee per movie, thats impossible pricing.</comment>


Kinect hackers take control of the action - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/16/microsoft-kinect-software-hacks

<comment><USER2> So, who here is hacking on a Kinect?

I've started some stuff using JRuby, Mirah, and Monkeybars.</comment>


Some Volcanoes Create Undersea Bubbles Up to a Quarter Mile Wide - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/10/18/some-volcanoes-create-undersea-bubbles-up-to-a-quarter-mile-wide-isns/ <comment><USER2> Looking forward to discoveries of what evolved to take advantage of this unique ecosystem</comment>


China Will Overtake the US in AI, said Alphabet's Eric Schmidt - <AUTHOR> https://www.investopedia.com/news/china-will-overtake-us-ai-alphabet-chairman/?partner=YahooSA&yptr=yahoo <comment><USER2> It's hard to say how much is this about scaring the government into action (AI-McCarthyism), or about being jealous that China is not constrained like Western countries are when experimenting with AI because of ingrained in society respect towards privacy, human rights, having to listen to the public opinion (democracy), etc.

In another HN thread about AI, big corporations and China, someone mentioned that big American IT corporations are very active in China, offering their tech for pennies just to be able to test it on a wider scale, because in the West they can't do it (regulations, human rights, etc.).

There are many problems unsolved, where a lot of grunt work is needed and little progress has been made in the last decades - healthcare is expensive, many diseases are still uncurable, production is still cheaper to outsource to other countries than do it locally because automation (not just AI, also sensors, computing power, materials, etc.) are not there yet.

I think the general trend to see current AI iteration as the magical solutions to all problems is dangerous, as usual the reality is much more complex and should be tackled in a more thorough manner. Why not pay AI-specialist pay to get the best people into healthcare, new material research, etc?

<comment><USER3> Ya, it sounds like a scare tactic. China does have advantages, mainly, they have lots of data with less concern for privacy.

The Chinese are making huge bets on AI, but they are beginning to sound like Japan in the 1980s with their Fifth generation computing project. Actually, there are so many analogues of China today to Japan in the 1980s (huge housing bubble, booming economy that doesn't seem to stop, a huge bet on AI....) that it doesn't really seem like a coincidence.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the comparison to 'neo tokyo' fantasies is warranted. When people were scared of Japan taking over the world with robots, those fifth generation projects were moonshot technologies without any clear commercial application.

The difference is that ML today (at least the kind of technologies where China has and is gaining an edge) are deeply embedded in the commercial sector and public security.

We're not talking about China building a superintelligence in some kind of basement of a research facility, we're talking about facial recognition in public spaces, consumer products that get data from a billion customers who all pay and live on a centralised platform and so on. That's a reality already and it's not a stretch to say that China's environment is more suited for this than any other place on the planet.

<comment><USER3> China has no technological edge in ML yet. Even the most ardent supporter talks about how China will have edges in 2020, but not today. It is still very aspirational.

I never said anything about neo tokyo, the fifth generation computing project was never vivid in our imaginations, all most of of us remember about it is the government throwing a bunch of money at AI research and hardware, and that it led directly to the 2nd AI winter. It also correlates nicely with other economic excesses (like China's problematic property bubble).

China still has a problem with attracting world-class talent, mainly because of their environment (great firewall, still way too wicked pollution). There are more Chinese working on ML in Silicon Valley then probably all foreigners working in tech in China. So if ML is a talent game, then I don't see how China will be able to win that in the near term, even with all their local human resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about this? (from part of my other comment)

* 9 out of the top 10 algorithms for the Stanford Question Answering Dataset are by Chinese teams, backed by HIT & iFlLYTEK, Alibaba, Microsoft Research Asia (in Beijing), NUDT & Fudan University, and others. They beat out teams by Samsung, Salesforce, CMU, and Facebook, for example.

[https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD- explorer/](https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/)

It is not like others do not try. This is a highly commercializable area of research and there is no requirement to publish the technical details of the submitted solution.

* Based on publications from 2015 onward, Peking and Tsinghua University are ranked in the world's top 5 for published papers in top AI conferences (at #3 and #5).

[http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2015/toyear/2018/index?ai&v...](http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2015/toyear/2018/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&world)

See my previous comment for more info & counterpoints about talent and pollution.

<comment><USER5> It's basically the same in computer security where you now see most vulnerabilities reported to vendors are from China. I wouldn't necessarily say China has "beaten" the rest of the world, but rather people in the west have basically decided that form of signaling is too expensive.

There's a lot of people publishing ML work on public datasets which barely move the needle. It's usually not too hard to squeeze something extra into a model to do better than the previous work, and if not there are always other datasets, so these raw numbers don't really means lot IMO.

Not to say China won't overtake the rest of the world, eg lots of great work coming out of MSRA, but I think that there is a lot of truth to the idea that once you start measuring something, people start gaming it, and I think the political environment in China encourages this gaming, so I would pay less attention to metrics like this that can be gamed.

Even paper metrics are gameable. Most reviewers acknowledge that once you remove the obvious accepts and obvious rejects you've got a large pile of passable but forgettable work. So if you can just keep cranking out passable work that fits the zeitgeist, you'll get more papers accepted.

I might be wildly off base here, I haven't tried to construct statistics, and academia has a large amount of starfucking going on, so it may be a cultural bias thing, but I don't get the impression that China is anywhere near dominant yet, but yet all these statistics look great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I think everyone, including the Chinese, agrees that they are not (yet) dominant in AI, just that they are catching up very fast to the best in the world. They might even beat all others in optimizing in existing paradigms.

Part of their 2030 plan to become preeminent in AI is to develop indigenous breakthroughs by 2025 and be equal to the leading nation by 2020. They are very much on track to achieve the closest goal given evidence to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Schmidt provided examples to support his claim that China is poised to dominate the field of AI. While many assume that the Chinese educational system is inferior to the U.S., he pointed out that Chinese people "tend to win many of the top spots" in Google's coding competitions."

In the last 5 years, participants from China reached the Google Code Jam finals (top 25 contestants) 12 times. Russian participants did the same 40 times (notably last year there were 13 Russian contestants, half of the finalists).

If this is evidence that China is going to dominate AI, what does it say about Russia?

<comment><USER7> This is evidence that the Chinese education system is not inferior. Nothing more.

The argument about AI lead is based on other facts, not particularly this one.

<comment><USER6> I don't think performance of the best on these contests says much about the education system (other than possibly how much exposure does the education system provide to this kind of contest from a young age).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He claims the US government isn't investing in AI. That's false. They're investing in AI, they just aren't giving any money to Google. What would the government do with an AI tuned for advertising? This is likely just Schmidt complaining about not getting free money from the government for once. Besides, it seems like Google is investing plenty of their own money into AI research without the government needing to contribute.

What will kill the US in AI research is when the government starts slapping export controls on everything and preventing foreign nationals from doing top level AI research in the US. Then all the talent will go to other countries.

<comment><USER9> What US govt investments are you referring to?

<comment><USER8> There is literally millions, and probably billions of dollars of spending that the military, NSA, and other agencies have put towards AI. Just about every military system with a computer has an effort to get some sort of AI onboard to decrease the workload of the operators and increase the effectiveness of the system. There are cognitive radios that aim to be jam-proof and make better use of the spectrum, smart ship management systems, adaptive self defense systems for jets, etc. The NSA uses AI to filter large amounts of data before a person ever sees it. The government is spending tons of money on AI, but many projects are classified and you aren't going to hear Lockheed bragging about how much money they are getting to upgrade their ships/tanks/jets with AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> China's will to move forward is astonishingly great. Remember that in the 70's it was close to a 3rd world nation. In less than 50 years it's challenging the US in technology. Sure a big part of that has been just copying what we already know in terms of technology but I see no slowing down from their part. To become a master at anything 1st you copy and try to match the master once you have matched the master you move past it. China is close to matching the master and they're not slowing down. Eric Smith is just reporting on what he sees as an inevitable outcome.

<comment><USER11> You can't extrapolate trends continuously forward into the future. At the turn of the 20th century Russia was closer in GDP per capita to India and China than to the US. By the 1950s, they beat the US in every space race milestone, and would've beaten us to the moon if the head of their space program hadn't died at an inopportune time. But ultimately it wasn't sustainable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fun fact: China's GDP per capita growth over the last 25 years is only modestly more than Japan's GDP per capita growth from 1970-1995 (20.5x versus 24.5x).

<comment><USER12> I wonder how China would cope with a long period of economic stagnation like Japan has had without the democratic release valve of being able to vote in another party. I wouldn't be surprised to see it all unravel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> GMail still can't effectively distinguish between real communication and spam. If China overtakes the US in AI, Schmidt and co. are the folks to blame. They are in the drivers seat of intelligence development, yet their efforts are increasingly scattered, and their only consistent focus is on lobbying government.

Dear Alphabet,

Please make your products and services work before worrying about geopolitical balance of power.

<comment><USER14> (While I work on Gmail, this is a curiosity)

What issues do you have with spam? Personally, I get maybe 1 false-positive spam email per year with Gmail, and maybe a few false-negatives (which are less of an issue anyway), for an accuracy rate in the 3-4 9s range. So I'm intrigued as to what you're doing or where you encounter the inability for gmail to distinguish between real communication and spam.

<comment><USER15> How about: I send someone an email, he answers, his answer is classified as spam. That's as broken as it can get!

(presumably because google doesn't like 'free' servers)

<comment><USER16> Maybe your friend's email server is misconfigured? Incorrect SPF records, etc?

<comment><USER17> I think the point was that initiating communication with an address is an extremely strong signal of willingness to receive (vs clicking a link, or replying, etc.). I think it's reasonable to expect to receive responses to proactively-initiated threads even if your correspondent isn't optimized for deliverability.

<comment><USER16> I disagree, just because I've emailed email@example.com in the past does not mean I want every spam phishing email pretending to come from firstname.lastname@example.com reaching my inbox.

<comment><USER17> You make a fair point but you've drawn a slightly broader scenario than I had in mind. Surely if you initiate an email to email@example.com with the title "Hey buddy" and you get back a reply titled "Re: Hey buddy" from someone alleging to be firstname.lastname@example.com, you'd want that in your inbox and not spam even with a misconfigured sender on your friend's end... no?

Edit: my ideal UX in this situation would be to get the mail in inbox, with a small notice saying "Unverified" and a mouseover/hover text explaining what that means re: SPF records; from there if you mark it as spam it would treat such unverified mail from that domain as spam on an ongoing basis

<comment><USER15> yes! I wish I could upvote more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> China is even more of a surveillance society than the US. America's top advertiser isn't happy. I am OK with America losing the race for total state control of information.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking at it from different angle than policy and surveillance other comments are focusing on:

\- I can't find any concrete data, but it feels like at least 50% of publications on conferences like NIPS or CVPR are made by Chinese nationals. Even if it is initially from USA universities, many researchers are going back, either due to unfavorable Visa situation or else.

\- Even among Silicon Valley investors, funds with China roots are relatively much more into AI startups

</comment><comment><USER19> The Chinese government's R&D initiatives are what's making the difference here. They've further laid out specific goals for particular technologies such as automated vehicles, drones, medical diagnosis, and machine translation, and their rate of R&D spend is on pace to overtake the US in the coming years.

For all its faults, their leadership has their eyes properly set on science and technology as a means to challenge the US economically and militarily. They're incentivizing the proper areas where they want industry to operate, and are better poised to take advantage of it. The US government is hampered by dysfunction in comparison.

Would hope the US sees what's at risk here, and moves from underestimating the threat, to overestimating it and taking massive action as they often do.

Better summary here: [https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/coming-tech-war- china](https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/coming-tech-war-china)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is the same as making government issues partisan to develop some sort of race and opposition. China already does the vast majority of manufacturing technology. It doesn't really matter what country does it. In the end, it will just be a smaller amount of money going to US businesses. Better ai has many applications but personal robot butlers and such have a while.

</comment><comment><USER21> i read the research. chinese contributions are amazing but it's a world wide phenomena

</comment><comment><USER22> Not sure about "will surpass". Possibly the inflection point already happened.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/china...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/china- artificial-intelligence/516615/)

> The 2017 AAAI meeting—which ultimately relocated to San Francisco—wrapped up > just last week. And as expected, Chinese researchers had a strong showing in > the historically U.S.-dominated conference. A nearly equal number of > accepted papers came from researchers based in China and the U.S. "This is > pretty surprising and impressive given how different it was even three, four > years back," says Rao.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> To give additional evidence why Eric Schmidt's comment has a basis in reality (and to reply to many sceptical comments here):

* 9 out of the top 10 algorithms for the Stanford Question Answering Dataset are by Chinese teams, backed by HIT & iFlLYTEK, Alibaba, Microsoft Asia (in Beijing), NUDT & Fudan University, and others. They beat out teams by Samsung, Salesforce, CMU, and Facebook, for example.

[https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD- explorer/](https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/)

It is not like others do not try. This is a highly commercializable area of research and there is no requirement to publish the technical details of the submitted solution.

* Based on publications from 2015 onward, Peking and Tsinghua University are ranked in the world's top 5 for published papers in top AI conferences (at #3 and #5).

[http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&v...](http://csrankings.org/#/fromyear/2017/toyear/2018/index?ai&vision&mlmining&nlp&world)

* China plans to add AI and programming courses in primary education. It is likely that soon, if not already, the _proportion_ of US middle and high schools that offer computer science courses will be lower than China's.

[http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0828/c90000-9261282.html](http://en.people.cn/n3/2017/0828/c90000-9261282.html)

* Most Chinese kids spend a significant amount of time working on their academics, even outside of school (whether this is good or bad at the individual level is different from the main topic of discussion here), while the same cannot be said about most American children.

* Since 2000, China's team was no. 1 in International Math Olympiad 12 times (out of 18) and 5 times at no. 2

[https://imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=CHN](https://imo- official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=CHN)

* Mathematics is an important foundation of AI. One needs to be relatively competent at math to understand most AI research papers and even textbooks. The level of math required may look basic to some HN readers but it still takes many years of focused learning to master for most people. Many smart people do not master math simply because they haven't spent the time.

The difference in math skills between the US and China high school students is evident in PISA 2015 results. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the potential _proportion_ of AI-capable natives in China could be 5 times as large as the US. Since China has more than 4 times the population, the potential _number_ could be 20 times.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339)

* China is doing everything it can to attract back their top talent as well as those from other countries. A reason for pollution curb, which starts to become successful, is to satisfy talent's requirement for quality of life. They have instituted a competitive program to attract global talent. (At the same time, the US is not exactly sending a welcome signal.)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program_(Ch...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Program_\(China\))

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/technology/china-us-ai- ar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/technology/china-us-ai-artificial- intelligence.html)

<comment><USER23> Counter-example: Geoffrey Hinton (who developed backpropagation), has a self- proclaimed phobia of mathematics. There's plenty more to innovation than solving those IMO problems, Google Code Jams, etc, because they involve very specific practice (and over-fit the needed skillsets).

It's instead the encouraging atmosphere and resultant inflows of capital (intellectual and otherwise) that may put China ahead in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Geoffrey Hinton may not be excellent at math at the professional level but if one watches his talks and lectures, it's clear that he is more competent than 99% of most populations.

AI requires more than math, but one cannot work competently in AI without being competent at math. Based on teaching experience, I would estimate the lower threshold to be about 2SD above global average (or equivalent to 700 PISA score in math), which might mean less than 2% of US high school students are above that threshold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> No doubt given a giant step ahead by open source initiatives such as TensorFlow, ironically.

</comment><comment><USER25> We're way ahead in cryptocurrency startups. We should definitely take that into account.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yet another US tech billionaire practically fetishizing China for their devotion to technology over people...

Sure, I can certainly get behind greater funding for scientific research and education for our benefit, but China is _certainly_ not a country I would like to emulate whatsoever.

My biggest question is, what is the meaning and implication of China "dominating" the AI industries? China overtaking the US in military and commercial might? This honestly seems unlikely.

And a follow up question is, besides government funding, what else is China doing to secure AI dominance? Putting human rights and regulations on the back burner would appear give them a competitive advantage - but is this worth the cost of privacy and freedom for the average citizen?

'"Shockingly some of the best people are in countries we won't let into America,' he said. "Iran produces some of the smartest and top computer scientists in the world. I want them here. I want them working for Alphabet and Google. It's crazy not to let these people in."'

Well now I am not following this logic at all. What is China doing to make working there more attractive? I would imagine the US looks a lot more attractive than China in terms of freedom and safety regulations.

If anyone has a copy of the AI report in English I would greatly appreciate it.

<comment><USER27> Easy to answer. China has billions of people and is getting exceedingly good at finding enough talent in this huge pool. This is sort of similar in Russia which has the additional advantage of better tuned education system and just as few scruples.

<comment><USER6> > China has billions of people

Calm down, it hasn't even reached 1.5 billion yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> China's GDP outgrows the west's by 5-10 percentage points pr. year. This means that in about 10 years China's economy in size will be twice that of the US.

That means China will dominate in most engineering fields. Also some where the US today is an absolute leader.

<comment><USER29> China is a juggernaut and will overtake the US, but I would guess in 20-30 years.

Economic figures from China are not very reliable. But they are making smart investments while the US is mostly moving money from one pile to another.</comment></comment>


In Chilean desert, global thirst for lithium is fueling a 'water war' - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-lithium-water/in-chilean-desert-global-thirst-for-lithium-is-fueling-a-water-war-idUSKCN1LE16T <comment><USER2> Speaks for itself. We never seem to learn.</comment>


Comparing Startup Ecosystems: SV, London, NYC - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/10/startup-genome-compares-top-startup-hubs/

<comment><USER2> As pointed out by @sakai I am surprised there is no mention of sample bias. I wonder if the results where adjusted to account for over- / under- representation from certain geographies, especially non-english speaking (e.g., Beijing) who probably never heard of SGP, much less used their Startup Compass.

Otherwise all good. By far the most detailed comparison I have seen of different locations and beats the pointless VC dollars per capita argument being touted at conferences and all over the interweb.

I guess at the end of the day it is a personal or team decision depending on many factors (connections, market, investors, family & friends ...etc.) but the more information to make that decision the better.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was most surprised by the average age of founders. Early 30s is about a decade older than the media let me to believe.

Perhaps the median age would've been a more insightful statistic.

<comment><USER4> The media glorifies youth. Always has, always will.

Even when Kevin Rose raised capital he was portrayed by Businessweek as some highschool wizkid when he was in his early 30s <http://images.businessweek.com/mz/06/33/0633covdc.gif>

Cameras will go to kids first, too, and older geeks are typically more private.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is such a dramatic step above the typical NYC vs. SV start-up reportage that goes on Techcrunch and GigaOm. Bravo.

That said, it IS based on a lot of survey data, with all the concomitant warts...

</comment><comment><USER6> Ah, yet more information to considered when I finally move from the startup hub that is CT. Biggest surprise for me was the relative size of Boulder.

"Silicon Valley's ecosystem is currently 3-times bigger than New York City, 4.5-times bigger than London, 12.5-times bigger than Berlin, and 38-times larger than Boulder."

</comment><comment><USER7> Happy to see Santiago, Chile is #12 on this list of top startup hubs.

I was a participant in Start-Up Chile (<http://startupchile.com>) and I do not believe it would feature at all without the programme. I think this provides some evidence that you can buy a startup hub. With the same amount of spending but with better execution (independent of government) I think there is potential for a developing world country to make it into the top 5. They really need to get much closer to implementing the model described by PG in Can You Buy a Silicon Valley: <http://www.paulgraham.com/maybe.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> You either have tons of funding or tons of talent: SV has both which is why it's the center of the IT universe.

NYC has more funding than engineers, and all other hubs are either a mix of both or have a serious deficit in one side (or even both) meaning making a startup there is very difficult, and if it takes off odds are they are going to move to a bigger hub, like SV.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps the greatest contribution of the 'cloud' is that it allows startups to sprout just about anywhere. These are definitely exciting times we're in!

I'm a little surprised not to see Boston on the top 25 list.

I would love to see a map overlay indicating factors such as wealth and education in these regions to see how strong the correlation is.

<comment><USER10> Boston is #18 on the list, isn't it?

But somehow I doubt those numbers. São Paulo is #8 on the list. But I have a hard time naming 10 relevant startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The bottom of the article lists the top 25 startup ecosystems. I am very surprised that Beijing is not one of them. I have a hard time believing DC/Chicago/Montreal's startup throughput is anywhere near Beijing's. What do you guys think?

<comment><AUTHOR> Beijing is growing extremely fast and will probably soon surpass more established ecosystems DC/Chicago/Montreal. Also , our data are not perfect for Beijing due to the language barrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where's the actual report? I got an email from the startup genome guys about this but it only links to the TC article. I'd like to read the complete findings, not just the summarised version.

</comment><comment><USER13> >2\. New York City (NYC, Brooklyn) NYC means New York City. And Brooklyn is part of NYC, it's one of the 5 boroughs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Beijing should be #2 on the list. Understood that it's tough to get data due to the language barrier, but for such a gigantic hub like Beijing it's worth reaching out to some people to really drive that data collection next time around. I'm happy to help in the future.

<comment><USER15> I know you're probably saying this to be controversial, but why should Beijing be #2? Are there any studies (even in Chinese) that back this statement up?

<comment><USER14> Scott, with a straight face and no controversy at all I'm definitely saying it. Beijing is indisputably not only the 'Silicon Valley of China' but also for all of Asia. It was initially sparked since the seat of gov't is here and there are so many universities here but there are many other reasons why it's become the hub for the largest wireless and largest internet market in the world. But due to language, the Great Firewall of China and failures of so many int'l internet companies here in the Middle Kingdom, and other reasons there's relatively little press about the thriving geekosystem here. However on just about every metric it is surely the #2 behind the Valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tokyo notably yet I suppose unsurprisingly absent..</comment>


iPhones RF emissions above safe levels? - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/08/21/iphone-radiofrequency-radiation-levels-testing/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this hasn't made it up to the front page yet, but votes are split across a few different submissions. Here's the source:

[https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell- phone-...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone- radiation-testing-20190821-72qgu4nzlfda5kyuhteiieh4da-story.html)

I'm a little disappointed in the methodology here. They only used one testing lab and a small number of phones, and an iPhone model released 3 years ago.

Back in the days of Antennagate, Apple gave a tour of their wireless testing lab to WIRED[1]. In the design of the new Apple Park campus, they added a "North Testing Building" and "South Testing Building" which I assumed were upgrades of the original lab, but I don't have any knowledge of them.

I'm a bit skeptical that they would invest heavily in these testing labs and then thwart the standards. And could they get away with it in 70+ countries they sell in?

1: [https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-antenna- lab/](https://www.wired.com/2010/07/apple-antenna-lab/)</comment>


Facebook follows SpaceX and OneWeb into high-speed satellite broadband - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/facebook-follows-spacex-and-oneweb-into-high-speed-satellite-broadband/ <comment><USER2> Part of me really wants this because it brings access to all of the world's people that can get at a computer with the appropriate transmission and reception device and would allow people to be able to easily get information out when under the threat of a hostile government.

Part of me wants this aborted, see: Kessler syndrome.</comment>