QMASM: A Quantum Macro Assembler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/losalamos/qmasm <comment><USER2> I wonder how much "shielding" is good, however, for the programmer. This is exciting for me, but I also think the assemblers should teach programmers the deep technical components of quantum computing systems like D-Wave's adiabatic quantum computers. A project to watch, for sure.

<comment><USER3> It is a common and significant misconception that D-Wave is an "adiabatic quantum computer". Adiabatic quantum computers for instance would be able to factor numbers in polynomial time (or more generally, adiabatic quantum computers have the full power of quantum computation, i.e. they efficiently solve problems in the BQP class). D-Wave, while being an interesting computing machine, is definitely not a general quantum computer (not even they claim that anymore). Moreover, classical computers have proven to be better at the optimization problems D-Wave was specifically designed for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is a debate on whether this architecture gives any advantage over classical computer architectures. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems)

<comment><USER3> Calling it a "debate" might be giving too much credit to D-Wave. Nobody, not even they anymore, is claiming that this is a machine capable of more efficient computations than a classical Turing machine (as opposed to a quantum circuit). By "efficient computation" I mean asymptotically polynomial.

Moreover, experimenting with the actual hardware has shown that a classical computer is practically better than this machine (in terms of money, electricity, or time).</comment></comment>


Major Games Publishers Are Feeling the Impact of Peaking Attention - <AUTHOR> https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/major-games-publishers-are-feeling-the-impact-of-peaking-attention/ <comment><USER3> This seems like a inaccurate take from folks who are not following the gaming industry closely.

Activision just had a record-setting year of high revenue (presumably they _are not_ feeling the impact of peaking attention), in part because the quality of their products is still high-ish. They laid people off because they could, not because of any downturn in business.

EA's quarterly results are down, because their product quality has suffered and their pricing has risen, players are somewhat disengaging. Those problems are with EA and internal to EA, not problems with the industry.

\---

The article is right to claim that too much focus is on "Fortnite", but they miss their own point. These companies are not suffering from "peak attention", so much as they have stumbled into various mismanagement and/or bled out a chunk of their talent and ability to create. These companies problems are impacting the products they ship.

If you build a well designed, well crafted product, players will still happily arrive and spend lots of money (as EA's own Apex Legends is showing today, and as Fortnite, Spider-Man, RDR2, Warframe, Path of Exile, Magic Arena, and many others routinely demonstrate.)

<comment><USER4> The best reporting on Activision I've seen has been from outside the games industry and games journalism (I've preferred writing from this link, Variety, Bloomberg, etc.)

Activision is not concerned about whether they are making money now. They are concerned about whether they can continue to make money. They have profitable, mature lines but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat to both Call of Duty and Overwatch, not to mention what's next after that. They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that wouldn't be able to help with that.

The morality of layoffs can be debated, of course, but analysis of the reasoning has been too absent from close followers of the games industry.

<comment><USER3> > but nothing in the battle royale genre that is quickly growing and a threat > to both Call of Duty and Overwatch

That's not really how games work though. Games are mainly emotional purchases of mass-produced art, not commodities like Corn or Oil. Games are not fungible like this. Telling Activision "you must make a battle royale game because Fortnite" is a quick way to watch them burn a lot of money on something that likely won't be very successful.

It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

> They need to invest heavily in acquisitions and development of new titles > using their existing brands. The layoffs came from areas of the company that > wouldn't be able to help with that.

With all due respect, I believe Activision needs to do the exact opposite of the above.

They need to invest in their existing successful titles (WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, Hearthstone), all of which have growth opportunity Activision has ignored in various amounts. And Activision needs to constantly be developing _new_ brands with _innovative_ new games behind them to experiment with. This is a sustainable approach to business in an industry where the market demands can shift wildly _literally overnight_.

Trying to acquire their way out of this, and recycle their old brands year- over-year into quick products, is how their product quality dropped in the first place. It's not a healthy way to handle the market, it's not a sustainable way to grow their business, and it's why they constantly worry about "whether they can continue to make money".

<comment><USER5> > It's like saying, "Hey Warner Brothers. Disney just made a bunch of money > making this 'Frozen' film, so you need to also make a movie about Magical > Sisters in some sort of Medieval European Ice Palace". Technically, they can > execute on this, but the result is unlikely to be successful.

Maybe a more apt example is "Hey WB, Marvel just made a huge amount of money making a 'Shared Superhero Movie Universe'. You should do that too".

Although I guess WB is finally starting to make good movies in Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and maybe Shazam?

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----

In any case, I agree with you. Battle Royale games are clearly the hot new thing at the moment, but Hearthstone (Blizzard / Activision) basically created the online collectable card game (yeah: MtG is the original game, but it never had a good and/or profitable video-game version before Hearthstone).

The goal of these game companies should be to discover the NEXT big game genre. Battle Royale is big today, but it will be years before you can launch a new Battle Royale game on the same quality as Fortnite.

New Genres pop up all the time: MOBA (League, DOTA, HOTS), MMORPG (WoW, Guild Wars, Final Fantasy, Eve), and now Battle Royale. Who knows? Maybe the next major genre will be robot-cars with rockets on them that play soccer. (Rocket League, except no clones have been made yet!! Think about it...)

<comment><USER6> I feel that the structural components of these large gaming publishers are actively working against them creating an environment to discover any new thing, let alone a new game genre. For instance I just do not believe that these large companies have the logistical bandwidth/incentive to not chase a 100MM hit, and these larger publishers have clearly learned from the post-MMO, post-Kickstarter, F2P/DLC landscape. It was quite a few years ago when I heard the anecdote that all new proposals should have a DLC/loot box hook for projects, and it just makes so much sense. Valve and others trailblazed the concept that you could convince people to part with their money for a chance of getting something of perceived value. Everything they have been doing is to create ecosystems of engagement to create those long relationship/impulse opportunities. To me, this is optimizing for the fact that most consumers in the market seem to have less free money for the traditional model that they are used to, but are willing to leak out a few dollars here and there en masse. From the platform side the console churn/complexity that was there in the 90's is lessened, slowed, and standardized.

The organizations themselves feel like they can't handle 100 1MM projects compared to a single 100MM project just from leadership and management but that's not something I blame wholly on these companies, it's a structural thing in most public companies right now. From a simple analysis it is so much less risky for them to just acquire a new development firm with a sure thing/hit that can be shoved down their sales funnel. You gain the best parts of the corpse too: the employees, the IP, the proven product, and the future and recurring sales. Sure they'll lose the employees, but the rest of it will carry weight until the IP is forgotten. Even right now the IP for both EA/Activision is probably still worth a ton if they had to part it out.

In a more theory kind of sense I just feel like this is one of the problems with how public companies work right now. Once you are of a certain size and exist primarily in the B2C space, the mindset becomes optimize, reduce costs, and make GAAP profits. While I feel like historically this may have been a healthy transition from companies at (today's dollars) 50MM-150MM AR to take them to 500MM+ AR it doesn't translate as well when a 100MM revenue increase is the only way to even move the needle when the majority of the company's revenue steals the attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's been years since I played any games really. I enjoyed D3 and really committed for a while to WoW. personally, I don't really like free to play as it distorts the gaming experience too much. Take WoW for example: when it started, it was legitimately slow and hard to get to level 20. Now that level 20 is the free to play cap, it only takes a few hours. All the fun that came from exploration and "play" of the game in that early level set is now gone, replaced by speed grinding, achievements, and constant rewards. I feel like leveling used to be a consequence of playing, now, since they've basically decided that there is no play until endgame, leveling is a chore that is meant to be rushed through. I mean, I get that endgame play is fun, and that the big raids are fun, but, they've so distorted the solo-questability that as a part time player there is virtually no point. There was a point in there where they could have focused on the long-term viability of the game and doubled down on mid-game content - better quests with complicated storylines, better low-level raids, better "role playing game" mechanics. Instead, they focused on endgame, where WoW and Fortnite start to look a lot more similar. One just takes a ton of work to be competitive and one is easy any free.

I guess if I had one point to make it would be that all the big titles focus a lot on endgame rather than making the mid-game deeper and more fun.

<comment><USER8> This is why Everquest was so great for me. Leveling took a long time and you really got to explore the world. It would take teaming up with people just to make perilous journeys - this is something I don't think exists anymore in games. Additionally, gear lasted much longer. You could be using the same piece of armor for months potentially as you leveled in EQ. It really felt like you were building your character. Now in MMOs, it often feels like you are just checking boxes to get best-in-slot items so you can be like every other high level $build $class character.

<comment><USER9> Some of my very favorite moments in videogaming ever occurred during the EverQuest closed beta. That game was so great. It would get _dark_ at night, to the point where if you didn't have a torch (which cost money) you'd be bumping into the trees in Kelethin in pitch blackness, and shortly get taken down by monsters. I remember spending nearly half of my time playing that game just waiting around in the dark by the town torches of Felwithe or Kelethin, chatting with other players and waiting for the sun to rise again so I could go back out into the world. That game didn't even yet have a minimap, so when you got lost, you got _LOST_ , and it was especially bad when the sun started going down and you still couldn't find a safe haven. The areas were big too, so you'd be playing for hours until you finally started learning how to navigate them. I remember downloading maps and printing them out, and referring to them when I got lost in game trying to figure out where I was.

<comment><USER7> The lack of a minimap is pretty awesome. There is a careful balance between preserving adventure vs making the game frustrating; between convenient and immersive.

I very much liked the early days of D2 when you had to legitimately watch out to always have scrolls of town portal. Or in D1 when your mana didn't auto- recharge and you had to meter out potions, trips to down for free heal/mana, and just getting in there and doing physical damage because you were out of mana and needed to wait for a potion to drop.

Convenient features always take me out of the world a bit, and stuff where you have to die, try something new, die again, etc to win always makes me feel like I'm actually learning to play better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Blatant self-promotion:

For us who grew up playing lots of video games but are now adults, we now have: 1\. Way less time 2\. A higher expectation of quality 3\. More money

Creating "Quality Time" entertainment is why I founded Escape Character. We're a platform for online experiences with a live actor. Since a paid actor is involved, and we pay them a suitable rate, events are ticketed even though they're online, just like an escape room or theatre show.

I have a background in improv theatre (but also a PhD in Comp Sci), and my initial crazy idea was "what if every NPC in a game you were playing was played by a good improvisor who could adjust to you." Economically this is feasible as long as the player:actor ratio is 4:1.

Our first online experience released last week - a 45 minute "live action digital adventure" called The Aluminum Cat. Tickets here: [https://escape- character.com/](https://escape-character.com/)

This content is made in-house, but our goal for Escape Character is to enable actors to work from wherever, to audiences based anywhere. Currently these kind of high-touch responsive experiences are exclusively in-person, e.g. escape rooms, immersive theatre, Disneyland.

<comment><USER11> I'm not yet convinced that this is something I'd really like, but I have to admit I'm intrigued. And the prices seem really reasonable.

I feel like I'd be more sure (and more likely to purchase tickets) if I had a better idea of how it plays. The description seems to be lacking. Perhaps a short video would help people better understand what they're buying into?

To be fair, this is my problem with real "dinner theatre" as well. I simply don't know what to expect, and so I'm not likely to buy tickets.

<comment><USER10> That's valid! I think communication and setting expectations around immersive events is an unsolved problem.

We have a gif here: [https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448](https://twitter.com/dustinfreeman/status/1096887625779048448)

And a secret highlight reel from our premiere show: [https://escape- character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights...](https://escape- character.com/secret/TheAluminumCatHighlights.mp4)

For many immersive events, lots of people are curious, but afraid that they'll be forced to act, or put in an awkward situation. It doesn't help that most "immersive theatre" events are so expensive to run they haven't really tried to expand out of the rich early adopter urbanite demographic.

Initially our closed alpha format had audience speaking to the actor, but we repeatedly found out that the average person was intimidated. We recently switched to a mouse-based/ouija-like UI you can see in the highlight reel. This has been surprisingly expressive. We don't use audio or text chat at all for the audience anymore. More info on my blog: [https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre- mice/](https://dustinfreeman.org/blog/immersive-theatre-mice/)

If I was to describe these events honestly, I'd called them "streamlined D&D" or "training wheels LARPs", but I think D&D and LARP* are intimidating mediums to the average person.

* Live Action Roleplaying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem for me is that games are rarely designed to be "complete" anymore. I assume there's some kind of catch with most of them, and it's tiring. Why spend time on a game only to discover that it's actually missing entire chapters, or has major bugs, or is curiously un-fun without an oddly expensive "optional" item? (Clearly many people must fall for these schemes, otherwise so many games would not be designed this way.)

"Initial price" seems to be the lure. Game revenue would look a lot different if publishers were required to use the term "Submit DOWN PAYMENT of $0.99 (All Content: $200.00)" or "Pay First Month $0.99 (Price Per Month: $3.99)" or "Try Now (All Content: $389.00)" or "Buy Chapters 1-3 ($9.99)".

Similarly, it would be very useful if publishers were required to show statistics on what percentage of people bought each downloadable pack. If you offer different downloadable chapters for instance and I see you have 50,000 downloads of the first chapter at $0.99 and like 10 people buying Chapter 2, I can conclude that maybe your game was not fun enough for people to want to play more. The platform may be able to determine this too, e.g. calculating an "average price per hour" factor that translates app time from those who purchased at least one component of the app, giving you a sense of how much time they were able to spend for their money.

<comment> the-pigeon There's a ton of modern games that don't do this.

Most of the top games your find on metacritic for Switch, PS4, PC and Xbox One don't do that.

For example games like Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, and Read Dead Redemption 2 are complete games without the catch you are talking about.

<comment><USER13> Basically just stay away from EA, Activision and Ubisoft and you won't find that much of this stuff.

Did I miss any?

<comment><USER14> I've played Far Cry 5 from Ubisoft and Destiny 2 from Activision and they both seemed like complete games to me.

<comment><USER13> Yep, even these big offenders only do it sometimes. EA released Apex Legends recently too - the key to that seems to be that Respawn owns the IP and EA didn't actually have any input in the development (allegedly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An interesting thing that's happening right now with the release and rise of Apex Legends is seeing how these now stale numbers are already starting to move around in regards to the level of engagement that Fortnite now commands versus what it commanded only weeks ago.

The pace that the market is moving is pretty incredible in direct contrast to the landscape even just 5 years ago when MOBA's owned the world.

This in conjunction with other nimble, highly accessible entertainment experiences (Tiktok, HQ and its clones, etc) make for vast and extremely fickle landscape vying for attention. It's really fascinating to zoom out and watch it unfold.

Personally I'm just thrilled to see the level of production around eSports really kick off. Games that have been around for a decade plus now (CS:GO, Dota 2, Street Fighter) now have these incredibly high quality events and online coverage that for me have shifted my attention away from many traditional sports I used to watch.

Exciting times for sure.

<comment><USER16> I do think Esports is let down by bad production quality of the telecasts, for eg: Most Rocket League telecasts seem show most of the match from each players camera, quickly switching from one player to another, but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable. Even with CSGO and Overwatch, similar problems, the game designers and sportscaster should promote such more viewer friendly production of telecasts.

Also most esports telecasts have too much fluff and too little gameplay, hours of pregame chats and pettifloggery for very short actual gameplay, they should take a hint from football(Soccer for Americans), esp EPL broadcasts, very less fluff.

I think the content would be richer if one could spectate the tournaments in- engine rather than watch them as video streams, atleast then viewers can take full potential of such telecasts, see things from any angle / perspective desired.

<comment><USER17> > but showing the whole action from a roof-top or sky camera or atleast > traditional football broadcast like camera would make it more watchable

I'm quite sure this is very intentional with Rocket League broadcasts. There's even a "director cam" that Psyonix built for this purpose, and it is still used often. It's just that it's not as exciting or impressive when you're not seeing it from the player's view for whatever reason. Everything looks slower and you miss all the nuances of the pros' mechanics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like I'm way out of touch with what I read online about game prices, and I don't think that I'm looking at things wrong. Games still cost about what they did when I was a teenager -- which is to say game prices haven't kept price with inflation. Meanwhile, games have added big increased in graphical quality, in the amount of voice acting and mo-cap involved, in the size of maps and whatnot. Meanwhile, for instance, I got Assassin's Creed Odyssey for myself for Christmas, and I've been putting 5-10 hours a week into it ever since and I'm still only about 2/3rd of the way through the main story campaign. There's almost no other entertainment medium where I can go spend $60 and get that much time spent out of it. And by just waiting for the holidays, I didn't have to spend $60, I spent like $30. And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it.

<comment><USER19> > And yet online I see complaint after complaint about how big AAA games > aren't delivering value for the money because of all the DLC available that > they feel "should" be part of the base game. I don't get it.

My complaint: If I, something of a story completionist, want to ensure I get to play all the story content which was built for, say, Asassain's Creed Odessey, I have to not only pay that up front $100+ (to get the appropriate level of pre-order exclusive content) cost, I have to spend an additional hundred plus for season passes and other DLC. And that's not counting all the extra skins and weapons for sale.

I'm glad you feel you're getting your money's worth, but not everyone plays games the same way you do. For some people, the level of content you purchased is a week's worth of entertainment.

<comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure the game plus season pass was $80 at launch. Where are you getting $200 from?

And what is someone _doing_ if they can burn through a game like Odyssey in a week? According to How Long To Beat, even if you skip the side quests and blow through the main campaign, that's 30 hours.

[https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503](https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=57503)

<comment><USER19> Gold was $100 (game plus season pass, plus an additional launch-time storyline), ultimate was $120 (additional skins and gear).

[https://vulkk.com/2018/06/12/assassins-creed-odyssey-pre- ord...](https://vulkk.com/2018/06/12/assassins-creed-odyssey-pre-order- details-and-editions-differences/)

30 hours over a week is only 4-5 hours per day. For someone without children, that's hardly outlandish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Regarding the video attention, Fortnite is building most of its community around game streamers instead of players! Most of the Fortnite events are heavily focused on big streamers than pro gamers unlike other successful big gaming communities.

That leaves a lot of power to streamers hand. But streamers will play any game that they're get paid to play unlike players from community.

Most of their community are following streamers instead of the game or Epic. That is how many of them moved to ApexLegends when top streamers got paid to play ApexLegends.

<comment><USER21> > But streamers will play any game that they're get paid to play unlike > players from community

They're also paid by the community through subscriptions and direct payments (Twitch bits). They'll get more people watching (and more bits/subscriptions) if they play an already popular game that people are interested in watching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article doesn't really mention mobile gaming which is a big factor in the attention economy, whether PC/console gamers like it or not. I think companies that handle mobile gaming properly will be at a serious advantage.

I think Supercell is one company that does well in this space and understand that attention is a commodity. I've been playing their latest game Brawl Stars, and I although the graphics are a bit cartoonish for me, I can see the genious behind their design decisions: the game combines several modes that are simplified versions of today's popular genres, moba and battle royale. Each game session lasts no longer than 2 minutes and it's continuous real time gameplay. There is no waiting, no searching for opponents, no setup. You just pickup the phone and play. These 2 minutes of gameplay however are very engaging and fun.

This is the kind of sessions a lot people will be looking for in today's world.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd love to spend money on games. Most games seem to be optimized for younger audience (==dumbed down) or monetized in really dumb ways. So no buy.

<comment><USER24> Here are some worth your time and money. Look to indie games, mostly. Lots of great stuff in that space.

\- Spelunky

\- Don't Starve

\- Factorio

\- Oxygen Not Included

\- All Zachtronic's games

\- Stephen's Sausage Roll

\- Stardew Valley

\- Faster than Light

\- Kerbal Space Program

\- Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan)

\- Return of Obra Dinn

\- Prison Architect

\- Mini Metro

\- Cities: Skylines

\- Frostpunk

\- RimWorld

\- Darkest Dungeon

\- Monument Valley

\- Portal

\- Journey

\- Paper's Please

\- This War of Mine

\- The Witness

<comment><USER23> Thanks for recommendation! (I already ticked off several titles from the list, will check out the rest)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To me there are a couple of things going on. Both were touched on by the article to different degrees.

One thing is that videos games interest is largely affected by trends. When PUBG blew up I had been out of the loop and I actually thought it was a novel concept. But it wasn't. It was just an improvement to game modes that had existed for years. Now we have seen Fortnite take over interest in PUBG and now with Apex not because it was a totally new thing but because it's a familiar thing with new wrinkles. It's a lot like clothing fashion. We don't really go for totally new ideas because we want to fit in. There is a network affect going on where the hot new thing dominates just because everyone is doing it now. So there is definitely a limited amount of attention.

The other thing is the fact that various video streaming services exist and people can get much of the same experience from video or streams as they get from actually playing games. But video or streams are free or inexpensive whereas each new game requires a heavy investment. It is enjoyable to watch someone else play a game. Not quite as fun as playing it yourself necessarily but it also takes much less effort. You can also get various degrees of social benefits from streams or videos depending on how much time or effort. Again, not as good as "real" socialization necessarily, but also usually with much less effort.

I would go so far as to say that a lot of the investment into assets, programming, story, content in general is being broadcast out for free or low cost or for the benefit of streaming platforms/streamers and it's possible that the producers of those video games are not able to make as many sales as they would have had their content not been available (albeit in a non- interactive way) on those broadcast platforms. Which is not to say that it's necessarily overall bad for sales or bad for consumers. I just think it has an effect of sales.

</comment><comment><USER26> The rate of technological improvement in video games has also slowed down (i.e, smaller increments in terms of graphics).

Graphics are a major part of a video game and the first thing most people notice. With a slow down here it seems inevitable that there will be a slow down across the industry.

</comment><comment><USER27> While we're all complaining about the state of current games, what I really want is for games (especially RTS games, but really any game) to come with an API so I can build and test AIs. For example, I love the game Planetary Annihilation (I played its predecessor Total Annihilation a ton as a kid). But after a few dozen games, I began to think 'I wonder if I could just encode my strategy as a policy' \- not even deep-RL necessarily, just a set of rules. But I can't even try because they don't have an API :(

<comment><USER28> If you're into RTS, Starcraft 2 is basis for a bunch of research and has an API available - <USER2> [https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2](https://github.com/deepmind/pysc2) or a tutorial for getting started [https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting- started-with-the-st...](https://njustesen.com/2018/01/16/getting-started-with- the-starcraft-2-learning-environment/)

DOTA had also decent API links as far as I recall.

Also, there's a lot of research on older games, see [https://github.com/openai/retro](https://github.com/openai/retro) for interfacing with NES/SNES/GBA/etc games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Investors see something like Fortnite making crazy amounts of money and ask why your game isn't generating that revenue. It's not rocket science.

</comment><comment><USER30> There is intense competition between these battle royale games. Possibly more intense competition than we've ever seen. Being the 2nd WoW or top MOBA pales in comparison. Of the dozen BRs I've played (including mods for existing games), all but 3 already seem somewhat dead. PUBG, which was the leader for what seems like the longest duration, now seems like a distant third, and will likely never recover.

<comment><USER31> I think it might have something to do with a combination of free to play and no matchmaking.

Once a BR has saturated the market, the percentage of new to experienced players starts to drop. I think most players will reach a skill peak and the game starts to get harder faster than they are improving. This can be frustrating, and since newer BRs have a higher percentage of less skill players they feel easier. With no money barrier, the players switch.

<comment><USER32> That makes a lot of sense. And even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is based on monotonic point accumulation, players with sub-average skill growth will be pushed out. Likewise, if the matchmaking rank decays slower (or not at all) than actual skill, players who took a break will leave when they try to return.

<comment><USER33> > even matchmaking, if implemented badly, won't help much: when matchmaking is > based on monotonic point accumulation

Do any (modern, popular) games implement this kind of matchmaking? I believe there's often a monotonically increasing 'rank' or 'level' displayed to the player, but I'd be surprised if any major games used this kind of score as the sole foundation for matchmaking.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interviewing for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://rawsyntax.com/post/6112439871/interviewing-for-programmers

<comment><USER2> this is some good advice. wish i had read this before my most recent round of interviews!</comment>


Linux Audio Conference 2017 – Paul Davis keynote - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZbMfyBGPKo&t=8658 <comment><AUTHOR> OP note: recommended talk, some details on the state of the Linux audio world in 2017, but also lots of thoughts applicable to not just audio software but general open-source/free software projects.</comment>


As more of them die, grocery workers increasingly fear showing up at work - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/12/grocery-worker-fear-death-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> This is going to get worse, and for other professions not generally getting news coverage.

A close relative of mine for the USPS. Mail volume has dropped dramatically, yet they are desperate for employees to work overtime.

It's because so many are using their vacation/sick time or otherwise not coming in, and I don't blame them. Some are going through cancer treatment, have diabetes, or other complications which put them at risk.

Some in the distribution center have contracted COVID-19, and at least one (but maybe more) has already died.

There are a lot of people endangering their life coming in to work, and not just grocery stores and hospitals.

<comment><USER3> > Mail volume has dropped dramatically, yet they are desperate for employees > to work overtime.

I thought mail volume was dramatically _up_ because everyone's ordering online?

<comment><USER4> I talked to the franchise owner of a UPS store outside of Boston, and he reported a 50% dropoff in business, as well as a shift in the types of orders for people working from home as well as people shipping things like toilet paper.

The big issue for the post office is the amount commercial mail has fallen off a cliff and will likely continue to drop. Anecdotally, we have seen very little junk mail in the past month other than grocery fliers. I predict serial publications like regional magazines will fail, too -- running a magazine was already tough, but now it's even worse now that many advertisers have gone out of business or are cutting back on marketing costs. If they don't have enough subscribers to keep the presses running, it's game over.

<comment><USER5> Interesting yet in retrospect not too surprising given that even Amazon is bottlenecking - even with increased demand in general that they could have issues keeping demand up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Then again, here's Kevin Drum @ Mother Jones asking what he got wrong here:

[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working- in-a-...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/working-in-a-grocery- store-is-a-pretty-safe-job/)

RTLD: 41 cited deaths among 3M grocery workers is a lower death rate than the population as a whole ?

<comment><USER7> >RTLD: 41 cited deaths among 3M grocery workers is a lower death rate than the population as a whole ?

If you're comparing grocers death rate against the population as a whole, that's not a good comparison as it doesn't control for grocer's demographics. I think that grocers would be younger (on average) than the the general population, and therefore should have lower death rates.

<comment><USER8> What is the term for this sort of statistical error? I see it very often in online discussions.

I think it's related to Simpson's paradox [0] or general issues with interpreting conditional probabilities, but I'm not sure what the best overarching term is for this sort of fallacy.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox)

<comment><USER9> Failure to control for confounders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the SF south bay area stores have been very uneven across the board with respect to sanitizing and rate limiting customers. Some seem to be faster and started early (e.g. Trader Joe's) while others are doing little.

A few days ago was the first time I saw that most (not all) Whole Foods workers had PPE (mask, gloves). I'm hoping its a supply issue, but wouldn't be surprised if it was a corporate "don't scare people" issue.

While I strongly prefer to select my food for quality, I'd be happy for workers' sake if stores were pure pickup only (basically a local warehouse) with enough slots for everyone to get what they need; leaving delivery for those who really need it. But stores are just not equipped to handle that sort of operation.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious, how do gloves help protect you from Covid? It's not transmitted through the skin, and you will get just as sick if you touch your face with bare hands as with gloved hands.

<comment><USER12> The value of gloves is they help keep your hands clean. If you don't wear gloves, you are reliant on a good hand wash to get the virus off. You can miss spots, it can get under your nails. Gloves aren't going to help if you are touching your face with them, but they allow for a better decontamination process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I noticed they aren't very consistent. Some stores already put up plexiglass barriers in front of the cashiers, appear to be enforcing distance, etc. Others aren't.

</comment><comment><USER14> Grocery worker COVID deaths: 41/900000 = 0.00004555555 (this number is from article and only for union members).

Total US COVID deaths: 28000/328000000 = 0.00008536585. So seemingly there's nothing particularly risky about being a grocery store worker. In fact, you're about half as likely to die!

Keep in mind the 328mm number includes children, non-working adults, etc and of course total deaths are skewed towards older non-working adults. Still it's extremely frustrating, but not surprising, that the media refuses to do any sort of cursory analysis like this.

<comment><USER15> It's probably not about death, it's probably about the no insurance and risk of bankruptcy by hospitalization they fear.

<comment><USER16> Does workman's comp cover on job exposure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We've basically split our population into two groups, a large group that is (hopefully) staying put and not interacting with the world as much as possible, and a small group that is still going about business as usual, because we need them to. The smaller group is hopefully doing everything they can reduce their risks, but small risks repeated frequently become likely odds.

As a civilization, this still buys us a lot (in the US, it's the difference between 30 million and 230 million people catching the disease and some percent of them dying), but even if you assume all 3 million grocery store employees are in the low-risk 20-29 demographic, we're still expecting ~1200 of them to die from COVID-19, given our current understanding of the disease.

That alone would make working in a grocery store roughly as dangerous as being a coal miner in the present day US, or roughly 4 times more dangerous than being a police officer; it gets worse if you assume many employees are not in the lowest risk category.

<comment><USER18> We will all get the disease, we won't delay it enough to get a vaccine. Those people will just get it earlier.

What we are fighting for is to not let everybody get it at the same time. Because when that happens, not only this disease kills a whole lot more, but other diseases and accidents and whatever start killing many times more too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The rational thing would be to pay grocery workers in risk groups (underlying diseases, age) to stay at home.

(And recruit healthy young people to temporarily replace them.)

<comment><USER7> >(And recruit healthy young people to temporarily replace them.)

better yet, people who recovered from covid-19.

<comment><USER20> That's not a guarantee of anything. Reinfection or relapsing happens and is not explained yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, these store have to stay open, no matter what. So I guess there's nothing to be done, other than have low-risk populations ready to fill these roles.

Seems a little bit scare-mongery to me.

<comment><USER22> > _there 's nothing to be done, other than have low-risk populations ready to > fill these roles._

Or increase wages. Quantity demanded of labor is greater than supply. It's relatively-unskilled work, so drawing new entrants to the labor pool isn't prohibitive. But it isn't happening at prevailing wages.

That wage increase, in turn, might merit price increases for customers. If politicians find that untenable, they may spread the cost to taxpayers instead through public programs.

If you're involved at any of these levels, reading the writing on the wall would be useful.

<comment><USER23> Why would a corporation do that? These jobs are "essential" and are also _extremely easy to replace_. That's why we don't see wages going up and likely will see the opposite in the coming few months.

Supply is FAR larger than demand right now. Have you seen the unemployment rate right now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There definitely should be a rule limiting the number of people allowed in stores.

I've quit going to our before pandemic store. It is impossible to social distance.

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://archive.md/rVsdx](https://archive.md/rVsdx)

</comment><comment><USER26> We need cultural changes.

More self checkout.

More automatic sliding doors.

Better designed public bathrooms similar to Walmart bathrooms: No door at all; choice between paper towels and hot air hand dryer; touchless faucets and automatic flush toilets.

Hand sanitizer at every cash register.

Better training for cashiers. Cashiers who do things like lick their fingers to open bags have long been the bane of my existence because I have a compromised immune system.

What we are doing now is not the way it has to be. PPE is not the optimal solution.

I think we have our priorities backwards. We emphasize the hell out of hand washing. It's number one on the list of "five things" the WHO is encouraging people to do to stop the spread.

Number three is "Stop touching your face." That should be the top priority. It's prevention.

Emphasizing hand washing as more important than "stop touching your face" is implicitly telling people "It's okay to expose yourself. Just use soap afterwards and everything will be okay."

No, it won't. You need to stop touching your face. You need to stop licking your fingers to separate grocery bags.

On top of that, you should also wash hands frequently. But washing hands frequently isn't enough in the current culture where people are oblivious about the things they touch.

When I ask cashiers "Please don't do that" or "Please use hand sanitizer now that you have licked your fingers" they sometimes tell me they didn't do what I just watched them do seconds ago. They do it so habitually, they aren't even consciously aware of it anymore.

In some cases, they get belligerent with me. How dare I ask them to practice germ control! How rude!

Yes, this was mostly before the pandemic. I've been trying to protect myself from infection for a lot of years. It's largely irrelevant to my point.

My son told me he saw two people hugging in the parking lot of the grocery store and one of them confusedly asked "Aren't we supposed to not hug?" and the other, an older person, dismissed that with "We aren't supposed to hug strangers!"

Even with their lives on the line, people are failing to get the memo that you can't run around touching everyone and everything. This needs to somehow stop and I'm appalled that the WHO is part of the problem here in that they are emphasizing hand washing as the top priority rather than emphasizing "Keep your hands clean to begin with by not touching every damn thing, especially not your face."

And I don't know if the WHO is that stupid and honest to god doesn't realize that not touching stuff is the more important thing or if they have studies and yadda and they believe that it is a lost cause to tell people "No, really, _stop touching stuff!!!_ " and hand washing will get more compliance, so they emphasize that.

But they have their priorities backwards. We can get this under control, but we have to practice germ control and the messaging we are getting is insufficient.

<comment><USER27> Actually, the number one thing would be to use a mask whenever you are out. I suspect breathing in aerosolised virus particles is the main mode of infection now. Second would be not touching your face. Washing hands, as important as it is, comes third.

I laugh inwardly whenever I see stores requiring the use of hand sanitizer at their entrances; they should be handing out masks if they are serious. Of course that's much more expensive than doling out sanitizer.

I expected governments to organize mass production and distribution of re- usable face masks for their populations, but so far I see nothing of the sort. If we are going to be able to resume a somewhat normal life going forward, use of mask has to become the norm rather than the exception.

<comment><USER26> I used to use a lot of medical equipment that had to be sterilized daily in boiling water. One day, we accidentally boiled all the water out and we had to replace the bulb syringe and find some new way to sterilize on a budget when buying a new pot to replace the ruined was temporarily beyond our means.

So we bought distilled water and that was not only dramatically more effective than boiling, it stopped putting steam into the air in our apartment and that brought down the levels of ambient mold spores and noticeably improved air quality.

I've had similar experiences with, for example, ozone machines. And I increasingly moved away from things like shiny tech and personal medical gear because it gradually became clear that maintaining such things is problematic.

And I'm no doubt running a fever and wasting my time replying to you. But I really think the emphasis on masks is misguided.

Don't touch your face and don't cough on people and don't blow your nose in public. If you aren't coughing, sneezing, etc at people and you are giving them a wide berth, you aren't likely to share your germs with them.

Anyway, I think I should probably step away from this discussion. It's probably not productive.

You have a nice day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Paywalled. [https://outline.com/2SY4ks](https://outline.com/2SY4ks)

</comment><comment><USER29> I pay for the Post. Love their reporting. But man! I've never seen so much fear mongering as they've peddled in the last month. News is a product—I get that. But they're _straining_ to wring every last drop out of COVID.

<comment><USER30> every news outlet is doing that. every political leader (garcetti in LA particularly) is doing that. it foments fear and hysteria. it's infuriating.

news sites post infection/death numbers for covid front and center, conveniently ignoring the 98-99% of non-covid deaths that are just as tragic and heartbreaking. they did that during 9/11 and for every mass shooting since. it's sickening.

<comment><USER31> Covid-19 is now the leading daily cause of death in the US. It's novel, people care about it, and it's more immediately preventable through collective action than other leading causes of death (2nd and 3rd are heart disease and cancer). I don't see how media attention is unreasonable.

<comment><USER32> Breaking the data into "current daily" is the most extreme way of framing the data, given that we are currently suffering a rush of deaths due to the delayed effect of accelerated infection rates that occurred before the shutdown. (Many of the individual infections occurred after, but the critical mass of asymptomatic carriers occured before, in NY and other hotspots.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 41 dead out of 3 million.

Odds aren't so bad yet.

<comment><USER34> A person's tolerance for odds of dying is understandably relative to context. A grocery store worker would be rightfully unhappy about increased odds of dying, even if their odds of dying remain very low absolutely speaking.

<comment><USER35> I feel like knowledgeable people have always encouraged the general public to understand statistics and realize that, as dangerous as some things might seem, the risk from them is very low, i.e. "Don't be afraid to do common activity X, because many more people perish in a year from heavy things falling on them at home, or in car crashes" etc. But now with the virus that calm and sober thinking is all going out the window and some are suggesting that it is fine for the public to fret and panic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Listening to capitalists, one would think that wages would just increase and safety would increase to equilibrate the labor supply. It's interesting that doesn't happen, but instead these major retail companies are taking out huge ad buys to performatively praise their workers in front of third parties.

<comment><USER37> Of course. That's corporate America strategy #1. Never fix anything, never concede to anyone, never admit wrong, and if all else fails distract with a PR campaign or by donating a tiny amount of money. As if the damage a company like Amazon (just as an example) could ever be mitigated by donations from Bezos. It's a clever trick. Starbucks buying coffee from war torn areas? No problem. Donate some money to charity and pretend the company isn't a piece of shit exploiting the world. Workers dying at supermarkets? No problem. Put up bullshit ads and other PR materials to pretend you care. Companies don't have feelings of course, but it'll gain the goodwill of Americans too stupid to realize they are being swindled.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where would you host a quickly bootstrapped site? - <AUTHOR>

I've been using heroku recently, but am wondering as to alternatives people use. This is just for hobbyist development and I'm fairly cost-conscious at the moment. <comment><USER2> Digital Ocean is great for small projects . . . and it's nice to you can host multiple projects on one droplet.

If you're using Laravel check out [https://forge.laravel.com/](https://forge.laravel.com/).

It makes it super easy to get up and running on Digital Ocean and [http://laravel.com/docs/homestead](http://laravel.com/docs/homestead) provides a quick and easy VM to match what forge sets up on Digital Ocean.

Plus it's easy to setup multiple small projects on the same droplet. Forge is $10/mo but it supports Laravel and does save time setting up and configuring Digital Ocean along with easy deployment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Host it on Digital Ocean. You can host multiple projects on same Droplet. When the traffic/load picks up for one project and can't be handled on one droplet, you can spin it out to a separate droplet. When load increases further, upgrade the droplet to larger expensive plan.

I started out with $5 droplet for my projects. Now one of my project that gained traction is on $10 droplet and rest still on $5 droplet.

Personally I avoid any PaaS/IaaS that require custom development hooks specific to their platforms to maintain my operational and hosting flexibility.

<comment><USER4> I still don't quite understand the value proposition behind DO and why people have started using it over AWS. So far I understand that it has a nice interface and is a bit (but not much) cheaper for certain server configurations. But that can't be all, right?

Could anyone explain why DO is becoming so popular?

<comment><USER3> AWS is akin to building your car by buying and installing one part at a time. DO is akin to buying a Honda Fit. AWS is good when you got Cadillac budget. AWS has a sweet spot. When your needs are too small or too large, AWS is not the right solution.

AWS integration is complex due to multitude of services priced separately and need to be integrated separately. For early stage projects, this creates unnecessary complexity. The costs of these services quickly add up too.

As you embed more and more AWS services into your projects, you become locked in and unable to migrate off quickly. That is when AWS tells you to bend over and empty your pockets. You lose flexibility to move.

I have primarily investigated minimal of services on AWS and DO and found DO to better and quickly fit my needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> DigitalOcean, spend a couple of hours getting a server setup that covers your general stack and then save it as an image. Then in the future you can just boot a new server on that image for $5 p/m.

<comment><USER6> I 2nd DO. I haven't found anything else that beats the price. I'm moving all my stuff there from Amazon.

If you can swing a static+javascript. Hosting on github pages seems to be popular, or AWS S3+CDN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Static website: S3 on AWS, Web app: Digital Ocean (can support multiple apps too, run Nginx on the same machine)

</comment><comment><USER8> Linode. It's the host I currently use.</comment>


Best way to learn PHP - <AUTHOR> http://wayofcoder.com/2011/07/best-way-to-learn-php

<comment><USER2> I applaud his effort to explain how to learn PHP, especially glad to hear that the #php community is polite and helpful. On the other hand, I would not recommend reading the manual as a way to learn a language. The PHP online reference is excellent but it's a reference. Rather than just plowing through it, I'd recommend an introductory book/video/tuturioral, then start working on your idea and keep the manual open in a browser tab! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I go with reading the manual. That is how I learned Fortran back in the day. I learned PHP by reading the php website. PHP for me was just Perl will all the logic ripped out and replaced with words.

I am not sure reading the manual is a good way if you don't already know a language.</comment>


Django DB optimization for pedestrians - <AUTHOR> http://facundoolano.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/django-db-optimization-for-pedestrians/

<comment><USER2> For anyone interested in DB optimization under Django, I recommend to take a look at Unbreaking Your Django Application presentation[0]. It might be more PostgreSQL-specific at times, but most of the advice is applicable to MySQL as well.

[0] [http://www.slideshare.net/OReillyOSCON/unbreaking-your- djang...](http://www.slideshare.net/OReillyOSCON/unbreaking-your-django- application)</comment>


Ask HN: Why do people get absorbed by some things but not others? - <AUTHOR>

As succinctly as I can: How and why do people have genuine interest in things?  How do they maintain that interest over time?  What initially determined their interest in that thing?
My thoughts on this question stem from noticing how people do a faster and better job when they are interested in a task.  In my own life, I've noticed times when I've been obsessed with programming, or a video game.  However, I've also had many times where I had to work hard to force myself to solve problems - I just couldn't convince myself to care.  I want to understand what the difference is, and hopefully exploit the knowledge to have a more productive and comfortable life.
In other individuals, I've been envious of their ability to stay deeply engaged with things for long periods of times.  Some of the most successful people I know are ones who somehow continue to care about a topic long after others would've given up.  Why do they continue to care?
I've also noticed there is a difference between genuine interest versus actions driven by a 2nd order interest (e.g. "I'm doing X for the money", "I'm doing X because I'm obligated").  Activities driven by 2nd order interests seem less skillfully performed.  Unfortunately, humans seem wired to have genuine interests in short-term rewards, which ends up meaning there is a performance hit  for long term goals since "I'm doing X so one day it will pay off".  It would be more ideal to just prefer things which would be long term good for you.
I've read a lot about Flow, but I don't think thats the entire answer.  For example: I know a lot more about programming know than I used to...but I don't stay up until 4 AM coding stuff any more.
I expect some responses about burnout at well, which is actually part of the question.  How do people go harder than others, and not burn out?  How can I have this for myself? <comment><USER2> The point is staying away from burnout. In my opinion we all have genuine interests in some fields. In my case they are computers.

Over the past few years I have noticed that if I neglect things that truly interest me like building a compiler or reading about automata theory just because I had to do other things (study for finals etc.) my performance drops. It may sound a bit metaphysical; but I think everyone in this world has a purpose in life and we are all suited for different interests. It is important to protect our hacker spirit and our general enthusiasm for life. These words may sound a cliché for depressed person; nevertheless in my own experience they proved to be right.

If you and more importantly your subconscious believe that you are not wasting your time and improving, you will experience joy and satisfaction. It will be much more easier to cope with circumstances and acknowledge the unpredictability of fate. You will naturally show a genuine interest in everything, because you are supported by a purpose that you believe in.

I have experienced several burnouts and severe depressions; and at times I thought I had lost my faith in computers. But when I embraced them back, it all went away, not at once, but eventually.

Kill your darlings had a wonderful quote on this topic: "Some things, once you've loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go, they only circle back and return to you. They become a part of who you are, or they destroy you."

If you want some philosophical background on this topic I would suggest reading more about Stoicism.

a guide to the good life: the ancient art of stoic joy is an excellent hands- on book about the practical parts of it. -BTW, I discovered it through an HN Post-

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out the book 'Flow' for one potential answer, or this TED Talk if you have less time: [http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?lan...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en)

</comment><comment><USER4> This book might be of interest to you: [https://leanpub.com/indoctrinator](https://leanpub.com/indoctrinator)

I haven't read it though, so I can't comment on it's efficacy.</comment>


2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2016/01/04/30-under-30-in-science-exploring-new-worlds-in-the-stars-and-in-our-cells/ <comment><USER2> I can't even use this site... The ads are horribly invasive. They also do that thing where they make you click to see every person so they can get more ad views, and page reloads.</comment>


Bill Gates on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Surface (video) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/10/20/exclusive-video-bill-gates-on-windows-8-windows-phone-8-and-surface.aspx

<comment><USER2> Why is this being upvoted? It is a collection of generic PR statements with no new or insightful information.

<comment><USER3> If this was Steve Jobs talking about an Apple product, nobody would complain.

<comment><USER4> Given that YouTube allows custom "opener" screens, why must a rather bad frame-still of Bill Gates be used? Bias, perhaps? Would this have happened if it were Steve Jobs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this video is relevant to remind people just how much Bill Gates is the man of "Windows everywhere". If it had been only his decision, the XBox would probably also run some variant of Windows.

<comment><USER6> It does! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox#Operating_system>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think it's a stretch to say Bill Gates's viewpoint on Windows 8 is somewhat biased.</comment>


The day our galaxy exploded - <AUTHOR> https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-day-our-galaxy-exploded <comment><USER2> Fascinating theory, backed by evidence from observations. And as Phil states, don't let cosmophobia scare you :-) "cosmophobia, a fear of things that happen in space"</comment>


Ask HN: Which categories/directories do you use in your RSS reader? - <AUTHOR> I'm struggling to find a good way to categorize my feeds, and I'm wondering how other people does it. <comment><USER2> Handlr.sapico.me , still optimizing :)</comment>


Andrew Ng: AI Winter Isn't Coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603062/ai-winter-isnt-coming/ <comment><USER2> AI was huge in the 1980s. Expert systems (rule-based progamming), Logic programming (Prolog), and Case-based reasoning were spawning startups at a furious pace. There were great breakthru systems such as Emycin. Large companies were developing advanced systems (IBM did a Financial and Marketing Expert). AI was taking over the world. AI based on reasoning and understanding was the true path. Eventually the limits became apparent and the hype died. Money fled the market. Winter arrived.

Today we see great strides in perception and manipulation (P-and-M). We can recognize faces. We can "compile action" into networks that can perform tasks. There is a belief that this is "all". "Reasoning and understanding" is now seen as "Good old-fashioned AI" (GOFAI). The limits of the P-and-M approach are obvious if you look at them with a clear eye. Unsupervised learning is one glaring example. Eventually the limits will become apparent and the hype will die. Money will flee the market. Winter will arrive.

This will be dismissed as reasoning by false analogy. But consider trying to use P-and-M in manufacturing. A robot would be excellent at putting something together using deeply-learned perception of parts and deeply-learned actions on parts. But the technology is useless for attacking related problems. For example, given a CAD drawing of a new toaster, develop a plan to assemble the toaster from parts and create the robot motions to complete the assembly. How do you create P-and-M actions on unique parts? How do you reason about plans? How do you handle one-of-a-kind problems that don't have big-data sources?

The limits are obvious. The primary market will saturate. Hard problems will arrive that P-and-M can't address. Winning technology areas will become mundane. Fast money will move elsewhere. Winter will arrive.

The "next generation" of AI will arrive when we start combining things like knowledge representation (e.g. the concept of a wrench) with perception (is this a wrench?) and manipulation (how to use it). The concept of a wrench will be grounded by attaching deep-learning P-and-M routines. Knowing the concept of a wrench will also mean knowing how to recognize one and knowing how to use one. Self-modifying systems that learn by changing their structure will arrive. New experience will add new knowledge and modify existing knowledge structures. Planning based on these structures will lead to experience which will lead to modified knowledge. The system will learn to ride a bicycle, "compile the knowledge into manipulation", attach it to the "bicycle riding concept" as grounding, and be permanently modified. Facts learned through conversation will be used to modify the knowledge base, leading to new behavior, just as we teach new students now. Self-modifying systems will arrive. But first we have to let the deep-learning hype burn out. Sigh.</comment>


Jitter – Does It Matter? (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jitter-does-it-matter.html <comment><USER3> _" Cables can "smear" digital signals by attenuating the highest frequencies."_

Yeah, right. If you get "smeared" digital signals beyond the sampling threshold, you'll get so many data errors that nothing will work.

The only thing that matters is whether whatever is clocking the DAC has a constant clock rate and that you don't get a buffer underrun on whatever feeds it data.

If this were a real problem, it would have shown up on analog VGA monitors as a wobbly image. Those are also an analog signal from a DAC coming from a clocked data stream. Several orders of magnitude faster than for audio. There have been VGA devices with jitter problems, and it's really obvious - <USER2> lines aren't straight. That was pretty much fixed by the time VGA went away.

(There was once a $13,500 HDMI cable. Really[1]. It was laughed at on Amazon.[2])

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/01/02/please- don...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/01/02/please-dont- buy-a-13500-hdmi-cable/#588ce29639b6)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/WireWorld-Platinum-Starlight-Cable- Me...](https://www.amazon.com/WireWorld-Platinum-Starlight-Cable- Meter/dp/B00KY2NKCO)

<comment><USER4> >Yeah, right. If you get "smeared" digital signals beyond the sampling threshold, you'll get so many data errors that nothing will work.

I don't want to feed the audiophile nonsense but you do get high frequency attenuation with shitty cables and human hearing is pretty dang sensitive. Even just slight attenuation can and will incur jitter in the signal.

It's just that one can mitigate the damage it with some clever circuitry and using anything other than coathangers or wet string...

Also come on, our sense of hearing is likely much more capable than our sight. If you introduce things like delta-sigma modulation, the jitter requirements become pretty ridiculous too. Something on the order of two digit picoseconds RMS.

It's cool to hate on ridiculous 1000 dollar HDMI cables and monster sized mains power cables but legit audio engineering can be pretty challenging, since our sense of hearing is actually way more sensitive than most other things we encounter.

<comment><USER5> The reason the "smearing" argument doesn't hold water when looking at jitter from something like a USB cable is that this interface is being used to send a bitstream, not timing information (at least not directly).

The way it usually works is that first the computer sends some sort of mode- setting message. This is where the computer tells the Audio DAC controller what output sampling rate to use.

The DAC then uses _its own internal circuitry_ to generate the timing signals. This circuitry is what determines the jitter.

The computer then sends the audio data over the cable. This data is captured, buffered, and then finally sent to the DAC _when the internally generated timing system is ready for it_.

So the only thing that cable smearing can do is introduce errors into the digital messages that the computer sends. If it's particularly bad, the mode- setting message won't make it intact and you won't hear anything. If the mode does get set correctly, but there are occasional bit errors in the bitstream, you'll hear occasional (but obvious) pops. If the computer can't send the bitstream at the expected rate, the buffers will over or underrun and everything will stop.

But what you won't get is more jitter.

The original argument assumes that the cable is sending a signal whose edges are used for clock recovery, _and that this recovered clock is used as the timebase for the sampling system_. But nobody actually does this [1]. Reasonably high jitter / phase noise on the bitstream signals is fine, as long as the data can still be decoded.

[1] Okay fine, HDMI sort of does this, but they're almost always using a more sophisticated retiming system.

<comment><USER4> OK yeah, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote about cabling.

I agree that clock recovery and PLL filtering can take care of jitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> NwAvGuy was a true beacon of light in the sea of bullshit that the audiophile community can sometimes be. It's sad he's not around anymore. I had a lot of fun building his Objective2 amplifier.

<comment><USER7> I bought the assembled O2/ODAC from JDS labs, and then the black edition a few years later. It's essentially a perfect product and I fully believe that any claims of superior transparency in audio reproduction over it from any other manufacturer are 'outside the realm of human perception' (i.e. snake oil).

There might be a few nice utility bells and whistles on other products but that's it.

Probably someone in the industry made him a hush money deal he couldn't refuse and that was that. Good for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the article is in reference to audio... Jitter in regards to sending data/requests to a 3rd party, such as a cloud provider of a service... definitely a good thing.. it helps differentiate your requests from a DDOS.

Skimmed the article to see the subject, saw it was audio, but still wanted to make this comment.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jitter is always introduced by non-RTOS operating systems that don't have a guarantee for preemptive realtime scheduling. The kernel scheduler introduces jitter, supervisory processes introduce jitter, etc. And an easy test to see the effects of this is to try to control a servo motor with a GPIO pin without RT_PREEMPT or comparable RTOS.

Simple fix would be an RT_PREEMPT-linked Linux sound player.

<comment><USER10> Scheduling jitter does not cause jitter in audio, because audio is buffered and the buffer is consumed by audio device using it's own clock. Yet OS has to fill the buffer in time or underrun will happen, which will be audible as crackling and stutter. For some applications input and output audio buffers need to be very small to avoid introducing noticeable delay in audio processing, and in this case real-time capabilities are required to prevent buffer overruns and underruns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Jitter was a HUGE issue in ~2004 for Lucas/ILM wrt rendering speeds... but due to how long ago that was, I dont exactly recall why...

They were the first Foundry customer, for these reasons...

They had render farms that were sensitive to jitter... Raleigh Mann later went on to run netops for google... thought he has left there and now runs williams sonoma - but he was super jitter allergic...

</comment><comment><USER12> It does for realtime. This article only cares for audio, but with realtime jitter is the worst problem of all.

Comparable to memory failures, segv, out of bounds, ... Usually caused by a HW problem, but sometimes SW is at fault also.

</comment><comment><USER13> Love NwAvGuy's DAC and amp. I own two of each and attempted to upgrade to expensive alternatives only to be disappointed.</comment>


Covid-19 – webcam app to detect and discourage own face touching - <AUTHOR> This app does not exist, but if anyone here could build it, I am sure it would be popular. Learning to not touch your face is one of the best things you can do to prevent transmission of viruses like flu and covid. surely it makes sense for businesses to use this. It just has to beep or flash when you touch your face so you learn not to do it.<p>Just want to put the idea out there as I am not able to build this myself <comment><USER2> habanero pepper juice on the fingers can discourage you from touching your face as well

<comment><USER3> Much much better than an app! And besides, an app like that - unless open source, it's very likely someone will be using it for spying on you.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are welcome suggestions, but habenaro sauce will get on my keyboard. open source of course :)

<comment><USER2> you have an open sauce keyboard then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this work when your phone is in your pocket? Or are you assuming that your phone is in front of your face often enough to make it useful?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you really need an app for that, you probably have bigger problems.</comment>


OpenSSH 6.8 released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-unix-announce/2015-March/000120.html

<comment><USER2> The host key rotation support sounds very nice, and something I've wanted for a long time:

> * ssh(1), sshd(8): Experimental host key rotation support. Add a protocol > extension for a server to inform a client of all its available host keys > after authentication has completed. The client may record the keys in > known_hosts, allowing it to upgrade to better host key algorithms and a > server to gracefully rotate its keys.

> The client side of this is controlled by a UpdateHostkeys config option > (default off).

I wish it were on by default, but I guess they want to test it further before enabling it by default. It will remove the temptation to keep using old, weak or suspect keys just because of the hassle of having all the users update their keys or because the admins are afraid of training their users that the scary "HOST KEY HAS CHANGED!!!" warnings are normal and should be ignored.

<comment><USER3> But you don't want users to think they're normal and should be ignored. They're an exceptional case and should be understood.

<comment><USER2> I think you should read the message you are responding to again, as you just agreed with what I said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I submitted a very detailed bug report[0] a while ago, which can lead to a DoS (albeit in a very specific setting). I don't expect anyone to rush to fix it, but I'm surprised that there isn't even a comment about it. Is there another place it needs to be reported in?

[0] [https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2265](https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2265)

<comment><USER5> Try pointing it out on the mailing list ( firstname.lastname@example.com ).

Having been on both user and the developer sides, with F/OSS projects, more developers are likely to read every post on the mailing list than every report in the bug tracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The --without-openssl option is particularly attractive on Linux systems if you distrust openssl's code.

<comment><USER7> It is, but please note that OpenSSH uses very little of OpenSSL's code. None of the serious bugs lately had any impact on OpenSSH.

<comment><USER6> That's probably very reassuring.

I personally don't share this belief that openssl is bad (in fact, for PHP developers, openssl is preferable to libmcrypt which has been abandoned since 2007), I just know it's a common sentiment of infosec people. :)

<comment><USER8> Just because OpenSSL is very hard to replace doesn't mean it's not very bad.

<comment><USER6> Sure. I simply use it for crypto primitives (e.g. aes-256-gcm) in environments where I cannot install libsodium from PECL (e.g. crypto_easybox() and crypto_easybox_open()).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Finally UseDNS is set to 'no' by default. This is the thing I was ALWAYS changing :)

<comment><USER10> I always felt guilty about it, as if I was perhaps missing something obvious. :)

Glad to see it gone in the defaults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > [...] SSH protocol version 1.3, 1.5 [...]

Do we still need these? Aren't they extremely ancient? Is there any old client that _only_ support these protocol versions __and __has no security issues, or is out-of-support?

<comment><USER12> I've got a few older Dell switches that still work wonderfully, but only connect via ssh1, not ssh2. They're still useful, and setting up a management vlan isn't that hard, so replacing them is a proposition that's much more expensive than it's worth.

<comment><USER11> That sort of avoids the question: Do those machines still get an up-to-date OpenSSH that's considered trustworthy today? Is there some impediment to upgrade OpenSSH on them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424](https://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1424) :(

Oh well, refactoring and crypto work is certainly more important. Congrats on the release.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to configure ssh servers so that putty is able to connect, so I can't follow best practices. Why don't the people working in this area help the putty project with support for the latest stuff?

<comment><USER15> Why don't the people who use and depend on putty help the project with support for the things they need?

<comment><USER14> There aren't a lot of people qualified to work on security software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping for U2F but I guess it's not ready yet. :)

<comment><USER17> Chrome has access to USB and its own code to handle U2F devices. This would require your SSH client to have the same capabilities.

This might work well on Linux/BSD machines, but likely not on OSX due to stagnant unix utility updates and Windows because... well, not a real Unix. Would probably require a heavy wrapper around Putty. Not sure if cygwin and friends would ever work either.

<comment><USER18> OSX supports PAM auth, U2F is just another kind of PAM. That's how I use my Yubikey.

<comment><USER17> I was thinking that server side it was a PAM module, but client side it was not... for some bizarre reason.

So yeah, I suppose if your platform supports PAM this is feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> OpenSSH is certainly the standard amongst SSH servers, however, I'm curious if there are serious alternatives that offer something missing in OpenSSH? I know there's a patch floating around that allowed some buffer to be configurable and boosted `scp` performance, for example, but I'm curious if there are other servers that offer anything else interesting.

<comment><USER20> Dropbear is a lightweight replacement for OpenSSH. It runs on things like routers (openwrt) and certain android ROMs.

<comment><USER21> Used it through an sshserver app for Android, had no troubles doing a full scp -R <phone> <backup> with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fingerprint hash tracking is on the plan to add to Userify soon as well, along with host key wipe and regen. Can't wait to get some of these other awesome features mixed in. Of course, we'll have to wait for distributions to catch up.. queue five year wait..

</comment><comment><USER22> The sshlog (password logging) patch still seems to work on 6.8

        http://w8rbt.org/patches/sshlog.patch

<comment><USER23> wget is blocked on that URL, any specific reason?

wget --user-agent="Not wget" [http://w8rbt.org/patches/sshlog.patch](http://w8rbt.org/patches/sshlog.patch)

works.</comment></comment>


2011's hottest web technologies - <AUTHOR> http://bindle.me/bindles/297 <comment><USER2> >[Clojure] .. example of the emerging trend of evented, asynchronous backend languages.

Clojure is not a great example of this, and certainly doesnt have any event loop magic or async IO libraries built in. There is some in progress such as Aleph etc.. . But hey another great example of people promoting shit they know nothing about.

</comment><comment><USER3> There should be at least one storage technology on this list. Redis? MongoDB? PostgreSQL? Riak? Cassandra?

<comment><USER4> Redis is right in the center, just below backbone.js.

I think the weird one is "Go". I don't see a lot of people using Go for anything, let alone web stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, in his defence, I just added that.

That's fair about Go. The last 3 were a bit random, I was just trying to get a bit more variety in there beyond the more mainstream stuff. I realise that Go isn't really used by anyone, but it has had a bit of airtime simply due to it being a Google tech (not to mention the authors). I guess I mean hottest in the sense of most interesting to people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I should've downvoted this link because it omits MongoDB...but I took a Bindle to the knee: <http://bindle.me/bindles/304>

I love this service, good job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks. I'm glad you like it.</comment></comment>


PHP the good parts - <AUTHOR> http://www.phpthegoodparts.com/

<comment><USER2> I did chuckle, then I looked at the source. It's not quite the same as the pot calling the kettle black, but you may want to strip out all that unused bloat before ripping on someone else's work.</comment>


New Zealand Launched Mass Surveillance Project While Publicly Denying It - <AUTHOR> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/15/new-zealand-gcsb-speargun-mass-surveillance/

<comment><USER2> If this sort of thing disturbs you (and it should), now is the perfect time to make a change by voting. If you're overseas but have been in NZ at all in the last 3 years you can still vote: [http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2014-general- election/vot...](http://www.elections.org.nz/events/2014-general- election/voting-2014-all-you-need-know/voting-overseas-2014-general-election)

</comment><comment><USER3> 'GCSB spokesperson would only say: "We don't comment on matters that may or may not be operational."'

I would like to draw this GCSB spokesperson a Venn diagram.

<comment><USER4> [http://imgur.com/wf53LHK](http://imgur.com/wf53LHK)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kim Dotcom is doing a live event in Auckland, NZ, that starts in 20 minutes, which is supposedly going to touch on a lot of this.

<comment><USER6> Live where? Is there a link? Thanks!

<comment><USER7> [http://kim.com/](http://kim.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Et tu, Kiwi?</comment>


You like the Koch brothers on Facebook and don't even know it - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/koch-brothers-facebook-memes-being-american/

<comment><USER2> Yeah... you claim that but I haven't liked a single picture, video, comment, status update, page, website or anything else that's likeable in the world since I enlisted to Facebook.</comment>


How is the hacker culture different between the late nineties and now? - <AUTHOR> The question says it all. If you have seen or were part of the hacker culture during the early days, how do you see it different now? <comment><USER2> Well, firstly I don't know that we would have considered the late 90s to be the early days. I was pretty active during a time where the scene was transitioning from underground bulletin boards to the internet/irc, circa ~1991 and even then it was common to find textfiles describing esoteric systems that were hard to find anymore.

I'm not active at all anymore in infosec (white or blackhat), so it's impossible for me to draw a comparison. But I can tell you that back then it was very much more about trading information and socializing. Google around for anything published from a guy named Fravia. When I remember those days, he more than anybody captured the philosophy I wanted to subscribe to. These days it sounds pretty scary. Back then you could get in trouble for phreaking some phone calls and end up with a stern talking to from the telco. Now you aim a webcrawler at the wrong service and they lock you up.

It also seems like blackhats now have a much more mature ecosystem and financial motives. Right around Defcon6 I think it was, hacker groups started building commercial product and people landed on episodes of MTV True Life. I think that was a pretty important shift.

tl;dr more fun, way less scary?

Edit: If you're talking about programming in general and the dot-com bubble, that's a different story. I may have missed the point.

</comment><comment><USER3> How has hacker culture changed? Not at all. I've been living, breathing, eating and drinking (less these days, tryna clean up my diet) the hacker culture, hacking continuously since late 1980s. Linux and Windows NT were of course the biggies, but after Windows XP it's been a meh fest turning into cringe fest, and Unix never changes.

One thing has changed: nowadays you can be even more reclusive and asocial than in the early, diskette-swapping, meatspace-meeting days.

Hacking will always be the same activity despite having more code at your disposal. Keep on hacking relentlessly and one day you'll make a sweet hack. Only then you truly understand what it is to be a hacker.

<comment><USER4> _" One thing has changed: nowadays you can be even more reclusive and asocial than in the early, diskette-swapping, meatspace-meeting days..."_

...or in the even earlier days when all the hackers hung out together in a terminal room. I learned a lot about Unix in the early '80s by sitting side by side with some accomplished Unix hackers, to the point where the powers that be gave me the root password on the system (a PDP 11/45 running Seventh Edition Unix).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the main difference is that it is not a subculture anymore.

<comment><USER6> Why isn't it still a subculture?</comment></comment>