IT certifications are no longer optional - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/347260/Certifications_Are_No_Longer_Optional?taxonomyId=10

<comment><USER2> _With so many job seekers to choose from, employers need to quickly identify those who have the skills they seek._

What world is this from? As far as I know, there is a massive shortage of employable programmers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The focus is on IT certifications aimed at people who have responsibilities for networking, security, Cisco/Microsoft products, etc.

<comment><USER3> There's a shortage of them, too. Okay, perhaps not for Microsoft "admins", depending on your requirements for such a position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Probably the most important part of the article is:

 _Bart Perkins is managing partner at Louisville, Ky.-based Leverage Partners Inc., which helps organizations invest well in IT. Contact him at email@example.com._

Leverage Partners, according to it's website _helps organizations maximize their IT investment through Technology Portfolio Management_

It's not anything more than marketing, aimed at the kind of middle managers who find the idea of technical resources being fungible and certified appealing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, I've _never_ asked an employee for any 'certificates', since most of the certificates are too narrow in scope to be of much use, unless you happen to need that exact skill.

This of course means that you need lots of certificates if you're going to use them which is money in the bank for the parties issuing them.

How about the other employers here, do you ask for certification ? Would you reject an applicant if he or she did not have a certain certificate but had multiple years of relevant experience vs someone that does have the certificate but lacks the experience ?

<comment><USER6> I have never asked for a certification in an interview nor rejected someone for not having them.

They are however useful as an indicator of interest and willingness to work and _very basic_ knowledge of the subject for someone who is just starting in IT. They mean almost nothing on the resume of a seasoned, experienced professional, but they can help distinguish one person just starting out from another, especially if staring at a stack of 20 resumes and only having time to interview 5.

I would never hire someone on the strength of a certification alone, but I have personally used them as an indicator of who was worth interviewing for _entry level positions_ between candidates with no experience too speak of.

On the flip side, when I was transitioning from the military to civilian work, I got database certifications and more than one interviewer told me directly that the certification helped convince them to interview me. Another, though this only happened once, told me that I could have gotten a higher salary offer if I got a higher level certification.

Also, some jobs in large organizations actively require them. Whether or not you are willing to work in a large organization is a matter of taste, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talent doesn't need or benefit from certifications. If a prospective employer is pushy about them, you don't want to work there. Pretty simple.

</comment><comment><USER8> I got an A+ cert in high school. It helped me get exactly one job: a tech at Best Buy (while still in HS). In the 9 years since then, the issue of certification has never come up again. I know there are more serious certs out there, but I can't help imagining that they are all a lot like my A+ was: memorizing facts that are fairly orthogonal to actually being able to perform your job.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most certificates are a joke. Google "brain dump". Anyone with a decent memory can download a brain dump, study it for a couple days and pass. The only certs I would trust are supervised, lab-based certs, like the higher-end Cisco certifications.

</comment><comment><USER10> Certifications are about as optional as they've always been: Some IT positions they're helpful for, particularly going into government work, but they're not a guaranteed path to success.

A consultant I've worked with (as a journalist) in the past actually tracks real wages for certifications vs. wages for area expertise and experience, and experience and real-world practice win out _almost_ every time. Source: <http://www.footepartners.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Certifications are only valuable if employers value them in return. Historically, that's been a dicey proposition with only a few exceptions in specific IT admin areas like Cisco and Microsoft server admin. The rest of the certifications are more or less crap.

</comment><comment><USER12> Certificates are relevant to non-hackers that want to build a career in IT. The companies that care about certificates are most likely companies that hackers wouldn't want to work for.

Also it is interesting how the attitude conveyed in this article is based on fear. "If I don't have X certification, I won't get a job".

</comment><comment><USER4> To be honest, if someone had a whole lot of certifications I'd be worried that they needed them to cover for their lack of talent.

Also if certifications play a meaningful role in your hiring process you're probably doing it wrong.

<comment><USER13> Punishing someone for having certs is about as silly as rewarding someone for having them when it's not central to their job. I get a cert every year because work pays me more to get one and they pay for the test.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying that there aren't good people out there with certs [1], I'm just saying that personally it'd make me wonder why someone had so many of them.

It's more that when I visualise really sharp technical people I don't see them having a load of certs.

[1] And some of the Cisco things, for instance, look pretty rigorous...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Years ago people recommended that I acquire some MSCE qualifications. I'm so glad I didn't do them now. For me, it would have been a huge waste of time and money.

If you're going to take IT skills related courses (and here I don't mean degrees or PhDs) be careful about your choice and spend some time verifying whether employers really are looking for those qualifications in new recruits. My impression of most of the IT skills courses is that they're just money making mechanisms for a few training companies.

</comment><comment><USER15> The only places I've ever seen certificates be an issue is government and government contractors. Maybe there are some big companies that also require them. But they are outsourcing there IT departments more and more so who has them isn't there problem anymore.

I do notice a dogfood pattern for places that require certificates they will pay for their employees to acquire them. One company I temped at wanted a bond to pay for you to get them (work for us for 3 years after getting your MCSE). A lot of the older guys were really excited about this (job security I guess), but the younger ones just shrugged at the offer. We were resume building so being tied to one company for 3 years was definitely not something to look forward to.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've noticed something interesting about certifications.

At least on forums I come across when Googling things in the Microsoft space, people with certs tend to add them to their signature, along with their little MVP badge.

e.g.

Jon Williams MCTS, MCPD, MSCE, MVP

As if it lends their post more credence.

I have two degrees, and ~15 years experience in the industry , but I don't sign off with

B.Sc, B.Sc(Hons), M.Sc 15 Years Experience

It adds no value...In my opinion, it's a negative indicator. Some of the best programmers I have ever worked with did not have any degrees or certifications, they got the job on the strength of their interview and ability to think.

</comment><comment><USER17> Certifications are as about as relevant as ComputerWorld magazine

</comment><comment><USER18> No, they're _completely_ useless now.</comment>


Tell HN: Biology.Net, coming soon - <AUTHOR>

Any Pubmed / Medline users out here?
I just put up the 'Coming soon' page for my next website, http://biology.net
It's gonna be a Pubmed clone with a twist - personalized recommendations, just like on Netlfix. You rate papers you like as you find them and the engine will recommend what you should read next.
If you know of any student in biology / life science related fields, or any Pubmed.com users, feel free to tell them about it, the site should be live in the next few months!
Even if you're not a life scientist or a physician, I'd like to have your opinion on the general design, logo, loading time, or anything else you can think of :) <comment><USER2> I don't think any of these papers should be behind a paywall in the first place. But that's another matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's getting better with the NIH forcing the deposit of a free to access version of a paper if public money has been spent on it, Pubmed Central is getting quite large.</comment></comment>


Google secretly screenshoted whole web and is rolling it out right now - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/2ngSD.png

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly, screenshots cover adsense after you click loupe icon to activate them. <http://i.imgur.com/IpuYY.png> I guess this will probably change soon.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's probably bad day for snap.com. I wonder if Google will grant access to these screenshots via API. That could be cool.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate our Start Up Image Terrain - <AUTHOR> http://imageterrain.com/

<comment><USER2> I didn't quite get it until watching a bit of the video. Might be nicer if on the main page you had a 'we turned this image into these images'. kind of thing. It looks like it could be an image library, rather than a product which creates images.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> pedalpete we were trying to hint at that by our slogan "one image endless possibilities and we do support chrome. If anyone is interested in a free trial or promotional rates contact me at

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you support Chrome?</comment>


Ph.D. Completion and Attrition: Analysis of Baseline Data (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.phdcompletion.org/resources/cgsnsf2008_sowell.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwj95P_2gb3MAhUM2R4KHRa2CCoQFggmMAM&usg=AFQjCNHLz0J1rbC2A1ajmb3R3igIp0BIcg&sig2=io81cXVUh7Fq9pa96YDe8g <comment><USER2> Mods, can you please update the link to go directly to the pdf ([http://www.phdcompletion.org/resources/cgsnsf2008_sowell.pdf](http://www.phdcompletion.org/resources/cgsnsf2008_sowell.pdf)) rather than going through the google redirect?

<comment><USER3> dang, do you hear this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although these general numbers won't be a surprise to someone who has experienced a PhD program or is well informed about them, I do think the detailed data is useful.

Congress recently considered legislation that would automatically grant a green card to anyone who has completed a PhD in certain STEM fields (not all branches of science qualify). An MS would also count under some circumstances. The logic behind this is that the people who receive these degrees are very talented, there is a terrible shortage of them, and that it makes no sense to force them to leave the US.

I do agree with point one and three. People who get PhDs in hard sciences and engineering are very talented, and it is truly bizarre to force them to leave the US. I'm also in favor of the green card, because truth is, people with these degrees who want to stay tend to be able to, and I think it would be better to grant them full and free membership in the US labor market, rather than forcing them to work under more restrictive conditions.

However, I also realize what this legislation means - that PhD programs, which I consider to be fairly abusive of their students, would now have an amazing weapon to coerce in their arsenal - they would now be institutions with the power to bestow green cards. A RAND study found that the aversion to STEM graduate degrees among people who already have US residency and work rights is economically rational when you consider other options available to elite students. [1] The "shortage" is simply a rational response to long completion times, high attrition rates, and relatively poor employment prospects (again, compared to the outcome for shorter, more certain degrees with vastly lower attrition rates). Keep in mind as you read this PhD data that elite law and medical degrees typically have attrition rates of below one half of one percent. Pretty much everyone who wants to finish does. I understand there are some differences here (half a JD isn't useful, half a PhD in CS could be). But we're talking about a stupendous difference in attrition rates, in a field where congress is taking legislative action to correct a severe shortage that supposedly threatens US competitiveness in high tech!

Before we grant this power to universities, they need to answer some tough questions. Why are general attrition 50-100 times higher than they are in professional degree programs? Why is it so much higher for women and some minorities? What are you going to do to remedy this?

[1] [http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html)

<comment><USER5> I would respond with a question, why do you think it's appropriate to compare a vocational training program such as an MD/JD/etc to an academic research program? They have very different goals.

<comment><USER4> It may in fact not be a valid comparison. But if we're going to speak of a "shortage" of people going into graduate STEM programs, we can't discuss that in a vacuum - we need to consider the other options available.

Here's a link to the RAND study (should have included this in the original post)

[http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html)

Which does contain a discussion of whether the comparison is appropriate, as well as a (short) justification of focusing on the doctoral level programs. Ultimately, though, their justification is largely market based. A couple of relevant passages:

"Alternatively, if the rewards of other careers—perhaps clinical medicine, law, or business—are higher and are growing relative to S&E, and if it is instead the costs of training for a job that are growing for S&E, then there is no shortage of scientists and engineers in this important fifth sense. Indeed, in this latter case, the "shortages" thatothers discern may well look more like discouraging surplusesto young people considering career choice."

"More young people today may arguably enjoy doing science or engineering than actually plan to prepare for such careers. Instead they may choose a professional degree, but only reluctantly. In a market economy, even one characterized by rigidities, regulations and unequal opportunity, qualified people tend toward career paths whose rewards and satisfactions are becoming more attractive and/or whose preparatory costs are becoming less onerous."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an african-american math ph.d. dropout, nice to know that 63% of people like me also didn't finish. Oh wait, it's awful. At least I'm not alone though.

<comment><USER7> That certainly jumped out, as well as the much higher female drop out rates. Shameful!

Edit: To be clear, I put the vast majority of the blame on the advisor, not the student. I would not have made it without the remarkable support provided to me by my mentor. Conversely, I saw much stronger researchers leave for lack of a good advisor.

<comment><USER8> Seems to me that the entire blame should go to the system itself. The system is broken, and everything you're seeing here is a symptom of this disease: lack of good advisors, exploitation of adjuncts, lack of tenured positions, etc. But there doesn't seem to be much agreement about what exactly is wrong with the system and what can be done to fix it.

<comment><USER9> Or maybe research level mathematics is actually really difficult.

<comment><USER10> There's difficult because "the topic is hard" and difficult because "there are unnecessary social barriers put up" and I've seen a lot more people affected by the latter than the former.

(source: am a math phd)

<comment><USER9> I agree there may be some social barriers, but, for instance 4 of the 10ish math students that started the phd program in pure math at the same as me were filtered out by the written exams, another was pulled to industry in her second year, and another left due to (I think) not being able to finish their research before his funding ran out (had less due to entering with a masters). I could be forgetting someone, but I think I am the only one on the pure side, finishing at the 5 year mark in my program, and I put myself through some serious sleep deprivation to do it. The applied students seemed to do slightly better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the opportunity cost of doing a PhD is, more and more, becomingly increasingly beyond what is tolerable for many academics.

tenure lines are evaporating, adjuncting is a nightmare, postdoc comp is pitiful... Meanwhile PhD students are competing for ever smaller slices of ever smaller pies in terms of fellowships.

meanwhile, universities are being taken over by MBAs and running them like corporations. many people (not just PhD students but staff, etc.) eventually throw in the towel and say 'fuck it, i'll just go work for an actual corporation where i'll make a decent salary.'

<comment><USER12> Working in the commercial sector for a PhD isn't "throwing in the towel".

Academia has always been political and competitive just from the limited economics of it, so don't construct an MBA scapegoat for "ruining" it.

<comment><USER13> There's definitely a little bitterness as a molecular biology PhD right now. The senior and emeritus faculty got in during a wave of setting up departments in the 60s and 70s. Jobs really were almost growing on trees, and the career trajectories they took are just so beyond what's possible today, well it does get a little depressing. That said, I think most people recognize that that was a singular era.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While 2008 is somewhat old data, a cumulative 10 year phd completion rate of 57% sounds _about_ what I would expect. That implies a cumulative attrition rate of 43%, which puts it within striking distance of say, the 75-80% attrition rate associated with Navy SEAL BUD/S.

The attrition rate jump around years 2-3 is almost certainly due to failing the qualifying exam, which in my experience is by far the largest eliminator.

<comment><USER14> At least at some schools, a spike at 2 years or so can also come from "mastering out". In my PhD program we get an MS after completing the required classes just by filing a form (and I think this is common). Someone who figures out quickly that they don't like research all that much is well advised to at least make it to that point.

<comment><USER15> True! Though not all schools are like that. My brother's made you do an extra masters thesis on top of the dissertation. Unsurprisingly, most PhDs then just have the doctorate, and not both. I also concur that the drop rates at 2 years are due to failing the quals. The more interesting part is then the 3+ year rates, as those are really the people that dislike research and not just the ones that can hack it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting that Computer Science is the lowest of all the engineering and science degrees. Any idea why that is? (Higher level of programming required as a base skill? Too many different skills to master? Too many of the top undergrads go to industry?)

<comment><USER17> I assume you are looking at the table on slide 7. I think that is the percentage of all who completed relative to those who started it, so whether many CS undergrads go intro industry (which is most likely the case) or not is irrelevant. However, I can offer anecdotes from my experience (recent PhD in CS). First, it is usually easy to find good jobs in the industry while you are doing your PhD. I think half of students in my department that did machine learning and computer vision didn't finish their PhD and went off to work at Google and the likes. It is very tempting, because the hours in a PhD program are long, stress is high and money is never good. And many CS PhD end up working in the industry anyway. Second, writing a lot of code isn't necessary if you're doing pure theory --- but even then you might be making small prototypes or using proof assistants, so a no-programming research in CS is rare. Whether you need to master many new skills depends on your background and what you want to do for your dissertation.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the reply.

To clarify on going to industry... If you are a top student with a bachelors in a field like Physics or Biology - there's aren't as many post-undergrad options as the top CS student. Therefore, the top Physics and Biology majors are more likely to head to grad school. Those top students are more likely to finish on time.

Again - just a hypothesis.

I think your point about mid-Phd CS folks having options is stronger. If you're 2 years into a Biology Phd program, your options are limited. If you're 2 years into a CS Phd program, the sky is the limit.

I hear you on CS theory. My impression during undergrad was that the grads were doing a lot of programming in the coursework, and many beyond.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My wife completed her major comps today. We are separated and will likely be divorced soon. But looks like she'll finish. Yay...

</comment><comment><USER19> <austinPowers> What does all mean Basil? </austinPowers></comment>


China's Censors Ban Winnie the Pooh and the Letter 'N' After Xi's Power Grab - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/asia/china-censorship-xi-jinping.html <comment><USER3> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16482406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16482406)

</comment><comment><USER4> I love that Chinese university students are posting George Washington's farewell address (which at the time was the first (?) peaceful turn-over of power ever?)

I also love the freedoms I have in the States even more now.

<comment><USER5> It certainly was not the first peaceful turn-over of power in history - <USER2> are many examples, but Cincinnatus[1] immediately sprang to my mind. He actually was given and then gave up dictatorial powers twice (note that being a dictator meant in the Roman political system something different than what it means today [2]).

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

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

<comment><USER6> Solon[1] is my favorite example, and how I think a benevolent ruler should act; Write a good constitution and take a step back. I think Juan Carlos of Spain did something similar: "Expected to continue Franco's legacy, Juan Carlos, however, soon after his accession introduced reforms to dismantle the Francoist regime and begin the Spanish transition to democracy" [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Carlos_I_of_Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Carlos_I_of_Spain)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Welcome to Chia, home of the world's best iteret.

<comment><USER4> [dumb comment removed]

<comment><USER8> Written without the letter 'N'.

<comment><USER4> Well ow I feel uitelliget

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Xi is saying his rule is needed for China to become a superpower. A country doesn't seem so strong to me, if it depends on any one person's single man rule to become a superpower. A truly strong country does not depend on a any single man, good or bad.

</comment><comment><USER10> People of China, speak up, rise up. You deserve better than this. Chinese people should have the freedom to choose where they can visit and what content they can consume and who they want to lead the country forward. [http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-south-korea- to...](http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-south-korea- tourism-20180228-htmlstory.html)

<comment><USER11> If you played Civ5: no ideology is inheritly wrong. As long as the "public opinion" is "content", people would be happy with it. Player would intentionally choose Order or Autocracy to gain some "Tenets". E.g. Order usually gets you better productivity and Autocracy usually gets you better military power.

Right now people in China are mostly content with the current ideology.

This design actually matches reality very well: while US apparently chose Freedom ideology, China chose Order ideology. China would finish impressive large project faster and more efficient, with the cost of dictatorship.

[http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Ideology_(Civ5)](http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Ideology_\(Civ5\))

(Civ5 got a lot of these right, including a technology called "the Great Firewall" to counter the cultural influence from other civilizations [http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Firewall_(Civ5)](http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Great_Firewall_\(Civ5\)) )

<comment><USER12> Fun post, but I'd argue that china chose is somewhere between the Order and Autocracy ideologies. For starters, while Mao Zedong laid a different set of plans (more similar to the Order branch of Civ5) than most rebel leaders, he was, for the most part, an autocratic leader.[1] They've had a more democratic approach as of late, but it appears that Xi Jinping seems to be turning China into an autocracy once again[2]. It's very interesting to me because for the most part, past Autocratic methods put military development at the forefront and left Technological development as more an afterthought. This seems pretty contradictory to the groundwork China has been laying during the past 30 or so years, placing a lot of value in M&S and installing technocrats to leadership positions[3].

[1][https://books.google.com/books?id=YQOhVb5Fbt4C&lpg=PA92&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=YQOhVb5Fbt4C&lpg=PA92&ots=ui- eqKa13p&dq=mao%20zedong%20autocracy&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[2][http://theweek.com/articles/757554/china-now-just-another- au...](http://theweek.com/articles/757554/china-now-just-another-autocracy)

[3][http://www.observa.it/the-technocratic-trend-and-its- implica...](http://www.observa.it/the-technocratic-trend-and-its-implication- in-china/)

<comment><USER13> China views democracy as a tool to be used where appropriate, rather than an ideology to adhere to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can it really be called a "power grab" when he already had all the power? This is more fait accompli.

A lot of speculation is that Xi is doing this because it's now basically impossible for him to retire now. Through the anti-corruption campaigns, the taking down of so many tigers, and pushing out vested interests as China tries to avoid the middle income trap, Xi has made too many enemies. If he were to retire as planned, there are too many in the party who would then move on him.

<comment><AUTHOR> interesting idea.

move on him, how?

<comment><USER14> Arrest and jail. Like what Xi did to Zhou Yongkang.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Yongkang#Downfall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhou_Yongkang#Downfall)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1 in 5 humans live under this dictatorship

<comment><USER16> And most of them are content with it.

<comment><USER17> Any sources of that claim? because seams very unlikely.

<comment><USER18> Anecdote: Many expats that live in China have commented on this. The Chinese don't care, they live their lives and the party lives its.

<comment><USER19> I could say the same thing about myself and the Trump administration. It's mostly a sideshow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not just in 'N>2' as the article states, but 'N' is also commonly used in Chinese slang as an mathematically-inspired, exaggerated or arbitrarily large number. E.g. "I've already told you N times" or "This plan has N number of problems." It's really N>>2.

<comment><USER21> _> It's really N>>2._

N bitwise right shift 2 positions?

<comment><USER22> N≫2

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm admittedly naive about some of this, but is there a good way for me as an American citizen to enable Chinese users to access an uncensored internet?

I don't really want to run a TOR exit node at my house because I'm afraid I'll get in trouble over illegal (in the US) activity.

<comment><USER24> No. CCCP blocks Tor anyway.

When you have physical control over the networks you have unlimited power to determine what flows over those networks. Nothing any of us can do about it.

<comment><USER25> Those SpaceX Internet satellites are looking mighty interesting right about now.

<comment><USER23> That sounds nice but I doubt Musk has the guts to park geosynchronous satellites over China without their permission.

<comment><USER25> They're LEO, they orbit the whole earth.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the correction

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just a few days ago, Google apparently banned shopping results for "water guns" and so forth. The urge to censor in service of one's politics is strong everywhere.

<comment><USER27> And yet I type "water guns" into Google and click "shopping" and get endless pages of shopping results. Or, you know, I could just go directly to Amazon and buy one too.

So much for that whataboutism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> A similar issue for companies and even communities is not total power but focused power where value can be extracted. Increasing total power is scalable but increasing it in a chosen direction is not.

A free market for example is "efficient" but you can't control (and take credit) for anything it produces. It's output is wild.

So what's good for the Chinese people may not necessarily be good for the concept of China and if the concept of China is broken so is the concept of being Chinese. HK/Taiwan already stress this dynamic somewhat.

As to why it's so important for this concept to remain whole I suspect it's historical/cultural. Fragmented city states proper as long as the ecosystem does not contain warmongers. Each city-state requiring its own military is like each individual being hunter-gatherers. Civilization doesn't proceed without the freedom to specialize.

The "humiliation of China" which started via the opium wars is very fresh relatively speaking. Many countries including the US still operate with a domination oriented mindset rather than mutual prospering.

To China's credit. Historically it has never over extended and tried to dominate other countries in the way many western countries have despite often being able to do so.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure why they would ban Winnie the Pooh. If I were Xi, I think it would be a fantastic image-softening strategy. Look at him, he's like Winnie the Pooh, so cute and cuddly and trustworthy! I would have totally taken the Winnie the Pooh thing and made it my own subliminally, and I think it would have worked well, because it's not contrived; it came from the people first.

<comment><USER30> It's because dictators tend to become petty and take everything personally because they think they can afford to do that.

This is the #1 reason why countries should not fall under dictatorship. Humans are flawed, and flawed rulers with a lot of power are extremely dangerous. They tend to retaliate aggressively either against individuals or other countries because there are no "checks and balances" to keep them from abusing their power when they get _emotional_ about something.

This is how you can _easily_ end-up with insane decisions at the highest-level of a government such as "banning the letter N" because the ruler's feeling were hurt. And this is just an example. We'll see many more like this once he's officially declared a dictator (or Permanent President, or "The Senate" \- whatever they decide to call him).

<comment><USER31> > become petty and take everything personally because they think they can > afford to do that.

Not just dictators but also, as we've seen recently, US presidents too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> With a few companies working on global, fast, low-latency satellite internet it seems that censorship will get much harder. I'd guess the place to stop people would be in preventing them from paying for the service. Are there still ways to control this form of internet access? If not, satellite internet development seem worth it even if only as a humanitarian effort.

<comment><USER33> Unless the upload signal was somehow ultra-directional like a laser or something, they would detect your upload transmissions and come and arrest you. Same as if you started up a cell phone jammer in the US.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, it's pretty old tech to triangulate a broadcast but I'm decently certain that satellite transmissions need to be directional.

The problem then is you need the tech of a directional satellite dish that knows where to send the data.

<comment><USER25> The antenna on the satellite itself is highly directional, which is enough to get you a good enough link budget to Earth for many applications with a relatively omni antenna on the ground. See e.g. XM radio, Iridium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> China is actively using USA as an example to show that Democracy does not work well these days too, for instance it appears gun violence, immigration and race issues can never be fixed here, and the national debt keeps increasing for years and there is no sign to stop. So, whatever their leader does must be better than others nowadays.

Admit or not, the overall impression these days is that China is an uprising power while US is in the decline. At the time they're building the best transportation system and investing heavily into robots and AI, we are here debating gender-less restroom, legalizing marijuana, keeping proving president is tied with Russia,etc.

The tipping point has passed, the gap will keep getting wider, based on history, there is no fix, countries rise and fall cyclically.

<comment><USER36> I would be careful to not confuse the news with the underlying reality of the situation. There are plenty of great things happening in America you don't hear about, and plenty of horrible things in China you don't hear about. Long- run, I'll take democracy personally.

<comment><USER37> He has a point that democracy really needs to step up its game. We're not exactly having a good run at the moment.

<comment><USER38> President acts like a corrupt asshat, almost immediately comes under investigation, there have been 23 indictments so far.

The alternative to democracy is not letting people have a say in government, and allowing rulers to rule for long periods until they pass down power to favoured successors or are violently overthrown. Both of those things are absolutely terrible for the health and safety of a society.

<comment><USER37> You don't have to convince me. But I think it's a bad sign if defenders of democracy can only get defensive when they have to face mistakes.

Is it really that hard to say we dropped the ball here, badly, and we need to do better, rather than immediately going to whataboutism about China? Yes, they have problems. That in no way contradicts the fact that we need to do better.

<comment><USER38> I feel like you have it backwards. The intent of my comment was to say democracy _hasn 't_ dropped the ball. Trump is massively and obviously corrupt, so he was massively and obviously investigated. Where's the whataboutism? If anything I was responding to reverse-whataboutism (self- deprecation from people in democracies when reading about 'N' being censored in China).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Leave it to the New York Times to call Chairman Mao's rule "traumatic." 46 million dead is, at the very least, a genocidal rule. Not mentioning this fact in an article about Communist China's totalitarian tendencies is a problem.

</comment><comment><USER40> Amazo lost 16% of its brand. Nothing to worry for Microsoft Apple Facebook Google Uber, yet

</comment><comment><USER41> Is this thread being marked as a dupe after being on line one? ...

</comment><comment><USER42> Trump: I can say anything to make people go crazy... No one can top me!

China: Here... hold my beer.</comment>


Intel demonstrates a 28-core processor running at 5GHz - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/05/intel-28-core-cpu/ <comment><USER2> How many will they ship, though? And at what price?

Interesting how only when AMD starts shipping something competitive with their chips, does Intel roll up its sleeves and get busy on breaking new ground. There almost seems to be a correlation ...!

<comment><USER3> Did Moore's law really stagnate as much as we think or do we just have a lazy monopoly?

<comment><USER4> Moores law held up pretty well. Frequency scaling did not continue as it did in the old days, I mean we had 3ghz back in the P4 days. But performance has certainly improved thanks to better IPC, more cores etc.

<comment><USER5> The law is about transistors I believe, not about frequency or performance, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> as originally formulated, yes, but no one really cares about transistor density itself; we care because it correlates well with performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we assume this design is based off of something similar to the 28-core 8180 which has a 2.5GHz base frequency and (generous, likely understated) 205W TDP, this chip could easily have a TDP north of 300W.

Those boxes on stage sure don't look air-cooled to me. The plumbing seriously resembles that of a phase-change setup, which would actually make sense here as an extremely low operating temperature would help tame the leakage power tremendously.

In summary though, it ain't gonna be cheap to buy or cool.

<comment> dis-sys I'd willing to bet that it is very different to 8180.

it is simply not practical to boost freq from 2.5 base/3.5 turbo to all cores 5Ghz.

<comment><USER7> I think the cooling could be a significant part of the picture here---you can nudge the power/frequency curve a bit with very aggressive cooling (phase- change is extremely aggressive) to drop the leakage power (e.g., as AMD did with the liquid cooled Fury X [1]).

If this had a different core count from the 8180 I would agree but I wouldn't expect Intel to do a completely separate design _just_ for a model that will need to be highly binned regardless.

That or Intel has made some serious magic happen at 14nm++++++++++.

[1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd- radeon-r9-fury-x...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd- radeon-r9-fury-x-review/5)

<comment> dis-sys > That or Intel has made some serious magic happen at 14nm++++++++++

will be interesting to watch what AMD is going to offer using their new 12nm toy. ;)

<comment><USER8> I'm more interested in Zen2 on 7nm which seems to be coming out earlier than Intels 10nm CPUs.

Possible IPC enhancements from architecture optimizations of Zen2 + better clocks = first time since over a decade that AMD beats Intel in single threaded workloads? Due to their better SMT implementation (?) they seem to beat Intel in multithreaded scenarios already with same core count and around the same clock (at least in Cinebench).

<comment> dis-sys Yes, Zen2 will be very interesting to watch next year. The only problem is that AMD has not offered anything else other than some ppt presentation on how great is the Zen2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title is misleading, it reached 5Ghz through overclocking and no mention of how many cores booted at 5Ghz, the nominal frequency of this part with all cores is 2.7ghz. Saw the photos but still skeptical about it like price wise and what cooling it need.

<comment><USER10> If it's Intel demonstrating on Intel chips, does it really count as "over"clocking? Seems like it's just clocking.

<comment><USER11> It's overclocking if it's over the nameplate clock speed, regardless of who does it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That Cinebench screenshot though. It looks _really_ fast when you compare it to a pile of 8yo+ CPUs.

Perhaps we should be more worried that it's only 5.something times faster than an 8yo CPU with fewer than half the cores.

[https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/c18d803c00f096b8d7b57...](https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/c18d803c00f096b8d7b57e18d6019fd4/206427322/Intel+28+core+demo+1.jpg)

<comment><USER13> Also interesting on the screenshot: Radeon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's cool! 32 core Threadripper coming as well? Good old competition is back and I love it! :)

</comment><comment> dis-sys anandtech is reporting that the chip might be for the LGA2066 platform[1] for home use. ;)

Before you get too excited, the current generation of 28-core xeon running at 2.5G costs you over $10k each [2]. I won't be too surprised if Intel sets the price of a 5G 28-core Xeon at $15-20k.

That being said, having more choices is always good. Can't wait to see how AMD is going to respond to this using their Epyc line of chips.

[1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12893/intels-28core-5-ghz- cpu...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12893/intels-28core-5-ghz-cpu-coming- in-q4) [2] [https://ark.intel.com/products/120496/Intel-Xeon- Platinum-81...](https://ark.intel.com/products/120496/Intel-Xeon- Platinum-8180-Processor-38_5M-Cache-2_50-GHz)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this a single 28-core CPU? The only other 28 core chips that Intel has are the Xeon platinum 8176 and 8180, which cost $9-$13K and don't clock nearly as high.

Or is this like AMD's Threadripper any EPYC, and they are duct taping together multiple CPUs in a single socket? Eg, 2 x 14 cores CPUS connected with QPI or EMIB ? 4 x 7 cores? I wonder if AMD patented this technique..

<comment><USER16> >duct taping together multiple CPUs

IIRC, according to Intel's slides, AMD used glue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how much cache that CPU has, and how many memory channels? 28 cores don't do you much good if half of them are always blocked waiting for instructions.

<comment><USER18> 24/26 core CPUs have been in the market for quite a while. The caches generally look like this: each core has 32KB instruction + 32KB data cache (L1) and 1MB L2 cache. All cores share the 30-40MB L3 cache and the 4/6 memory channels.

In my experience, cores getting blocked for instructions is not commonplace. They can block waiting for data if the computation is memory-bound.

Edit: These are the specs for the [Skylake 8180]([https://ark.intel.com/products/120496/Intel-Xeon- Platinum-81...](https://ark.intel.com/products/120496/Intel-Xeon- Platinum-8180-Processor-38_5M-Cache-2_50-GHz)). These chips are nowhere close to 5GHz though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be infuriating if this doesn't come with ECC RAM support.

<comment><USER20> It's infuriating ECC RAM doesn't come in everything.

<comment><USER21> ECC RAM is stuck at 2666 MT/s and rarely overclocks to 1.35V.

Normal RAM can handle 1.35V typically and often goes up to 3200 MT/s (on AMD systems) or 3600 MT/s (on Intel systems). That's easily +20% to +35% more memory bandwidth. With lower latency and better overall specs to boot.

And if your 3d render has a pixel-error on frame 50, delete the .png file and rerender frame 50. No biggie.

<comment><USER22> That sounds like an artifact of Intel's artificial market segmentation. If we imagine a world where ECC was mandatory then it's likely that ECC gamer RAM would be available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The most impressive thing shown was the cooler used to get that chip to sub- ambient. That's the magic part of the presentation.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRH0-QwhvVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRH0-QwhvVQ)

</comment><comment><USER24> Serious question, Who buys these chips?

There can't be many people in the world who will pay the 10k-20k price tag. How many people have the pull with their employers to justify it?

The production run must be insanely low or i just don't understand the marketplace around high end chips.

<comment><USER25> Might be bargain if your software vendor is still selling licenses "per socket" (joke, I guess everybody has migrated to per core or something more complicated).

To put hardware prices to perspective, think how much it costs to run even a small development team. If hardware makes them more productive and/or happier, most of the time you should go for it. Sad too see expensive people stuck with mediocre tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They really need to release a cpu for the FCLGA2066 platform that can beat the 8700K/9700K in games. People are waiting for the 9700K to upgrade, and avoiding intels high end because they dont have the a higher end cpu for gamer enthusiasts.

<comment><USER22> There won't be. The 5 GHz 8086K will probably beat this 5 GHz monstrosity in games due to lower latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am thinking could this be fitted inside the iMac Pro, or the normal iMac. Or is it for the new Mac Pro.

How did we manage to break 28 Core all running at 5Ghz barrier when we were previously hold up even 8 Core running at 4.4Ghz at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER28> Atom/Electron Devs: Challenge Accepted...

<comment><USER29> ahahah you made me laugh! :) it's funny because it's true.

<comment><USER30> I wouldn't say it's true, but it shows we all got trapped in a way. Let's take Mac OS development. In order to be able to publish apps, you need to have a recent version of Xcode. In order to use a recent version of Xcode, you also need to have a relatively recent version of macOS. Unfortunately, this also means your hardware need to be up to date. When you discover you can no longer develop on your 2012 machine, you buy a new one with a fast processor and plenty of RAM. (NB Even your app is so simple it could run on 3GS perfectly well, your lowest target is set at devices supporting the most recent iOS, but it's a topic for another discussion.) Now you feel the full power of your hardware and your opinion of what it means "current hardware" and "fast app" changes. You start to say things like "Come on, it's 2018, 8 GB RAM is low- end." You stop caring about these Core 2 devices because it looks like Apple doesn't care about them too, co why would you? In this way the machine is pushed forward, and we're becoming more and more wasteful.

<comment><USER31> a 2012 machine is more than acceptable as a builder, heck my mother still uses a 2009 MacBook pro and she uses her laptop quite "heavily" (She never closes programs/browser tabs), my mac pro is from 2013 and it's perfectly capable.

But, I think my pedantry does not dissuade from your actual point; making a modern MacOS program requires that you have a macOS machine- It also precludes learning a language that typically only runs on that platform (I know swift is cross platform but none of the windowing libraries that you'll use are).

Making tailored software per platform is tedious, making the same program multiple ways so that it can be native is just time consuming if nothing else.

Electron is an ugly way of fixing that; but it does the job of fixing it- Qt is an ideal solution in theory but it's obviously too much of a burden on developers to adopt.

<comment><USER32> "Precludes" means to prevent something from happening. You probably wanted something like "necessitates".

<comment><USER31> You're right, I have been living with the wrong definition of that word for quite some time now. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Will these be able to be used in multi-cpu systems? Will you be able to build a 56 core computer?

<comment><USER34> Most likely under the Xeon brand

<comment><USER35> IIRC top models from last i7 Extreme generation and i9 have support for dual- cpu systems.

<comment><USER34> No only Xeon E5-2600 V1-4 series (Dual Socket) and Xeon E5-4600 V1-4 series(Quad Socket) are multi-cpu capable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can we get a processor that can handle 32GB of LPDDR first?

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow a floating video over the content with no dismiss button? Wut? :-/

Seriously why have the video float? If I've scrolled down it's probably to read - like wtf is the intended user interaction goal there?

</comment><comment><USER38> How is that extremely intrusive tracking-management popup even attempting to adhere to GDPR?

For one it is opt out, which isn't allowed. It also claims that you need to accept to continue using the site, which isn't allowed, then it's countless steps required to opt out (if you even can, I got lost and accidentally allowed everything a few clicks in).

This is probably worse than just pretending GDPR didn't exist. This is a deliberate and disrespectful fuck you to every single visitor.

<comment><USER39> You can just go to another site, it's not original research anyway. That should motivate them to fix it.

Example: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12875/intel-announces-the- cor...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12875/intel-announces-the- core-i78086k-coffee-lake-at-5-ghz)

<comment><USER8> I agree, but the anandtech article is about Intels anniversary CPU (6 cores running @ 4ghz which can boost to 5ghz on a single core and probably 4.6 ghz on all cores), engadets article is about a 28 core cpu running @ ~5ghz.

If this 28 core monster really is released I'm curious what it will cost. The 18 core i9 costs ~2000 dollar, the 28 core Xeon with much lower clocks (but with ECC etc.) ~8000.

The power requirements will be even more interesting looking at the 18 core numbers when overclocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Engadget... What the hell is with your GDPR consent.

1) Manage Options

2) (Body font sized link) Manage

3) (Body font sized link) Show

4) Scroll down

5-100) Click each toggle individually (select all button is currently broke) (It is intentionally ambiguous which is the 'correct' selection)

101-150) Do the same on other page

151) Click done

152) Click OK (hoping it's saved, it doesn't feel like it has)

This is much harder than it is to opt-in. I'm pretty sure this against the spirit of the GDPR.

Even if it isn't against the GDPR. It's a dick move.

<comment><USER41> GDPR rules in practice seem to turn into the "this site uses cookies" notice but on mega steroids. Privacy control is great, but it's just not interesting to have a checkbox or agreement click through on every new site visited.

<comment><USER42> What you can do today:

\- If your browser doesn't have this option yet, write its developers, product managers, or CEO, voicing your most humble request that they try do something that does work, at least with some pages some of the time, to try to proactively automatically agree to GDPR and cookies. (Or automatically disagree with them, discard cookies, whatever.)

I promise you that it is possible technically to do something that works on at least 1 page, that other web sites could mimic the interaction of and have it work on them too.

Sites won't all support browsers' solutions but if browsers can automate _something_ , then some web sites can adapt to it. (By using the same interaction, names, etc - i.e. legally clicking for the user, or so that the web site can't tell if the browser sent that automated per the setting chosen by the user, or if the user manually clicked. Even if they can only automate ones that closely match certain element names etc it will still be a step ahead.)

<comment><USER43> I think you're missing the point. The operators of these sites are not interested in respecting user choice. I'm sure they're aware that the most ergonomic thing to do, and arguably the only legal thing to do, is to present users with two buttons "Yes, track me" and "No, don't track me", then provide the service with no degradation either way.

But they realise that almost nobody actually wants the tracking, and that does not align with their interests.

<comment><USER38> The thing is that the law requires exactly that. So it will be interesting to see the consequences.

They are currently just trying the waters, see what they can get away with, most certainly already have a backup plan they will enable at the first sign of trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> From the photo:

# of cores: 28

# of threads: 56

Hyper Threading FTW!

<comment><USER45> Doesn't the success of hyperthreading depend on the ineffectiveness of branch prediction?

<comment><USER22> No, a thread can still have low IPC even if every branch is correctly predicted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is that all cores at 5Ghz or one core turbo boosting?

AMD had a 5Ghz processor in what, 2014? Clock speed isn't everything...

<comment> dis-sys all cores at 5G, check out the photo in the link below

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/12893/intels-28core-5-ghz- cpu...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12893/intels-28core-5-ghz-cpu-coming- in-q4)</comment></comment>


Where would you look for save-the-world/do-good jobs? - <AUTHOR> Say you are a SW developer or sys admin or something akin to these. Say that you are not after big money (but you still have family to support). Say you want to help solve one of the many social/global/you-name-it issues through your work.
The question then is - where would you look for a job? Which industry/job boards/etc? Do you know anyone that does that? Any pointers welcome.<p>PS1: The person asking how to save the world is currently doing DevOps (continuous integration).
PS2: Eligible to work in EU. PS3: Thanks in advance to whomever takes the time to answer. <comment><USER2> I had exactly the same thought coming out of college. I have made a career helping oncologists as a software engineer. One of the best choices I ever made. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for answering. Care to share some more info? You did a bionformatics masters, machine vision, pattern recognition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Idealist.org

<comment><USER4> Yup, this is THE job board for the nonprofit sector (there are others, but this is the one everyone in the sector already knows and uses). Unfortunately, their recent redesign is pretty crappy, and they don't make postings expire, so pay attention to the dates on each posting - you may end up pulling stuff that's over a year old.</comment></comment>


Coronavirus (Covid-19): How Google is helping - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/coronavirus-covid19-response/ <comment><USER2> Nice article ... if there's a Googler watching this, the need to educate our students remotely has suddenly become really important. For some reason, the small Christian school I am associated with was rejected for G-Suite for education. We have a solution for teaching via video-conferencing as well as a curriculum management system with grading. What we're now desperate for is the ability to give quizzes and tests. Please reply here if there's any way we can figure out why we weren't accepted. (we can go out-of-band if we need to talk about specifics but I feel like this is somehow a long shot).</comment>


Planning is overrated. The best performers seesaw between ideas and actions. - <AUTHOR> http://www.tompeters.com/dispatches/009986.php <comment><USER2> As usual, life is not black and white, it is grey. The best performance can be obtained by:

Idea(s) Plan(s) Action(s)

Of course, the trick is to know when to switch from one to the other. Generally, I like to take an idea (or ideas) and think about them for a while. When I feel vaguely comfortable that there are no obvious roadblocks, start planning. When I'm vaguely comfortable there are no subtle roadblocks, it's time for action. If you hit a roadblock, it's back to the ideas phase.

This strategy keeps you moving forward, bring fresh information quickly, and avoids most roadblocks before they waste any time.

Depending on the scope of the idea, the planning could be anywhere from minutes to days. Scope and complexity also change whether the planning happens purely in my head, or requires some typing to get everything clear.

Luckily, life usually gives us ideas while we're working on something else, so there's time to think about an idea for a while before you even have time to take action, which gives some planning time.

<comment><USER3> I agree. It is never black and white, and the applicability of any rule or principal also depends on the context.

A small company cannot afford to do planning like that of a billion dollar company.

A billion dollar company cannot afford to plan like a small company (that is, not do much of planning). And for both, the folly always is in waiting for completing the perfect plan, before acting, because there is nothing such as the perfect plan.

Note: 'Afford' as not just in money terms, but the risk of taking the extra time to plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The problem I had was that Clinton's principal associate is Ira Magaziner, the same "intellectual" who was the schemer-in-chief behind "Hillary care" in 1993._

The problem I have is that Tom Peters is the same "intellectual" who continues to say less with more words that any other "business guru" on the lecture circuit.

Funny how often over the years he has been wrong with his McKinsey-like advice while the world changed under his feet.

Funnier is that the guy who skims the surface of everything, never digging down below one level is telling us hackers to act without realizing that this is one audience you can't bullshit.

Examples of Peters' charlatanism are everywhere. Just a few:

<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/53/peters.html>

<http://www.sathnam.com/Features/31/tom-peters>

[http://www.amazon.com/Witch-Doctors-Making-Sense- Management/...](http://www.amazon.com/Witch-Doctors-Making-Sense- Management/dp/0812929888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284909029&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER5> It's odd, because I don't get the same sentiment from reading the two articles you've cited (I haven't read the book).

Essentially, you're upset that the man's predictions have often been wrong. Big whup. Show me one billionaire or nobel prize-winning scientist who hasn't been wrong hundreds of times and I'll show you a liar.

What you should get out of Tom Peters' manic style is, if anything, that you should always question business as usual because shit is going to keep changing. That's it. If you're taking his (or anyone else's) advice as a prescription for how you should think, act, or feel - you're a fool. Advice should merely serve as fodder for thinking, for shocking us out of doing things just because we've always done them that way.

If you form your own opinions, there's no need to go foamy at the mouth when someone else's turn out to be wrong.

<comment><USER4> _If you form your own opinions, there's no need to go foamy at the mouth when someone else's turn out to be wrong._

Maybe not.

But then again, this is a guy who has built an entire career (and industry, in fact) on exactly the opposite of what most of us practice here at hn.

While we build, he talks.

While we test, he guesses.

While we ask, he tells.

When we're right, we deliver value, When he's right, people just say, "Of course."

When we're wrong, shit stops working. When he's wrong, the PHBs still keep writing him checks.

When the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, someone should say so. Especially here.

<comment><USER5> Just like models and actors have built entire careers (and industries, in fact) on just standing around and pretending to do things?

Tom Peters does not pretend to be a hacker.

Hackers are not the only sort of people in the world.

Peter Diamandis, for example, is a personal hero of mine and a champion of industry. Does he run unit tests? No. Does he personally build spacecraft? No.

Does that make him any less valuable as a thinker and leader?

<comment><USER6> Sure it does. He is the living embodiment of "you can just go around talking shit", he's irrational. You can call him an abstract painterly post-modernist thinker, or whatever, just don't go supporting his way of being by putting meaning where there is none, you'd be giving people false hope, so to say. And that really murders, and subsequently mutilates your inner child.

Night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable." Eisenhower - one of my favourite quotes that sums this up well.

<comment><USER8> It's similar to practicing scales or intervals on the piano. You'll rarely have to play those sequence of notes just like that, but the practice still prepares you for other actions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a fecund article as evidenced by the excellent comments here it has sparked.

My half-serious takeaways are: Peters mistakes overplanning and over- complexifying for systems thinking.

Some things really are complex. They stretch the boundaries of Einstein's idea that things should be as simple as possible but no simpler.

Anyone who thinks rapid prototyping is "play" hasn't been in a high-intensity production environment.

Peters is a popularizer but he sure can get the mental blood flowing.

You can't define a minimum viable product with which to start prototyping without some good planning/thought.

Perhaps to belabor the analogy, part of getting ready to fire is some amount of aiming.

The rap (deserved or not) on Microsoft is that it does the worst of both overplanning and then releasing products (prototypes?) that the customers have to "test". Slow-prototyping?

I like Bloomberg's quote, "We act from day one..."

The oil hunting analogy shows Peters' basic idea flaw because in order to drill test wells you have to read maps and study. Plus lack of planning can get very expensive in that field.

Was it Beckett who said, "Fail better." Even that requires planning along with the experience.

Attributing the loss of the House to "Hillary care" is solidly in the "dumb- simplifier" category.

Good enough depends on very intelligent implementation and feedback. Going off half-cocked is fine if the foreplay is effective. :-)

There is a difference in writing in which all your rapid prototyping is done in your drafts than in putting out an under-developed product. Although there are some experiments with crowd-sourcing writing too.

I liked this submariner catch-phrase, "Water in the people tank."

One comment said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." John Lennon My thought was, "So is death."

Ah lazy Sunday mornings.

</comment><comment><USER10> Planning for planning's sake is not the same as planning to act. Big organizations typically fail to see the difference because the price of failure is too high for them compared to smaller, more nimble orgs.

</comment><comment><USER11> The fact that many "performers" are somewhat unfocused doesn't mean that planning is overrated. These people would likely do even better with a little more discipline.

It just that big successes more often come from people with lots of ideas and lots of experimentation as opposed to people who pick relatively unambitious careers and rotely execute day after day.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand where systems thinking comes in to this. Because anybody who has thought at all about systems will realise they the are complex and hard to predict (because we can't know everything about the system), and therefore that the way forward is to make small changes and see how the system reacts to them... which seems to be exactly what Peters is advocating.

I don't know how the term is used in management consulting circles. Perhaps "systems thinking" has nothing to do with either systems or thinking, and it's just the latest buzzword that management consultants use to carry on selling what they always have. But if that were true, it would surely say more about management consulting than about systems thinking.

</comment><comment><USER13> GTD tip - don't make it (GTD) a hobby.

</comment><comment><USER14> Too much planning can certainly backfire, hence this article: When planning becomes a crutch - the woes of reaction and inaction: <http://dontgetburnedblog.com/planning-becomes-a-crutch/>

<comment><USER12> BTW every time you use the word "inciteful" I wonder if you made it up on purpose or if you just can't spell. And that worries me because anybody who thinks that "insightful" is spelled "inciteful" clearly doesn't have any idea what it means, and that would imply that maybe you're just using long words even though you don't actually know what they mean, and that doesn't make me inclined to pay attention to the rest of it.

So if you want some free advice, I would stick to using real words unless your neologisms can add a lot more value than they are here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is no specific question or thesis here about which to form an opinion. Is he saying that planning is bad? Always? What kind of planning? It's all vague platitudes.

</comment><comment><USER16> In other words:

        Exploration > Planning

This makes sense in any area where one is blazing new territory.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a miracle. A three-way seesaw between ideas, actions and planning.

</comment><comment><USER17> Such a bold headline.. ^_^

Everyone who at least once tried to participate in a mountain expedition should know that planing is useless. Everything is changing each half of hour, and what you do is adapting and correcting your assumptions on the go.

Of course you need some preparation, like getting warm clothes and stuff, but what would you actually wear you will know only right before the moment you're leaving the camp.

And of course, you never know when. ^_^

<comment><USER3> And it takes planning to ensure that you have all the different types of warm clothing that may be required to face as many of the possible conditions on that mountain as possible.

Of course, there are limits on how much you can take, and planning can help determine those limits (so that you don't end preparing for the tail ends of a distribution of possible scenarios and end up carrying a heavy burden).

There is always a give and take relationship in preparing for possible scenarios and the resources one can afford to spend for those possibilities.

<comment><USER17> I'm just trying to emphasize that actual experience is much more important than any amount of planing.

Moreover, planning if it was about top-down time-scheduling is useless, because you cannot foresee anything.

What most programmers do - it is like a planning an expedition without any experience using lonely-planet and internet for estimations - just a wasting of a time.

No amount of planning can replace your own personal experience, but with a lot of experience you don't need planing - you're just doing.

<comment><USER3> Not trying to be an asshole here, but love pushing logic.

I would definitely agree that the importance of experience can never be emphasized enough. The more the better, always.

But, even if one were to over simplify this, at the least, it is a trifecta of experience, planning and the complexity/scope of the task/goal.

If one were doing what the facebook team did at the start, a bunch of friends, coding non stop for days on end, bringing in formal planning would be the most idiotic thing. (but if one were to be anal about it, even that takes some ad- hoc, seat of the pants planning - what features to have, what algorithms to develop, blablabla)

But for the same facebook to keep growing at 500 mil users +, providing increased features (not to mention, deciding what features to provide in the short, mid or long term) while employing geographically distributed teams, it is impossible to go without planning. Make note, I mention 'planning' not 'plans'.

The same goes with what a team of one is trying to accomplish, depending on the complexity and scope of the goal with respect to that person's relative experience.

As Eiserhower said, "plans are useless, but planning indispensable" (or something like that). I can go on explaining why those words are so meaningful, but that did be a monologue and I am trying to get out of that habit :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Telegram desktop introduces code formatting - <AUTHOR> https://desktop.telegram.org/#v-0-9-10-stable-04-11-15 <comment><USER2> Finally. This was the only feature I missed from slack.</comment>


Feel Like a Wallflower? Maybe It's Your Facebook Wall  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/business/10ping.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> Being a college student and currently supporting my mother and I, I often feel what the author calls FOMO, or "fear of missing out." Every time I go on Facebook or Twitter, I see my friends having a great time doing fun, entertaining activities with their group of friends. Even though occasionally I'm invited to their excursions, I have to politely decline since I'm usually working on the weekends, and inaddition, I simply do not have the capital to go out anyway. I've gradually gotten over it though once I came to realization they, my college friends, are simply spending their parents hard earned money on essentially nonsense.

<comment><USER3> It's also quite possible that you have a more fulfilling life. Just because people are gallivanting hither and thither does make their lives better.

Also, the hard work your doing now may aid you in later years with a work ethic your friends might not have. Which will instill you to work 3 years straight with-out a break on your amazing startup and retire at the age of 29. ;)</comment></comment>


MIT CADR (Lisp machine) emulator and software - <AUTHOR> http://www.unlambda.com/lisp/cadr.page

<comment><USER2> So, anyone willing to risk an FPGA implementation?

<comment><USER3> There is some plausible verilog code on that page and schematics. It looks like Brad got a core design running in simulation - no evidence of synthesis or IO (yet?).

Tempting - amongst 1e6 other things.

<comment><USER2> Same here.

So much to do, so little free time...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How wonderful. However can you get more than a glimpse of the real thing without one of those extrardinary keyboards? ( see for instance the later <http://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/photos/IO/index.html> )

<comment><USER2> I find the lack of cursor keys will be disturbing to the uninitiated.

Last time I checked, it would be expensive, perhaps prohibitively, to build a small batch of them.</comment></comment>


Criticism and the Armchair Fallacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/2/4/criticism-and-the-armchair-fallacy

<comment><USER2> It seems like the author is very intent on justifying criticism.

 _" When readers say "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole" they entirely miss the point. In making such a statement, they only admit that they cannot handle the truth."_

No, I think the asshole is missing the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> To your first point, I'm not sure why that is an unworthy cause.

To the second, when many perceive critical assessment of imperfection (let alone mishandling of a project) as meaning that the critic must be "asshole" then it is not the critic who should be examined, but the community unwilling to look honestly at itself.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Don't Hold Your Pee Anymore (NY Edition) - <AUTHOR> https://restroomfinder.co <comment><USER2> Damn, my nearest restroom seems to be about 6600 km away.

If you decide to go global, it's easy to get locations (and sometimes other data, like wheelchair access or even opening hours) from OSM:

\- tag: [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=toilets](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=toilets)

\- example query with Overpass API: [http://overpass-turbo.eu/?template=key- value&key=amenity&val...](http://overpass-turbo.eu/?template=key- value&key=amenity&value=toilets)

But this approach (all data in a single huge array) could be pretty slow with a lot of restrooms: [https://restroomfinder.co/data.js](https://restroomfinder.co/data.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I could definitely use OpenStreetMap to add more restroom information.

And yes - the code right now is very messy. I'm learning coding as I work on this project. I am planning to rebuild it with React and Express on the backend. Performance definitely worries me considering scalability. I observed that most of the maps out there have a 'redo search in this region' button. I plan to do the same so that I don't have to load all the markers at once but only those that are near the user's location.

Let me know if you have any other suggestions as this is all new to me!</comment></comment>


[Mozilla] Introducing Extension Signing: A Safer Add-On Experience - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2015/02/10/extension-signing-safer-experience/

<comment><USER2> What's worse is that they won't let this be disabled by an about-config switch. They're basically turning Firefox into an iPhone and AMO into the App Store, amputating the add-on ecosystem and users' add-on experience without any consideration for what end users actually want.

</comment><comment><USER3> First wall in the garden.</comment>


Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww <comment><USER2> I think it's not quite as simple as that. When we discussed the scope of science in a university seminar one of my fellow students said: "If scientists where to find out that rooms which are painted yellow make students happy, couldn't we then say that the university ought to paint its rooms yellow? Isn't then science able to answer one of those pesky 'ought'-questions?"

The logical slip is a subtle one. The 'ought'-question to answer is not whether the rooms ought to be painted yellow, it's whether students ought to be happy. Sure, if you know that what you want are happy students or a flourishing human society, morality becomes a problem that is easily accessible to the tools of empiricism or science. But that first step is a problem.

I don't, however, think it's a big problem. Humans are remarkably similar – most of us want the same things: flourishing societies and rather more happiness than suffering. And that's pretty much all it takes to lay your foundation. After that it's all smooth sailing with the tools of science. Sure, there are edge cases (abortion, euthanasia, death penalty and so on) but to claim that religion has any kind of edge in answering those cases is completely ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> Ronald Merrill suggested a couple of decades ago that "normative ought" and "instrumental ought" are likely two sides of the same issue which he called the "unification of oughts" (rather like Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism, Merrill was an engineer). That "normative ought" in morality is an instrumental ought with an understood object (for example to improve your or someone else's life); and I would suggest the proper study of morality may be to understand, make explicit, and rank/prioritize those implicit objects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sure, science can answer moral questions IF you have a pre-scientific moral framework. For instance, "the suffering of conscious beings should be avoided." Then science can help you figure out who/what are conscious beings, under what circumstances they suffer and how to end their suffering.

Unfortunately, the speaker misses the fact that science _alone_ gives no basis for morality.

<comment><USER5> The point is that you can have a moral (whatever that means) society without religion.

Mirror neurons is what allow us to put ourselves in others place, thus feeling empathy with them. This and this alone is the basis for the possibility of some sort of social dynamics.

I have people in my life I love and don't want anything to happen to so I can recognize that there are other people who feel the same about some they care about.

I am therefore willing to make a deal with these other people that we don't hurt those who other people love and they don't hurt who we love.

It's really that simply but of course the emergent complexity of this is much bigger.

<comment><USER6> his caricature of religion was awful. i think most religious people in an educated audience like a ted talk would think of it more as encoding communal priorities than delivered over a phone line from a guy with a beard...

...and an emergent system that can encode ideas in persistent forms cannot be decoupled from its history. you are pretty much going to have some kind of activity close to religion. if you listen to the talk, where he's arguing for universal truths, and domain experts in morality, it's surprising just how close he is to arguing for a rather traditional religious approach...

<comment><USER5> I don't agree.

From what I know of Harris having followed quite a few of his debates his point simply is that to the extent that you can talk about right or wrong moral systems, science actually allow you to back up your claims.

This is in grave contrast to the moral systems that base their logic on premises that have no merit at all.

I would much rather live in a society where moral claims can be accessed and debated than in one where it can't.

Not to because I believe that science leads us to a more correct version of morals but because it's accessible to everyone.

Religious moral systems aren't hindering bad moral behavior, people are. So studying people would in my mind give us a much better basis to discuss morals than consulting 2000+ year old books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Honestly as someone who has spent the better part of his life studying Ethics it's sad that something like this is given credence. Not because he's completely off base but because he's an amateur whose put no study into the actual field. He's repeating things that Immanuel Kant and Sir Thomas Aquinas thought up centuries ago but doesn't know it because he's never bothered to look past his own echo chamber.

His theory basically boils down to "morality is acting in a way that creates the least human suffering" and his scientific twist on this is that technology such as neuroscience can objectively gauge suffering for us.

The problem with his theory is that it's simplistic and is in fact the moral philosophy that's usually debunked on day one of a good Ethics class. Generally the counter argument is something like this…

Yes suffering is bad. But say you have a child who has been found torturing a small animal. Statistically that child has a 90% chance of turning into someone who does great harm to human beings. Given that would a society be morally justified in killing all children that are found torturing small animals? It would unquestionably save the world the most suffering the only cost would be killing one innocent kid for every 9 who would turn in to a monster. Is that an acceptable loss?

Questions like that are where serious moral discussions begin. Bottom line: Sam Harris treats secular morality as if it's some kind of new concept and it just isn't. People have been studying it since at least 400 B.C. (namely Aristotle) and anyone talking about a topic while ignoring 2,410 years of previous thought towards that topic is nothing more than a fool.

<comment><USER8> I've noticed an interesting internet trend over the years.

1) I spent several hundred hours chasing down some topic I like, such as ethics, philosophy of science, global warming, The Crusades, whatever

2) Joe Blow the famous internet guy gets a bug stuck in his butt about the same topic -- perhaps he saw it on Oprah or read it on a discarded cocktail napkin. Who knows.

3) Joe does a TED talk, writes a blog, or some other way tells us his deep thoughts, most of which sound like a spin-off of The Matrix. Very cool. Very shallow. And without any historical context.

Everybody oohs and ahs and talks about how cool Joe is.

I'm not saying that has happened here. I'm not saying that I have some kind of deep insight. God knows I'm Joe to some other schmuck. All I'm saying is that reading blogs or watching videos in which people say trivial things while others applaud is getting a bit tiring. I love everybody participating in a debate! But I wish there was some way to rank the content of the material so I wouldn't have to go over elementary material -- many times arguing with people who don't know better. Talk about a waste of time for everybody.

Some kind of difficulty-rating system for internet material would be really cool. Save us all a lot of time on mis-matched conversations.

<comment><USER9> I don't think Sam Harris is your Joe. He has an undergrad in Philosophy and a PhD in neuroscience. He's also written several books, some of which are quite controversial. He's not as well known as Dawkins or Dennett, but he's not a quack from the internet either.

But that's beside the point, because I don't think you have to have degrees or write books to have valid opinions on topics. Some of the most insightful people I know have no formal education at all and I gain a lot by listening to them. Some are overconfident and lacking in topical knowledge, but if that is the case, then I still don't attack that person (sometimes I do if they attack others -- or me, I'm still learning how to communicate effectively). I just talk to them and try to get their opinions. In a debate like this, opinion is, for now, just about the best we can expect to share no matter how educated you are or how many books you've read -- there are no clear answers -- only choices.

I know my opinions of morality really differ quite a lot from most -- that doesn't make me wrong and it doesn't make _them_ wrong. Moral relativism is the first the we should accept before engaging in a debate about morals or ethics.

I wish really, we'd address the arguments rather than resort to ad hominem, which in this case definitely isn't valid. Many would consider him to be an expert on the topic of modern secular morality.

I highly doubt he hasn't read the famous philosophical discourse on the topic of morality. Your implication that you need to go over elementary material with someone as well versed in it as Sam Harris is quite funny really. IMO, you're Joe right now. No offense.

<comment><USER8> No offense taken. The comment wasn't about Sam at all. It was responding to the feelings of the parent comment and making an observation. Heck I didn't even RTA.

(Although I continue to make the observation that if by some miraculous means Sam were Joe to me, we would be having the same conversation. Hence the frustration in the GP)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Moral systems have evolved because that is a good way of maintaining the complex dynamics of a society.

How they work can perfectly well be explained by science if we are too look at it from a social dynamic point of view with mirror neurons at the center. Which also will explain why some people don't have empathy.

Science can obviously not explain WHY something is right or wrong but there is absolutely nothing that indicates that this can or should be answered. As long as the mechanics work.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure when it comes out, but he earlier did an authors@google talk on the same subject, which has been embargoed so the TED version came out first. My comments are based on that earlier version of this talk.

Sam did a very good job of demonstrating that it would be really good if we could get morality from science. He did a good job of pointing out that science can validly inform our decision making. However he misses the fact that science is about problems that are tractable, not important. And he is unable to present his variant of Western morality with sufficient force to convince people who do not start with a morality similar to the one he already has.

In essence it is the same mistake the social sciences make. The case that something is important, and that data is a useful thing to have in studying it, does not suffice to make a compelling case that we are on the right line of research.

See [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-makes-it- science.h...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-makes-it-science.html) for a more detailed explanation of my opinions about what is and is not science.

<comment><AUTHOR> One point at least briefly mentioned in the TED version is the advancements in brain scanning. I am personally an advocate of the singularity theory of technology, and I am of the opinion that we will get to a point where the psychological and social issues will be describable with sound neurology, and it will become a tractable problem.

<comment><USER11> I think I hold similar views, except I would say "sound epistemology" not neurology. Do you think P=NP?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A better basis for morality is this:

It's immoral to live in a non-error-correcting way because doing so dooms you to repeat your mistakes (whatever they may be) indefinitely.

<comment><USER13> That's one negative, and one CS degree. :)

<comment><USER12> What do you mean?

<comment><USER13> Your moral is about forbidding something, not guiding somewhere. Very much like the christian commandments.

And you need to be of a certain culture to understand the "error-correcting" part.

<comment><USER12> How can we avoid fooling ourselves and correct our errors?

is a constructive question that leads to things like the scientific method, and to the use of criticism in discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i know it's difficult or often impossible to accurately title talks like these, but this one is pretty far off. he stays somewhat on topic for a while but ends up drifting really far into compromising western and middle eastern values. i think "moral expertise" or something along those lines would have been better.

</comment><comment><USER15> The problem with basing your morals on religion (or science for that matter) is that biblical passages can often be taken out of context to validate any action, the same way scientific data can be looked at in many different perspectives (lying with statistics).

Morality is difficult to explain. I think most people just know what is right and what is wrong. A lot of people look to a higher power (religion or science) to justify the wrong actions they want to take.

<comment><USER10> Everyone _thinks_ they know right from wrong. The problem comes when what one person "knows" disagrees with what the next person "knows". Society is full of important debates about moral questions which people legitimately disagree on. (See abortion.) And Sam's presentation does nothing to help us sort those questions out. (Well actually he asserts his morality. But that won't convince people who fundamentally disagree with him.)

Now some people like to point out that evolutionary biology has a lot to say about why we develop the internal moral compasses we do. Morality really does seem to be bred into us. But the problem is that the same evolutionary incentives that breed moral behavior also breed negative characteristics like xenophobia and a willingness to selectively cheat. So evolution explains both what we like and dislike about human behavior, and provides no useful way for us to distinguish them.

<comment><USER15> I guess the point I'm trying to make is that allowing 'written' morality (written in a holy book or written by Sam Harris:)) to supersede personal morality is harmful because words can often be twisted to mean what you want them to mean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good talk, but I can't help feeling that John Stuart Mill said all this more than a century ago, and most of the history of economics consists of his and other people's attempts to address the same questions.

On the other hand, with so much ignorance and BS in the world, even in wealthy societies, restating these ideas as often and fluently as possible is a worthwhile endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER17> Careful, of all the places where language makes it easy to trip up and misunderstand each other, this one is particularly filled with land mines.

Don't get caught up on exactly what words he used, but rather watch the whole talk and try to get his intent, which I think is well founded.

He is, I think, fairly clear in saying that science does not tell us _what specifically_ is morally "good" or "bad," but rather that science can tell us what human activities foster and correlate with human prosperity and happiness. I'm sure most everyone here will agree that this is not an outrageous claim. Since moral questions usually deal with issues of prosperity and happiness, he concludes that we shouldn't be afraid to bring up science in such discussions.

<comment><USER18> > Don't get caught up on exactly what words he used, but rather watch the > whole talk and try to get his intent, which I think is well founded.

I don't think it is particularly well founded for a reason that hasn't been mentioned yet:

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

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

I believe that deontological ethics - that is, coming to decide right and wrong actions - is superior to consequentialist ethics, which is to judge actions by their expected results.

Many people would disagree with me - a lot of people are consequentialists. But consequentialism usually fails, once you start saying "The ends justify the means" you get into bad places really fast.

Historically speaking, consequentialism has produced lots of problems and not much success.

<comment><USER19> I realize this is going to seem a lot like a 'no true scotsman' argument, but I think there's a problem with saying consequentialism has bad consequences. If it has had bad consequences, they weren't doing it right. (or _possibly_ they just had very different values)

It's also possible to be consequentialist and still refuse to due certain things on principle, even if it seems like the right thing to do, because you know you are prone to be wrong about that kind of thing.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/uv/ends_dont_justify_means_among_hum...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/uv/ends_dont_justify_means_among_humans/)

<comment><USER18> > but I think there's a problem with saying consequentialism has bad > consequences. If it has had bad consequences, they weren't doing it right.

This is a good point, but it appears like the process of attempting to apply consequentialist thinking almost always leads to bad places. Consider, for example, Prohibition or the War on Drugs. These were both really well- intentioned in some ways - they were about having a cleaner, more sober, more healthy society, with less poverty and more prosperity, and less addiction. But the end result is creating an underground drug/alcohol trade, giving rise to organized crime and gangs, and having people now consume less safe homebrewed versions of alcohol and drugs.

I think most if not all well-intentioned consequentialist thinking goes to similar places. There were will always be seductively alluring "Works in theory/destroys the world" type things (separate but equal segregation, communism, prohibition, price controls) - and many of those are in violation of basic deontological ethics of giving people choice, letting them live their lives, and so on. I think the vast majority of drastically bad ideas can be avoided with straightforward, rule based live and let live type ethics, which is what I personally favor after searching around.

"Ends justify the means" has historically always led to bad places - and I think it always will. "Ends justify the means" works in theory, but has consistently historically failed in the real world.

Edit: Just read the Less Wrong article - quite good and I more or less agree with Eliezer there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another way of saying this would be that you can create a mathematical model of morality and have it answer your questions of morality in particular situations. If you come from the viewpoint that there is a mathematical model of everything (waiting to be discovered) then this is pretty obvious.

</comment><comment><USER21> fascinating because he makes an almost religious argument for absolute truth. he simply calls it objective fact.

</comment><comment><USER22> Science cannot answer metaphysical questions, so ethics is entirely outside its scope.

</comment><comment><USER23> So am I morally obliged to push my fat friend off the bridge to stop a train that will otherwise kill three people? Answer me, science!

And don't even get me started on the Repugnant Conclusion problem...</comment>


JPMorgan Chase Hired 2,100 People with Criminal Records in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2019/10/21/jpmorgan-chase-hired-2100-people-with-criminal-records-in-2018-and-will-hire-more/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if they take into account things, like how long since their offense, number of offenses. Hiring somebody whose last offense was more than five years ago perhaps is more likely to perform more similarly to a non-offender.</comment>


Naomi Parker Fraley, the Real Rosie the Riveter, Dies at 96 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/obituaries/naomi-parker-fraley-the-real-rosie-the-riveter-dies-at-96.html <comment><USER2> If you haven't been to the Rosie the Riveter museum in Richmond, it's worth the visit. The history of Kaiser and the Richmond shipyards is incredible. The number of ships produced per day was crazy. It's a nice walk around the Richmond marina as well.

<comment><USER3> ^---I came here to say this. It's a terrific museum -- we basically won World War II because we produced ships faster than the Axis. (And it's nice to see a museum that recognizes the role of _civilians_ in the war effort.)

Really a lot to think about at that museum...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those unfamiliar with the name "Rosie the Riveter", she's the woman on the popular "We can do it" posters from World War II.

<comment><USER5> The Westinghouse "We Can Do It" woman is not Rosie the Riveter, though. No-one associated the label with the Westinghouse poster until the early '80s. And the Westinghouse poster was deeply obscure during the war, unlike the Rockwell cover and the "Rosie the Riveter" song. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter#Westinghouse...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter#Westinghouse_poster)

<comment><USER3> You can hear the original song on YouTube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2E613J9m0I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2E613J9m0I)

 _" Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage

Sitting up there on the fuselage..."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting research.

</comment><comment><USER7> The "Naomi" in her name seems like a janpanses name.

<comment><USER8> Naomi is the name of a biblical figure who, along with her daughter-in-law Ruth, is among the most fully-fleshed-out women in the Hebrew canon (Old Testament, Book of Ruth). The Ruth story itself gets a lot of play in both the Christian and Jewish worlds, both because of the central loyalty aspect of the story, and because Ruth was to become King David's great grandmother.</comment></comment>


Runcoderun ending private builds - <AUTHOR> http://blog.runcoderun.com/post/380299464/runcoderun-returning-to-open-source-only#disqus_thread

<comment><USER2> I don't understand this profit model.

</comment><comment><USER3> why, oh why would you link to the comment anchor? please fix?</comment>