The Human Brain Project - <AUTHOR> http://www.humanbrainproject.eu

<comment><USER2> If that simulation would be conscious, wouldn't it be just as bad (if not worse) as performing experiments on animals ? and if it wouldn't be conscious, wouldn't it conflict with the beliefs of most scientists on the origin of consciousness ?

<comment><USER3> If the HBP is really a success and the simulation is conscious, then the simulation should probably get similar rights and protections as a human. ( Whatever freedom of movement means for a supercomputer is a rather interesting additional question. ) And this would likely mean, that the possible experiments on such a simulation need to be severely restrained. On the other hand, if a sufficiently advanced simulation of the human brain would not be conscious, then we run into trouble regarding the purely physical nature of human brains.

However, I tend to think that a more rigid definition of consciousness is needed ( and may well be one of the major results of the HBP). I think this, because I am thinking about similar complex programs as a full brain simulation, which demonstrate complex behavior, but no consciousness. ( For example very detailed simulations of super nova explosions.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Modern computing technology has brought these goals within sight.

Haven't we been saying this since we had vacuum tubes and early chess programs?

We thought machine vision would be easy and that turned out pretty tricky.

> ICT is ready to give us a completely new understanding of the brain and its > diseases; understanding the brain will lead inevitably to radical innovation > in computing.

I can't help feeling this is backwards. As we learn more about the brain our simulations become better. But I'd be really interested in any computer simulations that have improved our understanding of brain stuff.

<comment><USER5> > I can't help feeling this is backwards.

What they are trying to say is that we can put a lot more data into our simulations and run them at different abstraction levels, which will help us improve our understanding of the brain. This improved understanding can be used for innovation in computing, e.g. through neuromorphic processors, see [http://www.kip.uni- heidelberg.de/cms/groups/vision/projects/...](http://www.kip.uni- heidelberg.de/cms/groups/vision/projects/facets/) which is one of the project partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This sounds really interesting - I would definitely apply to work on such a thing. But I am scared away by the science career path. So optimistically you get to develop some neuro simulation code, maybe get a couple of papers out it. What do you do then? Who in industry hires people who worked on this kind of stuff? I'm not trying to be pessimistic - if I figure out a good idea then I'll go for it and apply.

<comment><USER7> I know several people who have done PhDs in neural simulation and then gone on to work in industry (e.g. banking, IT consultancy).

I've also come across a couple of startups building on brain-inspired computing. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is Brain Corporation in San Diego <http://www.braincorporation.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _At what resolution would you have to simulate the brain to get "human like" properties like consciousness? (quantum/subatomic? molecular? cellular? biologically inspired mathematical abstractions of neurons? simplest computationally useful mathematical abstractions of neurons - like current artificial nns?)_ \- this is the question I find most interesting ..instead of unrealistic goals like predicting drug effects in-silico.

It would be helpful to run simulation algorithms with "tunable resolution" on supercomputers to see at what level the interesting properties appear. Though I have better hopes of seeing an answer to this question from the guys doing AI research than from a medical mega-research project or a collaboration... This is _very different from the human genome project_ (where people alredy knew what information they needed and they put together resources to obtain it faster) that they try to imitate in the PR vids...

<comment><USER9> I agree. To simulate the effects of a drug, you would need to simulate not only the neurons, but the circulatory system, the blood-brain barrier, perhaps even the immune system, _and all of their respective interactions_. Give the state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems premature, like setting out to do the moon landing in 1870.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about that part of the project, but you could for example simulate the effect of the local interaction between a molecule and a neuron. The mechanisms to put the molecule there could be investigated separately.

> Give the state of our knowledge, a massive publicly-funded project seems > premature

One billion might sound like bucket loads of money, but it is not. There are close to 90 institutions involved and a huge percentage of the funding will need to go to the platforms that need to built. This is more about building the necessary infrastructure to do higher-impact research.

<comment><USER9> If this is really just an umbrella term for a bunch of independent research, that's different. The problem with a big project organization is that the administrative overhead involved in coordinating all of those 90 institutions will eat up valuable time and research dollars. And with no clear roadmap to guide priorities, that overhead won't provide any benefit. There's too much basic research left to be done before people start trying to coordinate on building ambitious 'platforms'. Better to simply fund a broad range of independent research and see what emerges.

<comment><USER5> The project is organized into different divisions and measures have been taken to reduce the administrative overhead where possible. Having 50 small projects does not reduce administrative costs, you would still have an enormous amount of reporting, both financial and scientific to deal with (on the EU and on the projects side).

> And with no clear roadmap to guide priorities, that overhead won't provide > any benefit

But that is one of the purported advantages of a flagship project. You do have a roadmap and a unifying goal that is provided by the project. Thus you can avoid different institutions performing the same research over and over without any concern to how this relates to previous results and other relevant areas. The difference is that the roadmap is provided by the project instead of the funding agency and as such there is more flexibility.

> building ambitious 'platforms'

To take one of the platforms as an example, the idea behind the brain simulation platform is to be able to aggregate scientific data collected one way or another (even outside the project) to build a simulation model. The more data collected the better the model. Then scientists can come and test their hypotheses or run scenarios. Based on the results the brain model may be adjusted. The way I see it, this will be an evolving tool that will facilitate basic research. I am not a neuroscientist so I can't really comment on whether this tool makes sense or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why start with the human brain? Why not do something simpler first? We can't even simulate the _C. elegans_ brain yet [http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/88g/whole_brain_emulation_looking_at_progress_on_c/) and that is ridiculously simpler than the human brain.

<comment><USER11> From the FAQ - Why not begin with simple organisms like C.elegans?

There are two problems here. The first is feasibility; the second is the relevance of our results. Feasibility. Neuroscientists have mapped all of C.elegans' 300 or so neurons. However, enormous amounts of key data needed are still missing. For instance we do not have enough data on the physiology and pharmacology of C. Elegans neurons and synapses. And we still have limited data on the distribution of ion channels, receptors and other proteins on neurons, synapses and glia. Without this data we cannot build unifying models. A second problem is how easy it is to obtain the data. The crucial requirement for unifying models is the ability to access the data needed. Obtaining a deep understanding of the molecular machinery of a single neuron or a single synapse is just as difficult in C. Elegans as in human beings. And many datasets – particularly data on cognition - are actually easier to acquire in rodents, or even in humans. So we can't just say: "let's do this quickly in worms and do complex brains later": we have to solve the same basic challenges, whatever brain we model. What we are actually doing is building a generic strategy we can use to reconstruct any brain.

Relevance: Studying the "simple" nervous systems of organisms like C.elegans or drosophila, is obviously very important, particularly for molecular and genetic studies. However the organization, electrophysiology and function of the mammalian brain are quite different. One of the HBP's most important goals is to contribute to the development of new treatments for brain disease. But pharmaceutical companies already have great difficulties in translating results from mouse to human beings; with simpler organisms these problems become much worse. If we want to make a real contribution to clinical research, it is probably unwise to invest heavily in simple systems, so distant from the human brain.

<comment><USER12> So sure there are low-level details that must be understood for any brain, but come on, 300 vs. 100B?

Once the big projects have cracked the low-level details, someone will figure out C. elegans. Until we have some smaller organisms emulated, don't expect to have a conversation with their emulated human brain, I just can't see that happening out of order.

<comment><USER13> It's simple, simulating C. elegans will not net you a billion in funding. It's not sexy enough.

<comment><USER10> If I was a billionaire, I'd spend a billion on that. It would be incredibly sexy, that is, if it is possible given our current technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The project received one billion euros funding today [http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/doc/p...](http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/doc/press28jan13-01_en.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> That's one _billion_ Euros taxpayer money and you will not be reading the results in an open access journal any time soon.

<comment><USER11> From the website: <http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ict_platform.html> Neuroinformatics Platform, Brain Simulation Platform, Medical Informatics Platform

Extremely useful platforms that should be open. In addition to which I agree with you that they should allow access to their papers.

<comment><USER5> According to the work plan (not public as far as I know), all the platforms will be open to researchers not just from Europe but from anywhere in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It'd be interesting if that page listed jobs at partner organisations.. I'd love to be involved with a project like that, but it's difficult to get involved.

<comment> a-priori Honestly, have you tried simply contacting the project? That's how I got an internship on the Blue Brain Project a few years ago (and in fact have a cameo in the video).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems they gave another billion to graphene research:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-eu-science- idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/28/us-eu-science- idUSBRE90R0HI20130128)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't _necessarily_ doubt the scientists' competence here, but they're just playing the fundraising game when they talk about "disease" in this context.

<comment> a-priori I agree that the word "disease" is certainly overused these days, there are still some things that should rightfully use the word.

Besides, whether you call them "diseases" or "disorders" or another term, there are many ways that our neurology can fail us. The "Classification" section of this Wikipedia article lists several major ones, but there's countless more:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder#Classific...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurological_disorder#Classification)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Personally, I believe it is too early for such large scale simulations, we have too many unknowns, that makes the simulation not worth the money,

</comment><comment><USER19> Damn. That's gangster.</comment>


Why Android smartbooks will eventually be free - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-no-media.com/2009/06/why-android-smartbooks-will-eventually.html

<comment><USER2> Something that's sold in a long-term contract but without an initial fee is not really 'free', is it? I mean, if the author really thinks that it's free, I've got a number of excellent business proposals for him (all free!).

<comment><USER3> Well, TANSTAAFL of course, but customers view it as free. That's a large part of why the iPhone 3g sold so much better than the original. It's cheaper upfront, though more expensive in the long run.

<comment><USER4> _That's a large part of why the iPhone 3g sold so much better than the original._

Citation needed. The 3G introduced a slew of new features and improvements, including more memory, 3G, GPS, and of course the app store, not to mention much wider availability internationally. I personally doubt that the modest price drop had much to do with its success.

<comment><USER5> Anecdotally, people I worked with all jumped on the iPhone 3G simply because it "cost less" than the original. $200 up front is a lot easier for most consumers to swallow than $400 up front, regardless of any price difference over the life of the contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well those guys are obviously right at the edge and are predicting the far future .... you could buy netbooks for 1 Euro with a 3G plan in every european country in the last year...

<http://www.t-mobile.de/mini-notebook/0,18488,21678-_,00.html> [http://www.eplus.de/Beratung_und_Kauf/Tarife/Mini- Notebook_A...](http://www.eplus.de/Beratung_und_Kauf/Tarife/Mini- Notebook_Aktion/Mini-Notebook_Aktion.asp)

<comment><USER7> I now know that Festplatte is German for hard drive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised they don't have a version available that has a built in permanent "ad-bar" on the side of the screen that allows them to distribute them for free without contracts. Granted the HN community could quickly find a way to remove it or format the OS altogether. But most average people would not be able to do this and they would just put up with the ad.

<comment><USER9> It's been one 10years ago in the last boom. Removing the OS wasn't an issue - if it didn't contact the site every few days to get a new set of ads you were in violation of your contract and they charged your CC. the HN community equivalent went to huge lengths to have fake proxies that downloaded and discarded the ads - far more effort than it was worth to get a $99 computer for free.

<comment><USER8> Well I'm just surprised things are not going down this road. I figured when android was getting close to release they would have a bunch of "free" Google phones with service and shake up the industry by payment for them via adwords.

There must not be enough money in ads to support a Google phone or they probably would have gone down that road.

Thoughts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If 'smartbooks' continue to have the same form factor as laptops (and netbooks), I think consumers will continue to buy them as low-cost, low- powered replacements for their computers. Hopefully, manufacturers will introduce new form factors (e.g. like the Kindle, or the OLPC XO-2) that break this paradigm.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's as free as it will ever get. Of course they need to make money somewhere, that somewhere being the contract. The point is that you will not have to pay for the machine, it will be considered a client acquisition cost. It is an old trick: give people something for free to sell them something of greater value.

</comment><comment><USER11> dont know about the OS but netbook is free in some parts of the world with the service contract ...

visit: <http://www.p1.com.my/wimax/wiggy_packages_ref.aspx></comment>


Show HN: kenv – an environment file injector for Kubernetes resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thisendout/kenv <comment><USER2> Helm is another great option here.

Helm uses Go templates. You define your variables in a top level values.yaml, and then install the chart to your cluster. The variables get expanded on chart install.

Here is a snippet from a deployment:

        env:
            {{- range $key, $value := .Values.my_env_vars }}
              - name: {{ $key }}
                value: {{ $value  | quote }}
            {{ end }}

</comment><comment><USER3> Man, this is definitely useful, but I hope you'd agree with me when I say that I hope you can safely get rid of this tool in the near future. I _really_ want to see a better way of reusing resources in k8s (for example, a first-class Environment object that mimics /etc/environment).

I'd really like to get rid of my custom hacky kubectl wrapper scripts and either just use a cluster add-in or have a kubectl build-in processor that helps reuse.

<comment><USER4> If you know Ruby and how class inheritance work and don't mind reading source code, check out my [https://github.com/matsuri- rb/matsuri](https://github.com/matsuri-rb/matsuri)

I wrote that one after putting into production: bash scripts (for Docker), Docker Compose, AWS ECS, and finally K8S. It was designed to reuse Kubernetes resources, but doing it in a way where it takes into account differences across environments.

Some of the code is old though. There is a whole part that brings up K8S in a container, which with microkube, nanokube, and kubeadm should just be taken out completely of Matsuri. It would also be great if I get an example repo written as a starter kit for people.

That said: have you checked out Helm? Helm overlaps Matsuri in functionality, is better documented and doesn't require you to know Ruby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I might as well plug in something I wrote to solve this problem in a different way. Warning: the project is undocumented, and require knowledge of Ruby. Obviously, if you don't like Ruby or like reading code, this will not work for you.

[https://github.com/matsuri-rb/matsuri](https://github.com/matsuri-rb/matsuri)

Matsuri is built on the idea that K8S is a building block for higher-level tools.

The gist is that rather than trying to template and substitute values, it uses Ruby class inheritance and mixins to construct the manifest being sent up to Kubernetes. Each key-value in the manifest schema is broken down into smaller, composable chunks. A single method `spec` composes it all together at the top.

To customize, you use Ruby method overrides to override part or all of the methods used to generate specifications. This also allows you to mixin modules that partially override methods describing the manifest. This allows the YAML or JSON manifest to be programmatically constructed with a Turing-complete language rather than templated.

The result is a single tool that allows you to describe pods (and services, etc.) that may require different things yet share some common functionality. For example, dev pods need to mount the source tree from the host and doesn't need secrets, doesn't need replication; staging and production might require volume mounts elsewhere and require secrets; staging might use a replication of n=1 while prod might be using replication n > 1; prod might have affinity, anti-affinity, and make use of node labelling while dev and staging do not.

Matsuri also has an abstraction that groups collections of pods, services, and other K8S resources together into an "app". It also has standard hooks for common operations, such as attaching to containers, getting logs, etc.

I have not updated Matsuri since around Feb of 2016, when I left the project this was extracted from. Sometime in the next six months or so, I'll be updating it again when I get my team's current project onto GCP.

</comment><comment><USER5> An alternative is to use Jsonnet [0] (a JSON/YAML templating language).

You can define an inheritance relationship, where your template inherits pretty much everything EXCEPT the environment variables. Or the jsonnet cli lets you specify variables to be replaced in the template.

There's some kubernetes flavored examples in [1].

[0] [http://jsonnet.org/](http://jsonnet.org/)

[1] [https://github.com/google/jsonnet/tree/master/case_studies/k...](https://github.com/google/jsonnet/tree/master/case_studies/kubernetes)

<comment><USER6> We've been using Jsonnet. It's saved much boilerplate and makes the syntax more concise. In our case we are taking advantage of the +: operator to provide a compositional DSL.

Container(foo, image) + HealthCheck(port) + EnvVar(VAR,value) + UseVolume(foo, /var/lib)

<comment><USER5> Sounds neat! Have you open-sourced this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the use case for this when Kubernetes already has things like ConfigMaps and Secrets?

<comment><USER8> It looks like it builds on those resources, but lets you deal with them via a simple dotenv-style file, rather than full YAML. Could be helpful for integration with those kinds of files or if you're migrating from an older .profile-based config.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Very cool! I created a similar project, ktmpl[1], which does require a template (as the name implies). It's a client side implementation of the proposal for templates[2] that has been accepted for implementation in the Kubernetes apiserver directly. The benefit is that ktmpl will eventually be obsoleted by Kubernetes itself, but you can use the same templates.

[1] [https://github.com/InQuicker/ktmpl](https://github.com/InQuicker/ktmpl) [2] [https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/pr...](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/docs/proposals/templates.md)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've just gone through the process of creating kubernetes configs for our entire infrastructure. I essentially created an identical set of scripts myself to deal with all our existing configs. Would have been nice to have this 4 weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER11> I just do it with python, you can dynamically modify anything in a resource pretty easily with the pyyaml module.</comment>


Introducing Mycroft Core - <AUTHOR> https://mycroft.ai/introducing-mycroft-core/ <comment><USER2> > _We are pleased to announce that Mycroft Core 0.6 Alpha is available for > download today. Mycroft Core is a lightweight, portable piece of software > written in Python. You can run it on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a > gaming rig. Mycroft Core includes Adapt, Mimic, OpenSTT, and multiple open > APIs to create an experience that allows users to interact with their > technology using the most natural form of human communication – speech._

I whole paragraph in, and I -- a programmer, who has worked with text-to- speech APIs AND Python for years-- still don't know what the duck this is.

Imagine the average programmer or layman.

"Mycroft Core is a lightweight, portable piece of software written in Python."

Wrong. I don't care what language it's written in, nor whether it's lightweight or portable, until I know what it is.

Better: "Mycroft Core is an XXX. It is portable and lightweight piece of software written in Python"</comment>


Fake Reviewers Snared in NY Attorney General Yogurt Sting - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/09/23/us/23reuters-fake-reviewers.html?hp&_r=0

<comment><USER2> Alright, so New York's relevant offices get a lot of complaints of false advertising in various online forums in the form of fake reviews. Obviously this is bad for legitimate businesses in the area, because their reputation could be negatively affected to a fairly significant degree, especially if the practice is allowed to continue.

So what should they do about it? It's a matter of fraud, it just happens to take place online, and probably in more places than just yelp.com. Since it's fraud, they have an obligation to investigate and prosecute it, and a sting operation like this is probably one of the most effective means of doing so.

This is New York saying they care about their businesses, and that they're willing to take action to protect them. I mean, would you want to open a yogurt shop in New York if you knew it'd have to shut down in less than a year because of a bunch of false negative reviews online? What would be the potential economic impact of that hostile sort of environment?

<comment><USER3> They set up a straw man so of course any reviews, positive or negative, are going to be bogus.

But suppose you open a legitimate yogurt shop in Brooklyn, and the competing yogurt shop down the street hires one of those shady Bangladeshi outfits to post a bunch of positive reviews of your business, then rats you out to the AG. The AG is going to come down on you pretty hard, and you're fined, and you're out of business. Mission accomplished.

In other words, be careful what you wish for. This is not an enforceable kind of law.

New York spends a lot of time and money on rather esoteric cases like this when there's plenty of good old fashioned street crimes they could be putting their resources into instead: muggings, gang-related activities, car theft, things that everyone living and working in NYC has to deal with every day of the year.

<comment><USER4> I have been living in NYC for the past 5 years. These are the things I dealt with:

      [ ] muggings
      [ ] gang-related activities
      [ ] car theft
      [X] false restaurant reviews

<comment><USER5> NYC actually has an epidemic of persons unlawfully looking through the pockets of black men and I think that should be attended to before restaurant reviews.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean law enforcement or muggers?

<comment><USER7> I believe the comment refers to NYC's Stop and Frisk program[0] which has been ruled unconstitutional by a US district judge, who found that the program unfairly targets African Americans and Latinos.

[0] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and- frisk_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and- frisk_program)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, the comments here are a story in-and-of themselves. I have to wonder if the people questioning state involvement are not astro-turfing here as well (in defense of the companies that got snared).

To make a bad pun, it's not free speech if you have to be paid for it. The state will go after those who pay or receive money for what they say.

</comment><comment><USER9> Very happy to see this. These companies are shameless, and there needs to be a deterrent against businesses trying to deceive consumers doing research. This has nothing to do with free speech.

</comment><comment><USER10> I find it very worrisome that the government views online anonymous postings on a private website as advertisement to be enforced by public agencies.

But, I guess it's no different than the government regulating anonymous online speech about stocks.

<comment><USER2> Speech is free right up to where it interferes with others' freedoms and liberties, which is why we have slander/libel laws, etc.

The medium doesn't exempt people from those laws.

<comment><USER11> But false positive reviews are extremely unlikely to fall afoul of libel laws...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It makes much more sense for Yelp to go after spammers, in the same way Google does. Not the NY Attorney General.

<comment><USER13> These aren't (just) spammers, though - they are people committing fraud against New York State businesses[0]. They just happen to be committing fraud on an online platform.

[0] Or rather, New York State businesses themselves committing fraud (if they are the ones writing fake positive reviews about themselves)

(Edited to reflect argumentum's reply),

<comment><USER14> Can you explain how the reviewers are committing fraud? If anything, it's the businesses falsely advertising.

<comment><USER15> If McDonalds runs an advertisement claiming Burger King serves horse meat, that's illegal.

If McDonalds pays a company to post a review posing as a customer that says Burger King served them horse meat, how is that any different?

<comment><USER16> I'm French, I've had (and loved) horse meat. I guarantee Burger King is not serving horse meat.

Edit to reflect responder: I do get the point.

<comment><USER17> You miss the point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's a question, based on an experience. Two scenarios:

A) A company posts fake reviews about itself, through whatever means. Consumers get a false representation of the business. The company and its associates are the bad guys, Yelp is the good guy.

B) Yelp's filters hide most positive reviews about a company, leaving only negative reviews. All reviews are legitimate. Consumers get an equally false impression of the business. Yelp is the bad guy.

Why is A) illegal and deserving of state interference, but B) is totally legal and continues today?

</comment><comment><USER19> isn't this yelp's job to police? Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?

<comment><USER20> > Why is taxpayer money going into propping up yelp's reputation?

It isn't. It's going into catching people violating various criminal laws against fraud. That stopping such people happens to help Yelp is a side- effect.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure how the reviewers themselves violated laws against fraud. If anything, the businesses that paid for the reviews violated said laws.

<comment><USER21> Because fraud means to be deceptive towards someone else for personal gain.

I guess you could argue like a racketeering effect-- who is guilty of murder, the man who pulls the trigger or the mafia boss who orders the hit? (Spoiler: both).

In fact, I'd love to see a State Attorney General use RICO to target not just a group of reviewers who are defrauding businesses, but the entire supply chain by which they get their targets and get paid for their illegal behavior.

<comment><USER19> fraud has a very specific, nine-point definition that may be more specific than what you believe it to be, for good reason too, because you don't want people going around crying "fraud, fraud, fraud" at the bat of an eyelash.

And to use RICO to go after them is really goddamn scary. RICO act specifically incurred to run-arounds on due process that were designed to go after organized crime. the expansion of that to terrorists essentially constituted the more worrisome aspects of the PATRIOT act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This operation seems like a complete waste of taxpayer money. While paid reviews are a violation of Yelp's TOS, since most businesses didn't add themselves to Yelp (they were added by reviewers or Yelp itself), they have not agreed to and are not subject to those TOS. Some incredibly blatant actions may qualify as fraud, but the bar for avoiding such accusations is very low. Businesses can simply ask paid reviewers not to post inauthentic reviews, and they have met their burden.

<comment><USER21> Lying about a business in a public forum with the sole motivation of harming the business... that's fraud.

"fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual;" Not a legal definition, but a good enough definition for now.

I think it's a decent use of taxpayer money to help combat the defrauding of businesses in the area.

If they were printing these fake derogatory reviews in local newspapers or on local TV, would your opinion of the fraud change?

<comment><USER23> The NYT article shouldn't say "fake" but "fraudulent", as that's the crux of the issue.

I can put up a fake review, but if it's with the intent to harm, it's fraudulent.

Now what do we do about fake reviews that are puff pieces intended to goose ratings?

<comment><USER16> I agree. There's a difference between review one: "I tried their yogurt, and it tastes like New Jersey Shore Sand", and review two: "Go to my_shOes.cOm and get great sneakers for chEap."

One is obviously lousy to the business. The other, just SEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> o0-0o Does anyone have a list of the names of the companies?

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh noes, think of the growth hackings!

</comment><comment><USER25> great. What's next? Tax money used to secure all of slashdot first posts to prevent trolls from getting it?

<comment><USER26> So you're saying that government shouldn't attempt to identify and prosecute those who it believes "breached laws against false advertising and deceptive business practices."

<comment><USER27> Yeah, in this case it should be Yelp's job to filter out fake reviews. Yelp should foot the bill for operations like this or for engineers to write better algorithms.

<comment><USER28> So, if I run a car rental company, and people start stealing cars, is it my job to recover the cars or filter out the criminals?

After all, I could write algorithms that used more and more information to determine criminality.

<comment><USER29> > So, if I run a car rental company, and people start stealing cars, is it my > job to recover the cars or filter out the criminals?

I'm pretty sure they do credit checks and run my license.

<comment><USER30> How do you propose to credit check car thieves? Ultra effective car alarms that only deactivate for people with good credit?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stripe and RunKit - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-runkit <comment><USER2> The link to the actual blog post is at [http://blog.runkit.com/2016/09/13/tonic-is-now-runkit-a- part...](http://blog.runkit.com/2016/09/13/tonic-is-now-runkit-a-part-of- stripe.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems we murder the stripe blog. It's down for me.</comment>


Principles - <AUTHOR> https://www.principles.com/ <comment><USER2> I've never worked at Dalio's hedge fund, Bridgewater, but after we studied their culture and performance in grad school, I did consider working there & spoke to a number of their alum (full disclosure: I did apply and was rejected in later rounds).

Bridgewater is easily one of the most consistently performant hedge funds in history, so it's hard to argue there isn't anything at all to ways in which they're different. Capital-T-Truth is worth its weight in gold when your business is predicting the future.

My conclusion was that the system for which Principles sets the stage really does seem like a sort of Truth-utopia. I say that with no hint of irony--it really does sound like bliss to have so many unproductive communication complexities actively suppressed. If you've ever felt like work shouldn't be about navigating complex political landscapes, or other people's egos and insecurities, but instead about the team's mission, then a system built on Dalio's principles is probably up your alley.

In practice, it turns out it might be a little tricky. Understandably, there's a tremendous stigma at Bridgewater with becoming defensive when confronted with your potential 'wrongness.' It's one of the things they screen heavily for: can you receive aggressive critique of your argument, often bordering on personal attack, without feeling threatened or defensive--ie, while still maintaining a relentless pursuit of Truth?

Problems start (again, as I understand it second-hand) at the point where people use Truth-seeking methodology like a cudgel. Consider a simple example, not significantly altered from a friend's first-hand experience:

You: "I think we ought to do X, because of [etc etc]"

Colleague: "What? It feels like you're not even considering Y. I think what we're seeing is that you're consistently refusing to get your head out of your ass and see [etc etc]. You have a bias that leads you towards X, and it's making you useless to this project."

You: "I understand your argument and I think it's fair to think I have that bias. However, I've thought a lot about that particular bias, and I've concluded that it isn't a bias because of [etc etc]. So I think the premise of your objection is flawed."

In this example, were 'You' responding to the merits of the argument presented, or were you being defensive? How do you know? How do you disagree with arguments couched in critiques of your objectiveness, self-awareness, etc?

The conclusion I ultimately settled on was that so-called 'social niceties' don't just serve as kid-gloves for fragile egos. They're also a reliable mechanism of giving people the space to engage in honest discussions about their own short-comings as they relate to the argument.

Because the Colleague in this example had been conditioned to understand that more aggressive arguments can functionally shut-out a dissenting opinion (because, again, of the stigma around defensiveness), I'd argue he/she had incentive to act aggressively.

In some respects, the Colleague in this example has failed to check their own emotions (irritation, frustration, etc.)--a slip-up that isn't nearly as vilified as failing to control emotions when confronted. This sort of asymmetry, I think, is one of the bigger risks in this type of system.

Like I said at the top, though, I ultimately did apply. My reasoning was simple: every work culture has its baggage (I'd come from investment banking), and I felt this baggage was more manageable than most other types I was familiar with.

Now that I'm building my own company, I've been re-reading Dalio's stuff. I really respect what Bridgewater is trying to do culturally, and I'm anxious to see if parts of it are transferable to a more tech-oriented workplace (and one where the average worker doesn't gross $200k+, fwiw).

<comment><USER3> Your post prompted[0] a search for this: [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red- boo...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red- book/ch27.htm)

Going to give this a read now.

[0]: self-criticism, "Truth-upia", "a little tricky"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like that there aren't any comments on this yet, it means that hopefully people are taking the time to read this.

I think the best way someone introduced me to Ray Dalio's principles is that it gives employee's the freedom, not to be an asshole, but to cut right to the heart of the problem without worrying about social niceties.

it's a common complaint and almost cliche on HN to hear someone say they find American culture ot be a bit "fake" where Fake refers to being polite or dancing around an issue rather than stating it clearly because they're worried about social niceties.

Principle 97 comes right out and says "Don't let people off the hook."

and Principle 98 follows up with "Don't assume that people's answers are correct."

When you are free by the CEO's decree to just flat out not let someone off with a half assed answer I find that you get to the root cause of issues faster.

The downside of course is that asshole's are even more pronounced and even the most well meaning people start to sound a bit like assholes. If you have thin skin it doesn't work well, you need to learn that people aren't attacking you, but attacking the problem instead.

Not everyone transitions well to this type of environment as it can be a bit of a departure from the norm of many companies existing cultures.

<comment><USER5> _it 's a common complaint and almost cliche on HN to hear someone say they find American culture ot be a bit "fake" where Fake refers to being polite or dancing around an issue rather than stating it clearly because they're worried about social niceties._

Interesting, I never heard this at HN at all and here in Brazil we have the exact opposite perception: americans are very straightforward in business while we worry too much about niceties, ammenities and excessive politeness that borderlines hypocrisy. We consider this a disadvantage in our culture regarding business.

<comment><USER6> I've noticed here, in the US, that technical staff will sometimes (often?) feel attacked or challenged by simply asking the question: "Why".

It's an important information-seeking question!

But, for some reason, in many geographies, here, in the US, people often (apparently) take it to mean something like "I don't agree." or "Justify that.". And that triggers defensiveness, and then you aren't getting information.

Because my goal is the information nugget at the end of the quest, I've learned, with most people, until I know them well, to use something like these instead of "why?":

      - "Interesting. Why did you decide to do it that way?", or
      - "Really? How did you prioritize the trade-offs to come to that conclusion?"

I don't know if that makes Americans thin-skinned, or just sensitive to that one word, or ... what ... but I think that most Americans most of the time would prefer to not offend, and have learned that challenging another person's opinion is viewed by many to be offensive. It's highly inefficient, doesn't work well in multi-lingual meeting settings, so I'd guess the Americans you have been exposed to are are somewhat experienced in international business?

<comment><USER7> Is this different from somewhere else that you've been? Or are you just offering the datapoint that you are in the US, and in the US you have observed this to be true?

I would think, given my travel and cultural experience, that the US would be one of the least problematic countries from the PoV of being allowed to challenge "authority" and ask "why" without catastrophic career consequences, but would be interested to hear other perspectives.

<comment><USER6> I am giving the datapoint, from the US, that I found team-mates, subordinates and managers to all respond defensively when asked a simple straightforward "why".

I never found my co-workers to be defensive when I asked them the same question in Japan (in Japanese). I didn't have any subordinates, and management let the group decide, (at our level), so challenging management rarely came up.

I agree that asking "why" is probably not a career-ending move in the US -- I'm just talking about the subtle first-response I've notices from other Americans in the first place. I don't know that it has any larger relevance than to maybe lend support to the idea that US workers (or engineers, anyway) are afraid to be wrong in public too.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the perspective -- I would have guessed exactly the opposite, using the logic that many Asian societies have highly formal and even ritualized notions of hierarchy and authority, and that asking "why" in such a place could be tantamount to questioning that authority. But maybe it's different when everyone is at the same spot in the hierarchy.

<comment><USER6> Don't get me wrong. The consensus attainment rituals/processes I found there (Japan, mid-80s~mid-90s) were mind-numbingly slow/tedious/inefficient.

But, in companies that manufactured products intended to compete in the global marketplace (and not something intended to meet some local need), the internal processes for doing root-cause analysis of design, manufacturing or even business model defects was pretty direct/efficient/ruthless and impersonal. To me that makes some sense: If I were on a team of 100 NASA engineers, all of us armed with slide-rules, trying to send some people to the moon and back, I wouldn't want feelings (or social standing) to get in the way of the process of verifying that the calculations were correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _I believe that pursuing self-interest in harmony with the laws of the universe and contributing to evolution is universally rewarded, and what I call "good." […] Like the hyenas attacking the wildebeest, successful people might not even know if or how their pursuit of self-interest helps evolution, but it typically does._

My perspective on this (and feel free to point out if there are any flaws in my thinking) is that this tendency to "work within the system of evolution" is how humans evolved. With our consciousness and self-awareness, however, we've accepted that some things that run contrary to self-interest are sometimes "good" for society. We don't have a society of absolute Darwinian natural selection; we've set up some structures to make sure that everybody can live a life where certain rights and freedoms are protected. Things like Universal Basic Income would go against the author's apparent Social Darwinistic morality, even though it might be a net positive for society.

So I'm not sure I agree with that view of "good" and "evil", though it certainly is _the most practical and effective_ when you're managing a company.

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing you were thinking mostly about financial and political self- interest (the things we usually classify as "greed") when you wrote this post. But I think there are other, equally important ways to be selfish.

For example, humans evolved to be social creatures. Interactions with other humans impact our body chemistry in dramatic ways. I want to avoid loneliness, so I selfishly hold relationships with others. I want to hear people say "thanks" to me, so I selfishly give people gifts. I want to be able to be righteous without hypocrisy, so I selfishly stick to my principles.

Just my two cents. There are a lot of different types of desire in the world. Who's to say that UBI wouldn't be in folks' best self-interest?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I am confident that whatever success Bridgewater and I have had has resulted from our operating by certain principles._

I generally avoid this type of advice due to the inherent effects of survivorship bias. Admittedly, I haven't read all of the words yet. Am I being too rash, or does this boil down to the standard fare of a successful person's biased view and false narrative about how they have been successful?

I am, however, intrigued with the ostensibly rigorous approach of making sure the subject is defined precisely.

<comment><USER11> The fallacy with dismissing Dalio's advice as survivorship bias, is that building a successful business isn't a one-shot deal. It's not like 100 investment managers all start out with different philosophies, their cards are dealt, and years later we find that 50 have turned a profit and 5 have become super-wealthy.

Building an organisation the size of Bridgewater involves many, many sub- challenges. How do find an opening with this client? How about this other client? How do you close a deal with this client? How about this client? One client now has an issue we're not able to solve. How do you retain them? How do you build a system to manage the sales pipeline and client relations?

Who do you recruit for this position? How do you interview them? How do you track for bad hires? How do you train interviewers so you avoid future bad hires? How do you build a system to handle recruiting and HR issues?

How do you train new hires? How do you decide who to promote? How do you minimise office politics? How do you handle conflicts between managers and teams? Etc, etc, you get the idea.

Once you've faced similar issues multiple times, you can track failures and successes, and figure out the essential actions which usually lead to success in that particular field. These essential rules are principles. Over time you identify meta-principles which apply to all fields (e.g., "be rational", or "avoid wishful thinking").

I assume you didn't intend to be offensive, but your attitude boils down to "someone smart and extremely successful has taken the time to identify what they believe to be the factors behind their success, and I'm going to dismiss their opinion without reading it, because I've decided, _a priori_ , that they must be delusional, and I regard this a-priori reasoning as the scientific and rigorous approach".

<comment><USER10> I did not intend to be offensive, only skeptical and cautious. I was pointing more to people's nature to erroneously construct narratives regarding cause and effect in their lives. We are all guilty of it, no doubt. I also don't think Dalio is being intentionally misleading. But, people tend to give less credit to chance and more credit to a very concrete chain of events that they can attribute a narrative to.

However, I think you bring up a fair criticism. It's worth reading, if nothing else, because of what Dalio has seen and experienced, situations I will likely never find myself in. As such, I would otherwise not learn firsthand how to react to or solve problems in such environments. Whether his association between actions and the outcomes are true is only part of the value of what he has written.

<comment><USER11> > I did not intend to be offensive, only skeptical and cautious.

Cool, that's perfectly reasonable.

> We are all guilty of it, no doubt.

This might sound facetious, but don't you see the contradiction here? Towards the proposition "These are the principles Dalio used to achieve success", you are skeptical. Towards the proposition "people erroneously construct narratives regarding cause and effect in their lives", you have no doubt that it applies to all people.

Why not apply skepticism towards the second proposition? Maybe somewhere on the planet are people who are able to examine their lives without constructing false narratives.

The reason I am not being facetious is that skepticism is extremely popular amongst intelligent people, but it leads to such contradictions in practice (e.g., "I know that all knowledge is biased").

<comment><USER10> I agree with the problem you raise and I don't have a good solution to the problem. This may invalidate my position.

However, per Kahneman, possibly some modes of thought are more susceptible to bias and to a greater magnitude than other modes of thought. This might allow for one to examine certain beliefs or actions based on one mode of thought with a higher degree of accuracy and lower susceptibility to bias than others.

This is getting off topic from the OP, but you raise an important issue that I think about often but don't have a good answer for. Thanks for the critical discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dalio seems to assume that, since nature follows certain physical laws, those laws must be morally good. Thus he says that natural selection must be a good thing in society.

I think the best counterargument comes from Lester Frank Ward, writing about Social Darwinism: [http://www.nlnrac.org/critics/social- darwinism/documents/min...](http://www.nlnrac.org/critics/social- darwinism/documents/mind-as-social)

<comment><USER13> Whose argument seems to be:

Being a proponent of natural selection, non-interference and laisser-faire is inconsistent, because who can be against protecting the innocent from injustice or healing the sick?

<comment><USER12> To give a simpler summary: nature rules by natural selection. But, once natural selection has created minds, these minds should be governed by a different set of rules: one that requires us to protect weak or marginalized people.

A related argument is this one: the laws of physics cannot, in a sense, be the source of the laws of morality. This is because the laws of physics are (by nature) inviolable -- you can never really "disobey" them. But moral laws are (by nature) able to be broken.

Edit: Aristotle disagreed with this latter argument: he thought that final causes were both causes of physical events and the source of moral rules. But this conception of physics has been (almost entirely) displaced by the modern scientific method.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am reading through some of this, and there is some good advice.

With the caveat that I've only read a portion, I am put off by the anecdote about the Hyena and the Wildebeest. This is where he seems to be attempting to justify social Darwiniasm with actual Darwiniasm, and bizarrely projects his own conception of morality onto both.

He seems to believe that evolution is directional, and moral, which seems rather fanciful to me.

The question of trying to understand morality based on principles of Nature strikes me as pointless.

When the Hyenas kill the Wildebeest, for food, to them it is good. To the Wildebeest who was killed, it was undoubtedly bad, if anything can be called bad. To the Wildebeest who remain, perhaps in a more healthy overall environment, it might go either way.

I'm not sure what my point is here, except that my intuition is that there are some basic principles of morality, and they are not synonymous with "success." This impulse of successful people to extend methods of achieving success to be more than that is weird.

<comment><USER15> Financial markets and the way bwater plays them are a zero sum game. This principle makes sense for them, but I am with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to be that guy. I skimmed a few sections and wanted to come back here and had to click the back button a dozen or so times to achieve that. Why does the URL update when you're scrolling down the page? It seems like a pointless "look what I can do!" kind of thing in JavaScript.

<comment><USER17> Firefox on Linux, I had to disable uBlockOrigin to see anything at all. It was a blank page, although ViewSource showed a large body of html and content.

This doesn't appear to be a commercial site at all. Weird that an ad blocker would be in conflict with it.

Also: I was able to read it with no problem with lynx, a text browser, after scrolling wwaaayyyy down to get to the article. Why don't designers (or whoever's responsible for this decision) put the content physically first, and the cruft last, in html? You can obviously arrange what gets _displayed_ first in CSS/javascript. It would make life easier for text viewing people and their tools.

<comment><USER18> Websites should fail like escalators, not elevators. If your JS isn't working properly, the site should default to just dumping the text. I'll be OK dealing with the consequences of bad formatting.

/rant

<comment><USER19> _> Websites should fail like escalators, not elevators._

I like this analogy and will be stealing it for future use. It's for this reason alone my site is plain text with few images and few styles.

Time to see how my site does in a CLI browser like Lynx or eLinks. :)

<comment><USER18> > I like this analogy and will be stealing it for future use.

Heh, I stole it from someone on here. I purposely built my site to work with minimal unnecessary components (JS, CSS, etc), and that makes it "just work" with things like Lynx. As it turns out, making sites simple also make them more compatible!

<comment><USER17> > making sites simple also make them more compatible!

For some reason (probably that I recently ran across it), this reminds me of:

"designing the system so that the manual will be as short as possible minimizes learning effort."

\- Mike Lesk, as quoted in _Expert C Programming_ , Van der Linden. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lesk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lesk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is related to a recent story and discussion of how Dalio is trying to turn his management principles into an AI to guide the management of his hedge fund, Bridgewater:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238568](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13238568)

<comment><USER21> What's interesting is that I've seen the link on HN titled "Hedge Fund Is Building an Algorithmic Model From Its Employees' Brains", but I didn't click on it.

I found it a bit silly that the WSJ doesn't name the hedge fund in question.. It's like seeing a link on Hacker News that says "This company is redesigning its architecture", and the company is Facebook. Just say "Facebook is redesigning its architecture".

I shared the video about "How the Economic Machine Works" (narrated by Dalio) on Facebook yesterday.. Here's the video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHe0bXAIuk0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I learned that one of the greatest sources of problems in our society arises > from people having loads of wrong theories in their heads—often theories > that are critical of others—that they won't test by speaking to the relevant > people about them. Instead, they talk behind people's backs, which leads to > pervasive misinformation. I learned to hate this because I could see that > making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your > head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and > unproductive.

This stood out as particularly relevant to our deep political schism of late. When you have subgroups calcifying around worldviews that haven't been stress tested outside of whatever microcosm they originated in, you end up with with large pockets of people subscribing to massively wrong ideas.

</comment><comment><USER23> For anyone looking for the context, this is was written by Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater. It's more or less a thesis of his personal and management principles. An article about Dalio and Bridgewater was on the front page yesterday, where chollida1 posted the link to this site in his comment.

</comment><comment><USER24> Also available in epub/mobi/audiobook [https://principlesbydalio.com/](https://principlesbydalio.com/)

<comment><USER25> and from there a pdf [https://www.principles.com/assets/artifacts/Bridgewater- Asso...](https://www.principles.com/assets/artifacts/Bridgewater-Associates- Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Please allow me to tell you the most important part of this "Principles." It is that we should each investigate and write down our own list. One that will evolve and change but we should have our own. Even a list of 10 guiding principles will do us good.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now and then I like to revert back to first principles. The moment things become refined, elegant, or complex, is usually when I have to see the woods from the trees and apply first principles to it.

One principle I live by is minimalism. With technology it's easy for things to become rapidly complex. It's worth applying mindfulness to technology and seeing the results. Most of my solutions are easy solutions with no cruft, instead of complex solutions with bells and whistles galore.

Another principle I try to apply is doing one thing at a time, which ties into minimalism. It's so easy to fall into the trap of distractions and multitasking. I've trained myself over the years to cull distractions, and segmented my workflow into discrete single duty units of work. If I'm on Skype, then I'm on Skype, & I'm not checking my email or Twitter too. If I'm on Hackernews, then I'm _just_ on Hackernews, and not lurking in Reddit too, etc. It seems obvious, but _focusing_ actually requires training.

Virtualization has helped with this, and it's not uncommon seeing me spinning up a new VM for the sole purpose of video conferencing, and having an entire operating system just for Twitter, etc

</comment><comment><USER28> My background is from the hedge fund investment side (though I have been programming since 1983 and have been increasingly involved in tech the past few years) and I have found these principles to be invaluable. I try to reread them a couple of times a year and in the past handed out copies to CEO and owner of the corporate partner of my startup fund.

There's a resonance here with Andy Grove's constructive confrontation and the kind of zero based idea they had about lines of business after realising mistake with memory vs cpu.

I think the main difficulties with it come from Dalio's insistence that everything is a machine - hunan beings, the family, the firm and the economy. I don't believe that is true - even code has an organic aspect to it, and firms are certainly organic.

And I think that shows in the difficulties he has with sustaining the principles as he steps away. If you read the comments on glass door, few complain about the principles but they do complain the principles aren't properly applied. So I think that's because he neglects the human aspect and if it's a cult if is insufficiently a cultus. (see TS Eliot).

Any approach can end up becoming a substrate for opportunistic and political behaviour. And most people aren't cut out for quite that level of directness.

But I learnt much more from Dalio than the stuff where I think he gets it wrong, and it's pretty powerful stuff because he has set out a coherent philosophy.

Charles G Koch has similar ideas about getting to the heart of things and bring critical. He says if a supervisor isn't being challenged by employees after a couple of years then he shouldn't be a supervisor - but the obligation is on both sides. See his books or YouTube interviews.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ray Dalio's principles are sound but the issue is that Bridgewater (his hedge fund) takes them extremely literally. This has made them seem cult-like to people from the outside and has also given them an interesting retention problem. (My understanding is that most of their technology people don't last more than six months despite their incredible pay at 2x market.)

<comment><USER30> >their technology people

I wonder if yelling and berating others is less helpful when its a technical issue versus yelling and berating others when it's some soft skill issue

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > 62 Look at what they were paid before and what people with comparable > credentials get paid and pay some premium to that, but don't pay based on > the job title.

Sounds like a justification for low-balling your pay. If there is a large range for "comparable" credentials, and you have been underpaid at a previous job, you get ... still low pay.

I say this as a person who was chronically underpaid for much of my early career due to this.

You could blame me for not being aggressive, for not advocating for myself, for being unaware of what others made. And I do blame myself. Don't make the same mistakes I made!

But yeah, it is unprincipled to default to getting away with paying somebody on the lowest end of the scale just because you can get away with it. You can dress it up as "smart" or "principled" however you want, but it is still scummy. Low pay can stick to somebody for years, it takes forever to climb out of it because it takes a lot of relatively high percentage raises, during economic downturns.

<comment><USER32> There is a principle about being cheap somewhere too. Treat money like its your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Principles are concepts that can be applied over and over again in similar > circumstances as distinct from narrow answers to specific questions. Every > game has principles that successful players master to achieve winning > results. So does life. [...]

Do "ethical principles" fall in the same category?

I think the author is confusing principles for heuristics.

</comment><comment><USER34> This made me think of Bret Victor's classic Inventing on Principle talk [0]. It was also broken up in similar 3 sections.

[0] [https://vimeo.com/36579366](https://vimeo.com/36579366)

</comment><comment><USER35> I've been on a fruitless pursuit to code a mobile application to model goals, values, problems, tasks, and their linkages. While I do enjoy journaling on paper, it's hard for me to organize over time. My app's called Experimentum on iOS if you care to check it out, it's free. I'd be very interested to hear anyone's take on this concept implemented as a mobile tool.

</comment><comment><USER36> It is interesting that many HNers describe this work as incredibly valuable, whereas they would describe humanities and social sciences as subpar, when they offer better vision on the same topics.

In particular, Dalio's anthropocentrism towards nature, evolution and the convergence he establishes between such human concepts as good and evil and subjective perception of outcomes make his work look shallow and flawed.

Overall, I think that his document works more towards justifying his situation than explaining it. If anything, I would suggest reading Spinoza as much as possible rather than this.

<comment><USER37> > _HNers would describe humanities and social sciences as subpar_

Curious assertion -- is that true? I know I prefer to hire engineers with at least some humanities background.

<comment><USER36> I would not put all HNers in one basket, but I have noticed on topics about studies, and on several societal topics that there is a tendency in our community to put hard sciences to the pinnacle, and to overlook the benefits of humanities. The extreme manifestation of this phenomenon is, to me, the SV creed of engineers disrupting the society for the best.

I was lucky enough to have someone show me this, and now I try to spend a fair amount of my time educating myself not only in my field but also in philosophy, sociology, etc. I am happy to discover these now, rather than after a life of making things I would regret.

<comment><USER38> There are many good principles that come from social sciences and such. The problems are:

1\. It's difficult to make a career in it unless you apply it in a non- traditional way. Many kids are often misled by that.

2\. There is a lack of rigor, politics-under-the-color-of-science and experimental reproducibility problems in the humanities and social sciences, and it's the negative downside you have to look out for.

3\. Postmodernism tends to be toxic and makes you ineffective. People repulsed by it go into more concrete things like STEM by instinct when they are young.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Has anyone in this forum that runs a company or a team implemented these principals or a variant of them? I'd love to hear how it faired. I've worked at several companies that preach transparency, but always fail to follow through once political obfuscation seeps through.

</comment><comment><USER40> Interesting stuff, and it was worth the read. I took some good ideas from it.

However, as I read it, I also wondered if his principles were used to test his principles.</comment>


Chinese Government takes control of Imagination Technologies - <AUTHOR> https://www.semiaccurate.com/2020/04/04/chinese-government-takes-control-of-imagination-technologies/ <comment><USER2> "They now have no other choice but to do it on their own with their own IP, either home grown or purchased." -Charlie Demerjian

gasp! What a frightful state of affairs that China has to PURCHASE or DEVELOP their IP.</comment>


Yo Raises $1.5M In Funding at a $10M Valuation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/18/yo-raises-1-5m-in-funding-at-a-10m-valuation-investors-include-betaworks-and-pete-cashmore/

<comment><USER2> Important numbers.

" To date, Yo has had over 2 million installs of the app and currently has over 2,000 developers who have started working with the API. "

</comment><comment><USER3> does everything just automatically get a $10mm valuation these days? this sounds like the pet rock of apps.

<comment><USER4> it surely does, how people can invest in a such useless app, well there is market for everything, but this is insane, well not as insane 16 billion whatsapp valuation, the market is crazy, CRAZY!!!</comment></comment>


GET Your FUCKING SHIT TOGETHER, GOOGLE (IO) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jarrett.io/post/45267516168/get-your-fucking-shit-together-google-io

<comment><USER2> Same thing happened to me dude, it so frustrating when you know you were on time but google SignIn page failed to load on time :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, such a bummer

Still loading as we speak, you get one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, calm down man.

<comment><USER2> no need, he is rightfully angry. Google's management of ticket sucks

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, agreed</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: 3 week YouTube Mashup - <AUTHOR>

Tagline: View Youtube on just one page.
http://www.tubecatchup.com
PS - Any tips on getting word out? avenues to market at?
Does the layout look right? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.tubecatchup.com></comment>


It's official, Assange given asylum - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/

<comment><USER2> Strange, until today I was pretty ambivalent towards Assange. Yes, what he was doing is I think the "natural" course of events - data will become more available, hiding secrets much harder and for shorter amounts of time.

But, for his personal fate, I was, well, ambivalent.

Now, however, I actively want him to not stand trial in Sweden (and certainly not end up rerouted to the USA.) I would prefer a method where he does face his accusations in a properly constituted court (Brussels perhaps?), but right now, I lack all trust in USA's approach to extradition when a War on X is involved.

Bush Jr has a long legacy - the beacon of Truth and Justice in the world, and guess what, I don't trust them.

Strange.</comment>


Ask HN: Resurrection of Z80 Exidy Sorcerer - <AUTHOR> Folks of HN. I'm trying to bring my Exidy Sorcerer back to life... & a call for help from anyone who knows anything about (old) electronics. Years ago I was lucky enough to buy an old Exidy Sorcerer computer. But I've waited till now to get time to try to bring it back to life.
It's a beauty, fully kitted out with display, printer, disk drives, manuals and software, in the original boxes!
The original box: https://imgur.com/5xRFpjH
From Exidy, 390 Java Drive, Sunnyvale California! https://imgur.com/kagFrCC
It's a 32K model: https://imgur.com/7KFBjaj
Inside, the machine under its plastic dust cover: https://imgur.com/syAC3mF
The dust cover reveals the pristine machine: https://imgur.com/MwSLOup
Hidden at the bottom of the box, weirdly, a chip! https://imgur.com/52V0x3N
The original monitor: https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ
Green phosphor no less! https://imgur.com/p1NGl2M
A bag of cables, including a joystick! https://imgur.com/s9kpfwg https://imgur.com/eibEq8L
The most beautiful floppy disk drives ever made: https://imgur.com/ssJq3Wj https://imgur.com/1kK3ole https://imgur.com/ADqTRum
That even have a little dust cover: https://imgur.com/fa3kRjD
But does this 40 year old machine work?
Yes! https://imgur.com/8toCU8T
In case you weren't sure, the stack begins from BF90 hex. https://imgur.com/HhcTkSz
BUT DISASTER!
I plugged it in and turned it on and it worked, but within 60 seconds there was a crackling sound and burning smell and I rapidly turned it off again.
OH NO!
What do I do? Dear Hacker News community: I'm trying to find someone who can help me with this. I believe the capacitors in these old machines are often a problem. Maybe it's that? How do I find someone here in Melbourne, Australia who knows how to replace capacitors in these old machines?
Hopefully I can get this beauty back to life and try to preserve the software contained on its floppy disks. <comment><USER2> Join us at the Vintage Computer Forum. Technical assistance on tap for keeping older computers operational. Troubleshooting assistance, parts supplier recommendations, etc.

[http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum.php](http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum.php)

Your problem sounds like a classic example of a capacitor failure, either a bypass capacitor or a filter cap in the power supply is most likely.

<comment><AUTHOR> This indeed is exactly the right place and I have successfully found someone there to help, along with alot of other like minded vintage computing people!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Replacing capacitors is generally pretty easy, especially with the through- hole components that older systems used. Of course, a lot of other things can lose their magic smoke too, so you'll have to do some troubleshooting to be sure what the problem is.

You'll want to find the official parts lists and schematics, so look on the Internet Archive for them. A quick search ([https://archive.org/search.php?query=exidy%20sorcerer](https://archive.org/search.php?query=exidy%20sorcerer)) finds the schematic for the Exidy Sorcerer 2, so hopefully the one for your machine won't be too hard to find.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, these photos take me back! I loved playing & making games on the Sorcerer with its character graphics. (Fun fact: my uncle Paul Terrell was the founder of Exidy. He sent us a Sorcerer for Christmas, but it was only partially assembled. My mom assumed he was just dumping a unit that failed QA, but my dad and I managed to get it working.)

Sounds like you blew a capacitor. Just open the case and look for the one that died. You should be able to desolder and replace it without much trouble.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a forum for this [https://www.badcaps.net/forum/](https://www.badcaps.net/forum/) which I believe was started when there was a slew of bad capacitors a decade or two ago.

The main page appears to be someone who has a service of some sort, but maybe posting in the forums will get you somewhere.

I always had a softspot for the Exidy and those awesome vector graphics. Good luck on your restoration.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, I've never seen the box before! Good job saving it all these years. You probably should have gone through it before trying to power it all on... look for signs of arcing in the monitor... and yeah, replace blown/leaky caps everywhere... if not all of the good ones too.. And make sure the power is stable and clean before connecting it up/trying again.

</comment><comment><USER7> A quick Google search brings up this guy. [http://members.optusnet.com.au/spacetaxi64/DRIVERS/VINTAGE-R...](http://members.optusnet.com.au/spacetaxi64/DRIVERS/VINTAGE- REPAIRS.htm)

People in the Australian Vintage Computer group on Facebook could probably give you some good leads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. He3 is actually out of business, but I have found someone else to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> With links:

The original box: [https://imgur.com/5xRFpjH](https://imgur.com/5xRFpjH)

From Exidy, 390 Java Drive, Sunnyvale California! [https://imgur.com/kagFrCC](https://imgur.com/kagFrCC)

It's a 32K model: [https://imgur.com/7KFBjaj](https://imgur.com/7KFBjaj)

Inside, the machine under its plastic dust cover: [https://imgur.com/syAC3mF](https://imgur.com/syAC3mF)

The dust cover reveals the pristine machine: [https://imgur.com/MwSLOup](https://imgur.com/MwSLOup)

Hidden at the bottom of the box, weirdly, a chip! [https://imgur.com/52V0x3N](https://imgur.com/52V0x3N)

The original monitor: [https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ](https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ) [https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ](https://imgur.com/qviVnoZ)

Green phosphor no less! [https://imgur.com/p1NGl2M](https://imgur.com/p1NGl2M)

A bag of cables, including a joystick! [https://imgur.com/s9kpfwg](https://imgur.com/s9kpfwg) [https://imgur.com/eibEq8L](https://imgur.com/eibEq8L)

The most beautiful floppy disk drives ever made: [https://imgur.com/ssJq3Wj](https://imgur.com/ssJq3Wj) [https://imgur.com/1kK3ole](https://imgur.com/1kK3ole) [https://imgur.com/ADqTRum](https://imgur.com/ADqTRum)

That even have a little dust cover: [https://imgur.com/fa3kRjD](https://imgur.com/fa3kRjD)

But does this 40 year old machine work?

Yes! [https://imgur.com/8toCU8T](https://imgur.com/8toCU8T)

In case you weren't sure, the stack begins from BF90 hex. [https://imgur.com/HhcTkSz](https://imgur.com/HhcTkSz)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a common occurrence on BBC Micros: a couple of capacitors from the power supply blow up. No harm comes from it. You just have to replace them. I hope this is your case.

I saw a picture of an Exidy Sorcerer on a The Centre for Computing History post a few days ago. I had no idea what it was.

</comment><comment><USER10> It actually might be a lucky thing that you heard a crackle and smelled smoke, because whatever burned up might have left a sign on the board. If you look at the board carefully under bright light with a magnifying glass, you may see some component that is clearly messed up, like blackened or ruptured.</comment>