[Ask HN] How do you organize your tasks/to-do lists? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious.<p>I might be old-fashioned, but I'm still using a pen and notebook. I'm thinking of going digital, but all of the online to-do list applications are far too complicated — I don't care about categories, tags, or priorities. I'd just like to be able to type in a list of tasks for a given day and hit a box to mark them as done. <comment><USER3> WeekPlan <http://weekplan.net>

As a fan of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I have developed WeekPlan. It allows you to keep your whole week and your goals in perspective. (Thanks to <http://teuxdeux.com> for some of the UI inspiration)

The feature I find most powerful and yet almost invisible is the Overall Quadrant indicator. It tells you in which quadrant (cf. the book) you are spending most of the time this week by showing a different color. Your goal is to have it green, Quadrant II, important tasks but not urgent. Trying to get the green light has been very efficient to help me keep focused on what matters.

(I developed most of it in eight hours using a combination of asp.net MVC and jQuery and was really impressed by the productivity you get out of these two.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I use <http://orgmode.org/>

<comment><USER5> +1 for org-mode

While on-topic, just want to clear up misconceptions of org-mode. It is different from all the software/website task managers mentioned here. You can think of it as a meta-organization tool. A org software factory if you will. You can customize it to exactly how you want your thoughts, tasks, notes, etc organized.

See <http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html> for an idea of the sheer breadth of options available to make it work exactly for you.

This may sound like a lot of work, but there are a lot of sensible defaults, which is why most org-mode tutorials that scratch the surface make it seem like a sibling to other task management software. The base case the OP wants would simply be:

      S-M-<RET>: create new TODO
      C-c C-t D: mark TODO as DONE

If I may pilfer a quote, org-mode "outshines other [task management solutions] in approximately the same way the noonday sun does the stars." (Neal Stephenson on Emacs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The simplest, easiest to use online ToDo app is Google Tasks. You can access it using small window in Gmail (look for "tasks" on the left-hand side) or full-screen ( <https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas> ) or on the iPhone/Android ( <https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig> )

I have also wrote a native iPhone app client for Google Tasks so that you can use it offline <http://www.geetasks.com>

<comment><USER7> Wow, great job man. I've been looking for something like this for a LONG time. Downloaded and tried it out with the lists I already have in there, and great stuff.

<comment><USER6> Happy users carry me through the day of work.

I'm _so_ not missing my corporate job.

BTW, I have forums over at <http://geetasks.com>, stop by to say "hi"!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> No pre-made org software has ever felt comfortable enough for me, so I roll my own.

I have a series of text files organized how I like. I added syntax highlighting in TextMate. I also wrote Ruby scripts that automate any parts that would be tedious if done manually. My calendar is just a glorified text file, specially formatted for ease-of-use.

I also wrote my own TextMate bundle that turns TextMate into a wiki, which is my exobrain.

Finally, whatever you end up doing, I would recommend doing something similar to my "jot" script. Basically, whenever I have an idea or come across something I want to address later, I hit F10, a dialog appears, I type my thought into the text box and hit enter, and then the message is saved in a file called jot.txt. At the end of the day I clean out my jot.txt. This allows me to capture ideas as they come to me without breaking my momentum of what I'm currently working on. You can find that script here: [http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow- wi...](http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow-with- applescript/)

</comment><comment><USER9> <https://www.rememberthemilk.com/>

Quite simple interface. Write your list, easy to manage times with the shortcuts (just go: ^ then type your due-by date, ie: tomorrow or friday and it'll set the date), and you can print it off if you still enjoy the nostalgia of pen and paper

<comment><USER10> Absolutely nothing works better for me, I've tried a lot of things from paper or post-its to writing my own software or using flat text files. I have paid for the pro version ($25 and can be accessed on an iPhone or Droid, web-only version is free) for two years now and I'd gladly pay $100 for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 37signals Backpack. <http://backpackit.com/>

For more information read this article: [http://patrickrhone.com/2006/06/27/backpack-new-gtd- implemen...](http://patrickrhone.com/2006/06/27/backpack-new-gtd- implementation-ideas/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I haven't found anything better than a written list. There's something really tactile and satisfying about crossing items off it.

Every few days I rewrite the list onto the next page, drop things that are no longer relevant, expand items that are sticking around. The physical nature of the list, and the ritual of recopying it are really powerful, to me. Plus the fact that I recopy it frequently helps keep it from getting out of hand and naturally prioritizes it.

I say this, but I've been out of the habit lately. I need to start doing this again.

<comment><USER13> IIRC, writing stuff down is better for recall than typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> OneNote -- it has been said it's the best piece of software to come out of Redmond.

<comment><USER15> One note is shockingly good. The easiness with which you make items "doable" is awesome. You then move them around as you like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I made a post about it some time ago on here, and at that point the poster asked for the opposite (not too simple).

You can find it here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1108498>

I have since added a few minor details, but largely it's the same. I still feel a bit bad for ripping off their design, but heck, it was just up my alley. But in all honesty, it sounds like <http://teuxdeux.com/> out of the box would be just your thing. Personally I wanted to be able to have it stored "locally" where I had full control.

And to answer your question: I use what is outlined above and it works really well for me. The only drawback, perhaps, is that my "To do Some day" list has gotten pretty big. Everything I can't do right now but find interesting, or every little idea end up in that container. Not sure if that's entirely bad, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

TeuxDeux is very, very close to what I'm looking for — I'll give it a try for a couple of days. Too bad they don't have an iPhone version ready (even just an iPhone-optimized site).

<comment><USER16> Glad to be of assistance. :)

It's on the "Todo Some Day" list to make my version of it talk SyncML which would enable it to synchronize with existing mobile apps out there. I never considered porting the UI, but maybe that's an idea, it is really suitable for cellphones.

Hmm...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've tried a number of different options - online and local files - but I've settled on Vim's taskpaper plugin (see link below) and a tasks.taskpaper file that I keep in sync across machines using version control. I don't actually even use Taskpaper itself, since I don't really want another application for this - just a file with a reasonable, and hackable syntax. (The syntax is simple enough that it's dead easy to whip up a script for any kind of display or search or munging you might want to do with your tasks file.)

Taskpaper.vim plugin: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2027>

Recommendations for highlighting taskpaper files: [http://www.praytothemachine.com/evil/2007/11/06/taskpaper- an...](http://www.praytothemachine.com/evil/2007/11/06/taskpaper-and-vim/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm working on an app for this - Speckle (<http://speckleapp.com>). The main feature is that Speckle has multiple checkboxes per task, so if you're working in a team, or even just if some tasks take longer than others, you can check them off bit by bit.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not in any one single way :-)

I think you might want to look at <http://www.toodledo.com/> \- it is actually quite powerful (aka "complicated") but the amount of complexity is user configurable. So if you don't care for a certain category, you can just tell the system to ignore it.

The main advantage of something "online" is that it is easy to attach supplementary information to a to-do item - a file, a message-ID...

I use a hybrid of post-it notes, online calendar, paper notebook, toodledo, and e-mail. GTD it isn't - but it works.

[Edit - toodledo also allows you to assign tasks to other users. It is not quite implemented in the way I would like, but their deveoper is very user- friendly and they are always working on it, so I am optimistic.]

</comment><comment><USER20> Gootodo (now called Goodtodo) is the best solution I've found. It's simple, without categories, tags or priorities (other than sorting by position). The differentiators for me are: calendar-based to-dos. I can create a to-do that I don't actually need to act on until next week, and it won't show up until then.

Also, awesome email integration, where I can forward an email to, for example, firstname.lastname@example.com, and the body of the email will be attached to a to-do that shows up on that date. This is a fantastic way to get in the habit of emptying your inbox as well. Things you have to do don't linger there, you just forward them to your to-do list.

Simple and elegant, and more than worth the $3/mo I pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Emacs' org-mode. I've been using it for the past several months and love it. Some links:

<http://searchyc.com/org-mode>

<http://orgmode.org/org.html>

</comment><comment><USER22> Nothing wrong with paper and pen but you need a system to make sure things don't fall through the cracks. I use and recommend the Franklin Planning system now Franklin Covey. <http://www.franklincovey.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> I use <http://toodat.com>

I wrote it myself because, like you, I didn't like the complicated nature of the other tools out there. It's pretty basic but it works.

</comment><comment><USER24> Things on the desktop and the iPhone. If you buy into the GTD system, I'd recommend it. The iPhone app syncs via WiFi to the desktop app whenever you're connected to the same network (I'm hoping syncing via the 'cloud' is coming soon). Ubiquitous capture is what it's all about, and Things is good at it.

It also helps that the app is simple and well designed. I don't use the tagging or much of the scheduled tasks features. Otherwise, there isn't much that beats pen and paper.

</comment><comment><USER25> Maybe it's just me, but maintaining a task list is about as troublesome as finding one that does just what you need.

I get e-mails for business related tasks. Outlook flags posts sent directly to me (as in, I'm in the TO: box, not part of a group or CC'ed) and I'll check them out.

Anything else is stuff I want to do. I don't often forget that I want to do something, thus no list necessary. If I do miss something... well there's always free time in the future.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like using Toodledo:

<http://toodledo.com>

I like it because it's free, and I can even sync it with my iphone free - <USER2> have to pay $1.99 for the app

Nice clean interface, has a nice Google Chrome extensions, and for me it is intuitively how I order things - by date and importance. I just use "Project -> Task" to signify next actions within projects

</comment><comment><USER27> GTD style git.

I have a private repo on git-hub with minor things I am writing (i.e. not multi-week projects), priority registers (only allow myself 3 things on it), lists of things to read, list of things to do in spare time, list of ideas for future projects, and directories with notes on books and practice applications that I write when learning something new.

It's _very_ effective for me.

</comment><comment><USER28> I used to be mostly pen and paper for capture and on-the-go lists, with a little bit of RememberTheMilk for larger lists (like the GTD someday/maybe lists, etc).

Now that I've got my Nexus One, I'm using Shuffle (<http://code.google.com/p/android-shuffle/>). Although I still haven't migrated everything out of RTM.

</comment><comment><USER29> A visually pleasing but very simple site: <http://teuxdeux.com/>

</comment><comment><USER30> I am a huge fan of DevTodo: <http://swapoff.org/DevTodo>

It's a todo list designed for development projects (you can put a todo list in any directory), but I use one in my home directory for just the basic stuff: add and mark complete.

</comment><comment><USER31> You pretty much described <http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone>.

These were the best $10 I spent on an iPhone app by a very wide margin. It is simple, but not simplistic, and it is really well designed and executed.

</comment><comment><USER32> Uncommon around here, but I love Outlook. I've tried Gmail, Thunderbird, and others but nothing handles the Email + Contacts + Calendar + Tasks problem as well as Outlook, IMHO.

I've also used Basecamp, but I like having my To Do list integrated with my email.

</comment><comment><USER33> <http://www.makeramen.com/noodles/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions everybody.

For now, I decided to go with Google Tasks. It's very barebones and simple, but it's just what I was looking for and they even have an iPhone-optimized version (I will also look into GeeTasks).

<comment><USER6> Be sure to let me know what you think of GeeTasks, as can be seen at my forum <http://geetasks.com> I always answer all inquiries.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went ahead and purchased the Pro version this morning. Really nice and works great. I didn't like how you couldn't indent tasks on the iPhone web version, but GeeTasks does it. :)

<comment><USER6> Well, there's a reason people are paying those huge bucks for GeeTasks :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I find OmniFocus to be very helpful. The difficulty is making sure you enter everything.

<http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnifocus/>

<comment><USER35> Second the vote for OmniFocus. The key for me was synchronization between multiple computers and the iPhone. The iPhone app seems a bit like an afterthought (it's very slow to update, even when using their suggested tweaks), but synching between computers works great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pen and paper.

When I had my blackberry (before it got damaged) I wold use the "memo" area a lot. It was the most convenient way to make sure I could note down tasks that came up as they came up.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a fan of Todoist.com

Pretty simple, plus a nice Web API. I wrote some command-line tools and an Android app to work with it, so I have a few ways to read or edit my list.

</comment><comment><USER38> Recently switched from white board/notepad to <http://speckleapp.com>, which is made by HN member elliottkember.

</comment><comment><USER39> Toodledo, via the web and the App Store app. Though I'd be using the mobile version of Things if it synced to anything other than a Mac application.

</comment><comment><USER40> I use t (one of my own projects): <http://stevelosh.com/projects/t/>

</comment><comment><USER41> I think google's tasks can do what you need... it has more than what you probably need but you don't have to do that.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use post it notes. But there is also a little known feature of gmail that has a very simple task list mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER43> I am hoping that the ipad will help me get better organized with e-mail, calendar, etc.....

</comment><comment><USER44> notepad.exe

When I had jobs that required me to use Huge Enterprise Planner v 10.0, i copied my tasks as succinctly as possible to notepad. It's lightweight, doesn't get in the way, and just works. Todo.txt, and I keep it to 10 lines per day.

</comment><comment><USER7> Google tasks is fine for me

</comment><comment><USER45> paper

</comment><comment><USER46> The Hit List

<http://www.potionfactory.com/thehitlist/></comment>


Ask HN: What would be helpful features to offer with wordpress cloud product? - <AUTHOR> We have been building a wordpress to cloud (right now AWS) migration plugin. Right, we have the free version mostly complete and working on a pro version and adding features to it. What would be the ideal set of features you can think of for such a product ? Right now, it works by backing up assets to S3, moving mysql dump and creating a new LightSail instance as a clone. <comment><USER2> Native multi-AZ or multi-region. If a single instance dying can ruin my day, there's going to be significant challenges with using WordPress for some workloads.

<comment><AUTHOR> OK. Thanks. We are working on Multi-AZ right now.</comment></comment>


Uber launches on-demand grocery delivery in Latin America and Canada - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/7/21315159/uber-grocery-delivery-launch-cornershop-latin-america-canada <comment> anonms-coward Why does uber think they can do a better job that focused companies whose main business is grocery retail. Uber doesn't even have another profitable business to subsidize their grocery business while starting.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the hardest part of self-learning? - <AUTHOR> I had to face many challenges as a self-learner. Finding the right things to learn, motivation, etc. What is for you the biggest challenge of being self-taught? <comment><USER2> Solitude. Then, I'd say acceptance from friends/family, followed by a good routine.

I've tried learning alone, but after 6 - 12 months it becomes really difficult. Being around a self-learning community daily makes a world of difference, I'm about to start my fourth year and I'm loving it.

Being part of a program also reduces societal pressure. Any program really, just to be able to give a simple answer when people ask you what you are doing. Otherwise, it's easy to be met with doubt and cynical questions.

Lastly routine, I see self-learning as a day job. You want to clock N hours per day and don't spend any time procrastinating. I've been building habits for 5-10 years, and I'm reaching a point where I can be productive, but it takes time and patience.

<comment><USER3> Would you mind elaborating on "self-learning community"?

<comment><USER2> The ones I've found most effective are schools for autodidacts (40-50 around the world), most of them are part of the 42 school network (I'm at the one in Paris), but there's also Holberton School and Epitech. Then, I'd say hackerspaces or playful/collaborative co-working spaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Knowing when you've actually, deeply learned something.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read a chapter in a book, felt I understood the material very well, but utterly and completely failed to reproduce anything when you take the book away and replace it with a blank piece of paper (or IDE).

Usually you can tell that you've failed to internalize everything when you try to teach it to someone else. You become aware pretty quickly where the gaps are. If you're on your own, though, it requires a lot more discipline.

<comment><USER2> On average, most forget about 50% of what they've read after 1 hour, and only remember 2% after a week.

It sounds like your problem has more to do with retrieval. You _learn_ something when you retrieve something from your working memory or long-term memory (you build myelin, a fatty substance that isolates your synapses, which enables you to later retrieve the information).

The optimal way to learn is to use spaced repetition. It naturally happens if you apply the knowledge frequently, or you can use a flashcard app to track it.

If you struggle to _understand_ something, it often has to do with overwhelming your working memory. You are connecting several concepts that you don't understand. On average, most can keep seven items in their working memory, but after that, you'll start feeling lost.

When you internalize a few concepts by retrieving them, followed by a long break or sleep, you free your working memory to connect more concepts.

<comment><USER5> You don't internalize concepts by retrieving them from memory, you internalize concepts by reconstructing them without aids like flash cards. Otherwise you just connect the words and not the concepts.

<comment><USER6> Spaced repetition in form of testing yourself. Anki and other software help with this.

<comment><USER5> The best way to learn concepts is to first forget them and then reconstruct the facts based on previous knowledge. Spaced repetition actively hinders this process by trying to ensure that you don't forget. It is great for shallow knowledge like language, but if you are doing it for maths or programming you are just hurting yourself. That type of training is how you get people who can talk like a champ but can't even solve fizzbuzz.

<comment><USER7> It depends. Spaced repetition can be used to mindlessly memorize formulas, which I agree is not useful. Or it can be used in the way described in this article ([http://cognitivemedium.com/srs- mathematics](http://cognitivemedium.com/srs-mathematics)), which can lead to a deeper understanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i think there is too much information out there as far as im concerned. I dont even know where to begin sometimes because the advice pulls in every direction. There was an article about prisoners learning coding and some commenter said that they had come up with their own solutions to popular libraries just because those libraries were out of reach at the time of learning. The experience allowed them to learn intricate details and rely more on intuition rather than online advice exchanges. anyhow, i think i know my problem and what i need to do but im still stuck in that loop where im always looking for the BEST resource to learn something new.

<comment><USER6> This used to be me. Now I don't care, I follow the text set by the lecturer. Look up a uni you respect and see if they have a course on the topic you are interested in, then find their recommended reading.

In addition, if you don't like the text don't be afraid to change. But if it's working don't worry about something better. Just get the content done, you will be in a better position to appreciate if something else is better then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The constant fear that I missed a force multiplier early on.

It's like a stalking mission in LA Noire where I spent hours on a mission having not realised there was a car for me to use at the very start.

More practically: thank God someone was there to introduce me to an IDE and code discovery autocomplete when I was just learning programming for the first time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Finding good sources. I constantly have to do my best to figure out if a source is credible when learning something in an unfamiliar field. Has this statement been disproven? Is this an opinion or a fact? Will following this idea bear fruit?

<comment><USER11> Relatedly: knowing what it is that you don't know.

If you're self-learning, you need to pick what you're going to learn from. Which means, ultimately, you need to pick what you will learn. If you don't know what it is (or what it's called), that can be very difficult.

Anecdote: I have zero background in graphics, but found myself needing to do some image processing. I spent about a couple days learning what I could about the problem space and deriving then writing an algorithm. It worked pretty well and I felt very clever about myself. A few days later I ended up googling part of the algorithm I wrote to try to better understand some edge cases. I ended up on Wikipedia staring at the algorithm I had written, only better, and simpler, and faster, and followed by a few paragraphs entitled "how to derive this algorithm from first principles". It was amazing, but I felt decidedly less clever about myself.

People say that in the age of the Internet, being taught this stuff isn't terribly important because you can just look things up. A caveat is you need to know what something is called to look it up. I've come to the opinion that a big portion of the value of higher education comes from being familiarized with solved problems and their names by someone who (hopefully) knows what you'll most likely want to use at some point.

<comment><USER6> Excellent points. For more established fields this is where textbooks are really useful. Plus, university course syllabi/recommended reading can be a nice way to find useful content in the field.

For less established fields I'd be looking for review articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> \- too many poorly-formed opinions providing hard and fast rules about what other people should do without any consideration of the spectrum of situations and abilities

\- knowing what there is to learn within any topic and what order you should tackle things

\- whether advice about what to learn in some topic, how, and in what order is any good or not

\- when to quit or stick when a certain approach doesn't seem to work

\- how to test your learning, and how to assess your efficiency

\- how to sustain motivation while playing the 'teacher' (i.e. co-ordinator) role when you'd rather learn, and the 'learner' role when you'd rather teach.

\- how not to make certain important things be associated with pain and boredom, when approaching them in a free, open, playful mode would make them stick much better

\- how to avoid or undo damaging perfectionism about resources and approach and personal standards for outcome and ability

\---

Self-learning is extremely difficult and I don't advise it to anyone, although I wouldn't discourage trying it either.

The traditional didactic models you already know are the best. The problem is getting the right people to teach the right subjects, and ensuring free and open access for all people of all ages.

Ultimately effective self-teaching tends to mean you implement the classical methods but in non-traditional formats.

I find it's usually only those with top percentile proclivity or motivation for a given subject can sit down with a textbook and notebook/repl and absorb information as effectively as the rest of us would with a good teacher and engaged classmates.

If you're like me and you're unable to go to Uni but want to self-teach programming/CS, learn the minimum required to get into a related apprenticeship-style position and throw yourself into it.

</comment><comment><USER13> As few others have said, for me it is structuring my learning to get to the end goal. Say I want to build a website or any other idea, I need to destructure things I need to learn in order to build this idea.

Currently I use Trello for this: [https://trello.com/b/cu32qF3q](https://trello.com/b/cu32qF3q)

In future I want to build a website ala Goodreads/Google/Roadmap that lets you craft optimized learning paths for creating any idea. Sad this doesn't exist yet.

[https://docs.learn-anything.org/roadmap](https://docs.learn- anything.org/roadmap)

[https://roadmap.sh](https://roadmap.sh)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't mean to sell you anything, but we are actually building exactly a website to let you organize and set goals on learning paths. If you want you can check it out at [https://barbra.io](https://barbra.io)

<comment><USER14> Clicking on "Get early access" doesn't do anything in Firefox 72.0.2 on Windows 10. The following is printed to the console instead: "TypeError: window.VL is undefined"

I also tried signing up in Chrome (v79) and while the pop-up opens, the signup request fails with with "Access to XMLHttpRequest at '[https://app.viral- loops.com/api/v2/events'](https://app.viral-loops.com/api/v2/events') from origin '[https://barbra.io'](https://barbra.io') has been blocked by CORS policy: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' header is present on the requested resource."

Hope you can get those issues sorted out, I'd really like to give it a try :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for letting me know. I wonder why that is. Can you shoot me an email to firstname.lastname@example.com? I'll make sure to move you up the line :) sorry for the trouble. Would love to have your feedback.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately I don't really have anything constructive to add at this point because the signup isn't working on any browser or device I've tried so far (all combinations of FF/Chrome on Linux/Windows/Android)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 80% of the things that can be learned by a mentor is invisible to the mentor. It doesn't show up in books, videos, tutorials, etc. It's in subtle unspoken habits.

A lot of my mentors are sloppy. They don't look for the best tools. When I ask them for the best site to train programming skills, they point me to Project Euler, not a more fancy new thing. Some will measure progress by lines of code. Some, when stressed out, move faster or choose to pass out on the keyboard, as opposed to relaxing. Many seem dismissive of planning and insist that you have to get lucky.

80% of people are in the bottom 80%. Communities like HN are likely well in the top 20%, in terms of success, and have to look at the top 10% to improve.

What this means is that advice you get from 80% of people will be bad. There might be some viral article on Forbes about how you need to wake up at 4 AM or have a solid breakfast to be successful. When most people you meet give you consistent advice, it seems like it's true.

But you have to pay attention to who's doing this. If none of the people in top 20% are following popular logic, it could well be misguided. e.g. maybe lines of code are an important metric after all.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sticking with it. A lot of this other stuff is about doing it at all, which isn't toooo easy, but however you do it, self learning is way harder than organized learning if you want to do more than like a week of it. If you want to reeeeally learn something for like 100+ hurs worth of learning, it's damned harder than spending 5-20 hours of "ooh exciting!" diving in.

</comment><comment><USER17> Structure: figuring out which of dozens to thousands of resources to consume, and in what order. Consistently devoting time to it.

<comment><USER18> Definitely agree. Finding a good starting point is equally difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Having the right resources available in a structured manner, and as a novice knowing which source or information is reliable.

There have been countless times where I've come to resent my initial source after a few months of digging deeper on the subject just because they've positioned themselves as an authority without the ability to properly teach.

</comment><comment><USER20> No one to easily ask questions about the materials you are reading.

</comment><comment><USER21> Motivation for sure. It's easy to self-learn on topics that really interest you. The hard part is to learn those topics that don't interest you (and may be very tedious and/or frustrating) but are crucial as a foundation for the topics that do.

<comment><USER6> I found by going back to uni I have been forced to learn a lot of things which I wouldn't have taken the time to look at before. And they are actually really interesting and useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I didn't see many challenges, except for a steep learning curve. Got hired as a junior, while having less knowledge in various subjects than uni graduates, I faster learnt and became productive in the tasks that we manage. Some even failed to meet the requirements since they focused too much on the theory and never got to the stage to actually apply it.

It may have been to my advantage that my senior peers quit & went on parental leave for months leaving me alone within the environments that I'm responsible for after only 8 months. Making it even steeper but also forcing me to apply the changes that I saw correct

</comment><comment><USER23> For me it is getting distracted with other cool things I would like to learn.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not being able to ask abstract conceptual questions of a book or website or etc.

Personally I'm a more visual learner and often while a book is busy with text syntax or misc details I will think I'm putting together a better understanding of what is happening / how things work....but the book goes on with details and I lose focus / get frustrated.

I so badly want to ask "Wait if a does b does that mean x is acting like this or that!?!?"

</comment><comment><USER25> For me, it is knowing (or more accurately recognizing) when I'm going down the wrong path. Sometimes this is, of course, part of learning and sometimes it is a waste of time.

One thing great about the Internet and places like S.O. or H.N. or search engines, as well as other subject specific sites is it is much easier to find subject matter experts when you get stuck.

</comment><comment><USER26> For me, it's not knowing how far off the beginning is from an actionable amount of knowledge. Robotics is interesting, drones seem cool, neurology is fascinating, I'd love to get into biotech, etc. but do I have 3 years of self study before I can do or understand any of the interesting parts? Not really.

</comment><comment><USER27> Depending on the material, understanding root concepts and knowledge must come before using it is needed more than just starting to play around and hoping it comes to you.

Self directed learning requires enough patience to recognize the best approach to learning it for you.

</comment><comment><USER28> I did take a gap year to improve myself and my technical skills.

I rewrote my study plan at least 10 times.

Other than the self-discipline needed to sit down and study, it is hard to ignore the noise of contrasting opinions from Reddit, Hacker News and the rest of the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER29> For me, actually practicing what I read is more difficult than understanding the content.

<comment><USER6> I find practicing is key to truly understanding the content. When I find the practicing difficult, it means I don't fully appreciate what I read. The process of practice and reading other sources to try and wrap my head around a concept is where I really learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lack of mentorship.

I'm still a self learner and going forward without proper guidance doesn't really help.

Things go much faster whenever there is someone there to help if not much but just to show a way.

</comment><comment><USER31> Cost of new books. I usually need to see a tiny passage in a new book (I constantly monitor the internet for new releases) and am not willing to buy a book just for that.

<comment><USER32> Which field are you looking at? On the topics that I've been interested in - programming, math, statistics, ML - there many really good books that are completely free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not having someone to ask questions related to what you're learning.

</comment><comment><USER34> Recalling, make sure to do lots of practice for the theory.

</comment><comment><USER35> Observing oneself without distortion

</comment><comment><USER36> Unknown unknowns.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean?

<comment><USER37> I think it means not knowing what you don't know - i.e. Not just being unaware of a particular bit of knowledge, but actually that that area even exists at all. I've had a few moments when this kind of thing had become apparent, and then there's a whole new area that you never knew existed to be aware of.

<comment><USER36> Right. This is where a teacher or mentor can really speed things along by being able to hear you want to achieve X, and suggest you study the fields of Y and Z.

Ed: and beyond simply pointing out areas the student isn't aware of, also suggesting connections between fields - like linguistics and computer science, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Self discipline</comment>


This Is the Tiniest Little Quadruped Robot We've Ever Seen - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/tiniest-little-quadruped-robot#.V1CYBW5g6ew.hackernews <comment><USER2> Do these robots have electrical parts inside of them? It seemed like they were being made to move by a nearby magnetic force, not an engine within the robot.</comment>


PFQ I/O - <AUTHOR> http://www.pfq.io/ <comment><USER2> How this compare with Netmap? [http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/](http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/)

<comment><USER3> Netmap is for writing fast code in userspace. With this you get to run the code in kernel space, in a more limited environment, but which may be sufficient for many tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has quite some of the worst documentation I have ever seen, and as you can imagine, in this industry, there's strong competition.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to DPDK?

<comment><USER6> this is seems to be an offshoot/extension of pf-ring.

apart from performing packet operations in userland also defines a language with functional-composition (take a packet, return an 'enriched' packet) for further processing e.g. fanout/io etc.

ast from pfq/lang application gets translated into appropriate structures, in the kernel, and gets executed on top of the driver...</comment></comment>


Radical Changes Are on the Way for Investment Banks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/radical-changes-are-on-the-way-for-investment-banks-1464904490 <comment><USER2> paywalled

<comment><USER3> Click "web" under the article title, click the top result in Google, no paywall.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some alternatives to Indiehackers forum? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There's a few alternatives:

[https://barnacl.es](https://barnacl.es)

[http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/)

[https://productpeople.club/](https://productpeople.club/)

[https://www.foundercafe.com/](https://www.foundercafe.com/)

[https://nugget.one/](https://nugget.one/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/)

<comment><USER4> That's not actually what he wanted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I saw your post on the IH forum for feedback. Are you looking for other alternatives where you can get more feedback?

I would say look for Facebook groups or even just regular forums with Google search that may be in your niche. If you know of a particular set of keywords that relate to a niche you want, you can utilize the google advanced search to narrow down places where people are discussing this online.

There are a couple of books out there that talk about this technique, and it is a popular method talked about in affiliate marketing forums.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a live chatroom for this kind of stuff on IRC

##passiveincome on Freenode

[http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23%23passiveincome&ui...](http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=%23%23passiveincome&uio=MTY9dHJ1ZSYyPXRydWUac)</comment>


When Theft Was Worse Than Murder - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/12/feedback/when-theft-was-worse-than-murder <comment><USER2> 400 years ago justice systems were based on the desires of the crown and aristocracy and the needs of the aristocracy demanded they be able to buy their way out of murdering common folk but have their precious wealth protected at all costs. Murder of the ruling class was, obvs a different story [1]. Among other things the strengthening of the middle class is what slowly, reverses this.

[1] [http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/punish.html](http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/punish.html) {Opening passage of Foucault's Discipline and Punish, recounting the drawing and quartering of Robert-Francois Damiens for attempted regicide.}

<comment><USER3> i've only read a bit of foucault but one of his fascinating expositions is the mechanisms of discipline that run through us unconsciously (i've heard it termed micropower). it's tangentially related to the panopticon, which is what many people think of in relation to foucault. foucault makes claims that normative forces (micropower) are more powerful than direct coersion.

micropower breaks down when individuals start othering people (contrasting and disassociating others from themselves), particularly those we call criminals (recall zimbardo's prison experiment and milgram's as well). reformation efforts in the criminal justice system, then, have been focused on replacing punishment and coercive tactics with rehabilitative ones to bring offenders back into the fold so that normative forces rather than coercive ones can act to create social stability.

but our justice system has a ways to go on this front. minor offenses like petty theft can lead to months/years in prison and acute othering (yet we don't even prosecute those who brought our financial system to its knees and millions of livelihoods along with it). instead sentences for most offenses should not separate offenders by putting them into jail but instead should put them in the middle of a normative group of people. this surely requires a high degree of collective empathy and compassion though. but at least we no longer have debtors prison...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is depressing, but perhaps expected, that an article about a quantitative approach to historical analysis includes one anecdote and no additional data.

I was able to dig up this paper:

      http://www.pnas.org/content/111/26/9419.full

which is sufficiently dense to require some time to read and consider.

<comment><USER5> Looks to me like nautil.us is aiming at a general readership that is interested in science. Many articles like this gloss over the numbers in favor of narrative and anecdotes, because that's what's interesting to general readership. The provides plenty of opportunity to delve deeper by seeking out the source material, as you have done.

There's many people, myself included who you could send the original paper and I'd give it a glance and probably leave it. Not because I'm stupid or uneducated, but because I don't even know if its a paper that says something new or relevant to the field or has something to offer me as a person. An article like this makes it much more likely that people will engage the research by giving me some initial sense.

<comment><USER6> Shouldn't the Nautil.us article simply have a reference (link enabled)? It's important for those of us who want to verify the analytical model and what inspired the ideas. For everyone else, it's a link they wouldn't click.

It's not exactly a new practice in the literary world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Read this just last night and wanted to quote it somewhere:

"For instance, the law of England is much more severe upon offences against property than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion is money. A man may half kick his wife to death or inflict horrible sufferings upon his children at a much cheaper rate of punishment than he can compound for the theft of a pair of old boots."

"Alan Quartermain", H. Rider Haggard

</comment><comment><USER8> This article could use some nice infographics and charts. The way it is written makes it hard to see exactly how things have changed over time.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. What I would really love to see is whether a "historical economist" (or whatever those are called) could estimate the statistical value of a human life as defined by people's own revealed preferences. This is the sort of calculation where we infer how much each of us values our own lives based on the amount we are willing to pay to avoid small chances of death. In the US today, the number is about $8 million now, and is surprisingly consistent (within a factor of 2) over many possible inference methods.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US)

(Of course, there are exceptions where people effectively pay rates of many billion dollars per life to avoid emotionally salient risks, like terrorism.)

The OP article gives the misleading impression that society's changing values are mostly due to moral progress (presumably arising, I guess, from people being persuaded by moral arguments, or from certain societal norms taking hold). But it's almost certainly the case that you can explain the vast majority of the change by economic developments, especially following the dramatic rise in per capita wealth starting with the industrial revolution. The dark implication of this is that if per capita wealth falls drastically in the future, which is possible depending on technological developments, then we are likely to see a regression in moral attitudes.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. My take on it is slightly different: it feels like a necessary condition of economic progress is that you trust that you will get to keep the fruits of your labours.

The way this happened in our history (I'm assuming that it's not the only way) is through institutions like The Old Bailey and the codification of laws and the visibility into the not always completely fair, but always getting fairer, application of those laws that they provided.

<comment><USER9> Well, I agree that certain institutions for law and order appear to be prerequisites for the sort of economic/technological progress that occurred during the industrial revolution. And it is plausible (though definitely not obvious) to me that such institutions really did arise from the slow and steady accumulation of ideas. But the sacredness of life as compared to property seems mostly a result of per capital wealth. I'd guess we can find many times and places in history where there have been periods of predictable (and reasonably just) law and order, without the sacredness of life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're interested in the main thesis of this article -- that the reason that our attitudes to violence declined steadily was due to a feedback loop "feeding the output of the Old Bailey the day before to the input of the Old Bailey the day after.", I highly recommend "The Better Angels of our Nature" by Steven Pinker.

<comment><USER11> I read that book. It was very enlightening to say the least.

That being said, my view is in line with the book: cautiously optimistic.

I believe that the domestication of mankind will continue, but that isn't inevitable. Maybe in the future, the trend will reverse. It's up to us and our responsibility to ensure that doesn't happen and to accelerate the trend of less violence over time.

<comment><USER12> My view is that many people are quite domesticated- traditionally, would you not agree that society flourishes wherever the strong and fair have the capacity to exclude the psychopaths?

Unfortunately, domesticated people often somehow get convinced to vote for open borders.

<comment><USER13> Borders are only one way to exclude people from society, and not a very efficient one if the only goal is to "exclude the psychopaths", which are no more likely to be on one side of the border than the other.

Or maybe I missed your point?

<comment><USER14> qnaal's point, of course, was to derail the interesting conversation HN is trying to have with some meaningless contingent political bullshit. I envy you, that such intent wasn't clear upon reading. Suffice to say, there is a certain class of American political lizard that enjoys pretending there's no problem we can't solve without some more of that good old-fashioned racism. Just downvote and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Murder is theft. The worst kind of theft

<comment><USER16> Not really. A life is not property. It cannot be acquired or given away. Even if we were to just go along with it and categorize life as personal property, a murderer does not take the victim's life into their possession in any way I can tell. Murder ends life rather than appropriating it, so murder would be destruction of property, not theft.

<comment><USER17> _Even if we were to just go along with it and categorize life as personal property, a murderer does not take the victim's life into their possession in any way I can tell._

That never stopped copyright holders from calling infringement "theft".

<comment><USER18> If the copyright holder is deprived of resources they otherwise would have received due to the infringement, it is indeed "theft". It wasn't until it could easily be done on a wide scale that such infringement was a real concern.

<comment><USER19> That's not how it's seen legally. _Dowling_ explicitly made clear the distinction between theft and infringement. No taking with intent to deprive == No theft. Copyright is unique in that there's no "taking" when you copy something.

<comment><USER18> The laws can vary from area to area, but a number of them do refer to infringement as a form of theft. Any law that refers to the negative impact of the criminal act to the economy is almost certainly speaking of theft. It might not be literally spelled out as theft, but in most cases it is. Heck, in the US there's a law referred to as the Net Act, which stands for No Electronic Theft Act, that literally names it electronic theft even if there is no monetary gain.

EDIT: Which upon reading up on this I'm assuming you mean Dowling vs US from 1985. The Net Act I mentioned was passed in 1997. Plus Dowling is strange, it seems to suggest that copyright infringement isn't theft because the alleged thief didn't steal the actual copyright and didn't deprive the owner of the use of the copyright. The decision didn't seem to have anything to do with the physical materials that were copies, most of which weren't copyrighted to begin with.

The "taking" is not the copying, that's a truly sad defense. The taking is depriving the original owner of the resources due them for the time and resources expended during the creation itself. If they created it then they have the right to dictate terms in how you consume it. If you don't agree to the terms then the proper response is to not consume it, not to copy it outright and make some silly claim that they lost nothing because you made a digital copy so that they still have the original.

<comment><USER19> _Heck, in the US there 's a law referred to as the Net Act, which stands for No Electronic Theft Act_

This means nothing, and is certainly not a defense to your (and the copyright lobby's) misuse of the word "theft". There is absolutely no requirement that a bill amending the USC be titled anything that has to do with what it actually regulates or contains. The Patriot act has little to do with patriotism...

 _The taking is depriving the original owner of the resources due them for the time and resources expended during the creation itself._

A good counterpoint to this:

* Inviting a friend or any random person to watch a movie with me: Perfectly legal.

* Inviting a friend etc. to watch my entire collection of movies with me: also perfectly legal.

* Ripping my own DVDs so I don't have to deal with physical media: Arguably legal and fair use.

* Giving that ripped copy to said friend: Copyright violation, and many would argue morally wrong.

* Downloading a copy of a movie I already purchased from a torrent site for whatever reason: Also a copyright violation, but few would argue that this is morally wrong somehow.

Replace "movie" for "song" or "game" and the same argument holds.

Where your logic breaks down is that the net effect to the copyright holder in every one of those scenarios is the same. Someone else enjoyed some product without extra compensation being required.

<comment><USER20> That's a stretch. The effect to the copyright holder is the same only if the frequency of the acts is the same. Giving a copy to someone is very easy, disconnects the time and place of playing completely. Those are easily enough to disincentivize the friend from buying the movie.

Which is nobody's business but the two friends, right? Sure, if all those other situations are a right and not a privilege. Socially, people feel they must be able to share their movies in their own home, and the movie industry begrudgingly permits this without charging. But when you start giving it away, the argument that its your business is clearly strained to the breaking point.

<comment><USER19> So are we talking about laws or morals here? My stance has always been that the legal argument carries zero weight for the average person, along the same lines as the slight speeding that anyone who owns a car has done. Yeah it's illegal, but who cares? You're not going to be in trouble unless you make a business out of it.

Morally? Then, admittedly, it's murkier. There's a point to be made there though that the "damage" the industry always crows about is less of a real thing (supposed damages higher than the country's GDP, suing networked printers, that kind of thing.. these are not the actions of rational actors with facts on their side) and more of an excuse to be made for exerting greater control over culture. That's getting a bit meta for this thread, though.

Are we at the moral event horizon? I can only speak for myself: We blew past it sometime around the Sony Rootkit scandal. Respect is earned, not given freely - I certainly don't lose any sleep over that blockbuster movie sitting on my NAS or that EA game I download to ensure it's not garbage before shelling out $80.

For you and anyone else? Can't speak there. I just wish everyone would stop conflating legal and moral.

<comment><USER18> I would say that you are mistaking moral and legal issues. It's your moral right to commit illegal acts because of the Sony rootkit fiasco or other similar nefarious acts? Really? I guess we can all go rob banks now because of the financial industry misbehavior over the last few years? We can steal cars to determine if we like them before dropping twenty or thirty grand?

<comment><USER19> And there's the strawman.

<comment><USER18> Is that response in the negative or the positive? I always get confused when people toss out the fallacy card to answer simple questions. It's not like I claimed no true Scotsman would commit copyright infringement, they are simple questions awaiting a yes or no response.

<comment><USER19> You went directly for the bank robbery line, which is at the very least dishonest when talking about copyright infringement.

Your simple questions are loaded and therefore will not be answered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So, I did my dissertation on these documents working with these same people. I don't really have an argument with Dedeo's argument. Now, my work was mostly qualitative (I tried to infer meaning from the text) than quantitative, but my work relied heavily on quantitative underpinnings. The only argument I have is with the title. In 17th, 18th, 19th century England thievery is never considered worse than murder. Ever. That doesn't mean that people weren't executed for it, but it's usually under what we would call "aggravating circumstances". So, a woman who stole something might be pardoned, sent to the workhouse, or "transported"\-- that is, sent overseas. In fact, if you were a young and fertile woman you had a better shot at getting out of trouble-- and the women knew it.

Were people executed for property crimes? Sure they were, but the property crime could have very well been the precipitating legal event, not necessarily the larger "social" crime that the person committed. What do I mean? Well, juries were often a group of men impaneled to sit in on trials throughout the course of a day. They sometimes knew the defendant, sometimes not. During trials, a defendant might call character witnesses to his or her defense. The prosecution might call character witnesses to the character witnesses, and on and on (though usually this was more effort than anyone put in). Character witnesses mattered a lot, because it showed that you were viewed as respectable and therefore clearly not guilty (strains of Calvinism here). If a nobleman stood for you then your chances were pretty good. Now, if no one stood for you, or if people came in to defame you for the prosecution, that showed that you were a transgressive individual. As a transgressor you might very likely be worthy of death. It's notable that a lot of folks who were executed in the 17th and 18th centuries would confess to their crimes on the gallows. And even if they did not confess to the crime for which they were charged, many would admit that they deserved the punishment for other acts they committed. So, judgment in a criminal court case is often the judgment of a person's whole life.

Now, execution was the basic form of punishment in this era because the options are execution, occasionally a workhouse, transportation, the stocks, and ... that's about it. Jail (gaol) was only a place to hold people until they were ready for trial. No one stayed there long term. Okay, well more gradation is needed for punishments. If a man kills another man in a fight then he may deserve to die, but he may simply die by hanging. His end may be gruesome, but if he's viewed as a decent fellow who made a mistake then the hangman may give him a "drop" that actually breaks his neck or the crowd may gather around to pull his body down and thus speed his death. The woman who murders her husband in cold blood was often strangled and then her dead body was burned at the stake. A premeditated murder could see the dead body quartered and hung up in his or her's hometown. The important thing here is what happens to the body _after_ it's dead.

Dedeo's point about the changing nature of society and the role of violence therein is correct. I don't buy Pinker's argument, really, but what Dedeo describes here reflects an accurate understanding of the changes in the English justice system.

A few things worthwhile to know:

* Foucault is the starting point for studying crime, but he's just that, a starting point. His general conclusions are so-so, but he asked really important questions. Anyone who relies on the work of Foucault as a theoretical basis ends up having to expand it to make sure they can derive meaning according to the situation their research is examining.

* We can't talk about class at this point, because this is not a society organized by its relationship to the means of production. We can talk, however, about social orders. There's a lot of gradation and variation on this, but you have a very small elite group and a very large group of commoners. The elite are responsible for justice and protection. The commoners cooperate in this because they believe that the elite (in a general sense) are upholding their responsibilities to fair justice and providing protection. When they disagree this does break down and the elite knew it.

If you have questions, let me know. I'll be in and out all day.

<comment><USER22> Do you have any pointers for someone outside the field to get an overview of critical responses to Pinker's thesis and work?

<comment><USER21> This review sums it up pretty well: [http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1232](http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1232)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> You might very well want to punish theft more harshly than murder, because it's significantly more difficult to find the perpetrator.</comment>


Technology for Non-Profits - <AUTHOR>

I've been working for a non-profit for the last 6 months doing a complete technology overhaul for them. My gut says that there are a lot more out there that are paying too much money for crappy software or not using technology efficiently.
Do you think this would be a good market to build a product or set of products for? Do you have experience working in the non-profit sector to support your claim?
Let me know! michael[at]faceaids[dot]org <comment><USER2> It's great that you want to get involved -- nonprofits can always use more tech assistance. But note that there are already quite a few orgs serving the tech needs of the nonprofit sector.

TechSoup (where I used to work) helps greatly with the acquisition of commercial products, like Windows and Office, by partnering with the vendors to lower the cost to a fraction of retail.

Aside from your back office and IT stuff, the other two big needs seem to be Web site development (for outreach), and CRM (to manage donors). Drupal, Plone, Joomla and other solutions are popular for the former. CiviCRM is popular in the latter, as are solutions from Kintera and Convio (for large orgs with the money to spend.)

This is not to say that all nonprofit tech needs are being met. But it's definitely a busy space. If you're looking to get involved, it'd be good to find a problem that isn't yet being addressed and attack that.

If you haven't already, you might want to join NTEN (<http://www.nten.org>). And keep an eye on Aspiration and attend their next NPO Software Developers summit. (The 2008 summit in Oakland was last week.) <http://www.aspirationtech.org></comment>


Ask HN: Will California Consumer Privacy Act Kill the Newsletter? - <AUTHOR> CCPA makes a company liable for $750 per user in the event of a breach if the company has revenue of over $25M or 50,000+ users. We have a weekly newsletter with 75,000 subscribers and so I assume that if our mail provider is breached then we could be liable for $56,250,000 -- more than the Equifax.... What's everyone's plan for this?<p>https://www.csoonline.com/article/3292578/california-consumer-privacy-act-what-you-need-to-know-to-be-compliant.html <comment><USER2> My understanding is that you should make sure that you have a service provider [0] contract in place with your mail provider and that they have easy to use tools for you to opt-out and delete subscribers info.

There is also a need to make sure data is being appropriately stored by the service provider since you have a "duty to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information to protect the personal information" [1].

I'd start by digging into how the mail provider is approaching compliance and security and whether they are planning to get certified.

\--

[0] Section 999.314 of the proposed regulations from AG [https://hq.services/blog/ccpa-proposed- regulations/#999.314](https://hq.services/blog/ccpa-proposed- regulations/#999.314)

[1] Section 1798.150 of CCPA [https://hq.services/blog/ccpa-full-text-with- amendments/#179...](https://hq.services/blog/ccpa-full-text-with- amendments/#1798.150.a)

Note, the above links are to a version of the regulation that my company formatted to be easier to read. The original versions are here if you'd prefer:

[0] [https://www.oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/privacy/cc...](https://www.oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/privacy/ccpa- proposed-regs.pdf)

[1] [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.x...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB375)

</comment><comment><USER3> From the statute, address issues promptly and you're in good shape:

 _A business shall be in violation of this title if it fails to cure any alleged violation within 30 days after being notified of alleged noncompliance._

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB375)

</comment><comment><USER4> As a user, my email is not worth $750. Where did they come up with this number? Now if we are talking SSN...I could justify $750.

<comment><USER2> It's actually a range between $100-$750 or actual damages, whichever is greater. [0]

The law also specifically calls out in the next section that: "In assessing the amount of statutory damages, the court shall consider any one or more of the relevant circumstances presented by any of the parties to the case, including, but not limited to, the nature and seriousness of the misconduct, the number of violations, the persistence of the misconduct, the length of time over which the misconduct occurred, the willfulness of the defendant's misconduct, and the defendant's assets, liabilities, and net worth."

So seems like an accidental breach of a not super sensitive piece of data might be treated with more nuance.

[0] CCPA 1798.150.a (I linked to this in a comment above)</comment></comment>


China Is Engineering Genius Babies (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gw8vn/chinas-taking-over-the-world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program <comment><USER2> Here's the primary piece:

> At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the > world's smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an > attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. > Apparently they're not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo > screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially > bump up every generation's intelligence by five to 15 IQ points.

It's also interesting to note this was authored in 2013. I would be curious to know the kinds of things discovered in the ~4 year span.

<comment><USER3> is a high IQ enough to determine 'success'?

<comment><USER4> It's not sufficient, but arguably necessary.

There are roughly three things that make you successful: 1\. Being smart 2\. Working hard 3\. Opportunity

Everybody can do #2, but most won't. #1 is at least partially genetic. #3 is mostly luck, but is influenced by the other two. In fact all of the factors influence one another to a degree. Being born in an area with good schools and working hard can overcome somewhat deficient genetics for #1 for example. On the flipside, being born a genius in sub-Saharan Africa with no opportunities or even anything to work hard for makes success almost impossible.

<comment><USER5> You forgot the 2 that count the most luck and network.

<comment><USER4> That's opportunity. The network is basically being born into the right circles, which is pretty much entirely luck. A few people do break in through sheer determination and/or a lucky break with some contacts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how they define intelligence. I suspect the cognitive traits that will serve an economy best in 30-40 years, when these babies reach the top of their economic productivity, are not what one might expect today.

<comment><USER7> So I was one of the volunteers for this study - they accepted people based on a threshold of an official IQ test, or SAT/ACT scores. I forget if it was 99th percentile or higher. I heard about it on LessWrong way back while they were soliciting volunteers, and signed up as a way to get a free genotyping since my SAT was high enough.

I lost the email thread, but I didn't get my genome data back for about 2 years (April 2015). The researcher I was talking to seemed frustrated at some pretty large delays in the project.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by _5 to 15 IQ points_. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.

...."

[https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838](https://www.edge.org/response- detail/23838)

<comment><USER8> Or it could mean millions of high IQ Chinese people doing menial jobs while suffering feelings of existential dread at a higher rate than their lower IQ peers.

<comment><USER9> Yep, since the booming of Conficius, generations of Chinese has been wasting their IQ and suffering from rationality-reality inconsistence.

Increasing IQ without reforming the culture is just a mean to crush opponents in Chinese social darwin scheme.

<comment><USER10> I'm very interested by this. What is it about Chinese culture that is oppressive to people with high IQs?

<comment><USER9> Turn any rational debate into a moral debate [good people vs. bad people] and appeal to authority/majority [to get the good people tag].

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given the way genes work, which is that they operate in networks and rarely code for a single trait, what other phenotypes would be affected by selecting for such genes ?

<comment><USER10> I would expect attractiveness to take a dive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm relatively sure the Soviets had a go and got nowhere. I'm hoping this attempt will go about as far.

<comment><USER13> the Soviets were hampered in many ways. One of them was a fundamental misunderstanding of genetics: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

<comment><USER14> And a fundamental misunderstanding of intelligence.

The USSR was run primarily by highly educated engineers. China has the same issue. Yet somehow the preference of large communist dictatorships for credentialed leaders does not correlate with actual success.

One problem is that 'intelligence' is a very tricky thing to define and isn't at all the same as IQ or academic achievement. The world is full of foolish academics. The first thing the nascent Soviet Union tried was putting a committee of academics in charge of setting every price in the USSR, over 21 million of them. The futility of this task was not apparent to any of the ideologically-soaked intellectuals that ran things until the economy collapsed, although I suspect many ordinary kulaks could spot the problem right away.

<comment><USER13> The reliance of measuring intelligence in only a handful of highly specific ways is a failing that is found across humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's a newer article on the results: [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese- scientists...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/health/chinese-scientists- edit-genes-of-human-embryos-raising-concerns.html)

The conclusion: technology is not ready for editing genes of human embryos yet.

<comment><USER16> That paper was obsolete when it was done, even more obsolete when it was published, and totally obsolete now when even on the front page of HN, right now (presumably prompting this submission), there is an article about US researchers successfully editing human embryos with few or no off-targets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article interviews Geoffrey Miller.

He wrote an article around the same time here: [https://www.edge.org/responses/q2013](https://www.edge.org/responses/q2013)

Here is a response to that article: [https://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge- org-chinese-eugenics-...](https://eastasiastudent.net/china/edge-org-chinese- eugenics-rubbish/)

TLDR; The view promoted by this article is probably only supported by a single person(Geoffrey Miller) and is highly speculative.

<comment><USER18> I know this enters the realm of character assassination, but, after reading the article I also was curious who Geoffrey Miller is. Found a wikipedia article which contains one of his twitter posts:

"Dear obese PhD applicants: if you didn't have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won't have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth." [0]

I know that doesn't invalidate his arguments and you can't judge a whole person by something they posted on twitter, but man, I'm disappointed this is the kind of person whose genes are considered so valuable to replicate. In our efforts to optimize for intelligence we may leave so many other good traits behind.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how- twi...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/how-twitter- schooled-nyu-professor-about-fat-shaming/313728/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Totally 100% unrelated but on the line "China continues to buy up American debt", the United States could just as easily buy up Chinese debt. For some reason it just doesn't do this.

<comment><USER20> True. It's not considered as safe of an investment. A lot of times you can't even trust the numbers China publishes about their economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> >> 'I don't think they have any imperial ambitions to spread China's borders—they're not going to act like Nazi Germany or America in the 20th century'

Oh, wow, that's quite a serious yet subtly thrown-in burn...

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm exaggerating a bit but basically:

\- Primary source of the article says "It's not genetic engineering or adding new genes"

\- Vice's marketing department: "Gina is engineering babies!!!@$@#%1111"

</comment><comment><USER23> Dear HN - the world would not be a better place if everyone was more like you. It probably wouldn't even be better for _you_

</comment><comment><USER24> Are they still carrying this out? I thought it stopped when the head of BGI bailed.

</comment><comment><USER25> I guess the movie "Gattaca" just got the location wrong.

</comment><comment><USER26> IQ is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER27> People are afraid of "super intelligent" AI that can make itself smarter taking over the world. Well they didn't count on people becoming "superintelligent", making themselves smarter :)

Not sure how well these Chinese experiments will work out though. For some reason I doubt it will have the amazing effects they intended, at least in the near term.

</comment><comment><USER28> That anyone believes that this effort at extrapolation will produce anything but monstrosity is unbelievable

<comment><USER29> Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> China, with its totalitarian capitalism, scares the shit out of me. I truly believe this country poses the single biggest threat to human kind today.

<comment><USER10> How is the U.S. any better? (Assuming you're American, correct me if I'm wrong)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This article is a train wreck of nonsense, misunderstanding and predictions of the future. It is just talking about research of finding correlation in genomes and intelligence. Also Japan is the largest holder of US treasuries, followed closely by china.

<comment><AUTHOR> The East Asian culture strongly values intelligence and education. The parents there WILL act on embryo selection and genetic engineering when it is available and safe.

<comment><USER31> The point is that the article is taking bits of research into simple correlation and extrapolating that into embryo selection, guesses about IQ points being raised and all sorts of other things. It shouldn't be taken seriously in any way.

> The parents there WILL act on embryo selection and genetic engineering when > it is available and safe.

It seems a bit of a reach to be so adamantly sure of what other people will do in an already predicted future.</comment></comment></comment>


Quantum computers: amazing progress, but probably false supremacy claims - <AUTHOR> https://gilkalai.wordpress.com/2019/09/23/quantum-computers-amazing-progress-google-ibm-and-extraordinary-but-probably-false-supremacy-claims-google/ <comment><USER2> The usage of the word "supremacy" is probably the primary thing that rubs people the wrong way. When I first heard of it myself, it did feel a little strange.

Doing some research into it though, it seems like the phrase and usage of quantum supremacy is pretty well defined and accepted by and large within the physics community. Supposedly the coiner of the term believed "quantum advantage" wouldn't emphasize the point enough.

The basic components of achieving what the term defines though is relatively straightforward. It's basically just about definitively showcasing a problem where using a classical computer would take super polynomial time, but with a quantum computer ends up taking some significantly lesser time complexity. Google's Quantum AI Lab achieved exactly that based on the results provided in the paper released by NASA. Granted, the problem in question is extremely specific, but that doesn't invalidate it as being an admissible problem. The author raises points in contention, but they largely just seem like nitpicks to me.

<comment><USER3> > The author raises points in contention, but they largely just seem like > nitpicks to me.

It doesn't seem just like nitpicks to me. The core issue the author raises is the noise in the final output. If the quantum computer can only produce significantly noisy data (ie not in accordance with the theoretical distribution) whereas the conventional computer produces noiseless data, then that isn't a clear case of quantum supremacy.

<comment><USER2> We can look directly to the paper itself to see how it addresses the issues of error uncertainty that the author premises his blogpost around:

"This fidelity should be resolvable with a few million measurements, since the uncertainty on FXEB is 1/√Ns, where Ns is the number of samples. Our model assumes that entangling larger and larger systems does not introduce additional error sources beyond the errors we measure at the single and two- qubit level — in the next section we will see how well this hypothesis holds.

FIDELITY ESTIMATION IN THE SUPREMACY REGIME

The gate sequence for our pseudo-random quantum circuit generation is shown in Fig.3. One cycle of the algorithm consists of applying single-qubit gates chose randomly from {√X,√Y,√W} on all qubits, followed by two-qubit gates on pairs of qubits. The sequences of gates which form the "supremacy circuits" are designed to minimize the circuit depth required to create a highly entangled state, which ensures computational complexity and classical hardness. While we cannot compute FXEB in the supremacy regime, we can estimate it using three variations to reduce the complexity of the circuits. In "patch circuits", we remove a slice of two-qubit gates (a small fraction of the total number of two-qubit gates), splitting the circuit into two spatially isolated, non-interacting patches of qubits. We then compute the total fidelity as the product of the patch fidelities, each of which can be easily calculated. In "elided circuits", we remove only a fraction of the initial two-qubit gates along the slice, allowing for entanglement between patches, which more closely mimics the full experiment while still maintaining simulation feasibility. Finally, we can also run full "verification circuits" with the same gate counts as our supremacy circuits, but with a different pattern for the sequence of two-qubit gates which is much easier to simulate classically [29]. Comparison between these variations allows tracking of the system fidelity as we approach the supremacy regime. We first check that the patch and elided versions of the verification circuits produce the same fidelity as the full verification circuits up to 53 qubits, as shown in Fig.4a. For each data point, we typically collect Ns=5×10^6 total samples over ten circuit instances, where instances differ only in the choices of single- qubit gates in each cycle. We also show predicted FXEB values computed by multiplying the no-error probabilities of single- and two-qubit gates and measurement [29]. Patch, elided, and predicted fidelities all show good agreement with the fidelities of the corresponding full circuits, despite the vast differences in computational complexity and entanglement. This gives us confidence that elided circuits can be used to accurately estimate the fidelity of more complex circuits. We proceed now to benchmark our most computationally difficult circuits. In Fig.4b, we show the measured FXEB for 53-qubit patch and elided versions of the full supremacy circuits with increasing depth. For the largest circuit with 53 qubits and 20 cycles, we collected Ns=30×10^6 samples over 10 circuit instances, obtaining FXEB=(2.24±0.21)×10^−3 for the elided circuits. With 5σ confidence, we assert that the average fidelity of running these circuits on the quantum processor is greater than at least 0.1%. The full data for Fig.4b should have similar fidelities, but are only archived since the simulation times (red numbers) take too long. It is thus in the quantum supremacy regime."

Links to the figures can be found by viewing the paper directly here. If you have the time, I highly recommend reading the paper in full regardless: [https://www.docdroid.net/file/download/h9oBikj/quantum- supre...](https://www.docdroid.net/file/download/h9oBikj/quantum-supremacy- using-a-programmable-superconducting-processor.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > We can look directly to the paper itself to see how it addresses the issues > of error uncertainty that the author premises his blogpost around

Can you demonstrate how the author "premises his blogpost around" the "issues of error uncertainty"? I don't think that was the main premise of the paper, at all.

<comment><USER2> I'm unsure of what you're trying to say here. The issues that Kalai poses as to the validity of the experiments done by Google's Quantum AI Lab is that the difference between the ideal distribution D and sampled distribution D' is meaningfully different enough from each other, that significant results cannot be obtained from the experiment in comparing performance to classical simulations.

The excerpt I posted above from the actual paper directly addresses the points made by Kalai, and provides reasoning and analysis for determining the 5 sigma confidence of their results.

This is again, why in my original post, I said I believed Kalai to be nitpicking, primarily because the additional statistical testing he proposed should be done, while surely never a bad thing wouldn't do anything to change the ultimate confidence determinations and results. Kalai of course believes that the testing was insufficient. The easiest thing to do resolve such an issue is to perform the additional work that Kalai asks for in order to appease his suspicions. I have personally no problem with that. It's never a bad thing to do more tests.

<comment><USER4> I think you have serious conceptual holes in your understanding of the post.

> The issues that Kalai poses as to the validity of the experiments done by > Google's Quantum AI Lab is that the difference between the ideal > distribution D and sampled distribution D' is meaningfully different enough > from each other, that significant results cannot be obtained from the > experiment in comparing performance to classical simulations.

This is categorically false. Can you quote the passage(s) that lead you to this conclusion?

<comment><USER2> > By creating a 0-1 distribution we mean sampling sufficiently many times from > that distribution D so it allows us to show that the sampled distribution is > close enough to D. Because of the imperfection (noise) of qubits and gates > (and perhaps some additional sources of noise) we actually do not sample > from D but from another distribution D'. However if D' is close enough to D, > the conclusion that classical computers cannot efficiently sample according > to D' is plausible.

<comment><USER4> The passage you quoted is under the:

> Achieving quantum supremacy via sampling

Headline and is simply describing some technical details of the experiment. This is _not_ the author bringing any points of contention, there is no disagreement here at all, this is merely defining the criteria for how quantum supremacy is defined.

I highlighted his points of contention as a response to your original comment that said he is nitpicking, here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21168813](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21168813)

His main point of contention seems to be:

They need to understand the D' distribution more by running the experiment on lower qubit configurations, comparing the experimentally sampled distributions with one another across qubit configurations and across multiple runs of the same qubit configurations. As it is, he says that they may not have even sampled from D'. The burden of proof is on the experimenters to quantitatively show that they did.

There were other issues raised, like Google not being quantitative enough with their claims of the gains achieved in their _supremacy statement_.

He also brings up a more general issue with quantum computing in correlated errors, which are described in more detail in his paper here: [http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~kalai/Qitamar.pdf](http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~kalai/Qitamar.pdf)

But it boils down to that qubit logic gates experience positively correlated errors, which unless corrected with quantum fault tolerance will have an impact on any result.

I hope this clears up some misconceptions. In general it is a good idea to use the principle of charity and try to address the best possible interpretation of someone's argument. This is true even more so when commenting on someone who is literally close to the top in their field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Discussion around the matching bullish take: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21053405)

<comment><USER6> What do you mean by "matching"? The bullish take is just a _different_ take that presumably must develop answers to the points of this post to remain a viable belief option.

It actually strikes me somewhat as editorializing to place this link here with the wording you chose.

If anything in your linked discussion actually addresses the substantive points of this post, why not link to those items specifically? What would a generic link to discussion on it that's not tied to this post's claims be contributing? Why would it matter if that post was "bullish"? If it adds some context related to this post, what is that context?

<comment><USER7> An obvious interpretation of "matching" here is "as bullish as the OP take is bearish."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had my eyes on Adrian Thompson's genetically evolved FPGA circuits for a while now - they do amazing things very economically and exploit analog circuit properties. So I've always wondered what if we make unreliable but super tiny atomic level programmable gates where we know the unreliability stems from quantum fluctuations, and then evolve circuits over millions of generations (A.T. ran thousands) to see if they manage to start exploiting the quantum effects.

PS: I don't have the expertise to make a strong argument here, but it seems like an intriguing idea. Anything fundamentally against it?

<comment><USER9> 'Quantum effects' are already exploited in analog components. TFET's work by modulating quantum tunneling. Zener reverse breakdown in Zener diode is also quantum effect. Esaki diode uses quantum effects.

Unfortunately just because the single component relies on quantum effects does not have anything to do with quantum speedup in computation.

Quantum computation exploits entanglement in larger scale than normal. The whole computational state must be entangled quantum state. Separated quantum effects result just classical computer. The quantum circuit must be carefully arranged so that the interference pattern yields the result you want.

<comment><USER8> Well, trivially that's a yes. However, the "specification level breach" property of A.T.'s work is what intrigued me - i.e. the circuits are specified to do a digital task, but work in an analog manner - constructing antennas and receivers - to the extent that the same digital circuit wouldn't work when written to another FPGA.

Also, entanglement doesn't need to be perfect. You can have 1% entanglement too and have that propagate over time and operations. The question is whether an evolved circuit can figure out pathways to use that little bit of entanglement in ways that our understanding doesn't quite admit .. in much the same way as a digital FPGA designer wouldn't think about using not-gates as antennae.

An unreliable circuit achieved this way would also be interesting I think.

<comment><USER9> Entalgement is very fragile. You can't keep even "little bit" of entanglement in any normal temperature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As far as QC scalability, the thing I wonder about is the cost of maintaining full entanglement of N qubits as N grows large.

The debbie-downer perspective would be that for each additional qubit you add, you effectively double the cost of isolation from the environment, quantum error correction schemes, etc.

So, while compute power for quantum algorithms grows exponentially in N, so would the cost of operating the machine.

Do people who work in QC see this as a concern? Are there scientific arguments or engineering insights that lessen or obviate this concern?

For your enjoyment and amusement, here is a QC-related show-HN!

"An elementary proof of a key lemma in Shor's quantum factoring algorithm": [http://gregfjohnson.com/qft.html](http://gregfjohnson.com/qft.html)

<comment><USER11> This is the primary concern and barrier to most realizations of quantum computers including Google's most recent efforts, though there are exceptions like linear optical quantum computing which have different problems. So for people working in QC this is in fact the perspective, though they are mostly optimistic that we can continue to engineer/discover better solutions to this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My level of expertise on quantum computing is low.

The announce of the imminent advent of the Quantum Computer seems to be recurring every few months these last few years because it's a moving target.

HN recently featured an article about a supposed quantum-only algorithm being applied to normal computing. Algorithms are a vastly larger space to explore than general computing paradigms.

Computer hardware is still advancing forward in performance even though single-threaded performance is stalling in relation.

We're moving away from general computing, this is always happening, but the current environments are pushing us back towards transputers. There's a place for special purpose quantum hardware, but right now the money is in making the most general quantum cpus possible(D-wave being an exception because annealing has many uses where it excels.)

<comment><USER13> > The announce of the imminent advent of the Quantum Computer seems to be > recurring every few months these last few years because it's a moving > target.

That's mostly misreporting by the media and perhaps d-wave overselling their capabilities. If you actually listen to experts they're far more guarded in their statements.

<comment><USER11> Yes, there has been a lot of animosity in the quantum information community for a long time against D-Wave for this very reason, as researchers are worried about them over-promising and ushering in an analogue of the AI winter as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Quantum computing immune to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14018450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14018450)

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I understanding correctly that the whole idea is to get a bunch of qubits in one machine and then have them evaluate every possibility in a super dumb way but count on them to get the desired result faster than a transister based machine that knows what its looking for?

And that we currently just can't coordinate that many qubits at once and also cant keep them cool long enough to function??

This seems kind of ridiculous idk...

<comment><USER11> This is not the case and is a constant frustration researchers have with how quantum computing is represented in the media. So much so that Scott Aaronson (who works on computational complexity theory, particularly as it relates to quantum computing) has a statement telling you that's not the case in the heading of his blog: [https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/)

<comment><USER15> I had to skim but that articles seems more of a gripe with "p-bits" being an even dumber concoction of standard computers

I didn't see how it dissected my understanding

edit: oh I see I had read the first post on that blog thinking it was what the attention was supposed to be on

<comment><USER16> The link was not to the article, as the post you replied to clearly stated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I attempted to put the complete title but it was 35 characters too long. I have no personal take on this and am not attempting to editorialize the title, if the mods have a different opinion on what the proper shortening of the original title should be (or if they have the power to put the actual complete title) then I am all for it.

Here is the complete title: Quantum computers: amazing progress (Google & IBM), and extraordinary but probably false supremacy claims (Google).

</comment><comment><USER17> If quantum supremacy was not possible, wouldn't that mean that something is wrong with our physics understanding?

So when people say quantum supremacy is impossible, do they say that the device itself is extremely complicated to build (like an earth to moon elevator for example), or that quantum supremacy isn't allowed not even in principle?

<comment><USER18> Not necessarily. I believe it's the case that for every quantum algorithm that is exponentially better than the best known classical algorithm for solving the same problem, it is not _proven_ that an equally good (up to polynomial overhead) classical algorithm does not exist.

Therefore, one way quantum computers could fail to be exponentially better than classical ones, without us having to revise physics, is that there are as of yet unknown classical algorithms that would erase the apparent difference between the two classes. You would have quantum computers, but not quantum supremacy.

I believe that there are quantum algorithms that are provably better than any classical one, known or unknown, but I think these only provide at most polynomial speedup, not exponential. So you might still call it quantum supremacy to have algorithms that are merely polynomially better.

I've heard it called "Aaronson's trilemma", the fact that at least one of these three things must be true:

* Quantum computers are not possible even in principle (new physics required, since current physics says they are), or

* The extended Chuch-Turing thesis is incorrect (because quantum supremacy implies not all computers are within polynomial overhead of each other), or

* There exist polynomial time classical algorithms for factoring and discrete logarithms.

<comment><USER6> I remember seeing a lecture by Aaronson where he described the idea of a "relativity computer" where you set a computer running on some exponential task, but then hop in a spaceship and fly off at nearly the speed of light, and come back to find the answer in an amount of time only polynomial for you.

He "debunked" this by mentioning to do it you'd potentially need an exponentially large supply of fuel to accelerate yourself to a speed exponentially close to the speed of light as the problem to solve grows more complex.

I wonder if something similar could be true about quantum computing. Maybe it is theoretically possible to solve problems polynomially that can only be solved exponentially in a classical computer. But maybe it requires "exponentially more" of some resource, like a power supply to power the physical devices needed to do an amount of error correction to make it physically realizable as the problem size grows.

Would it be possible for the Church-Turing thesis to be false _mathematically_ , but for the amount of quantum error correction to require an amount of physical resources that grow prohibitively and prevent it from being practically possible (like the fuel limitation prevents the otherwise physically possible relativity computer)?

<comment><USER19> The universe may not see any difference between the two states!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My level of expertise on quantum computing is very low.

The announce of the imminent advent of the Quantum Computer seems to be recurring every few months since at least 20 years, at this point I don't care anymore.

<comment><USER21> As a licensed quantum computologist (um... not really, but I do work for a major QC effort)... your skepticism is not misplaced.

I can only speak for my place of work (not publicly) and pass along scuttlebutt... but, my understanding is that it's largely the same everywhere. Some efforts have tight budgets, some have billions backing them; but QC research is hugely expensive with more unknowns than knowns. People giving out the cash want results sooner than later. At my workplace, the researchers are in a continual pitched battle with management to keep a rein on marketing, limit expectations, etc., and it's a major distraction. When management misunderstands an early result, and oversells it to their superiors (if not the press!), suddenly they think it's appropriate to make "Quantum Supremacy" a task with a 6-month deadline.

It all makes me want to crawl into a box and take a nap.

<comment><USER22> That sounds demoralizing and corrosive. What keeps you there?

<comment><USER21> I fired my therapist for asking that too often. Not really. But that is uncomfortably close to the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > As you know, I expect that quantum supremacy cannot be achieved at all.

There's the source of his skepticism, not some specific flaw he's identified in these new results.

<comment><USER24> Except for the part where discusses at length his criticisms with the paper itself, which apparently you don't wish to comment on.</comment></comment>