Facebook confirms data-sharing deals with Huawei and other Chinese companies - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/06/facebook-confirms-data-sharing-deals-with-huawei-and-other-chinese-companies <comment><USER2> I deleted my FB account a long time ago when it became apparent how bad their business practices actually are. I wonder how much longer before they run aground?

</comment><comment><USER3> Poor startup can't catch a break.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your biggest challenge in trying to learn functional programming? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in what others are doing to learn FP:<p>- what's been your biggest challenge so far? - what has worked and what hasn't? - why did you decide to learn FP?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'll bite. I haven't done huge dives into it, but I've definitely gone through the Learn F# interactive tutorial and spent some time working through some Scala lessons a while ago. I would love to be doing more FP work just because of the testimonials of others in how it has improved their craft.

The most difficult thing thus far has been that I haven't seen where many of the more interesting FP concepts fit into my daily programming efforts. I am most frequently working on LOB applications, mobile apps, or backend APIs. It's very much the world of take a model, do something to it, and return it. I know that it comes with practice, but often times the cool chaining and currying concepts, FP modifiers (except for map and a couple other simple functions) just don't seem to apply when I think about the problems I'm trying to solve. The tutorials often lack any real-world examples, focusing more on math problems or "not real data" uses.

That being said, one of the biggest things that I _have_ taken away is the idea that, given the same inputs a function should always return the same outputs, and be free of outside state. That has definitely helped me improve my coding.

<comment><USER2> Or to put a more fine point on it, if I'm writing SaaS-style web applications, which as most do are CRUD implementations, where do FP languages and concepts help me out? That's the question I haven't seen addressed well in the beginner materials, despite the presence of langs and frameworks like Elixir, Phoenix, Clojure(script), F#, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What hasn't worked: thinking in terms of monads / applicatives / functors / other FP / category theory concepts.

I know what those are, but this is just not how I see the world, and forcing myself to think about code in those terms just isn't productive.

What worked: using FP composition / organization / abstraction patterns that often involve those same FP concepts but without cargo culting.

Non-hardcore FP has been very rewarding to me. With Scala, mixing FP and OOP patterns is a great way to get the best of both worlds.</comment>


HOWTO: Increase MySql Performance for URL index - <AUTHOR> http://rating-widget.com/blog/how-to-convert-a-url-string-to-unique-integer-with-php/

<comment><USER2> Awesome post. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> useful stuff!</comment>


Flying While Trans - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/opinion/tsa-transgender.html <comment><USER2> Sadly the TSA and really any screening process is all about trying to find abnormalities. There is no way around it, using their example if you "look" like a female and are wearing baggy underwear while 99.9% of females do not. That is an abnormality. That alone won't trigger anything, but a combination of things (purely statistics) should require a search of some sort.

I don't think the issue is with that, I think the issue is with how it is handled and what the "search" is.

Nobody ever wants to be singled out, and no one wants to be that 0.01%. But the sad truth is, some people will be, and just based on the amount the 0.01% will be the minority.

<comment><USER3> And to those who think 0.01% may sound like it'd be a rare occurrence, LAX, for example, averaged 164k passengers per day in 2006 which means approximately 1643 of the passengers were in this 0.01% minority. 1643 occurrences per day is quite common.

I've also been frequently flagged in the past for not fitting in the TSA's narrow gender model to the point of getting Precheck at the cost of my privacy and money. It's very frustrating.

<comment><USER4> Not to take away from your point but 0.01% of 164k is ~17.

Edit:

I didn't want to be a jerk so I decided to look it up. Looks like NYT[1] has the number at 0.6% (probably higher in reality since it's self reported) so that's about 1000 people a day.

Also stats offer little comfort when you're part of that group and it happens to you 100% of the time.

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/health/transgender- popula...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/health/transgender- population.html)

<comment><USER5> It's probably lower in reality since it's phone poll and minorities are probably more likely to participate in polls.

<comment><USER6> > minorities are probably more likely to participate in polls

on what basis do you believe that to be the case?

<comment><USER5> Just my humble experience. Any minorities (e. g. people of minor nations, like Icelanders) always try to remind everyone of own existence. Which is not a bad thing, and this is maybe untrue, but this could be an explanation of possible trans-people overrepresentation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MongoDB Is a Tool, Not THE Tool - <AUTHOR> http://architects.dzone.com/articles/mongodb-tool-not-tool <comment><USER2> Another someone saying it 'works for them'? They talk specifically about avoiding hitting disk; shame they don't talk explicitly about if reliability means anything to them and the patterns they use and how they'd deal with losing a node or other data loss. Inquiring mongoskeptics want to know ;)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some amazing open source Data Science projects? - <AUTHOR> I have recently started my journey with data science and was wondering if someone could list some open source projects that one could contribute too, involving data science. Please suggest some beginner friendly projects. <comment><USER2> Not a concrete Project for you (the list is long with good projects), but maybe you find some usefull stuff in the oreilly data archive

[http://www.oreilly.com/data/free/archive.html?imm_mid=0e7547...](http://www.oreilly.com/data/free/archive.html?imm_mid=0e7547&cmp=em- data-free-na-stny16_nem4_end_summer)

</comment><comment><USER3> Extremely interested by the answer, if you're aware of some, please let me know.

After I've dived up into some Data Science/ML books, I'm trying Kaggle right now. Seems very focused on practical projects, so that's good.

Finding a few real-life data science projects would be a huge plus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly. I've been primarily following Harvard's CS109. How are you getting ahead with it?

<comment><USER3> I went through the Titanic "Getting Started" competition. The stack to practice Data Science and submit results there, is really top notch, it's like Jupyter on steroids. I love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you talking about Kaggle?

<comment><USER3> Yes :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Static website generation with large number of images? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking into creating a static website using something like Hugo or Jekyll that has about 1GB of images hosting on something like Netlify:<p>- For each image, I want to automatically generate mobile, tablet and desktop sizes, and also optimise each image with tools like pngcrush.<p>- I want an easy to use CMS interface like Netlify CMS to edit content.<p>- Deploys should be fast. Correcting a typo and having the fix deployed shouldn't take long.<p>What approaches are there to doing the above where image generation doesn't slow everything down? Can generated images be cached somehow between builds? Can generated images be automatically committed to Git somehow when a new image is uploaded? Is it better to use a web service to generate and serve the optimised images on demand? <comment><USER2> I used a combination of Hugo, Python script and a separate Netlify site to serve ~1k images.

The python script cropped, resized and optimized images.

Hugo generated a simple image site with an API-like url schema that could be consumed by my main, also Hugo, site using the getJSON function.

Do the images change frequently, or is the situation more one and done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Interesting...why did you separate the images from the main site like this? What was the site for?

Also, doesn't Netlify change your image URL names each deploy for cache busting reasons? Doesn't this cause problems?

> Do the images change frequently, or is the situation more one and done?

I'm thinking of something like a standard WordPress blog site with lots of images so infrequent changes.

<comment><USER2> >>why did you separate the images from the main site

I anticipated using the images in more than one place at the time, so wanted an API-like interface.

>>Netlify change your image URL names each deploy

I have not run into this. My images don't change much either, so not redeploying very much, but have had no issues with URLS changing on me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, what I should have said is I think Netlify modify image filenames to do cache busting on deploy so I'm guessing old image filenames eventually get discarded. As long as you're only relying on fairly recent image filenames from your API it shouldn't be an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered using a service like Cloudinary.com, imgix.com or github.com/thumbor/ (open source) for image transformations? IMO, they're a much better way to handle variations of your images.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've looked at them briefly but I'm worried about vendor lock-in and unpredictable pricing. The pricing one is a big aspect if I'm wanting to sell something to a client as the pricing needs to be simple and predictable. Any thoughts?

Also, how well do these work with source control? I like having everything under source control for easy reviews and rollbacks.</comment></comment>


SpeakerText Automates And Crowdsources Video Transcripts (100 Beta Invites) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/speakertext-crowdsources-micro-tasks-to-automate-video-transcripts-100-beta-invites/ <comment><USER2> The new design looks very good. I could definitely see this being useful for online educational videos and interviews. I often find that I can read faster than the conversation happens on video. It would be very cool if they could partner with Khan Academy to transcribe all of the lessons. This would allow for translation to other languages, which would also be a cool feature to build into the product.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very nice. Sphinx is a great, but what we found was that the open source acoustic and language models are not good enough. To get any decent performance out of it you had to develop our own. We gave up at that point and switched our transcription process to a manual one. Maybe it time to go back and have another look at it.

<comment><USER4> Helps to have custom models. The free ones though are decent and a lot of recent sphinx improvements help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I preferred speakertext when it cost $.30/minute, not the new price of $2/minute. I can understand why they would want to increase the price, but the new price point means that it is not usable by casual bloggers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice work guys, like the QuoteLinks.</comment>


To Understand the Future of Tesla, Look to the History of GM - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/04/to-understand-the-future-of-tesla-look-to-the-history-of-gm <comment><USER2> This is an insightful, thought-provoking article.

It mentions Billy Durant, the exciting, visionary entrepreneur who raised goads of money and built GM from a disruptive startup in 1906 into a company with $10 billion (in today's dollars) in annual car sales by the early 1920's... but who was nonetheless _fired_ by GM's board because, despite the company's rapid growth, it was burning cash and remained dependent on continued capital-raising. The board concluded GM needed someone who could _execute_ a business model, not someone with grand visions who would perpetually need fresh capital to turn them into reality.

The parallels to Tesla's current situation are obvious.

The person who replaced Durant, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., ran GM for three decades with incredible success, turning it into the world's largest automaker.[a] This is the same Sloan as in the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, MIT's Sloan School of Management, Stanford's Sloan program, and Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. (Durant died poor, managing a bowling alley in Flint, Michigan.)

PS. The most interesting aspect of this article, for me, is the fact that it was written and published in the first place. It makes me wonder if the _mindset_ of investors with regards to Tesla is changing from "show me an exciting vision" to "show me profitable execution of a business model."

[a] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Sloan)

<comment><USER3> The only problem I have with the GM analogy is that GM benefited greatly from WW2, not to mention the reconstruction years after it. In fact GM has essentially even benefited form the German rearmament after the Nazi's rose to power until essentially the US declaration of war or at least until the revenue payments from Opel stopped crossing the pond.

<comment><USER2> When Sloan took over, GM was 3x _smaller_ than Ford.

When Sloan retired, GM was 2.3x _bigger_ than Ford.

<comment><USER3> I'm not saying that Sloan didn't do wonders he clearly did what I'm saying is that it's hard to estimate if without WW2 would he had the opportunity to achieve the same outcome.

"During World War II, GM led the largest commercial-to-military war production effort in American history. In 1942, the company converted all of factories to produce $12 billion worth of airplanes, trucks, tanks, guns, and shells for the US military."

Before the US got into the war GM supplied a 3rd of the trucks used by the Wehrmacht.

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

<comment><USER4> Well, the same macro economics / historical factors that helped GM, could've helped Ford and others. In particular, other 2/3 of trucks must have come from somewhere.

<comment><USER3> Ford didn't own 2 major subsidiaries in Europe. While GM was buying every company they could get their hands on Forde was too busy with building Fordlândia in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest the best they managed to get is to enter into a partnership with a Russian car company after the Bolsheviks have already gotten into power.

I think GM was much better positioned and it much more decisively went all out on war production Ford made cars and engines during the war GM made everything from bullets to machines guns to tanks and bombers.

<comment><USER5> Mars, Solar city, Boring company, Hyperloop...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am a huge Tesla fan (and Elon fan). I own stock (shortly after IPO). I have a model 3 reservation. I have been singing their praises for a long time. Elon is an incredible visionary and probably an incredible engineer. This is a great combination for making the impossible possible.

And I totally agree with this article. If not a new CEO, Tesla needs a good COO. They need excellent, consistent execution, not novel, groundbreaking execution. They have 100's of thousands of reservations for the 3 (and I don't know how many powerwall and solar roof reservations). If they can just execute on this, the world is theirs. But if they continue to have delays and major, public mistakes like the model 3 ramp, my stock purchase may have been a poor choice.

<comment><USER7> There will come a time when Musk needs to step away from Tesla, but that day is not today. He's publicly mused about stepping away (SpaceX is his real fav), but had his tenure renewed recently.

If all Tesla did was sell pretty good cars, they'd probably get crushed by the incumbents. Tesla, is selling way more than that - they're selling the idea of a brighter, better future. You're not just buying an EV, but you're helping climate change, you're reducing pollution, you'll be reducing human death and suffering and ending traffic jams and hey - it all comes in a exclusive, technologically-advanced, aesthetically pleasing package.

Now, some might object that this is largely a bunch of marketing/PR bullshit, and you will likely be technically correct, but would still miss the point. If people wanted a nice, efficient EV, they'd buy the Bolt, which by all accounts, is pretty damn good. But Tesla sells this "bullshit" because it's what people actually want to buy, and EVs happen to be the delivery vehicle. So as much as you might dislike this "bullshit", it's a core reason why Tesla even exists in 2018.

Where does Musk fit into this? He happens to be the personification of this idea today. In the popular mind he is "cool" so when you buy a Tesla, you're also implicitly buying part of this cool, much like buying an iPhone back in the day got you a part of Jobs' cool. Eventually Tesla will become it's own thing (as Apple is today) and outgrow Musk, but that's still years away.

OTOH, if you want to know what's _actually_ going on at Tesla and what they need, this will probably give you the best idea out of any material on the internet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo)

It's an in-depth interview with a guy who owns a consultancy which disassembles, analyses and sells reports on vehicles, both for manufacturers looking for research on their competitors and at improving their own products. His findings are extremely interesting - he's downright astounded at how incredible parts of the car are (battery, electronics) and thinks established companies should be quacking in their boots. OTOH, he thinks they've made a number of blunders in other parts, such as their production line design or parts of the car (for example, he thinks the body is 20-25% heavier than it needs to be, with parts that serve no discernable purpose)

<comment><USER8> This is a common misunderstanding in my opinion. People don't really care about the environment/climate change that much. People may think they do, but in practice the amount of people that would convert that sentiment to a purchase on a high-ticket item is probably a tiny niche, and not something you would build a business strategy around for something so capital intensive.

The point of Tesla is to force electrification simply by making cars that are better than gas cars, because then the broader market does most of the remaining work. Tesla has always known that the whole environmentalism thing is insufficient and unnecessary.

I think what throws people off is Tesla's stock price and brand. People who don't understand what can go into these assume it must be "hype and dreams," and they conclude that Tesla is popular because of marketing tricks.

<comment><USER9> The brilliant stroke of Musk was to market the electric car to sports car buyers. They don't care about high cost, short range, and performance at sub zero temperatures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My biggest takeaway from this article is that Tesla's very aggressive, forward-looking growth plan could be absolutely destroyed by a recession in the US economy.

Durant's companies ran fine with him as CEO until recession hit and he ran out of money.

What happens to Tesla if a recession hits? All of their products, while undoubtedly groundbreaking, are luxury goods purchased with discretionary income. Even the Model 3 - reliable, commodity transportation can be had for far less than $35,000.

How will Tesla handle the pool of buyers for a $75,000 sedan and $900/mo lessees shrinking dramatically?

Of course all auto manufacturers face this problem. But a company run by an aggressive, visionary CEO like Musk faces far more risk.

<comment><USER11> Tesla did experience a recession in the early years of the company when trying to raise money and sell prototype visions. It nearly crushed the company but they came out on the other side. Today they're much better capitalized and Elon structured debt specifically to guard against dips in the economy.

Not saying he can't be wiped out with one or two bad decisions + a recession, but this isn't new territory for Tesla.

<comment><USER12> >better capitalized and Elon structured debt specifically

This goes against everything I know about Tesla's finances. You really have to provides sources if you want us to believe this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> GM had inventory >> demand, Tesla has demand >> inventory. Durant micro- managed; Musk both has obvious tendencies there, but also just broadcast a memo directing employees communicate directly, without going up and down a chain of command. And, as noted in other comments, Musk took over the company from its founders — like Sloan, and unlike Durant.

There's ingredients here for a Tesla:GM and Musk:Durant story, or for its opposite.

To make the argument compelling, I'd want a justification for including only the similarities while omitting these differences. Without this, the comparison seems ad hoc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great storytelling, but it concludes rather abruptly. An argument of analogy and anecdote. Further, Musk is not the founder of Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are.

<comment><USER15> Wikipedia has five people listed, and says that while it was registered by those two, they consider the rest as co-founders. Now, Wikipedia isn't the greatest source, but it seems to be consistent with most media coverage.

<comment><USER16> in the Elon Musk book its mostly Martin Eberhard who was obsessed and created prototype of electric vehicle and started a company. Musk joined as an investor and then changed the company's direction

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's a fine line between learning lessons from history and assuming that a lesson from history will inevitably happen again in the future. People, companies and life have elements of chaos and luck that have so far made consistent, accurate future predictions unreliable.

People are good at identifying patterns, but we sometimes make the mistake of predicting the future based on past patterns. A classic example is the stock market where no one has reliably predicted the future without insider information.

So, yeah it's good to know the history of GM, but let's be careful about projecting that onto Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER18> Look to the history of Delorean.

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

<comment><USER19> Are you suggesting Musk selling suitcases full of coke to fund Tesla?

<comment><USER20> Flamethrowers should do it: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/boring-company- flame-throw...](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/boring-company-flame- thrower)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A better comparison to Durant's amazing entrepreneurship as auto manufacturing scaled would be Steve Jobs.

Very similar situation to Durant, fired by Apple (who ironically were trying to impose sloan style metrics on everything) comes back and builds the biggest consumer brand on the planet. Look at Apple now, it's sliding back into mid management mediocrity...

I'm not a Musk fan particularly but slowing down innovation and sizzle at this point in their scary journey would be a disaster IMO

</comment><comment><USER22> Billy Durant was a bad ass. My father told me a story he heard from someone who was in the room. Durant crashes a GM board meeting and is told he has no standing and must leave.

He starts toward the door, says something and in file a series of Western Union boys who bring in bags of telegrams which at Durant's direction they empty on the board table.

Durant announces to the stunned board that these telegrams give me voting control of General Motors and it is you who have to leave - and they did!

I'm just surprised that no one has ever done a movie about him.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is conventional B-school wisdom (where B = biology or business): the most successful adaptations are enabled by new DNA. In business, firms that grow from one of many to leading firms must adapt because leading firms face different threats, of which, celebrity CEO may nowadays be the biggest.

</comment><comment><USER24> Another parallel: Over-automation [https://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo?t=3045](https://youtu.be/CpCrkO1x-Qo?t=3045) (the whole thing is worth watching if you are into this sort of thing)

</comment><comment><USER25> Musk should hire away executives from Toyota or Honda to manage the execution of vehicle assembly at scale.

<comment><USER26> He has scoffed at the Toyota Production System, so while I agree with you, I find this unlikely to happen. He seems to be backing into it with comments like "humans are underrated" since I would imagine his ego can't allow a backtrack any faster.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever managed someone paid more than you? - <AUTHOR> I once prepared an offer of about 10% higher than my comp for a candidate who would be my direct report. It didn't trouble me at all because this person would have been a perfect fit for the role.  My manager said no way and we lost the candidate. I was probably underpaid and I suspect my manager feared I would use that as leverage to ask for a raise. But honestly it didn't bother me and I feel like the company missed out on a great candidate. Has anyone been in this position when it actually went through? Was the salary difference a cause of tension? <comment><USER2> I wish I did. I think programmers deserve a little more than managers, because the work is harder.

It's similar to sports team management - sure the manager is rare and more experienced, but they're not burning their mind off trying to meet irrational deadlines. The stress of management mostly comes from team issues, so I'd think paying them more would solve a lot of problems.

But it's also sort of a hierarchy thing.

<comment><USER3> > I wish I did. I think programmers deserve a little more than managers, > because the work is harder.

Let me guess, you're a programmer.

<comment><USER2> I was a manager/tech lead from 2015-2019, then went back to programming because it was such a pain dealing with underfunded teams.

Programming actually seems to pay better in third world countries, though, as there's a shortage for specific skill sets, as opposed to developers with 20 years experience who can put together a full stack PHP site or build telco systems, but haven't done Angular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I once took over a team that had number of members that were paid more than me and had higher titles.

The money side didn't bother me because they were more experienced and in specialist roles that I definitely couldn't do (at least when I took over the team). If anything it worked out to my benefit as my boss felt a bit guilty about it so I received a promotion and a hefty pay rise at the next year end.

It also helped that none of the team had wanted the role so there was no slight implied.

There were some odd moments. At one point one of the team, with more than 10 years more experience than me, asked me for career advice. But mostly it wasn't much different from other team lead roles I've had.

</comment><comment><USER5> Management is a skill, but it's a fairly generic and transferable one.

ICs can be specialists, and there are rare / valuable specialist skills that can command far higher comp than a generic manager or director.

There's nothing about comp itself that would cause a report making higher comp to undermine a manager making less. And a good manager will defer to the report on the topics the report is an expert on.

(Tho in a pathological organization or if the report is an asshole, it might be an indicator that the report is more valuable to the organization and could go over the manager's head to undermine the manager if they wanted to.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I suspect that I was once in the complementary position of being paid a lot more than my manager (who was quite a bit younger). His take on the situation seemed to be that I should be that I should be doing everything twice as fast as him, etc., since I was being paid more, and it did somewhat poison the relationship.

Life is short--I moved on.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have seen this at two Fortune 50 companies firsthand. This happens usually when there is a reorganization and people move around (at least in my two anecdotal cases).

Essentially you have a very valuable individual contributor who is good at what he does, and he wouldn't be as valuable if he was forced to be a manager.

The manager above him understands this.

</comment><comment><USER8> At my friend's company, a director wanted to higher someone but they were asking for more than what director was making. Director was okay with it but HR would not approve it. Eventually, they end up giving director a pay raise to let him hire the person they wanted.

</comment><comment><USER9> Your direct reports should never make more than you (in non-commission role). How can you be the boss of someone who is defacto more valuable then you (even as they lack the responsibility you bare). Yes, you would be underpaid in your current roll if the candidate was being offered market value and you should not search for validation on your position but a new job entirely

<comment><USER10> Why couldn't you be the boss of someone more valuable than yourself? They're more valuable in _their_ role - that doesn't mean they'd be better/more valuable than you in _your_ role, of management.

For example, it would make perfect sense if a dean made less than one of their Nobel-prize winning professors. Or a coach that makes less than their olympic athletes.</comment></comment>


Neuroscience of free will - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will <comment><AUTHOR> The only reason I posted this was this line seemed pretty amazing a way to even look at it - It is pretty scary a thought that all the free will decisions are made by the sub conscious and consciousness is just aware of it and thinks it did them!!

"It may be possible, then, that our intuitions about the role of our conscious "intentions" have led us astray; it may be the case that we have confused correlation with causation by believing that conscious awareness necessarily causes the body's movement."</comment>


Learning About Machine Learning 2nd Ed. - <AUTHOR> http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/3/12/learning-about-machine-learning-2nd-ed.html <comment><USER2> For good lectures and slides, see Andrew Moore's collection on statistical data mining:

<http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a noob and so here is my question: What will I be able to create after I go through all the books mentioned on the list?

I ask this question keeping the current state of AI in mind.

<comment><USER4> IMO, AI is logically quite different from Machine Learning / Statistical Learning.

The stuff mentioned on this page is largely about methods to learn from structured or unstructured data, and this is a field that has become highly relevant of late due to the data deluge. Research in these areas has progressed immensely as well, and we now have methods to mine many different types and volumes of data. If you have a good grip of statistical techniques and some basic ML ideas, you will be able to single out and pick the right technique that fits your problem, given your data type, SNR ratio, structured- ness, volume, your resource constraints, etc. Knowing a little more about ML will also allow you to change/invent new methods to suit your own problems better (e.g., a new way to compress your feature space).

<comment><USER5> I mostly agree with parent, but the divorce between AI and ML might only be temporary, and the deep learning branch of ML is targeting more general AI than just fitting linear models, c.f. for instance for a high level overview:

      http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/pointeurs/TR1312.pdf

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I missed the first one of these when it was originally posted, but it's a huge thread full of really interesting material:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1055042>

</comment><comment><USER7> Seconding his recommendation of _Probability Theory: The Logic of Science_

</comment><comment><USER8> This leads to a nice summary that may also interest the same audience (posted by fogus, seems to be slipping away ...):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187148>

</comment><comment><USER9> Baye Sean, relative of Jay Sean? :)

This is a great list, I'd also recommend Ross's books on probability as starting points.

<comment><USER10> Nice catch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great book list. I strongly recommend getting a strong gasp of linear algebra as matrices are the a great way to think of large data in a manageable way.

also, for folks who just want to their feet wet, oreilly's programming collective intelligence is a good start.

<comment><USER10> "for folks who just want to their feet wet, oreilly's programming collective intelligence is a good start."

No, it is not a good start.

<comment><USER11> can you explain why not?

<comment><USER12> "can you explain why not?"

see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208811>

I said there "PCI takes (in my opinion, feel free to differ) a math-lite, "dummies guide" approach to AI algorithms. "

Brad's approach and recommendations are in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm just curious. Have you read most of these books or did you get these recommendations from people you've networked with?

<comment><USER10> I own them all, and I am perpetually at different stages of working through each of them. :-) I work in the way I explained in the intro - when I don't know something, I step back and go learn the background I need to move forward.

<comment><USER14> Do you find your time spent committed to learning conflicting with your time spend doing product development for Flightcaster?

<comment><USER10> On the contrary; I find learning and production to be mutually self- reinforcing rather than conflicting.

I am a professional committed to both practicing my craft and consistently increasing my skill at my craft. For machine learning researchers, computer scientists, and engineers, a healthy ongoing dose of theory and practice is a great way to proceed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mr. Teflon and the Failed Dream of Meritocracy - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/2015/08/03/mr-teflon-and-the-failed-dream-of-meritocracy/ <comment><USER2> I realize "drama sells" but is this Zed fellow telling truths that people just don't speak about? This sort of thing has never happened to me - am I living in a weird bubble?

<comment> norea-armozel I think it's more likely that you've been lucky. Mind you, I've only started my career in programming, but at least in the jobs I've worked at before then drama has been the norm and not the exception. Whether it was gossip, plain psychos, or folks who would make your part of the job harder it seems the quality of human beings isn't going to be nice at every workplace, meritocracy or not.</comment></comment>


Codename Prometheus: User experience driven open source initiative - <AUTHOR> http://aralbalkan.com/notes/codename-prometheus "Codename Prometheus is a new initiative to create an open platform that competes on user experience in the consumer space. It is inspired in part by the Snowden leaks about the NSA and GCHQ spying programmes on ordinary citizens. Our aim is to create products that are great experiences out of the box. Oh, and by the way, they just happen to be open. They just happen to protect your privacy and respect your human rights. We will need all the support we can get. Follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our mailing list, and join us as we embark on the long road to realising this mammoth task." <comment><AUTHOR> "Codename Prometheus is a new initiative to create an open platform that competes on user experience in the consumer space. It is inspired in part by the Snowden leaks about the NSA and GCHQ spying programmes on ordinary citizens. Our aim is to create products that are great experiences out of the box. Oh, and by the way, they just happen to be open. They just happen to protect your privacy and respect your human rights. We will need all the support we can get. Follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our mailing list, and join us as we embark on the long road to realising this mammoth task."

Lofty goals, I do hope they can pull it off though.</comment>


Dating a programmer - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/dating-a-programmer-d302693d10f5 <comment><USER2> a few stereotypical assumptions which shocked me only because I'm guilty in most points. Reflecting how the career choice influenced my routines, life and directly my marriage it's clear to me, that being with somebody who understands what you're doing (or at least is interested in it enough to get to a level where you can have a basic conversation about "how my day went") makes things much easier in a relationship.

Over the years (and a marriage later) I learned to have hobbies outside software engineering. This me helped to a) expand my social circle, b) have conversations about other things than my job/software c) get less lost in the technical details and learn to step away, resulting in d) better code and engineering skills.</comment>


Sweeping internal Facebook memo: "I have blood on my hands" - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/sweeping-internal-facebook-memo-i-have-blood-on-my-hands/ <comment><USER2> Original piece, with almost-full version of the memo: [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook- ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo)

<comment><USER3> Discussion of the Buzzfeed piece: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24474343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24474343)

<comment><USER4> We've merged the comments thither. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Meet Amazon.com's first employee: Shel Kaphan - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-employee-1

<comment><USER2> I didn't know this story before reading it - great job GW.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was a fascinating interview! very cool.</comment>


Why Facebook thinks Blu-ray discs areperfect for the data center - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/why-facebook-thinks-blu-ray-discs-are-perfect-for-the-data-center/

<comment><USER2> Why do none of these people ask facebook why tape is not a better solution.

Oh right, because Facebook and google are the tech industry's apparent "cool" companies so nothing they ever do should be questioned.</comment>


To Generate Jobs, Nurture Start-Ups (Big or Small) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/business/12unboxed.html?_r=1 <comment><AUTHOR> So it's not just small business that creates most jobs, it's the start-up phase of the small business that does most of the job generation. That's an interesting statistic.</comment>


Boltzmann brain - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain <comment><USER2> The best explanation for this paradox and one that should be especially convincing to computer scientists is that the kolmogorov complexity of any brain aware enough to have consistent memories is higher than the universe which contains it. A Boltzmann brain might not be impossible but it is far,far less likely than arbitrary universes occurring as fluctuations. It makes sense if you think about it. It's also consistent with the fact that 17th century mathematics could make so much headway unravelling the laws of physics and we're still fumbling trying to understand bacteria.

Suppose you were playing with procedural generation. Which would be harder: a procedural universe, a procedural universe with a generated AI able to interact with it or an isolated AI which has learned to act optimally in some arbitrary but specific universe? It is not clear that the last program, meant to represent a Boltzmann Brain with a memory of interactions with the universe is any less difficult than the one with the complex generated AI. The isolated AI might be even harder since a dumb algorithm could, given enough time and feedback, produce something fairly intelligent.

So it would take more bits to describe a brain with your specific memories than to specify a universe which _could_ end up with someone similar to you and easiest of all is the program which generates all possible universes. Schmidhuber goes into this here: [http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html](http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html).

Even if the universe is not some automaton, the argument is still valid. Shorter programs are more likely and a program specifying you with memories of being embedded in some specific universe requires more bits than evolving a universe which has the laws required to support and eventually evolve someone like you.

<comment><USER3> I approve of you giving this some thought, but entropy doesn't care about Kolmogorov complexity at all. A box full of helium where exactly half of the helium is on one side and half is on the other is not appreciably more likely than one where there are 17 more helium atoms on one side the box than on the other despite requiring less bits to describe.

The regions of the Canonical Ensemble corresponding to a "A Brain" are much smaller than those corresponding to "A brain that's inside a body". And the incompressibility of phase space means that it's therefor proportionally less likely in the steady state. Just be very glad that the universe we live in is such that we seem due for a Big Crunch or Big Rip before getting anywhere near steady state.

EDIT: A little bit of help for the intuition. In a long run steady state universe pretty much all matter is going to be inside black holes. Sometimes you get a spontanious particle/anti-particle pair forming near the radius and one happens to escape. The odds of this happening enough times to accumulate a brain's worth of mass outside a black hole are staggeringly unlikely. Each additional brain's worth of mass decreases the odds exponentially. So I hope you can see that an entire solar system's worth of mass forming outside a black hole is so unimaginably unlikely that it dwarfs the unimaginable unlikely-hood of some mass happening to assemble into a brain.

<comment><USER4> >A box full of helium where exactly half of the helium is on one side and half is on the other is not appreciably more likely than one where there are 17 more helium atoms on one side the box than on the other despite requiring less bits to describe.

Plus, how does one decide which information is counted ("which of two distinct volumes the atoms occupy") and which information is not ("full position & velocity of every particle constrained only by uncertainty")?

Because if we don't make that [artificial] distinction, each box has exactly the same amount of information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also worth considering is Dust Theory, from the inventive mind of Greg Egan, which adds a simulation layer and time/space independence to the Boltzmann paradox.

[http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2009/01/dust- hypothesis...](http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2009/01/dust- hypothesis.html)

And the FAQ for those who have read Permutation City:

[http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ...](http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/PERMUTATION/FAQ/FAQ.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty silly. The ``paradox'' only arises because of a confused notion an apparent incongruity between the second law of thermodynamics and the subjective perception that complex "things" in the universe (rivers,trees,people) are highly organized. The second law makes a precise statement about the evolution of closed thermodynamics systems. The latter observation is only a vague sentiment without an exact statement, and is at any rate concerned with open systems to which the second law of thermodynamics does not apply. So there is no paradox.

Addendum: So I made my way through to some of the references, where one can find all these papers by respected cosmologists (I am not a cosmologist, but I have heard of these people and get the sense they that are the real deal). Anyway, it would seem that the term "Boltzmann brain" refers to a technical problem associated with the growth rate of the creation of metastable states from fluctuations during inflation (an actual particle physicist should feel free to chime in). This article appears to hijack the associated buzzword to advance a philosophical discussion around the ``paradox''. It is worth pointing out that none of these cosmology articles are referenced inline in the text. Who are these people and why are they writing this?

<comment><USER7> (I am not a cosmologist or particle physicist, but my thesis did require me to delve into both, and was defended in front of someone who _was_ a particle physicist)

It doesn't require confusions about the second law.

It _does_ require some very specific conditions which may not obtain in the actual universe. It requires, for example, that the universe can eventually reach thermodynamic equilibrium, that the universe in this state can persist over incredibly long time periods, that at least some types of particles are stable enough to exist over such a time range, etc.

And then starts considering whether situations that we normally associate with states where free energy and the ability to do work exist could arise occasionally as a result of random collisions of particles, possible quantum effects, etc.

The key is that the second law is statistical in nature. It describes a tendency, wherein macroscopic entropy-decreasing events in a closed system are merely incredibly improbable. Or, more simply: entropy-decreasing events can occur, they are just so improbable/rare compared to entropy-increasing events that we should expect not to observe them.

In that context, the Boltzmann brain and other strange things are at least not outright impossible.

<comment><USER6> I think I completely agree with you. As you point out, one expects that there is a small but finite probability to have Boltzmann brain-like things pop up in the universe. And if it did happen it would violate the second law, which is making a statistical statement.

So my problem with the article (perhaps your comment should help to clarify) is that it attempts to start a discussion, involving some kind of anthropic principle/natural selection to resolve a paradox that doesn't exist in the first place. The body of the article states:

>The usual resolution of the Boltzmann brain paradox is that we and our environment are the products of a long process of natural selection, which can produce complex and improbable outcomes without violating the laws of thermodynamics.

>The Boltzmann brain paradox is that any observers (self-aware brains with memories like we have, which includes our brains) are therefore far more likely to be Boltzmann brains than evolved brains, thereby at the same time also refuting the selection-bias argument. If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which only creates stand-alone self-aware entities.

The authors of this article somehow turn a correct argument of the expectation value of the number of Boltzmann brains in an ensemble of universes to a claim that most brains in these universes must be Boltzmann brains. They do this without mentioning at all how to calculate the probability of non-Boltzmann brains (assuming the distinction is even valid). TO deal with the feeling of existential anxiety that they are left with at the worry they might be Boltzmann brains they then invoke a natural selection+ anthropic principle argument.

As far as I can tell has very little to do with the concept as it was introduced by the cosmologists.

<comment><USER7> I suspect, but cannot be sure, that a lot of the handwaving about the second law is due to the common misconception that evolution somehow violates the second law.

It's unfortunate but common, especially among people who refuse to accept evolution, so I'm not surprised to see it being mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a Sean Carroll article on the subject: [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2006/08/01/boltzman...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2006/08/01/boltzmanns- anthropic-brain/)

here's another one, linking the higgs field to the cosmological entropy problem: [http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/the- higg...](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/08/22/the-higgs-boson- vs-boltzmann-brains/)

(that second one is a bit whacky...)

<comment><USER9> Peter Woit also has some material on this :)

[http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?s=boltzmann+br...](http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?s=boltzmann+brain)

as does Luboš Motl: Boltzmann brains: popular misconceptions [http://motls.blogspot.de/2008/08/boltzmann-brains-trivial- mi...](http://motls.blogspot.de/2008/08/boltzmann-brains-trivial- mistakes.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Taking the argument further, it seems more likely that you are a Boltzmann half-brain, with the other hemisphere's input arriving randomly.

</comment><comment><USER11> It must be noted that we evolved the way we did because nature have selection functions interwoven in it. Self awareness (consciousness) is still a tricky subject to grasp. People think of Infinite Loop Apple's office name as play on programming. But I am pretty sure it's play on thinking.

</comment><comment><USER12> He was definitely ahead of his time... "Mathematicians Solve 140-Year-Old Boltzmann Equation"(2010) [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513162755.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513162755.htm)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have some observations on this.

1\. The universe we observe is interpreted by a brain(or conscious entity)

2\. There is no proof if the universe is real or fake(Any proof for its existence if all brains are destroyed?)

3\. Existence of the universe seem to be a property of the conscious mind

4\. There is no probability theory in this realm. Even Randomness is an attribute of existence which itself is under question

5\. It is impossible to prove if there is only one conscious mind or there are several(what if all men are fake)

6\. Since the physical brain is part of the universe which again depends on its own conscious perception, we have a total breakdown. One possibility is resort to Godel and suggest that consciousness exists outside the physical/energy plane.

7\. Therefore what are we talking about (super mario questions his own origins on an 8 pixel screen)

~random

</comment><comment><USER14> Even with a knowledge of psychology, I'm sure few people realize nightmare of such vision.

Please, consider that many geniuses feel deprived and stressed ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_At- Risk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifted_At-Risk)). It would be unwise to assume that these problems would not arise for a brain without access to culture and society. What is a Boltzmann Brain, if not an isolated genius?

To be such an isolated and self-aware brain might be a scary experience, if we were ever to record it.

Or impoverished one, if it lacked emotions.

</comment><comment><USER15> Loosely related: Some time ago I wrote a fictional story "History of Everything" about a "overlord of chaos" which is roughly similar to the Boltzmann brain, at least in its basic idea:

[http://profv.de/history/](http://profv.de/history/)

However, I never thought that this strange idea could ever be part of a serious scientific discussion, let alone that such a discussion already happened more than a century ago.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a first time introduction, my brain instantly related the Boltzmann brain concept to Spontaneous Generation ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation)). Oddly, Ludwig Boltzmann lived during the time the Spontaneous Generation theory was discredited after being a widely accepted theory for 2 millennia.</comment>


Linux vs. Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/linux-vs-bullshit <comment><USER2> I found this article confusing because the introduction -- the title, the SunOS history, the Longfellow quote, and Morton's quote -- all suggest a self- righteous position around technical integrity and engineering choices. (Such a position would be poorly-founded anyway, since economics are a crucial part of engineering, even engineering that starts from a principle of technical integrity above all else. Besides that, various sources peg the percentage of Linux kernel contributions coming from commercial entities upwards of 75% -- which is a great thing, but can hardly be said to be free of commercial influence.)

The meat outlines some good points about modern advertising, but I don't get what it has to do with Linux. (Which "Linux" is this? The system? The community? Something else?)

It's also wrong to say that software systems don't lie: that's what virtual memory _is_ , for example. Obviously educated people know the truth, but there's a real sense in which the system is presenting one thing as though it's really another, when the system is actually just going through great pains to make things look that way. This is often a good thing in software, unless the system gets caught in the lie (e.g., when it has to page things out or deploy the OOM killer), at which point real people are often surprised at what was going on all along.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the organization's a mess, but there are some gems in there, like:

> Trader Joe's [in avoiding loyalty programs, coupons, and retailer trade > fairs] spares itself the cognitive overhead required to rationalize > complicating the living shit out of everything

Should have maybe been broken into a series of two paragraph articles.

<comment><USER4> This was a really bad example. Trader Joe's repackages (almost) everything under their own brand so you can't recognize and buy the product elsewhere. So technically it's (almost) all BS.

<comment><USER5> You've got this backwards. TJ sells name brand products at a discount that can be fairly steep. The product manufacturers are incentivized to camouflage this (via the TJ label) so as not to cannibalize their higher margin brand name sales.

<comment><USER6> This is what Trade Joe's says, but our experience is that the bill is higher at TJ's than at, say, Walmart or Safeway, for the same shopping list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really appreciate this article. Searls has put to words a concept that has long bothered me on an intuitive level. Namely that all of these bullshit marketing techniques create a cognitive load that is not in proportion to any value that I as a customer receive from them.

I think it is self-evident that when it comes to matters of taste there is no really "right" answer, but these middle-men are all about muddying the waters for the (short term) benefit of their clients at my personal expense. That is really in contradiction to the premise of a market-based economy - that every transaction benefits both sides. These techniques are all about shifting as much of the benefit to the seller rather than improving the outcomes for both participants.

<comment><USER8> > Namely that all of these bullshit marketing techniques create a cognitive > load that is not in proportion to any value that I as a customer receive > from them.

The problem is that companies don't exist in a vacuum, and soon as one adopts these marketing techniques, everybody has to adopt to "stay competitive", even though they end up wasting money _and_ bullshitting the customer. It's a prisoner's dilemma.

That's one reason why advertising makes so much money. Advertising is one of the rare industries that generates demand for itself.

<comment><USER9> > The problem is that companies don't exist in a vacuum, and soon as one > adopts these marketing techniques, everybody has to adopt to "stay > competitive"

I was wondering the same thing, although Searls takes an example of Trader Joe's and tries to illustrate how avoiding marketing actually helps this business. I'm not from the US, so have never heard of Trader Joe's. I can't help but wonder how competitive it is compared to other businesses who do employ those huge marketing / big data operations. I am also curious how the customer experience itself differs between companies in this market.

<comment><USER10> > I'm not from the US, so have never heard of Trader Joe's.

Probably most Americans haven't heard of Trader Joe's since most of its stores are in Southern California.

But it's a really cool grocery chain, and I say that as someone who generally hates shopping. Still one of the things we miss most about California since we moved to Australia.

<comment><USER11> _Probably most Americans haven 't heard of Trader Joe's since most of its stores are in Southern California._

You must have blinked! They started there, but have expanded rapidly across the US in recent years. They now have 400+ stores in 35 states: [http://www.traderjoes.com/pdf/locations/all- llocations.pdf](http://www.traderjoes.com/pdf/locations/all-llocations.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I read the article, and I don't see what the thesis is.

The article is disorganized. You can't tell where it's going, and when it gets there, you can't tell where you are.

It also seems to contain a lot of pretentious pseudo-intellectual posturing.

Maybe I'm missing something, though. Someone feel free to enlighten me.

EDIT: Also, I should state that I find the scatalogical references to be vulgar, juvenile, and a big turn-off.

<comment><USER13> The thesis is that things like Linux belong to a category of human endeavours that are opposite in nature to most of what regular consumers are exposed to nowadays. Furthermore, it analyses the increasingly strong "economy of bullshit" that we live under.

It's hard to avoid the scatological references without diluting the message. When I read "bullshit" for the first time, I knew immediately what the author meant. Had he said "intentional misrepresentation and/or exaggeration of facts for the purpose of personal gain", the whole thing would be harder to read. And the author even bothered to explain the analogy.

I don't think pseudo-intellectual posturing is a problem here. The author is quoting philosophers, but he does that in a way that is relevant to the main thesis. I understand that a lot of people groan the moment they see a reference to Philosophy. Philosophers might be to blame for that, but let's not throw away the baby with the bath water.

I would make the opposite accusation towards many articles we see on HN these days: they are too simplistic, too conformist and lack deep thinking.

<comment><USER14> >The thesis is that things like Linux belong to a category of >human endeavours that are opposite in nature to most of what >regular consumers are exposed to nowadays

But this is true for any open source project, why just Linux ? That said, I feel Linux too can't escape the "economy of bullshit" \- commercial companies have interest and contribute to different parts of the Linux kernel for a reason. Heck even MS works on the hyper-v code base, not for the betterment of Linux but for the good of their own product. The "enterprise focus" of LKML activity is proof enough.

<comment><USER13> > But this is true for any open source project

Not in my opinion. In my opinion, Gnome, KDE, Ubuntu and many others are self- destructing in an effort to imitate Apple's design without understanding it, and generating a good amount of bullshit in the process.

I don't think anyone here is suggesting that companies==bullshit. There's nothing wrong with smart employees of big companies contributing to the kernel. In many cases it's mutually beneficial so it's the rational thing to do. On the other hand, it seems to be very hard to create a big corporation without letting bullshit fester. Linux is not controlled by the sort of people that thrive on bullshit. But could it fall under their control in the future? Sure.

<comment><USER15> > Gnome, KDE, Ubuntu and many others are self-destructing in an effort to > imitate Apple's design without understanding it

I'd go so far to say that the desktop App Store is a BAD idea.

1\. It was meant to make mobile _more_ free, and now makes desktops _less_ free.

It was born out of things like Brew on the old, old cellular market. Mobile content used to be as free as a concentration camp, and in order to appease them, Apple said "we'll do your content management for you". That was a huge deal step forward, but it obviously wasn't enough or people wouldn't jailbreak their phones.

2\. It is not sustainable over the long haul.

Centralized app management is not a long-sustainable model for the desktop, or anything for that matter. You cannot continue to micromanage that much software without things eventually deteriorating. Apps require maintenance or removed as hardware and the OS changes.

3\. The user experience sucks.

It puts all the installed apps in its own area (LaunchPad) in addition to the AppStore app where you see what you bought, and both in addition to the previously widely known Applications directory/folder. That's just stupid. Why do people want to emulate that mess?

3\. But it survives for now because it is profitable.

I've bought more apps in OS X using the App Store than I would have in a store or via some other online delivery mechanism or Amazon, etc.

But, _none_ of all of that would have been as terrible, if it hadn't spread to Ubuntu. Seeing similar there was a huge WTF moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _" We now know that the Feds and marketing mills are both harvesting massive amounts of personal data without revealing to us what they know, and that the two are actually in cahoots, at least some of the time. This is especially vexing, because the feds should be the ones protecting us from bad actors, rather than bad actors themselves."_

This quote nails it for me. The _waste_ involved with universal surveillance.

Further down this discussion, some participants are arguing about terminology ('Linux' or 'GNU/Linux') which is the other side of the free software/open source process...

I was previously unaware of the work of Harry Frankfurt, and the original journal version of the _On Bullshit_ essay is available online as a .pdf. There goes the morning...

</comment><comment><USER17>
      "To be fair, both the DAA and the IAB would like
       advertising to be as wrought as possible, and for
       consumers to appreciate the good intentions and effects
       of their business. I know that because I've talked to
       them about it. Those organizations see themselves,
       correctly, as advocates for good behavior in a business
       rife with the opposite. "

this paragraph stuck with me. I rigorously ad block, on everything. I make sure my relatives have PVR's and I train them to pause and skip effectively so that they never see advertisements. I install ad block on not just my computer, but my families as well. I actively avoid content that has advertisements in it (I don't play free to play games, for example).

I do all this for two reasons.

1\. I don't trust them. I honestly believe that if an advertisement ever states anything, the opposite is likely to be true. eg. "Our product helps you lose weight!" I am now convinced this product makes you gain weight.

2\. I fear that advertisements really alter the way I perceive the world. part of that fear discussed here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14y695/el...](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14y695/eli5_why_does_cocacola_still_advertise/)

I worry that advertisements gradually change the people that watch them.

but the paragraph mentioned above gave me pause. I can't help but feel, if there were advertisements that didn't lie or actively mislead, that didn't have a terrible and dishonest history, that didn't exist purely as a form of mass manipulation, that I would be more amenable to them.

Of course, that will NEVER happen _EVER_.

so I will continue to block them at every vector. Maybe when the advertising industry is completely squeltched, desperate, and trying to claw itself from its own dug grave, will they play by the users rules. I wouldn't hold your breath.

<comment><USER18> I don't like ads and prefer content without them, however I've never thought that the act of avoiding them was taking a stand or anything like that. It's interesting though to hear someone's justification for it. What are your thoughts on pirating content? I would guess you also hold some strong views on the righteousness of that.

<comment><USER17> pirating content really helps to prevent free software from being adopted. So... I guess that would be considered pretty righteous, right?

*edit: clarity.

or were you thinking along the lines media piracy?

I have no justifications or rationalizations there. There's a giant bureaucracy that will never move, and never let me watch their content. So more or less, I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Linux doesn't lie

Until you ask it to allocate some memory.

<comment><USER20> echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory

But be warned, a lot of applications also lie on how much memory they need.

<comment><USER21> It's mostly about copy-on-write memory due to forks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great article. It can expand further than Linux and turn into a piece of it's own. Bullshitting is the disease of the decade.

</comment><comment><USER22> linux development is majorly funded by those same old school (with some new entries) companies with the same agenda of pushing linux in a friendly direction.

the "community" has long since ceased to be what most people think it is.

<comment><USER23> Absolutely, most of the work being done is for self serving reasons, which happen to be shared by a number of organizations.

Due to the GPL "infection", though, the bullshit can only go so far. If it went _too_ far, somebody would make a "ReDoIx" fork/distribution from the unbroken parts, and build something that people could tolerate.

I started with Slackware Linux in the mid 90s, jumped to RedHat for a while, couldn't figure out what to make of "Fedora", so I jumped to Ubuntu. While both my current and previous employer use RedHat in production (the previous employer _was_ on Debian until being acquired by BigCo), I have no problem with jumping again when something better comes around.

I guess business-to-business supported software has to come with a certain level of bullshit or FUD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Things I think are bullshit:

1\. Ubuntu's decision to include ads

Linux got a real black eye from that imo, and turned me off of the normal Ubuntu distro for the forseeable future. Even for my lightweight distro I use Mint XCFE now just to stay the hell away from an organization that would do that.

2\. Corporate Linux

I liked RedHat in 1997-98, but they went corporate quickly, and since then I personally don't like paying anyone for Linux. I want to support the hacker ethos that made Linux great, not some big corporate head.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't use Adblock. I could, obviously. All my friends and coworkers seem to. Honestly, the main reason I don't is because I want to support Google. Sure, they're only a large portion if ads, not all of them, but given the insane amount of value they provide to me, I'd feel downright guilty not allowing them to make money off of me.

<comment><USER25> Do you click them?

If not then google aren't making money.

If yes then you might have to feel guilty about robbing small businesses to make money for google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yup, I use the Trader Joe's analogy too. I love them. There's no contrived nonsense. It's so refreshing. It's so obvious how all the rest are manipulative bullshitters. Hooray for integrity. Why they hell do 70% of GNU/Linux users still not use AdBlock????

</comment><comment><USER27> I am a developer who works in advertising and I can say this article is bullshit (different agenda, but bullshit just the same).

Most of the literature out there makes the marketing world out to be the NSA. The truth is there are some very easy ways to control the ads you see on your screen if you take the time to understand how it works. Basically, not logging into Google while searching and periodically clearing your cookies will keep your searches for sex toys from showing you ads for butt-plugs. Most of this information is stored in cookies, except for when dealing with companies with large stakes in advertising that have user accounts where they can store your history with their service (Google). I find storing search information connected to a user in a database to be invasive so I don't log into Google. I have little reason to log into Google and do so very infrequently. If your argument for logging in is gmail, just don't use the web client. Cookies are protected by domain so the only visibility into the ads you're delivered via a cookied ad network is via your eyeballs.

Many of the technologies listed in the article are hair splitting variants and some are not advertising at all (Web Analytics are used mainly to determine where people go and what they are interested in in your website to drive changes that benefit users and keep your website profitable, whether that be through ad placement or order form flow). Additionally, ad buying for newspapers and television are only slightly less complicated and involve only slightly fewer middle men than internet advertising and these days those are considered "traditional" advertising media. CRM is listed here as well, which is basically the online equivalent of leaving your business card at someone's office and is mostly used by companies as an alternative to cold calling.

Much of the diversity listed here is about monetization. IE, does the publisher get paid for impressions (views of the ad) or clicks, or completed tasks (sign-ups, orders, etc). This is better for the advertisers because they can pay only for effective ad placements, and puts a lot of focus then on how the ads are placed effectively (so those who display them can make money from those who traffic them). Without going into it too deeply, this is how money from a company (like Aspen Solutions, who's ads I see on the article page for example) trickles down to linuxjournal.com to pay their staff and hosting bills. If you prefer paywalls on your news outlets and blogs or are willing to pay Google for access to their search database (or worse need to log in so they can collect data about your searches to sell to parties undisclosed), I'm sure that could be arranged, but I will go on avoiding traps and diverting my eyes because I understand that this is the middle-ground. At some point you have to accept that the services we enjoy on the internet are built by people with families that like to eat and your selfish desire for public search privacy and screens uncluttered by advertising are secondary to their well being. Are there people making a lot of money off of advertising? Yes, but much fewer than make money off of professional sports which is also funded by advertising and gets a hell of a lot less negative press.

<comment><USER28> And this: _" The truth is there are some very easy ways to control the ads you see on your screen if you take the time to understand how it works."_

Is the entire problem. One of Searl's points is that cognitive overload results in abuse. Let me create a straw man and see if it works as illustration.

I've got a restaurant and on a white board I write a word, then when the waitstaff says that word, customers merely have to lay their heads on the table, because those that don't will be slapped. Periodically, and without sound, I will erase the word on the board and replace it with a new one.

Now eating at this restaurant is a lot harder because while I'm eating I have to keep an eye on the white board and duck when I hear the word that is written on it, and still eat.

You've increased the "cognitive load" of eating artificially. So something that I would give my whole attention too now only gets 80% or less because this other distraction. The alternative is to eat while being slapped. Which ruins the entire experience.

As more and more of our activities involve tools or products that can be remotely controlled, people exploiting that control to inject advertising impute a tax on our usage which is not appreciated.

<comment><USER29> I like the way he makes it sound like the issue here is that I want to easily "control the ads you see on your screen" in order to hide my perversions from family members and shoulder-surfers.

Yes, I believe this person is in advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Minor point: could the prevalence of ad-blocking on Linux be mostly because ad-blocking makes the Web significantly faster because Flash is dog-slow on Linux, rather than any particular philosophical objection to ads?

<comment><USER31> Could be, but careful observation and personal research has revealed that Flash runs dog slow in OS/X and Windows also.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "GNU/Linux" is the OS, "Linux" is just the kernel. The GNU project is responsible for many of the crucial parts responsible for making a complete OS, save for the kernel. Abbreviating the OS with "Linux", for the sake of convenience, should be avoided in order to give the GNU project its due credit.

<comment><USER33> That's not how OS naming works.

Historically, naming rights for an OS go to whoever actually puts together and distributes the complete system. For instance, if a workstation company licensed Unix from AT&T and ported it to their workstation, they got to name that OS whatever they wanted. A couple examples of this were Uniplus+, which was UniSoft's Unix, and 386/ix, which was Interactive System Corporation's Unix. Both were Unix systems--they used a Unix kernel and Unix utilities--but that wasn't their names. Half the fun working at a Unix workstation company in the early '80s was thinking of a neat name for your Unix port. :-)

For the complete systems distributed by Canonical, Red Hat, and the like, they are the ones who get to name the operating systems that they distribute. Ubuntu calls their OS the "Ubuntu operating system". Red Hat calls their OS "Red Hat Enterprise Linux".

Yes, they are _also_ GNU systems, but if we want to be historically accurate, the most correct way to view this would be to view "GNU system" and "GNU/Linux" as specifications for a specific Unix-like userspace and for an OS that runs the GNU system on a Linux kernel, respectively. The Ubuntu operating system complies with the GNU system specification and is a GNU/Linux system, but it is _named_ Ubuntu operating system.

<comment><USER34> While this inversion of the usual prescriptivist argument for "GNU/Linux" is amusing and interesting, I feel it's worth stating the more general objection as well:

It's called Linux because we call it Linux. That is how language works. It doesn't matter about the official name or the etymology, if the population typically uses a certain term for something, that is the "correct" term.

Now there are lots of arguments for preferring an atypical term in some situations. Official names in more formal contexts, genderless nouns to avoid excluding people, and indeed "GNU/Linux" to promote the GNU project. But these are _choices_ we make, and are not something to be forced on people who don't necessarily agree with the reasoning behind them.

<comment><USER32> No one is forcing anyone. It is just a courtesy, not a binding, to acknowledge the group who built the OS ground up.

The GNU project had built all pieces of the OS, before convincing Linus Torvalds to release his proprietary kernel code in the GPL license.

<comment><USER33> The Linux kernel was never proprietary.

<comment><USER32> From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux), here is the relevant part:

"Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under _a license prohibiting commercial distribution_ to its state in 2009 of over 370 megabytes of source under the GNU General Public License."

<comment><USER35> OK, technically correct, but access to source code and a restriction on commercial distribution is not what people usually associate with propietary software. When you say propietary what most of us think is Linus releasing binary-only versions of Linux in 1991, which is false. I think "almost free software" is a much more accurate description, and a lot less flamey.

And by the way, the GPL was first written in 1989, so you could hardly argue that in 1991 many people understood how free software should work or which are the longterm consequences of using a certain license for your hobby project. Cut Linus some slack, he released source code and eventually used the GPL, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Linux doesn't lie, any more than gravity lies, or geology lies, or atmosphere lies. Like those other natural things, Linux has no guile, no agenda beyond supporting the entirety of use-space.</comment>


Logless VPNs Not Safe as You Think - <AUTHOR> So you're begging up your privacy online. Good for you! So you started paying for logless VPN. Does it make you feel more secure? What could possibly be the risk of handing all your traffic to a single party? Where's that server located anyway? Are you sure? What happens if someone taps your data? Will there be a record?  You know that clever marketing money is coming from somewhere don't you? But where? Not sure it was erased without any trace. <comment><USER2> > What could possibly be the risk of handing all your traffic to a single > party

I mean, the alternative is your ISP, which is usually a single party. Yes, some people do believe VPN providers are less shitty actors than ISPs. There are some terrible ISPs.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Not sure it was erased without any trace.

Yep. The thing about logless VPNs (or other services) is that you really never can be sure about what's being saved and what isn't. Only solution is to assume any service is compromised and act accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER4> IMO

"VPN" as in public sites only makes sense when you are at a physical location that inspects your WiFi traffic or when you're conducting grey-market activity like torrenting where the multi-jurisdictional obfuscation is meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Use two VPNs sequentially.</comment>


Why one email app went to war with Apple–and why neither one is right - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/why-one-email-app-went-to-war-with-apple-and-why-neither-one-is-right/ <comment><USER2> Debating the legality of the matter is particularly weak argument. This reads like a paid advertisement</comment>


Show HN: Miso – A Haskell implementation of Elm - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dmjio/miso <comment><USER2> I misunderstood the title at first. I thought this was a rewrite of the Elm compiler in Haskell. This confused me because I was pretty sure that Elm was already written in Haskell.

For anyone else who was confused like I was: this is more like a new frontend framework to implement the Elm architecture but in Haskell. Kind of the way Fable.io has a framework called Elmish, but you're writing in F#.

<comment><USER3> I am guessing the title should be more like "An implementation of Elm Architecture for Haskell." Even then, it kind of appears to be much more than that based on a cursory glance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, could have chosen a better title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This honestly makes more sense to me than Elm itself. I don't see the reason to make Elm a separate language. It's the architecture that's important (given the type system of the language you choose doesn't suck, which is certainly true for Haskell.)

<comment><USER5> I like Elm and see advantages for it being separated from Haskell for a couple of reasons:

1) The Elm language is tightly curated. It features the most important parts of Haskell/OCaml for frontend web apps and decreases the surface area of knowledge needed to use it.

Obviously, this point is debatable and has been heavily debated in the Elm community.

2) In Elm, there is only way one to create a frontend web app. When new developers come on to a project, they need to mainly learn only the business logic of your app. When you want help from the online Elm community, they already know the workflow of the app.

3) It's a gateway drug for Haskell/OCaml. I think any rise in Elm's popularity can only help languages like Haskell & OCaml.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very impressive, and as a developer who prefers using languages with strong type systems, I'm particularly intrigued by efforts like this.

Most of the examples seem to contain 1.5MB of JS. My gut feel is that it isn't terribly low or high for transpiled JS, but it is what it is.

I'd be interested to see how large it is compressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why thank you kind sir :) Using advanced optimizations with google's closure- compiler, the todo-mvc example can get down to 500kb. Compressed it might even be smaller. This is why having the "isomorphic" part is important. This way the user will see content immediately while the app bootstraps in the background and sets up event delegation. Then events will get routed through the vdom to pure haskell functions and the app is responsive again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see a small tutorial for package, perhaps even explaining some concept basics, and differences to Elm when working with it. Just dabbling in Haskell a bit (for fun, working through _Haskell from first principles_ ). Better a headache from reading a book than a headache installing npm packages on Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is fantastic feedback, better documentation is the next step so I'll be sure to include a comparison section between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how does it compare with Purescript + Pux. My experience with Pux has been pretty good. As a beginner, I find it more comfortable when the FFI is thin, the compiled JS is kind of readable, so in case if I am stuck, I can still go back to my familiar Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER9> along similar lines, here's an ocaml+bucklescript version of the elm architecture: [https://github.com/OvermindDL1/bucklescript- tea](https://github.com/OvermindDL1/bucklescript-tea)

<comment><USER10> He has a great intro blog post too [http://blog.overminddl1.com/posts/bucklescript-tea-game- over...](http://blog.overminddl1.com/posts/bucklescript-tea-game-overbots- pt1-setup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It will be interesting to see if the push to state-based design on the web really sticks. The JS library I forget the name of seems to have made it pretty popular, but projects like Elm and this will be the proof of its success.

<comment><USER12> Redux was based on Elm, not the other way around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title should be:

Misco: Write Elm-like front-end applications in Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER14> You've submitted this yesterday. I upvoted you and asked a question. I was ignored.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, my bad, I wasn't aware someone else submitted it, what was the question? Would be happy to talk about it.

<comment><USER15> The previous submission is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14682295)

The question was:

> Why do you wrote this instead of just using Elm? Is GHCJS fast enough? Does > it produces builds small enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> The choice of using Haskell was due primarily to 3 things.

1) Code reuse - The ability to share types on both client and server.

2) Hackage - by using Haskell you have access to 90% of Hackage on the frontend (this means nice lens and json libraries).

3) Types - Haskell's type system can express higher-kinded and poly-kinded types (something which Elm cannot afaik), this gives the user flexibility, expressivity and safety.

The code is quite performant, but for the fast stuff miso FFIs into hand- written js.

In regards to output size, the generated js can be very large. But, the generated code is in a state where it can use the closure compiler's ADVANCED optimizations. That combined with caching the rts.js and gzipping, you can probably get down to a few hundred kbs (which is large by a lot of people's standards), but workable</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Backtracks Under Community Pressure, Goes Back To Old ToS (For Now) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/17/facebook-backtracks-under-community-pressure-goes-back-to-old-tos-for-now

<comment><USER2> dupe <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485460></comment>


Ask HN: Is cloud computing decimating platform/infrastructure engineering jobs? - <AUTHOR> Cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are providing more and more tools that allow companies to build applications with far fewer engineers to handle the backend.<p>Does this imply a gloomy long term outlook for engineers in other companies who do platform and infrastructure development? Are there any leading indicators of this trend? <comment><USER3> I believe it's empowering more people to build applications without in-house infrastructure support.

Once the applications grow big, the need for infrastructure people comes back. The difference is now these people are not touching hardware but software.

<comment><AUTHOR> The cloud providers are providing a lot of software as well: relational databases, other kinds of data stores, load balancers and so on. They also provide you an integrated ecosystem where these things work well together.

Correspondingly, you need far fewer engineers in your company to build and maintain custom software for such things. I am wondering whether in medium term - say the next 4 to 5 years - we are going to see an order of magnitude decrease in the number of jobs in this sector.

<comment><USER3> Most of those pieces of software can be configured as well (load balancing methods, DB parameters, etc).

I don't think we need less people, I think we need people to work differently. Also, an application needing of X amount of infrastructure persons will now need less than that, which frees resources to deploy more applications.

In a nutshell, I don't think we're going to lose jobs at all. I think the cloud is a fundamental pillar of the startup system, which is creating so many jobs that didn't exist before. Efficiency doesn't drive us to less jobs - <USER2> drives us to more jobs.</comment></comment></comment>


NASA launches 100-year quest to send humans to the stars - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0618/NASA-launches-100-year-quest-to-send-humans-to-the-stars <comment><USER2> The trough is too long: <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/576530/kickstarter/u_shape_full.png>

See "Kickstarter: Shorter project durations lead to higher funding rates": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684511>

They'd be better off investing in nuclear propulsion R&D on a 5-10 year scale (Project Rover, phase IV):

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

<comment><USER3> If civilian nuclear power gets replaced by other forms of power generation, we'd have a surplus of rocket fuel. If present sentiment continues, investing in nuclear-thermal propulsion could result in something interesting.

Maybe I should start lobbying against nuclear power ;-)

However, before we start, we should have some clear, economically viable, destinations. An NTR is worthless for launching stuff to orbit and that is 99.999% of what current rockets do. Where it shines is in Earth-Moon ferries and in planetary exploration.

<comment><USER4> I did a rough guesstimate, and in order to get a space ship the size of the Space Shuttle to Alpha Centauri in under 100 years and stop it, you need probably about 20x10^18 J of energy, assuming roughly 1% efficiency of mass to kinetic energy propulsion and with minimal effects due to relativity. I don't think this number is off by more than two orders of magnitude, but it's probably still much too conservative.

That's a lot of energy, about 10 times more than all nuclear explosions ever. Close to half your mass would be fuel at 1% efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Prediction: funding runs dry after five years.

I think only a few religious/academic institutions have managed to have ambitious projects in the 100-year range.

<comment><USER6> _I think only a few religious/academic institutions have managed to have ambitious projects in the 100-year range._

I'd be genuinely interested to hear if you could name any.

<comment><USER7> Construction of cathedrals often takes a _long_ time - look at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, started in 1883 and still being worked on (although it has been consecrated):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia>

<comment><USER8> Meh. That's not even 200 years. Short by Cathedral standards.

Cologne Cathedral: 1248-1880

My favorite example to bring up when my boss complains about schedule overrun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I was a kid I was promised that in the 21st century we would have flying cars, hotels on Mars and space scouts exploring the galaxy back and forth. I am in the 21st century now and what do I get ... facebook? They've stolen my future. I want my future back. Cold war was fun.

<comment><USER10> > Cold war was fun.

On your side of the curtain, maybe.

<comment><USER9> I just meant that human progress seems to be driven by warfare more than by anything else.

<comment><USER11> Yeah technologoy has made zero progress since 1991.

 _Sent from my iPhone_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting thing is that they're _not_ asking for innovative ideas about spaceflight, which you might expect from DARPA.

They're asking for ideas on optimal management and alternative funding for big long term projects. Spaceflight is just a widget example.

</comment><comment><USER13> As great as it is in theory, even agreeing with thebooktocom that it'll likely not happen... It hurts a bit knowing we'll never settle another planet in my lifetime.

<comment><USER7> "in my lifetime"

First invent (effective) immortality _then_ travel to the stars.

<comment><USER14> I was about to suggest the same approach. Immortality seems an easier problem to solve than building a starship, and travelling between stars becomes a lot easier if we're not bothered about bringing our organic bodies along.

<comment><USER10> > Immortality seems an easier problem to solve than building a starship

Why do you think so?

<comment><USER14> Immortality is essentially a question of understanding a collection of cells well enough to transfer their state to a more robust medium. Performing experiments on cells is relatively cheap, and medical research is generally very well funded.

On the other hand, a viable starship would require a considerable amount of energy. We'd need to be comfortable travelling within our own solar system, because we're not going to get the amount of energy required from Earth. The best option so far is probably to park some 100km wide solar panels close to the Sun, store up energy for a year, and then use some rather large laser beams to convert that energy into a million ton blackhole. We'd then have a portable generator powerful enough to get us to another star.

So my guess is that we'll figure our immortality long before we can seriously think about building a starship.

<comment><USER10> Just because something is cheap and funded, doesn't mean it's easy. That's like saying, "Math departments get more funding than pottery classes, and paper and pencils are cheaper than clay, therefore math is obviously easier than making your mom an ashtray."

<comment><USER14> There are exceptions to the rule, but in general if performing experiments is cheap and easy, it's easier to solve a problem than if performing experiments is a million times more difficult and costly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This isn't NASA launching a quest, this is NASA / DARPA asking some else to take up the quest.

</comment><comment><USER16> The citizens equivalent would be to offer a $500,000 dollar prize for the best idea to figure out how to turn myself into a quadrillionaire.

</comment><comment><USER17> You know, $500,000 is less than it costs a developer to buy a decent medium sized duplex house within reasonable commuting distance to a tech job in San Jose.

I don't really see $500k as an indication of any serious interest at all. It might as well be a grant for $37 plus whatever change, lint and gumdrops the proposal author happened to have in his pocket that day.

</comment><comment><USER18> This should reside under the foundation of the long now. Funded by wealthy visionaries backed by corporations instead of governments.

<comment><USER18> Downvotes? Care to explain?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Relevant, Project Icarus (A Joint Tau Zero Foundation & British Interplanetary Society Initiative): <http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I would say spend the money on teleportation using entanglement. That would probably produce results faster then trying to move a large mass from one side of the universe to the other.

<comment><USER14> Quantum teleportation doesn't solve the problem of having to send mass across the universe.

<comment><USER20> Really...whats cheaper and easier to build. A ship to keep people alive for 50yrs or tiny cargo ship to send the other side of the teleporter?

<comment><USER21> Build me a quantum teleporter, then we can compare masses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly the Space Core's ability to add (and maybe subtract) was removed at manufacturing. This would set him up for the fall as NASA's first non-human, albeit humanly insane administrator.</comment>