AMD Radeon VII Review: An Unexpected Shot at the High End - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13923/the-amd-radeon-vii-review <comment><USER2> EDIT: if the chart on the Anandtech review is true I have to take back what I wrote below. I didn't know the AMD Radeon Instinct MI50 (6.7 TFLOPS FP64, 16 GB memory with ECC and also 1 TB/s bandwidth) only costs 1000 USD, I expected it to be closer to the FirePro cards. So if you don't need active cooling this seems like a even better choice.

Good that AMD reverted their decision on FP64 which means the card has 3.5 TFlops.

The only real competitor in the consumer space seems to be the Nvidia Titan V which has 6.9 TFlops, 12 GByte of memory with 652.8 GB/s and costs 3000 USD.

The Radeon 7 only has half of the TFLOPS for FP64 but 16 GByte with 1024 GB/s and only costs 700 USD.

I don't have a use case for double precision but I'm sure people who need it will like the card.

<comment><USER3> The only disappointment is that AMD's software stack is very lacking for compute. While, Nvidia commands absurd prices for 2080Ti with a mere 11GB GDDR6, Radeon's with 16 GB of HBM2 are closer to the memory spec of Titan V100.

OpenCL, while being a much cleaner API, suffers badly from the lack of quality libraries. The requirements aren't even that large for the killer application of DL - BLAS, a few convolution kernels, and random number generation. Darknet's {of the YOLO fame} interface to CUDA, for instance is composed of fewer than 10-15 functions.

AMD's efforts in this regards have not been very satisfactory IMO. Infact third party work such as CLBLAST are of much higher code quality than libraries like AMD's own CLBLAS (or it was). Sadly, AMD over the past few years has seems to have come under the belief that building a transpiler from CUDA bytecode to AMD's would be the magic bullet. It remains to be seen if this will suffice, but it does seem like a quixotic solution to a straightforward problem.

Had such a foundational software libraries (which mind you requires a lot of harware tailored optimization ) been perfected over the past few years (even while being multiple years behind NVDA), they could easily have turned the game, more so considering NVDA's shady tactics of banning GTX/RTX cards in the cloud.

I don't know what went wrong. It's not like AMD didn't have engineers working on ML applications; the direction seems misguided - AMD's engineers (unlike NVDIA's) seem to have focussed on porting frameworks onto low quality libraries, rather than securing the foundation. I'm afraid the ROCm effort will have the same effect.

<comment><USER4> Could not agree with you more - tracking the AMD compute story has been painful. Talks about having Tensorflow / Torch upsptream support have been going on forever. Reading between the lines OpenCL seems to not be the favored way to do compute anymore, so its unclear if I was starting today what the canonical forward looking path is for writing compute on AMD cards.

<comment><USER5> > I was starting today what the canonical forward looking path is for writing > compute on AMD cards.

HCC and HIP seem to be the canonical compute path forward, with compiled ahead-of-time OpenCL being supported as well.

There's some "#pragma openmp target" tests in the Github repos. So AMD is clearly working on that as well. If HCC got OpenMP support, it would be significantly easier for typical programmers to write GPU code.

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

If I were starting a project today, it'd be OpenCL 1.2 on the AMDGPU-pro drivers (the old proprietary driver is more stable for sure), but with a careful eye on HCC / HIP advancements. HCC and HIP have gotten a huge amount of attention / github commits in the past year, so its clearly where AMD's main effort is going into.

</comment><comment><USER6> For me, 700$ are still high end.

Time ago the high end was above 500$ and the price climbed during this time thanks to cryptomining.

With 200/300 you could buy a modest graphic card that could last 3 years playing top titles. Now in that price range you can just keep up one year and then it's completely trash

<comment><USER7> I think a RX580 or Nvidia 1060 is still perfectly great for modern gaming and can be picked up for $200 or less.

<comment><USER8> rx 580 8GB is good. the 4GB version is lagging behind a little -- VRAM spills into system RAM regularly.

I assume the 1060 3GB has a similar problem.

source: I have a 4GB and am currently saving up to upgrade.

edit: also, the rx 580 4GB generally runs at a lower clock than the 8GB counterpart, which affects performance, as well.

<comment><USER9> Which titles are using more than 4GB these days?

<comment><USER5> [https://techreport.com/r.x/2019_02_06_AMD_s_Radeon_VII_graph...](https://techreport.com/r.x/2019_02_06_AMD_s_Radeon_VII_graphics_card_reviewed/memory.jpg)

Seems to be a VRAM-based calculation. There have been some youtubers looking into the "pop in" effect on GPUs with less VRAM. Basically, GPUs will render images at a lower texture level if the texture wasn't fitting in VRAM. So the failure case is pretty smooth these days and hard to notice.

Basically, the mountain range in the background may only be a 2k texture, but may pop into a 4k texture after a bit. Because the 2k texture is a mipmap of the 4k texture, its actually hard to notice. So you can stretch lower VRAM Settings these days better than you'd expect.

Another thing: just because VRam is allocated doesn't necessarily mean that the VRAM is being used. If you look at a wall in any video game, all the textures are going unused. Taken to the extreme: there are people and objects "behind" a lot of geometries that you'll never see in the game, but will be allocated to VRAM. As such, a game may allocate 9GB total, but not really need the last 2 or 3 GB. So even if a game reports 9GB or 10GB of usage, you may get by with a 8GB card.

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

In any case, we're long past the 4GB of RAM mark. Practically speaking, games require 6GB at least and may break 8GB in the near future IMO. 8GB seems to be sufficient for now though (thanks to pop-in, VRAM overallocation, etc. etc.)

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems that this has a better process (7nm vs. 12nm), more memory (and bandwidth), and more power draw than the RTX cards.

So why does it have equal/lower performance? Is it just that it has fewer transistors (13.2B vs. 18.6B)? (And if so, why doesn't the smaller process allow more transistors?) Or is there also a difference in the architecture where a better design could get more performance out of the same amount of silicon?

<comment><USER11> There are so many variables. A few that you didn't mention in your comment is the number of shaders/cores and the core frequency.

However there's one other thing to consider for games. Essentially every big video game has a special profile in the Nvidia drivers that optimizes performance for that specific game. Gaming card reviews almost always use popular AAA games for benchmarking. It's possible and even likely that each was developed with Nvidia cards in mind, in coordination with Nvidia to optimize those drivers.

<comment><USER12> It depends on the game, many games (especially previous ones) would say POWERED BY NVIDIA or whatnot. Usually specific series get special treatment, Hitman goes AMD but the Witcher goes Nvidia or whatnot. To my knowledge that generally means that A) they're using hairworks or something, and B) they likely got to work with that company for extra optimization.

Then I believe the drivers also optimize games without the developers involvement (But I would assume this isn't as effective as working directly with that company).

But generally certain games "work better" on AMD/Nvidia based on whoever they worked with/built it for, however the majority are "better" on nvidia for various reasons.

<comment><USER13> In case of Nvidia it also means game will force certain feature known to not work as well on AMD, like for example tesselation in Crysis 2 going down to many triangles per pixel just to make sure AMD cards struggle [https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation- to...](https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of- a-good-thing/2) , or invisible tesselated water under main geometry [https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation- to...](https://techreport.com/review/21404/crysis-2-tessellation-too-much-of- a-good-thing/3) Other times Nvidia will "help" developer drop DirectX feature it doesnt like, like Assasin Creeds removal of DX10.1 after joining Nvidia "meant to be played" program.

Optimizing drivers is one thing. Sabotaging libraries, and then forcing said libraries on developers under the guise of "support"/cross promotion (read Nvidia is paying developer in advance) is another.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The big surprise is the disabled PCIe 4 support. It makes sense in isolation, but since they plan on launching Zen2 ASAP with PCIe4 being one of its flagship features this would be very complementary. Doesn't the left hand of AMD talk to the right hand?

<comment><USER5> AMD's gotta have a reason to sell the higher-end MI50.

<comment><USER14> They could have sold a ton of Zen2 / Radeon7 bundles. Instead they chose to sold a few dozen more MI50's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The pricing puts it outside of what I'd consider a gaming oriented card. Same can be said about Nvidia's RTX by the way.

Nice performance though, it's the highest performance "gaming" card with open drivers today.

</comment><comment><USER2> Taken from the other thread:

Other reviews:

\- (guru3d) [https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-radeon- vii-16-gb-r...](https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-radeon-vii-16-gb- review,1.html)

\- (tomshardware) [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii- vega-20-...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii- vega-20-7nm,5977.html)

\- (techpowerup) [https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_VII/](https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Radeon_VII/)

\- (arstechnica) [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/amd-radeon- vii-a-7nm-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/amd-radeon-vii-a-7nm- long-step-in-the-right-direction-but-is-that-enough/)

\- (gamersnexus) [https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3437-amd-radeon-vii- re...](https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3437-amd-radeon-vii-review-not- ready-for-launch)

\- (gizmodo) [https://gizmodo.com/amds-radeon-vii-is-a-solid-gaming- card-b...](https://gizmodo.com/amds-radeon-vii-is-a-solid-gaming-card-but- thats-just-1832412200)

\- (gamespot) [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/radeon-vii-review-can- amds...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/radeon-vii-review-can-amds-new- card-handle-4k-pc-g/1100-6464872/)

\- (digitaltrends) [https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-radeon-vii- revie...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/amd-radeon-vii-review/)

\- (extremetech) [https://www.extremetech.com/computing/285286-amd-radeon- vii-...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/285286-amd-radeon-vii-review- this-isnt-the-7nm-gpu-youre-looking-for)

\- (pcper) [https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon- VII-...](https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Radeon-VII-Review- Supercharged-Vega)

\- (techspot) [https://www.techspot.com/review/1789-amd-radeon- vii/](https://www.techspot.com/review/1789-amd-radeon-vii/)

\- (tweaktown) [https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8894/amd-radeon-vii- review...](https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8894/amd-radeon-vii-review-team- red-back-enthusiast-gpus/index.html)

\- (engadget) [https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/07/amd-radeon-vii-review- vi...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/07/amd-radeon-vii-review- video-4k-benchmarks/)

\- (pcmag) [https://www.pcmag.com/review/366382/amd-radeon- vii](https://www.pcmag.com/review/366382/amd-radeon-vii)

\- (techradar) [https://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-radeon- vii](https://www.techradar.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii)

\- (hothardware) [https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii-review-and- be...](https://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-vii-review-and-benchmarks)

\- (kitguru) [https://www.kitguru.net/tech-news/zardon/no-custom-radeon- vi...](https://www.kitguru.net/tech-news/zardon/no-custom-radeon-vii-at- launch-amd-say-partners-free-to-make-them/?PageSpeed=noscript)

\- (hardwarezone) [https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-amd-radeon-vii- review...](https://www.hardwarezone.com.sg/review-amd-radeon-vii-review- finally-high-end-card-amd)

\- (rockpapershotgun) [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/07/amd- radeon-7-rev...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/07/amd- radeon-7-review/)

\- (hexus) [https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/126752-amd-radeon- vi...](https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/126752-amd-radeon-vii/)

\- (bit-tech) [https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/amd-radeon-vii- re...](https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/amd-radeon-vii-review/1/)

\- (legitreviews) [https://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-vii-16gb-video- card-...](https://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-vii-16gb-video-card- review_210489)

\- (overclock3d) [https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/amd_radeon_...](https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/amd_radeon_vii_review/1)

\- (techgage) [https://techgage.com/article/amd-radeon- vii-1440p-4k-ultrawi...](https://techgage.com/article/amd-radeon- vii-1440p-4k-ultrawide-gaming-performance/)

\- (computerbase - google translate) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerbase.de%2F2019-02%2Famd- radeon-vii-test%2F3%2F%23abschnitt_benchmarks_in_1920__1080_und_2560__1440)

\- (pc games hardware - google translate) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcgameshardware.de%2FRadeon- VII-Grafikkarte-268194%2FTests%2FBenchmark-Review-1274185%2F)

\- (harwareluxx - google translate) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hardwareluxx.de%2Findex.php%2Fartikel%2Fhardware%2Fgrafikkarten%2F48510-7-nm- gpu-und-16-gb-hbm2-die-radeon-vii-im-test.html)

\- (golem - google translate) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fnews%2Fradeon- vii-im-test-die-grafikkarte-fuer-videospeicher-liebhaber-1902-138906.html)

\- (hardware.info - google translate) [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnl.hardware.info%2Freviews%2F9051%2Famd- radeon-vii-review-nieuwe-kans-voor-vega-op-7-nanometer)

<comment><USER16> \- (linus tech tips) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alhEgNvzv50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alhEgNvzv50)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could this be the piece Apple was waiting for to release the new Mac Pro?

<comment><USER18> At this point I expect the Mac Pro to go the way of AirPower with Apple never mentioning it again and calling the iMac Pro "good enough".

<comment><USER19> To be honest, for many purposes it is good enough. I love this machine. The Vega 64 inside the iMac Pro even has 16GB instead of the standard 8GB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm sorta surprised that the specs are so similar to the MI50. Seems like this might cannibalize the sales of MI50 for applications that don't use fp64 (i.e. all ML/DL uses).

<comment><USER5> Well, that's the thing. Its clearly a discount MI50. PCIe 4.0 and a coherent GPU-fabric however are MI50 only features, so anyone buying bundles of GPUs for hardcore compute will want to stick with the MI50 for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> TL;DR:

\- Stock/Better than RTX 2080 performance at 1440p/4k.

\- Needs driver updates for overclocking and for matching 1080p performance.

\- Heat design bad on founder card.

\- Expensive and mostly Sold out.

I'll wait for Navi.

</comment><comment><USER22> Happy to see at least _SOME_ competition, would be nice to see AMD offer something by end of the year competative to RTX 2080 Ti, which should at least drive some pricing competition. I wouldn't be surprised to see a $100-200 drop for RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti because of this.

</comment><comment><USER23> 300W power consumption, and it still only caught up with Nvidia cards drawing less than 200W on gaming performance

<comment><USER24> >300W vs 200W

That's not measured. That's manufacturer spec, which is best ignored.

NVIDIA's TDP is not the thermal design number as you'd expect, but rather, the "typical" as in measured while running some arbitrary loads.

It's dodgy, but that's how NVIDIA rolls.

Always do refer to measurements for actual numbers to compare.

Manufacturer specs are best not trusted.

<comment><USER25> Discovered this the hard way when building quad GPU servers. 1080Ti has TDP of 250W per spec, yet most "1600W" power supplies will crap out and shut down your system if you fire up 4 1080Ti's simultaneously. The only brand I've tried that didn't crap out was EVGA. Supposedly Corsair 1600W PSU is also OK, but I haven't tried it. Even in nvidia-smi (which I think still averages things out somewhat and never shows the momentary peak power), 1080Ti will often jump way over the 250W "limit" when it's at 100% utilization.</comment></comment></comment>


Fragmandroid: Google's mad dash to Microsoftdom - <AUTHOR> http://counternotions.com/2009/12/15/nexus/ <comment><USER2> This article is quite interesting with hindsight. When you consider that even though their branded Nexus phones haven't sold amazingly well, but that android as a platform has grown incredibly since the article was written.</comment>


The 50-Year-Old Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://theaccidentalengineer.com/the-50-year-old-engineer/ <comment><USER2>
      >For new projects, you will know the answer to questions like:

      > do tools exist to build it?
      > are the tools "mature"?
      > can our team adopt these tools without bankrupting the company with technical debt?
      > Your years of experience will make you more confident in your understanding of the "state of the universe." This is valuable to employers…always.

No, you won't know the answer to these questions any more than anyone else unless it's a tool set you've used. It takes actual experience with a particular tool set to know where the hype meets reality.</comment>


Jonathan Ledgard Believes Imagination Could Save the World - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/jonathan-ledgard-believes-imagination-could-save-the-world <comment><USER2> Can we get a succinct thesis statement of this article? Was put off by the writing style of the portion I read.

<comment><USER3> Some people are lucky enough to get jobs that give them connections and resources to try out crazy ideas in far off lands with wild sciency stuff that they barely understand.

Calling up EPFL right now with my pitch for why they should let me hang out with top research scientists to flesh out a vague idea that blockchain can fix the refugee crisis.

<comment><USER4> A blockchain system for land ownership records. Now that might actually work. The problem needs an immutable shared ledger that cannot be easily destroyed or tampered with. Transaction volume is low enough for a blockchain system. There are many countries that lack documented land ownership.

One of the World Bank's blogs suggests this, but not much seems to have been done.[1]

[1] [https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/keeping-it- clean...](https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/keeping-it-clean-can- blockchain-change-nature-land-registry-developing-countries)

<comment><USER5> > A blockchain system for land ownership records.

How would that handle shared ownership of some of those lands? Will that entail their owners now paying tax on these lands whose ownership is now "recognized"? (a negative for some of the people involved, because at this moment they pay no tax on it). Will this registering of lands "help" them be put on the market? If yes, how can we prohibit the sale of those lands to people outside of the village/county? I.e. how do we stop alienating lands that have been owned by the community for possibly centuries?

And these are just a couple of hard to answer questions, because land "ownership" (for lack of a better word) is really complex and ancient and not easy to put into "organizational boxes" dreamed up by our technocratic society.

<comment><USER6> >If yes, how can we prohibit the sale of those lands to people outside of the village/county?

This is only a feature in a couple jurisdictions. Not all countries ban the sale of land. You might guess those jurisdictions won't be interested in recording land sales, since land can't be sold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > … the best-educated generation in African history, digitally connected to > the rest of the planet, yet the World Bank estimated that seventy-five per > cent of sub-Saharan youths would be unable to find a salaried job in the > coming years. "They will be easily knocked flat by mishaps or illnesses," > Ledgard continued, and would be prone to recruitment into insurgencies and > terrorist groups. It was no coincidence, he thought, that the jihad was most > active in the areas already being ravaged by oil extraction and climate > change.

Substitute "American" for "African" and some more palatable-to-Americans word for "jihad" and his could be the USA in a decade.

</comment><comment><USER8> >What if human greed could be harnessed as a kind of natural resource, and redirected to mitigate its own effects?

It's called capitalism. People like to rail against capitalism for rewarding greed, and capitalism does have faults, but they forget that it is the only system (so far) that acknowledges the presence of greed and actively harnesses it for the benefit and advancement of everyone. Some alternative systems are so foolishly idealist that they try to pretend that greed (and the hierarchical systems constructed from it) doesn't exist. And of course it's easy to build those make-believe systems if nobody is actively exploiting it.

<comment><USER9> > presence of greed and actively harnesses it for the benefit and advancement > of everyone.

This is not what capitalism does. Much of capitalism today and in US history is that of a destructive force that hurts the entire population without consequence, enriching mostly the already wealthy.

The improvements and conveniences of modern society are unevenly distributed and brought to the masses at great cost to our society.

Unchecked global climate change due to infinite-growth-greed-capitalism has _dramatically decreased_ the quality of expected life for much of the world's poor.

Capitalism absolutely does not, in theory or practice, make its benefits available to everyone.

<comment><USER10> Historically what has worked better?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure this is a meaningful question to most anti-capitalists who want to move beyond capitalism to a non-exploitative economic system rather than return to some real or imagined historic system.

<comment><USER12> Honest question: what is the non-capitalist alternative economic system? European socialism and Chinese communism are still very capitalist. I'm always generally confused by these debates.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Moonlight without violating employment contract? - <AUTHOR> Hi!
tl;dr: I work at Google, don't want to be fired, but want to start some side businesses/experiments online. Advice on getting started?
My family really needs our health insurance right now, and I make great income. However I'm slowly dying inside every day at work. I would like to do something more creative and more in my control, just to try and see how it goes. However, it's unacceptable right now for me to lose our health insurance / miss payments on our mortgage.
How do I validate what I'm actually risking based on what I do? I fear that if I actually try to go through corporate legal they'll just say "no" and now have it on record they said no, thus a fire-able offense if I try anything. Lawyer recommendations maybe?
Thanks for any pointers! I have a lot saved up so maybe I'll just leap, but I'd love to moonlight a bit and get some market data first so I can make a more educated gamble. <comment><USER2> Take a look at your employment contract (you'll need this anyway when you talk to a lawyer). Many contracts will have clauses about outside work/IP rights etc. The enforcement of these clauses depend on your location (and to some extent Google's). To that end, it would be useful to mention approximately where you're based (NYC, CA, Seattle, etc), especially to garner useful lawyer recommendations.

If/when you do moonlight, make sure that you do NOT use company assets to do so. Do NOT use your corporate issue laptop or your corporate email. Typically anything created using company assets is considered company-owned. Also anything that directly competes with Google is dicey.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in the bay.

Great point, I would definitely be using 0 corporate resources for any work I do for myself. I would not want to do anything in a gray area, thus the questions.

<comment><USER3> Here's a plain English explanation from Joel Spolsky: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side- pr...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you happen to be in California...

Section 2872 of the California Labor Code prohibits your employer from taking ownership of anything that you develop entirely on your own time without using your employer's equipment, supplies, facilities or trade secret information, EXCEPT for those things that either:

(a) Relate at the time of conception or reduction to practice to your employer's business, or actual or demonstrably anticipated research or development; or

(b) Result from any work performed by you for your employer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I am in the bay. I read this labor code, but figuring out what actually is covered by a. seems difficult with such a large corporation.

<comment><USER4> Almost nothing is covered by a. Just do b and you'll be fine. Quote from a book:

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

Don't tell Google about it (but do declare it on any future employment agreements), make sure your team is happy with your performance, don't use company resources and your job/insurance will be fine. Let that settle in, afterwards thinking more is a waste of time.

There's many examples of Google employees building side projects that turn into companies. [1] Let that precedent keep you calm.

1: [https://sandstorm.io](https://sandstorm.io) [https://sourcegraph.com](https://sourcegraph.com) [https://www.businessinsider.com/20-enterprise-startups- forme...](https://www.businessinsider.com/20-enterprise-startups-former- google-employees-2019-6)

<comment><USER5> Note that sandstorm.io (and Cap'n Proto) was written 100% after I left Google, so I'm not sure if that's a great example.

I would not recommend working on a future startup while still at Google, _unless_ the work is 100% open source and approved. If it's open source, you'll have an easier time getting it approved if you let Google keep copyright. This should be fine because they cannot retroactively revoke the license, so your startup will be able to use it under the terms of the open source license.

If you're writing proprietary code, you are putting your future startup at risk. It's not just that Google might come after you (this is actually unlikely, since it's bad PR for Google), but you may have a hard time getting investors if your IP rights aren't in order. Investors do care about this stuff.

California law does not work well as a defense since Google essentially claims that all code relates to its business in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chances are you aren't going to create anything GOOG is interested in anyway.

Just don't attach your name to anything you create and don't mention your projects/businesses to co workers. Don't visit them on company devices or company wi-fi. If you want set everything up in your wife's name. You can start out with a sole proprietorship, you can get an EIN number so you don't have to use your social. Setup an LLC when you get traction on something.

You should be fine, it's a long road to making something profitable enough to leave your GOOG job though.

Check out startupsfortherestofus.com, listen to their archives good advice and you can follow Rob's story. Drop shipping beach towels, online invoicing to an exit from drip.com.

You'll need to stair setup up to something that replaces your income, so get started.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll echo the talk to a lawyer with expertise in that area, who you hire, have him look at your contract.

Get advice not just on your contract but how to draw the dividing lines between work and your other project.

You don't want to find out later some guys on the internet might have been wrong...

</comment><comment><USER8> What happened to Google's 20% time policy? I thought that was supposed to be a creative outlet.

<comment><USER4> That's to build things owned by Google, OP wants to build something on the side that's not owned by Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it true that, at Google, if you leave `on good terms` and come back within a year, you don't have to interview again. Why not explore that route, if 1 year is sufficient for moonlighting and validating?

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. Follow your passion.

2\. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

3\. My experience: The best things came to my life after i took the risks of violating someone's nonsense terms

</comment><comment><USER11> I find myself in a similar position.

Shoot me an email if you are ever looking to collaborate: email@example.com</comment>


Python is better than Perl6 - <AUTHOR> http://everythingsysadmin.com/2011/01/python-is-better-than-perl6.html

<comment><USER2> In related news, donkeys are better than magical unicorns.

(or perhaps "Wolfenstein 3D is better than Duke Nukem Forever"?)

<comment><AUTHOR> > In related news, donkeys are better than magical unicorns.

While the title says Perl6 (the magic unicorn or DNF), I think everything in it applies to Perl 5. The title could have been "Python does what Perl should do, I'm not waiting for Perl 6."</comment></comment>


Scott Adams Blog: The End of Capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_end_of_capitalism/ <comment><USER2> This is perhaps the most poorly-thought out post on economics I've read in a long time. Adams is essentially arguing for a completely unrealistic set of draconian regulations to manage every aspect of society, from capital investment to personal health. An example:

"Stock bubbles could be avoided by restricting how much money can be invested in stocks, on an annual basis, to keep the price earnings ratios around 15."

Err...what? Who decided 15 was the ideal? What about those companies that clearly don't deserve that multiple based on their growth prospects, or companies that clearly deserve more? Why bother with a market at all?

He asserts that it's not socialism, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it wouldn't be worse.

<comment><USER3> What were you expecting from a cartoonist?

<comment><USER4> Cartoonists are good at finding the flaws in the current system but not really finding ways to fix them.

So looking for some more reasonable ideas to address his concerns: There are already limits on the kinds of investments low net worth individuals can make and quite possible some for of useary law limiting interest to ~20 - 30% which would cut down how much credit people can get and reduce there payments at the same time. A few changes to how people can invest their 401k's so they need some reasonable P/E and diversification if they have less than say 200k and are over 55 might not be a bad idea.

I think most of what he is complaining would be addressed with those changes and something like them might even become law but we would still have capitalism. Because capitalism is about having markets determine price which would still happen based on the actions of people with more money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More like the downfall of crony capitalism, caused by the federal reserve.

</comment><comment><USER6> Okay, I just skimmed it, but that didn't make much sense. I guess it's a Scott Adams post...

<comment><USER7> He is probably right in that the economic system needs to evolve to keep up with technological change, but he misses the most important reason for that (the increased importance of products with negligible marginal cost of production), and he has no reasonable idea of possible solutions.

He is not content to be a cartoonist and has so far tried to write about physics (the last part of, I think, the Dilbert Principle) and religion (God Debris, which is a free download - he manages to come up with crude versions of ideas that Hinduism got to millennia ago).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"...The economy is now too complicated for even the regulators to know when a con or a huge mistake is happening..."_

I stopped after this sentence. The economy has always been too complicated for experts to understand. That was the beauty of what Adam Smith identified -- with billions of people, billions of "unseen hands" control the division of labor.

The current crises is the 15th crises since the civil war that involved some sort of mortgage gimmicks. We have fraud and economic panics going back to the 1600s.

Nothing new here to see, Scott. After you blew it with the statement above, you continued to go off the rails with the rest of the article, all because of your belief that economies can be engineered. That's a farce that Smith observed in his day. You'd think that a basic education would take most people beyond that point.

<comment><USER9> _" The economy has always been too complicated for experts to understand."_

Adams' thesis doesn't rest upon any assumptions about the complexity of the historic economy. He's simply acknowledging a fact: the economy of today is much _faster_ than it has ever been before. Scammers can effectively hide behind the speed of their actions. That's new.

Once upon a time, regulatory agencies like the SEC had a fighting chance of catching stock scams, because the market was _slower_. It was still efficient, but because there were fewer players, making fewer plays per billionth of a second, they had a chance of stopping crime. Today, the best that the SEC can do is to (maybe) catch these guys in retrospect -- and there's absolutely no chance that they're catching all of them. Thanks to modern technology, market manipulation can happen at the speed of light.

<comment><USER10> There are two ways to speed up antiscamming that I can think of. It could become automated, AI-controlled, with a machine capable of pulling the trigger at computer-speed. Or, it could become distributed, one-on-one. The latter seems to me to have better scaling characteristics.

How about this as an idea: suppose somebody starts a financial market which from day one has a system of guarantors. You have to be introduced by a member, who thereby takes full personal responsibility for your bankrupt losses.

<comment><USER11> The "full responsibility" thing means I will never introduce anyone, save possibly my own children.

<comment><USER10> You would be able to demand insurance and payment from them as a condition. You could demand they let you audit on zero notice. In the worst case you would be able to revoke their sponsorship and that of their transitive protégées (stopping your losses by cutting off responsibility for any future transactions).

The idea here is to make the risk manifest with the risk-taker, rather than letting it settle by default on their clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At the risk of being a hypocrite (mortgage, student loans), why not eliminate credit? Can't afford a $200,000 house or $20,000 car without credit? Guess what, no one else can either. Prices of those goods would fall back to reasonable levels. Can't afford cable, data plan, or fancy clothes? Guess what, you don't need those things, so learn to live without them.

What good has credit brought the individual? Inflated prices, slavery to debt. What good has that done for corporations, banks and governments? Trillions worth of good. (Not saying that corporations, banks, and governments are bad, just pointing out that they are the winner with regards to credit.)

I realize prohibiting credit instantly would be a huge jolt to the system, but wouldn't it prevent similar problems in the future?

<comment><USER13> Credit is just the continuous version of slavery. There's little difference between a literal slave and someone deep in debt with creditors forcibly confiscating their income. Unfortunately the market rewards those who use credit, which encourages a society based on debt rather than one based on widespread assets.

However, this does not mean that credit should or can be prohibited via edict. What will happen is that over time communications technology/market efficiency will progress to the point that anonymous transactions will (once again) make economic sense.

When it once again becomes feasible to transact your life using money (instead of the current identity based "point" system), it will make sense for people to liquidate all sources of credit and laugh as the creditors are unable to collect. When this catches on, the credit system will crumble.

edit: cool - mass downmods for an idea that doesn't mesh with the groupthink du jour. didn't know one had to pay karma to hopefully start a discussion.

<comment><USER3> Let me guess, you just watched Zeitgeist Movie? Great flick.

<comment><USER13> Never watched the first one, but I saw the 'Addendum' a while ago and thought it was mild at best. They point out a lot of problems and the history, but their proposed "resource-based economy" solution is just more monolithic authoritarian gobbleygook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What he's talking about is essential Corporatism; its been tried, and it doesn't work. In fact, its more of a continuation of our current trends which have caused these problems in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER15> We need both Socialism and Capitalism to build and sustain a great nation.

1\. Prevent race to the bottom aka Socialism 2\. Promote race to the top aka Capitalism

</comment><comment><USER16> _Perhaps your health insurance premiums would be based on your body mass index and whether or not you smoke._

You mean it's not already? I'm an ignorant Brit with state healthcare (mostly) in this regard, but doesn't insurance work this way in the US?

Our car insurance varies on gender, age, employment, and all sorts of factors - shouldn't health insurance be based on.. well.. your claim risk too?

<comment><USER17> Not unless you are paying for your own insurance.

This is, however, how life insurance works.

<comment><USER16> I'm surprised anyone's self employed in the US with the various hurdles (higher taxes, choosier health insurance) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> to me the future isn't about some new variation of the decrepit systems that already exist (capitalism, socialism, democratic republics, ...).

when you think about it, those systems are just hacks meant to maximize the good parts of humanity (cooperation, innovation, ...) and minimize the bad parts (corruption, ...). imho what we have now is the acme of those systems

I feel that if humanity can survive long enough (with our scientists and current infrastructure intact), eventually we can make those systems obsolete by fixing the root of the problem: basic human nature - specifically the part where sub-systems try to maximize their efficiency at the expense of the system as a whole. bureaucratic systems (no matter how large or small) can limit it (temporarily), but they can never eliminate it in the long term...

to me the answer is human evolution through artificial means.... a shared consciousness (aka the borg); though i'm sure it'd have its own set of problems...

</comment><comment><USER19> idiocracy, here we come!

</comment><comment><USER20> I thought this was going to be funny?

</comment><comment><USER21> I think one thing similar to one of the things he said is to limit the amount of tax free equity one can hold in a 401K plan. Like say if you hold more than 50% of your 401K as equity, there will be a tax incurrance. That way, government is not "dictating" your portfolio, but it is "encouraging" you to have a well-balanced, more conservative portfolio. Dictation by the government on one's portfolio I don't think would work any better than prohibition worked, but small things here and there I think can be done to encourage people to have more conservative holdings, and therefore keep a lid on market "bubbles".

That said, I think I have concluded that capitalism will never go away, simply because we are the "gene machines", programmed towards the best interest of the "selfish gene", and therefore, we will always have a "greed is good" mindset. It is in our DNA. We can't escape it. A socialist society would never happen in the long run, because quite simply the competition of genes would not allow it. No political or economic theorist can beat natural selection. Survival of the fittest is universal, it created us, and our markets, and will continue to shape our lives, like it or not. My opinion anyway.

<comment><USER22> Capitalism is just a system that replaced heredity with exchange values as the economic imperative. It's only been used by a few primate tribes for a few hundred years. It's about as significant to the genetic tree of life as this sentence I'm writing is to the internet. And it's dying anyway; this site, for instance, implements a postcapitalist economic system.</comment></comment>


Lego Art Campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.lego.com/en-us/campaigns/art <comment><USER2> I love that there's the option to build 3 different pictures or buy 3 sets and build one giant one. Lego, as usual, including some pretty great replay value.</comment>


Reddit Changes Content Rules as Steve Huffman Takes Charge - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/technology/reddit-steve-huffman.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

<comment><USER2> One thing missing in mainstream reporting on the events at Reddit is the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent report [1] criticizing Reddit as a prime online source for white supremacist recruits, in part because it presents racism as normal and banal.

[1] [http://www.splcenter.org/Black-Hole](http://www.splcenter.org/Black-Hole)

</comment><comment><USER3> Will /politics be removed completely?

I only ask because most comments in these articles are clearly bigoted toward: reoublicans, christians, anyone successful.

Just knowing the history of reddit, those will stay becaus3 the community likes hatw toward specifix groups of people.</comment>


Unvarnished: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place For Defamation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/30/unvarnished-a-clean-well-lighted-place-for-defamation/

<comment><USER2> So, I guess one strategy here would be to fill your own profile full of stories so obviously fake that they discredit anything that might be true.

<comment><USER3> Nope, then the employer will assume you must be covering something up (which is true) and not hire you "just in case".

<comment><USER4> Not if you fill thousands of other profiles with the same rubbish too. Then it's a level playing field.

<comment><USER5> Again, that sort of thing will be tough to do based on what we've built. You can't just spin up new account programattically. You have to use a verified Facebook account with a sufficient level of activity to prove humanness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it is the way it is now, smart people will automatically start discrediting the site. So, I don't see a need to worry excessively.

<comment><USER5> The site is actually full of awesome content of a very productive, professional nature. TechCrunch's headline was hysterical and designed to draw pageviews. Mission accomplished! The conversation on Unvarnished is more akin to what you find on HackerNews than on, say, 4chan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm wondering how far you can really take it, and still be inside the boundaries of the law?

What is the limits of stalking for example? Could we follow the life of a RIAA lawyer and post photos and detailed description of his day to day life?

<comment><USER5> Private information that is not business related will be deleted from the site, and get the reviewer banned. (and not just kicked off the site. Ban his FBUID forever, such that he'll have to invest in a whole new FB identity that passes our threshold of "humanness" before he's let in again.)

So yeah, it's not a good idea to engage in behavior that violates community guidelines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Will you ever give users the option to take down their profile?" "No, because if we did that, everyone would take their profile down"

I find that remark quite amusing coming from the creator.

<comment><USER5> Why do you find that amusing? The cut out the second part of that sentence which was "everyone would take their profile down in the case they get a negative review."

Your desire to 100% control your image does not trump the rights of free speech that others have. For example, I can't remove any of the comments here on this site making reputation claims about me, because it would be censoring you. And it would injure the rights of others to consume that information.

Just because I have an interest in making everyone think that I am 100% A+ 99th percentile doesn't mean I can censor you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This will most likely be illegal in France (ianal, just a feeling).

</comment><comment><USER10> There is probably a counter business here: "destroy your unvarnished profile".

Either an expensive hand crafted one or, depending on their "spam" filters, Mechanical Turk farmed.

(I can't quite describe the whole reasons but I find this particular site wholly distasteful)

<comment><USER5> Well, this is the sort of thing that we believe persistent identity and review graph analysis will help us prevent. We are committed to ensuring that the content on the site is not spam or shilling, and that it remains a place for productive conversation about professional reputation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me more of Get Satisfaction than Yelp - in the sense that people perhaps aren't even after publicity, but they can get listed anyway. Only now it's individuals that can have their reputation held to ransom!

<comment><USER5> Correction to your point: On Yelp, you or I can add a restaurant, doctor, dentist, whatever, to the site in order to review them.

Again, people can speak about me without my permission.

And no one's reputation is being held ransom. Individuals can claim their profiles if they like, or ignore it if they like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey folks. Sorry for being so late to the conversation. It's been wild with the amount of media coverage we've been getting. I'll try to respond to comments.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if underlying users get a chance to respond to negative material. At least this site can be focal point for rebuttal. Negativity shouldn't be feared.

<comment><USER5> Yes. That is extremely important to provide balance to the conversation. While I can't infringe your right to express your opinion about me, I certainly do have a right to add my voice to the conversation. Unvarnished allows profile owners to claim their profile, respond inline to review, request more reviews from their network, and so on.

You're right on the money about 'focal point'. Right now, reputation conversations already happen, but they're sprayed all over the web. I don't know who's saying what about me on what blog or what twitter stream. Moreover, I don't know how authoritative that blogger / twitterer is, when I'm reading claims they make about someone else.

On Unvarnished, the interests of the three sides of this conversation are balanced: the profile owner, the reviewers, and the review readers. No one's interests trump, but there is a framework and rules for the discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, am I reading this right, in that someone can create a profile for you without your consent, and you can't stop it from appearing?

<comment><USER5> Correct. You can speak about me without my permission. We do it all the time offline, and we do it all the time online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> people with more friends could quickly down-vote each other's negative reviews and write scathing reviews for whoever they wish to bully

unless they explicitly bar people below a certain age, this site will wreak havoc in children's social lives

<comment><USER5> Actually not. Because we can see, in the backend, the reviewing patterns, along with a variety of other tools, it's possible to discern when folks who have likely not worked with each other are reviewing each other.

Also, the site is only for people 21+ years of age. Very good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My crystal ball shows that the future is cloudy, with a chance of defamation lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another strategy would be to write a few well-written, plausible, damning reviews of yourself. That way you weed out prospective employers who are stupid enough to believe any old garbage they read on the intertubes.</comment>


Upping the Ante: Top Poker Pros Face Off vs. Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2017/january/poker-pros-vs-AI.html <comment><USER2> > In spite of the diversity of strategies one can design, it is important to > remark that the heads-up limit Texas hold'em variation has been claimed to > be "essentially weakly solved" in January 2015 by the Cepheus poker-playing > bot.[1] This means that on average the program is so good that a human would > have no chance of ever edging ahead of it, even if the two played 60 million > hands.[2] The bot can be played online at poker.srv.ualberta.ca, and users > can even query strategies from the software

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

<comment><USER3> This is for _No Limit_ which is a whole different class of problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doug Polk, a pro that was on the first challenge just talked about this on his channel: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz9FJfe2YGE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz9FJfe2YGE)

<comment><USER5> I watched that, and I think his understanding of what a "statistical tie" is is extremely dodgy ([https://youtu.be/gz9FJfe2YGE?t=10m43s](https://youtu.be/gz9FJfe2YGE?t=10m43s)). What's up with that?

 _Edit:_ he does make a good point later on that playing thousands of games is exhausting, which would affect the reliability of the comparison between the AI and the pros. I don't know anything about poker, but it sounds plausible. Presumably this means they should make the AI so good that it can demonstrate its greatness quicker than a human gets tired.

<comment><USER6> Chalk it up to poker being something you can be skilled at without really having much mathematical understanding, and throw in a little "common sense" (i.e. anti-intellectualism), and you get comments like that.

<comment><USER7> The charitable interpretation of his argument is that the outcome is only a statistical 'tie' if you accept the arbitrary significance threshold of p=5%. Even relatively weak evidence is still evidence.

Unfortunately, some of the examples which he claims don't pass this significance threshold actually do. This does not help his credibility.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, the win rate was -91mbb/g, and so they reported the probability of being equal in skill somewhere between 5% and 10%, hence the "tie". The introduction to the other poker paper on HN now ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.01724v1.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.01724v1.pdf)), by a different team, from Alberta, is rather less gracious and says it was a "huge margin of victory". I think that whatever the interpretation, his video makes it clear he didn't understand any of this.

<comment><USER8> Significance works the other way round than you described it -- if two players were equal in skill, then a winrate of -91mbb/g or larger would happen 5-10% of the time.

I don't know if Doug Polk understands that or not, but I agree with his criticism and I think his analogy with sports reporting is sound. While "statistical tie" is true in a technical sense, it's not usually how matches are reported, and it's somewhat disingenuous and self-serving to use that language. It would be more honest to say that it's very unlikely that bot is better than humans -- given the advantages the bot had (a gruelling 2-week schedule, and pressure on the humans to get through N hands per day) it still lost by a significant margin.

<comment><USER5> You're right, I would have liked them to report posterior probabilities, but those were p-values instead.

> _It would be more honest to say that it 's very unlikely that bot is better > than humans_

I don't think the analogy is sound. Consider the alternative: over a long match, the humans _failed_ to beat the bot _convincingly_. But in any case, the examples he gives are so wide of the mark that it's clear this isn't the sort of argument he's making—he talks about "spin" and stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personally, I think it would be much more interesting to see an AI compete in a multi-player game with, say, ten human pros at the table. Not just heads-up.

<comment> jim-greer There's so much variance in the game that it would be hard to know how good the AI really is. If they're doing 120K hands heads-up, they'd need to play far more in a full table. Getting that many pros to play that many hands would be difficult.

And what's wrong with heads-up, anyway? It's not as popular as multiway, but it's a fascinating game. In a full table game, you usually only end up playing 20-25% of your hands. Heads up you play 90%+. You end up in leveling wars with your opponent more often, too ("he knows that I know that he knows I usually wouldn't play a premium pair this way").

<comment><USER9> Maybe you are right, but in Poker championships you see many of the same names in the top from one year to the next, right? (I could be wrong about this)

That could suggest the variance is manageable.

I'd like to see more players because we have seen so many two-player AI contests before (chess, go). It would for example be interesting to see MCTS in this setting.

<comment> jim-greer The variance is manageable if you play enough hands. This is one reason why a lot of pros prefer to play online - by playing many tables at once, you get more hands in and can better overcome the variance.

As for tournaments, the variance is even greater, since it is closer to all or nothing. To mitigate this, pros "buy a piece" of each other. Or swap equity. If either wins they pay the other a percentage. If you do this with enough other pros, you even out your swings...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh, so playing online with access to statistical tools and analysis, so really the computer advantage for knowing the odds is completely nil. It's really only then competing in the strategy element... very interesting indeed.

<comment><USER11> Calculating odds against hand ranges is too complex to be done by a human in real time while playing, even using calculators made for the purpose. Computers definitely have an advantage there. Assigning hand ranges in the first place is the trickier part for an AI, as it is more rooted in psychology.

<comment><USER12> This is a great way of putting it, your last part especially - assigning hand ranges is one of the things many players would probably attribute to gut or feel. Some implicit decision making ability that causes them to prune away vast parts of the possible tree and then make quick decisions on the remaining ones. Often based on knowing opponent history, observing patterns, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yep, being good at this is what separates great players from mediocre. If AI can figure it out, humans are toast.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I would say one difference in poker is that strategy can be (and is, constantly) adapted over the life of a competition (and over the span of several competitions). Tempo, adjustments, stack and blind management/inflection points, even opponent avoidance in certain circumstances - I expect some of those to be things that humans may hold an edge to some degree. Those factor in a lot differently in other types of games (tournament play especially). I don't understand AI well enough to know what would be the hardest possible game for AI to conquer.

<comment><USER13> imagine a human player playing solo against a table full of optimally designed AI's that compute perfect statistical and economic odds based on a huge library of prior games including human games. What you are calling "advantages" for the human are no advantage at all. So now add a second human at that table, now the advantages you cite, they work only against that other player.

in terms of intial hand evaluation based on "gut", this is similar to chess position evaluation, a key part of master and computer play, a part that's been hard to get right, a part that brute force depth helps to get right, a part that is now completely solved for computers in play against humans. There is nothing particularly challenging about poker that stands in the way here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any online poker pro will tell you that 120,000 hands is nothing. You can win over the first 120,000 hands and lose over the next 120,000 hands or break even. This is because the margins are low and the variance is very high. Someone winning 2 big blinds per 100 hands (with 80 bb variance) will win between 7901bb and -3141bb 95% of the time.

<comment><USER15> This x 1000.

Also, it appears they are playing a tournament, which increases the variance significantly. I actually think tournament play is less suited to measuring AI performance than a cash game, because you're basically playing a series of different games as the tournament progresses that may not be generalizable because the decision math changes based on blinds and stack size unlike a cash game.

> To ensure that the outcome of the competition is not due to luck, the four > pros will be paired to play duplicate matches — Player A in each pair will > receive the same cards as the computer receives against Player B, and vice > versa. One of the players in each of these pairs will play on the floor of > the casino, while his counterpart will be isolated in a separate room.

This technique won't work for the same reason mentioned above. Hands in tournament poker are necessarily not independent events.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does the AI ever bluff?

Edit: Yes.

> During last year's contest, the pros noticed Claudico was making some all- > too-obvious bluffs that they were able to exploit.

<comment><USER11> Certainly. Bluffing at an optimal/unexploitable frequency is something that is quite difficult for humans to do, but is easier with access to a RNG.

Some pros use systems where they look at the second hand of a clock to decide whether to bluff or not, as a proxy for randomness.

<comment><USER13> gotta remember to look at the clock when you are not bluffing too, otherwise you are teaching your opponents how to "tell" time.

<comment><USER17> They look at the clock to decide _whether or not_ to bluff, so this is already taken care of.

<comment><USER18> Except, if you don't look, the table knows you aren't considering bluffing.

It's still a tell.

<comment><USER19> I use the second hand on my watch to help with mixed strategies; sometimes using it to inform size of raise, or the direction of raise/fold, raise/call, and (rarely) call/fold decisions.

As such, if you happen to notice me look at my watch, you can deduce I might be raising, or calling, or folding, with a strong, weak, or medium hand that is already made, or on the come; or that I am interested in the time for a reason such as wondering how long i've taken, how long i've been at the table, if i need to leave, if a new dealer might sit and collect time soon, or something else.

I get that you're a pedant who wants to be right; but it's not a remotely useful tell unless the person does it only in one type of situation. but nobody who is concerned about how well they mix a mixed strategy is dumb enough to mix only _one_ strategy.

edit: and i'm not a pro. i play in mid-stake games with $1-5k buy-ins.

<comment><USER18> Apparently you're also a pedant who wants to be right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm guessing they're training the AI independently for each player, with that in mind I wonder how good it would perform when matched against a different player. Knowing your opponent's playing style is one of the main things you have to master in poker. This is specially difficult as playing style will vary as the game goes, and sometimes solely by the player's will (to trick you) and not by some information derived from the game. I can see a bot performing reasonably well on this task for a specific player despite all the difficulties, but for the general case it seems like a huge challenge (as it is for humans).

<comment><USER5> The article says they're computing (approximating) the mixed Nash equilibrium, which means it doesn't depend on the opponent's style.

<comment><USER21> If it's just looking for equilibrium, it won't make any money. It also does live analysis of end-game situations, so I'm guessing it'll make use of U of Alberta's research into deviating from equilibrium to exploit leaks in the opponent's play.

<comment><USER22> It will if the human is not playing perfectly. Which of course they aren't because they are human. The question is if the computer is playing close enough to equilibrium/optimal compared to the humans.

<comment><USER21> > equilibrium/optimal

That assumes that the Nash equilibrium is optimal. It isn't. Optimal play is to deviate from Nash equilibrium to take the most exploitative strategy against specific opponent weaknesses. This necessarily creates weakness in your own play. Optimal play sends misleading signals to the opponent. Basically, you signal "rock" so that the opponent plays "paper" but you actually play "scissors".

(In this metaphor, neither "rock" nor "paper" nor "scissors" are equilibrium strategies.)

For example, I might order a couple beers, straddle a few times and start egging on the rest of the players for a round of straddling. To get it going I might throw in a few blind bets. Ask folks to go all-in blind once or twice, for fun. Do that a few times and no one expects you to have a good hand. Well, except for the folks that have seen that story play out before. Except for the beers and bending the rules, the computer can do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's really unlikely the computer will win this. If it does it will be a big shock to the poker community.

The pure Nash Equilibrum strategies do not work that well against thinking opponents.

<comment><USER24> Nobody who's been paying attention in the poker community would be shocked by this. HULHE has already been a AI win for a few years. HUNLHE is basically just a matter of time.

Nash equilibrium strategies specifically do work better against thinking opponents - the usual complaint about them is that they don't maximally exploit "bad" opponents.

<comment><USER25> For anyone else who was lost: HULHE - Heads-up Limit Hold'em HUNLHE - Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone else find it fascinating that AI can beat Go and Chess but not poker (no limit)?

I played poker professionally for 7 years (until banned in US) and am still amazed by this.

<comment><USER26> I feel a big difference is Google was behind the Go AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I feel that Poker is one of those games that an AI could develop a winning strategy for, but not the most winningest. If you deployed this AI on pokerstars, it would win you money. If you deployed it at the WSOP, it would not win a bracelet.

<comment><USER28> nit: as a former professional poker player, the skill level required to be a long-term winning player at a high-stakes cash game is considerably higher than the skill requirement to win a single high-stakes tournament. (I would not voluntarily sit at a high-stakes cash table without knowing there were a mark present, I would voluntarily play most WSOP tournaments)

<comment><USER29> Well of course. If you don't know who the mark is then it's likely the mark is you.

<comment><USER21> I think "fish" is more typical. Though I suppose in Rounders it was "sucker". Still the best poker movie, despite depicting the actual poker play badly. [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rounders_(film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rounders_\(film\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's unfair and rather cruel to pit humans vs computers. How about we use the AI to design a poker variant that is unbeatable by another AI ?

<comment><USER12> Unfair and cruel to whom?

<comment><USER31> Why the computers of course

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> i wonder why Durr (tom dwan) and Isildurr (viktor blom) are not in the mix.

<comment><USER33> Probably because playing 30,000 hands each for a chance to win a share of $200k is spectacularly not worth it for those guys.

<comment><USER34> And Durrr is known for not finishing his challenges...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Jason Les, Dong Kim, Daniel McAulay and Jimmy Chou ..." are the pros? not exactly ivey.

<comment><USER12> They're heads-up pros. Ivey and many other well-known names are not heads up specialists like these competitors. They'd likely have an edge over almost any "recognizable" name player.

<comment><USER35> i'm informed and know next to nothing about two of the names. there are plenty of guys out there the poker world recognizes as better players.

<comment><USER36> you're missing part of the point.

The $200k pool of money for an actual 'celebrated' poker player is absolutely not worth the time and effort. Hence why you get a few tiers down in terms of player skill. Still valid tests though, you can't only compare it to the top 1%

<comment><USER24> It's not a few tiers down in skill, it's a few tiers down in fame. Each of the four players named is likely a favorite over Ivey in this format. Being a specialist counts for a lot here.

<comment><USER14> Ivey played HU vs. Tom Dwan, Galfond, Blom, etc. and did fine. There's no way they're favorites against Ivey.

<comment><USER24> Galfond thinks otherwise. From the article:

"Your favorite poker player almost surely wouldn't agree to play any of these guys for high stakes, and would lose a lot of money if they did," Galfond added. "Each of the four would beat me decisively."

<comment><USER14> Interesting, because for the durrrr challenge Galfond was named as the only person Tom Dwan won't play. Maybe I've been out of the loop too long.

<comment><USER37> Yeah these would not be considered the world's best HU NL players anymore.

Names like Ben Sulsky, Doug Polk, Isaac Haxton would be big favourites over your lineup.

Galfond while still playing is playing mostly Omaha

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seems unfair. Hard to read the face of an AI to tell if it's bluffing or not.

<comment><USER39> The 90's called. They want their poker strategy back.

Poker is not about reading your opponents "tells". That is a myth perpetuated by Hollywood and ... professional poker players.

While there definitely could be some value in using psychological manipulation to best your "live" opponent, gaining some advantage via a physical tell is a crap shoot at best except against the absolute worst players or the biggest mark.

<comment><USER21> I did play with a guy for several sessions who would consistently shake his leg whenever he had a good hand. I felt so bad for him (after busting him a few times) that I told him about it so he'd fix the shaking.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An issue tracker that uses a Git repository as data store - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vicjicaman/tracker-tool <comment><USER2> That's a lot of repositories for a git issue tracking tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello

Yes, those are a lot, but that is on purpose. I am working on a tool to manage multiple repositories.

All those repositories were created to have the experience and experiment on how to manage and sync them all during the development or release of a feature.

I learned a lot working with all those repositories and how to overcome the drawbacks.</comment></comment>


HTTPS' massive speed advantage - <AUTHOR> https://www.troyhunt.com/i-wanna-go-fast-https-massive-speed-advantage/ <comment><USER2> > Well, almost, let's address the "It's not fair" whingers. The HTTPS test is > faster because it uses HTTP/2 whist the HTTP test only uses HTTP/1.1. The > naysayers are upset because they think the test should be comparing both the > secure and insecure scheme across the same version of the protocol. Now we > could do that with the old protocol, but here's the problem with doing it > across the newer protocol [is that HTTP/2 over TLS]

This doesn't invalidate the argument that you're comparing two things and claiming you're comparing two other things prima facia. For this use-case HTTP/2 will be faster, with or without TLS (if it could be tested). Claiming that it's the TLS that's speeding up the connection, which is what you mean when you say http vs https) is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER3> But the other point is that https now means HTTP/2 or HTTP/1.1, where as http always mean HTTP/1.1 - so I'm not sure that's true.

<comment><USER4> If https can mean one of two things, but http2 clearly means only one thing, why would anybody choose to use the term https unless they are trying to be deceptive?

<comment><USER5> Or of they're trying to refer to the thing that http2 is not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not about fairness, it's about accuracy. You can't accurately say this is just comparing HTTP and HTTPS; it's comparing HTTP/1.1 and HTTPS/2, why can't you just say that?

It's especially irksome that "httpvshttps.com" complains when your browser doesn't support HTTP/2, saying the results will be inaccurate. If the site were called "http1vshttps2.com" I would agree, but it's not.

<comment><USER7> Looked at another way, it's comparing the latest HTTPS (2) with the latest HTTP (1.1).

Looked at another other way, there are huge speed advantages that you can only get if you go with HTTPS.

You aren't guaranteed those advantages if you end up stuck with HTTPS/1.1, but that just means you're using an old stack which you should (and can) upgrade (unless you're using IIS).

<comment><USER8> This speed advantage could have been present for plain HTTP as well, if not someone with an agenda had declined to make plain HTTP supported in HTTP/2.

Actually the whole HTTP/2 name is massive misnomer (since it doesn't actually support HTTP) and is the closest thing I can think of as technical newspeak as far as internet protocols are concerned.

Marketing this as a new HTTP protocol version when it clearly wasn't was just shady tactics and bad propaganda. The whole thing stinks.

<comment><USER9> « if not someone with an agenda had declined »

Because privacy and security by default are a bad agenda to agree to?

« the whole HTTP/2 name is massive misnomer (since it doesn't actually support HTTP) »

HTTP/2 is backwards compatible. It may not be your idea of the right direction for HTTP/1.x, but that doesn't make it a misnomer. To be honest, the only people that can decide if it was the right name for it are the IETF and they already made that decision. There's a reason that the name SPDY looked nothing like HTTP, because Google left that decision to the IETF as the standards body controlling the fate of the HTTP protocol.

<comment><USER8> > Because privacy and security by default are a bad agenda to agree to?

Taking away people's ability to host servers and services for themselves without having to register with a DNS provider and a CA are two major privacy violations, and a roadblock to easy application deployment of applications on your own LAN.

So yes, it's a bad agenda. Because it's not "by default". It's the only choice. You can't choose not to incriminate yourself and your identity to a centralised internet registry if want to host a service now.

You may not realise it, but once again you as a representative of the http/2 crowd is using wildly misleading language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Ono-Sendai Pretty stupid article, -1 flamebait.

One thing I have always wondered about these waterfall comparisons is why http 1.1. is slower. Since http 1.1 has keepalive, a browser should be able to send multiple requests upfront to the server, and the server can then stream them back. The lower limit on transfer time should therefore depend only on bandwidth.

<comment><USER10> The big thing that HTTP/2 brings as far as pipelining is concerned is that requests and responses can be multiplexed over the same connection to avoid the head-of-line blocking problem with HTTP/1.1. HTTP/1.1 requires pipelined responses to be sent strictly in the order they're requested; HTTP/2 can send responses in any order or even multiplexed/interleaved (hence the network activity graph from the OP).

Also, most browsers don't enable HTTP pipelining by default-- they'll reuse a connection if possible, but won't make multiple requests at once for compatibility reasons. Chrome even supported it for a while, but had to remove it because it didn't work (bugs in Chrome, bugs in servers, and the head-of- line blocking problem made it not worth keeping) [1].

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/network...](https://www.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/network-stack/http-pipelining)

<comment><USER11> Head of line blocking is mostly a theoretical concern not a practical one. Since browsers use 6+ connections at once, a large slow request will only hold up a few resources and usually doesn't affect the page load speed by much. In fact, as shown recently interleaving can actually slow down the page rendering. Then there's the priority system, an inversion of which caused Google Maps to load far more slowly over HTTP/2\. The main problem solved by interleaving responses is when there are 6 slow resources that tie up all the connections causing deadlock, which is because of browsers capping the number of connections.

Google spread a lot of FUD in their push to get SPDY standardized. For instance they _never_ compared to pipelining, which is relevant because Microsoft found that with pipelining HTTP was essentially just as fast. Google's mobile test where they claimed ~40% speedup used 1 SPDY TCP connection for the entire simulated test run of many sites vs new connections per site for HTTP -- a simple mistake? Maybe, but they didn't take any steps to correct it once they were made aware of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Despite the calls of "it's not fair!", I can see what he is getting at. From the end-user perspective, it doesn't matter what the underlying technology is: if it provides a faster (and more secure) experience, it's a win.

If there was some huge drawback to using HTTP/2, I can see why people might cry foul, but whether they like it or not, HTTP/2 is coming, so we might as well embrace it.

<comment><USER9> Right, users see HTTP and HTTPS, they don't see /1.0 versus /1.1 versus /2.

(There's a good argument that users seeing HTTP versus HTTPS was a mistake, too, versus just secure/unsecure markers in browsers. TLS shouldn't have needed a new port number and URL prefix... but it is way too late to fix that now.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> IMHO, when AWS uses HTTP/2 and not HTTP/1.1 over TLS, then you can start claiming that https === HTTP/2\. Until then, you've moved the goalposts well beyond what most of your peers would consider to be reasonable.

As a side note - what is the standard regarding multiplexing for terminating HTTP/2 proxies: i.e. how much multiplexing could make it across that boundary? Or is that a bridge we haven't crossed yet?

</comment><comment><USER14> Fun history: does anyone remember 32-bit/33MHz bus PCI crypto accelerator cards? I remember seeing them for sale around 2000/2001 with openbsd driver support.

[https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ei=oSGRV9uAHM2OjwOPxZK...](https://www.google.com/search?num=100&ei=oSGRV9uAHM2OjwOPxZK4AQ&q=pci+crypto+accelerator+card&oq=pci+crypto+accelerator+card&gs_l=mobile- gws- serp.3...4023.6532.0.7126.96.36.199.0.0.0.221.1390.4j6j1.11.0....0...1c.1j4.64.mobile- gws-serp..1.10.1166...35i39j0i22i30j33i21.cjLimKjUPlQ)

</comment><comment><USER15> Imagine how fast it would be if the browsers didn't artificially restrict HTTP2 to HTTPS only. HTTP over HTTP/2 would be faster and easier on the CPU.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me or is his HTTPS website down?

<comment><USER17> Works for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This would be interesting if it compared the energy required in joules!

</comment><comment><USER8> Trollpost. Flagged.</comment>