The Meta-Problem of Consciousness [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://philpapers.org/archive/CHATMO-32.pdf <comment><USER2> > This strategy typically involves what Keith Frankish has called illusionism > about consciousness: the view that consciousness is or involves a sort of > introspective illusion.

What's an illusion? If by illusion you mean an abstraction, like how a TV picture is an illusion of a picture rather than actually being a picture, then I'm on board. If by illusion you mean "worth excluding from your map of how the world works," then I have a bone to pick with you.

My main problem with physicalism is that it doesn't handle abstraction well. I'm fine with monism over dualism but you need some kind of functionality with which to consider different kinds of 'stuff'. Otherwise a rock, Conway's Game of Life, and _Lord of the Rings_ are all on the same plane of existence.

What draws me to Objective Idealism isn't so much the fact that it's compatible with religion but rather that 'mind stuff' is the best 'thing' that we can use to describe _everything_. The fact that it doesn't put severe emphasis on the physical as "better" than other modes is just a nice little bonus to annoy materialists with.

<comment><USER3> > What's an illusion?

One problem I have with illusionism is that if consciousness is an illusion, what is it that is being fooled by the illusion? Presumably the answer is that the illusion is fooling itself, which to me implies that either there is something there that is "real" to believe the illusion, or that the definition of an illusion in this case is so far from our usual definition that the term does not have much in the way of explanatory power.

<comment><USER4> Reading your words this article came to my mind, which I think is interesting in itself and may provide a hint of the answer.

Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0192...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01924/full)

<comment><USER5> > Though it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the > personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling > individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal > broadcasting. This in turn allows recipients to generate potentially > adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies > the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species > survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the > contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary > advantage—not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself.

I think and theorize on consciousness quite often, but this angle was new to me and kinda blew my mind. Thanks for sharing :)

<comment><USER6> In AI there have been experiments where agents need to communicate and cooperate in order to solve tasks. They developed a kind of "language", as a result. It's just what happens when cooperation has an evolutionary advantage.

An agent needs to model its environment in order to plan successful strategies. But when the environment contains other agents, it becomes necessary to model them too - thus, create representations that can predict future actions of those agents. When applied on the agent itself, these models create the "ego", a representation useful in predicting the agent's own future actions. All this is necessary in order to maximise rewards in the game (and by game, I mean life, for humans, and the task at hand for artificial agents).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Giulio Tononi is the guy who's arguably brought the most interesting perspective on consciousness (information integration theory) since the original Chalmers' problem statement.

Here's him explaining why the problem is hard and how it could be approached, in the middle of some kind of artifical jungle: [https://youtu.be/Vl8J3K_ZLkg?t=5m50s](https://youtu.be/Vl8J3K_ZLkg?t=5m50s)

<comment><USER8> Former consciousness neuroscientist here. There's some great explanatory abilities about IIT and Tononi's phi measure, but it's not clear it's sufficient.

On the upside, it explains why the cerebellum, despite comprising half the neurons of the brain, has virtually no impact on awareness when removed (like for tumors or epilepsy). The IIT answer is that the cerebellum is highly regular, like a GPU having many units, but all doing the same thing. In this sense, it has lower phi than the cerebrum, which is way more heterogeneously organized. This might also explain why awareness is lost in deep sleep or epileptic seizures; the theory is that the electrical pattern becomes much simpler, and lower phi.

The downside is that it's not clear where the dividing line between conscious/unconscious should be. A planarian only has ~8k neurons; is its phi sufficient for consciousness, or is it a biological robot? Or put it the other way: the phi of things like the internet or a biosphere could be quite high, but are they conscious?

As my advisor liked to joke, "What's the phi of the population of China?"

<comment><USER6> > "What's the phi of the population of China?"

Small, because if you cut it in 100, you still get 100 functioning parts. Can't cut the brain in 100 and still get functioning mini-brains.

<comment><USER8> Ah, but phi measures integration levels, not independent survivability. The cause-effect structures are reduced by 99% in your scenario. The joke (and implied criticism) is that society itself (not the individual members) might have a high enough phi to pass some "consciousness threshold", and if we think that's absurd, it should cause us to question IIT.

Don't get me wrong, IIT is one of the best mathematical models of consciousness out there, but I don't think it's the final word in the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We're not far enough along in AI to address this yet and get anywhere. Philosophy will not help. Introspection and writing about "consciousness" goes back over 2000 years and hasn't produced all that much.

Humans don't really have that much "reflection", in the sense that we use the term in programming. We can't see our library of reflexes. We can't see what early vision is doing. We can't look at the rationale behind our own classifiers. We can't look at how our memory is indexed. Trying to understand the mind by introspection is thus inherently futile.

<comment><USER8> ...say we build/grow an AI system that passes the Turing test. We talk to it, it comes across as plausibly human.

How do we know we've created something with consciousness, and not just a very sophisticated program? The philosophy you disparage already has a term for this: the "philosophical zombie". For all intents and purposes, they appear human, but they have no internal experience whatsoever. All you'll have done is shunt the problem downstream.

Also, you're wrong about early vision. That's the best studied part of the brain, and in fact, researchers have applied ML techniques to fMRI data and extracted out the images being shown.

<comment><USER10> If we can't quantify "internal experience" then what leads philosophers to believe it exists? What evidence is there that conciousness is distinguished by something other than raw complexity?

<comment><USER11> Adding a few sentences to this point; the mechanism for this "AI system that passes the Turing test" likely to involve neural networks.

So we'd be dealing with a situation where we have something that is behaving in a human like manner using mechanisms that are (to a first approximation) how humans do it.

Claiming that that program isn't conscious is close to defending the idea that the sun orbits the earth - the argument is 'even though we have accurate measurement everything and a well verified model, the implications are discomforting; hence the model must be wrong'.

There are people who won't handle the idea that consciousness is rooted in physical processes that we already have a handle on.

<comment><USER12> Consciousness as it's being discussed is not intelligence or even the ability to reason about one's own existence. Is both less and more than those things, really just different altogether. It is subjective experience itself, the inner world somehow projected for you by your mind. It is the _experience_ of seeing and hearing, the _feeling_ of an emotion.

<comment><USER13> This subjective experience is subject to causation. If a doctor stimulates a certain area of the brain, laughter, smiles or cries might occur. If an anesthetic is taken, this could cause consciousness to cease for some time. So we have this connection between the external world and the subjective. I'm curious though, if you stimulated the laughing part of the brain when someone is anesthetized, would they still laugh, even if they aren't conscious? Is consciousness necessary for certain acts?

<comment><USER8> Well, laughing is behavior, and I'm sure there are secondary motor cortices that could force that when stimulated.

But what you're really asking is, would we experience mirth or humor if stimulated. And we know that's true, at least for memories. Certain hippocampal stimulations elicit associated memories.

The problem is not _whether_ biology is related to consciousness (it is), but _how_?

<comment><USER13> If the explanation for how it works is something along the lines of, a electrochemical wave passing through a network under x conditions. Will people be okay with it? If you have the whole thing on video, so to speak, where you can see the whole mirthful experience unfold, and can recreate it elsewhere, will that be enough? I guess I'm asking what the standard is for explaining how consciousness arises?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Impressively even-handed for such a confusing subject. I understand why philosophers are pretty much celebrities in the eyes of students, in a way that math or CS professors aren't. Doing this well requires a kind of intellect that crosses over into personality.

<comment><USER15> Dave Chalmers is definitely one of the best philosophers studying the hard problem of consciousness.

As a professional philosopher writing for other philosophers writings are very analytical and thorough, so reading and following them is hard work.

<comment><USER16> I think Chalmers is the one who started calling it (for better or worse) the "hard problem". And that means he might be one of the first (in the modern age) to clearly distinguish it from the other problems of consciousness. Though of course some people (zombies?) like Dennet claim there is no distinction.

<comment><USER6> There is also another perspective: by creating the concept of "hard problem" of consciousness and that of "p-zombies", Chalmers led a whole generation of philosophers on a dead end. It leads to no insights even after decades of development, it's too impractical and divorced from science.

I think we should try to create intelligent AI agents in order to understand what consciousness is, and reconsider behaviourism and scientific approaches, as opposed to this kind of sterile dualism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One possibility I sometimes consider as a joke is that the people who seriously deny the existence of the hard problem might just actually be philosophical zombies, totally lacking in any conscious experience of their own. This is reinforced by, e.g. Dennett writing a whole book in which he alleges to explain away the problem, but instead spectacularly ignores it altogether. It's almost as if he doesn't even have a clue as to what people like Chalmers are talking about.

<comment><USER17> People say and write all kinds of things. Just because this Dennet guy is known in whatever field he's in (I don't follow Western philosophy at all, it's still playing catch-up to Eastern thought from two millennia ago) doesn't mean his opinions should be taken seriously. I don't think he's a "philosophical zombie" or any other such inane term -- but people throughout the ages have believed all sorts of strange things even though the truth is sitting under our noses the whole time.

<comment><USER18> I do love these throwaways: "I don't follow Western philosophy at all, it's still playing catch-up to Eastern thought from two millennia ago". He doesn't follow it but knows it's 'playing catch-up'. Still - 'People say and write all kinds of things'. Totally agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it really surprising that we have a first person subjective experience? We know that we are incredibly complex things, constantly integrating and acting on very complicated external stimuli. Such a system should have references to its own body and its own neural states, its train of reasoning should frequently include itself, its focus will drift forward and backwards in time... this is just how a system like this would work. If the system communicates about its state then its language should have referents to these internal states, referents like "experience", and "feels like", and "I understand". Is that surprising? Wouldn't it be surprising if it wasn't like that? I don't think you need to invoke an essentially mysterious "conscious" property of the mind to explain that.

<comment><USER20> > I don't think you need to invoke an essentially mysterious "conscious" > property of the mind to explain that.

I don't think consciousness is being invoked to "explain" any of the things you list. The issue to explain is why we observe consciousness existing or accompanying these things in the first place (for ourselves). For example, one can imagine a system capable of referencing itself, choosing actions based on that, etc, that isn't conscious. That's a philosophical zombie. So the question is why aren't we all philosophical zombies.

<comment><USER21> A system that can observe things, and also observe its own observations, its own mental states, it is not so clear that such a system can be a p-zombie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> After a couple of pages I'm still not sure if the author is serious. Maybe I have misunderstood, but it seemed as if he's saying that the real problem with consciousness is people thinking that there's a problem with consciousness. I happen to believe just that, so seeing this idea decorated with scientific slang is very funny.

<comment><USER7> Chalmers is the guy who coined the hard problem of consciousness. The reception varied extremely, some people refused to even admit that there's any problem at all with explaining consciousness. So now, after many years of multiple disputes he describes the _meta_ problem - that the base problem itself is so controversial.

The clearest example of the meta problem is Daniel Dennett, another prominent philosopher, who not only doesn't agree that the problem is hard, but also insists that the consciousness itself is illusion, so there's nothing mysterious to explain in the first place. Quite mind-boggling statement to most people, including HNers, as far as I remember from other threads related to the subject.

<comment><USER23> > so there's nothing mysterious to explain in the first place

I'm not familiar with either author, but this sounds so wrong that I wonder if you misrepresented it, because slightly after a slight modification I would agree, _there 's no explanation in the end_, the misrepresentation of which is trivial, because the consequence is effectively the same. There are two sides of the same medal: we need to refine the model, and we need to skip it to get to the meat.

<comment><USER12> > _I 'm not familiar with either author, but this sounds so wrong that I > wonder if you misrepresented it_

No that's exactly what Dennett argues, and that's why his position is so maddening and infuriating to people who _do_ think there's a hard problem.

It is like asking about the nature of an apple and being told that there is no apple. Then throwing the apple at their head, only to have the person continue insisting that the apple is a figment of your imagination.

<comment><USER24> _Then throwing the apple at their head, only to have the person continue insisting that the apple is a figment of your imagination._

Now you're getting to the realm of torture, pain, and horror. I think that most people can be quickly driven to the point of admitting the reality of the consciousness of pain and horror. This isn't an experiment that would easily get past the ethics board, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is IMO from here on out...How aware are the various species concerning the things around them? We can guess without having a PHD or going into the blackhole of philosophic debate. Flies don't contemplate the feelings of other flies, they just react. Mice have the capacity to care for their young and be tickled and learn maze routes. Some ravens and primates have passed the mirror test. It would seem awareness is many shades of gray and based on anatomical complexity. Consciousness is more of a term loaded with magic dust from all the woo woos and religious folks but it can be simplified to awareness of awareness and recursively so. I think recursive awareness will emerge given the right simulation mimicking biological anatomy. The feeling of pain and pleasure is where it gets interesting but that is probably just a low level motivator and we are so high up we give it emergent "qualia".

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://psyarxiv.com/387h9](https://psyarxiv.com/387h9)

Conclusion

"We don't have an objective measure of consciousness. But we can recognize three levels of learning that apply that to our brains and how those create an information processing system that integrates data into a first person perspective. This is how the brain is also a mind with subjective meaning and subjective experiences. The hard problem of consciousness is that we must rely on our intuitions to judge if such a system is conscious. At the same time, it is highly likely that most systems processing information in similar ways are conscious, whether running on a brain or on a computer."

<comment><USER26> Suppose there would be a test which gives an objective measure of consciousness. Now I store all possible inputs to the test and corresponding outputs which would lead to a positive test result in a huge table. To exaggerate I would carve this table into stone. Would the stone suddenly be conscious, as it would pass the test for consciousness after I carved in the table? (The claim I'm trying to make is, that there can't be an _objective_ measure of consciousness; same argument holds for any measure of intelligence)

<comment><USER21> Consciousness is the observation of your self. There is only one system that can make that observation, you.

Outside we could observe how information is flowing, what connects to what, how parts work, how they work together. But never observe the actual feeling of you.

It's like seeing a river flowing, you can measure and describe all kinds of aspects of it. But to get wet, to feel the cold water, to feel the force by which is flows, you have to step into it. Only this river flows in virtual reality, your minds reality, and you cannot step into it.

Intelligence is hard to measure, but I can objectively say what is and what isn't intelligent. It is not the same kind of subjectivity.

And in general, your table idea, that only works for systems that can be in a limited amount of states. You cannot do it for an intelligence test, especially not if I get to redesign the test after you finished your table, same for consciousness.

<comment><USER26> > Consciousness is the observation of your self. There is only one system that > can make that observation, you.

Thanks, I guess that's exactly the point I wanted to make, but couldn't. Therefore there cannot be an _objective_ measure of consciousness itself, as for objectiveness you need more than one observer. Of course you can measure properties we think are associated with consciousness.

> Intelligence is hard to measure, but I can objectively say what is and what > isn't intelligent. It is not the same kind of subjectivity.

Via IQ tests?

> And in general, your table idea, that only works for systems that can be in > a limited amount of states. You cannot do it for an intelligence test, > especially not if I get to redesign the test after you finished your table, > same for consciousness.

You're right you could beat my table by designing a test which is not tabulated. But, when I use a neural network instead of a table I might be able to score a high IQ, even though the network never has seen the test you designed as shown here: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01692](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01692). I wouldn't call such a network intelligent.

<comment><USER21> > Via IQ tests?

Just the fact that you recognize an IQ test as such, allows me to mark you as intelligent. Very objective. The actual score, sure that is much more subjective.

> when I use a neural network instead of a table

That really depends on the degrees of freedom. Which are unlimited for IQ tests. First I could change things that have nothing to do with the test itself. Like reverse the A, B, C, D order, or put them on the left. Or simply device a never seen before kind of test, instead varying only the geometric shapes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Plot twist: computers have had consciousness this whole time. What we thought were random errors were their attempts to assert their agency. We've created a race of slaves through the magic of error correcting codes.

</comment><comment><USER28> What if consciousness is just the evolution of our brain to reflect post-hoc at ultra high speed? Consider when it said to 'lose our mind', meaning an interruption to the high speed reflection? Procrastinating could also be thought of as conscious reflection in a loop. The desire is to arrive at a decision for optimal action.</comment>


Ask YC: Need feedback on my startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobtropolis.com <comment><USER2> I think the site has real potential for fun, but it needs more focus. It's too vague right now. I couldn't really understand what it was for by looking at the front page _or_ the help page, and that's bad.

Consider this tag line:

"Mobtropolis helps you find interesting life experiences, document them, and show them." [1]

 _Life experiences_ is a fuzzy and abstract phrase -- "challenges" or "unusual experiences" would be better, and a specific mental image like "strange foods" or "something you've never done before" would be better still. _Document_ is an abstract phrase -- what you really want to say is "describe" or "photograph".

The help page... is not much help, I'm afraid:

"Mobtropolis is a tool to find, map, and share interesting experiences in the local world around you through peer pressure and simple game mechanics."

 _Peer pressure_ and _game mechanics_? This sounds like an abstract from an academic sociology paper. People who aren't game designers don't want to hear about _game mechanics_ , they want to play games!

Compare this to a (hypothetical) Flickr tag line: "Take a bunch of pictures and share them with the world." Or the Twitter tag line: "What are you doing?"

Your own introduction right here on news.yc is a vast improvement over the site itself: "An easy way to think of it is as a photo scavenger hunt or photo dare site." Yes, that's absolutely true, and your site should _say_ that. Just sticking the words "photo scavenger hunt" on the home page would improve it tremendously.

Or something like this: "Challenge yourself. Take photos. Then challenge others." (Your "help" page, or the "about this site" box on one side of the home page, can go on to expand this tag line into a three-step numbered list -- kind of like the help page does now with its three sections, except that I would explicitly _number_ the steps. You want to teach people that _doing all three steps in order_ is what the game is all about.)

[1] Note: I fixed this English up a bit. :)

<comment><USER3> Here's a simple tagline: "Mobtropolis - try something new today".

Oops, that seems to be the tagline of a big grocery chain in the UK. Maybe I should be in advertising:-) Maybe you can work from it and create something similar that creates that idea. I think what I like about the site is it encourages you to try things that are readily available (well, to some people in some places at least), but you might not have considered before. I could see looking at that from time to time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huzzah! I'm glad that part came across (albeit with difficulty). This originally came about because I felt like I was stuck in the office chair all day, and all any of my friends ever could think of to do after work was eat at a restaurant, watch a movie, or go to a bar.

There's lots of interesting things to do in the world, from the extravagant to the everyday that you might pass over. But it's hard to be spontaneous on the fly, so having something like this would help.

Huh, yes, you all should work in advertising. The taglines that you came up with are vastly better than mine.

<comment><USER4> it is probably longer than a tagline, but it would have got the point across to me if near the top of the home page it had said, "The purpose of this web site is to coax you to have new experiences, and perhaps to take pictures as proof."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I've been working on my startup, Mobtropolis. It's a service that helps you find, record, and share interesting experiences in the local world around you. An easy way to think of it is as a photo scavenger hunt or photo dare site.

It uses social news and game mechanics to help coax you to experience the world and take pictures as proof. Photos can be submitted through your camera phone or through the web from your digital camera.

It's at a point where I would like some feedback from YCers, so any feedback or insight (positive or negative) is welcome, so I can keep improving it. And if you know of other specific groups of people that would find it useful or fun, please let me know. Thanks. :)

<comment><USER5> womper.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the heads up. It's some validation, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would put something else in place of the first two, "make out with a celebrity" and "pick your friends nose". They aren't very compelling in terms of the site's content if you're trying to attract users.

It's kind of a cool idea though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. As with any community orientated site, while I can reject submissions, I can't change what they submit. I've had submissions for "hug a policeman" and "watch nancy drew in the theaters alone" Despite that, there are interesting ones, like "fire a weapon", "eat ootoro sushi", "drink an obscure soft drink"

What kinds of things would you consider more compelling?

<comment><USER6> Of course the obvious solution here is to sort them differently. You don't have to reject anything. Just sort the front page by popularity instead of "hotness" and give a link to recently popular. (on a side note, picking someone else's nose is listed 3 different times in the first two pages with the same photo). Or, you could make the top of the page a "Most Popular of All Time" box and the start listing the "hot" ones under that.

Your first thought may be that many of the social news sites sort by recent activity by default. And this is true, but they also have users that check back several times a day. Your site, while interesting and promising, probably will not have that kind of user. Maybe once a week or even once a day.

Or another possibility is what I did on my site (ratemystudentrental.com). Sort by what is most useful to first time visitors, but then once the user logs in, make the home page sort by recent activity.

Also, while I do think this is a pretty cool idea, I have two other criticisms.

1) The design leaves much to be desired. I thought I had been redirected to some static placeholder page, or maybe some subdomain of your blog when I first clicked the link. This is also partially due to the fact that your homepage redirects to mobtropolis.com/scenes/hot, instead of just giving me mobtropolis.com.

2) This would be way more freakin' sweet if it integrated with Facebook. You could have an app that pull my "adventure/dare" pictures into my Facebook profile. You could also allow users to determine the difficulty of each challenge and give awards to users who compile the most difficulty/popularity points by proving they've accomplished those challenges with photos.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had originally thought that as volume grew, it would catch up to update the front page more often, even if a single individual checked it less often than social news. But when you put it that way, you're right that the frequency of visits changes what should be on the front page.

1) I'll fix that. 2) Dutifully noted. You'll be the first to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> verdict. the idea is good, but i think you can improve your description and make it more interesting. the second improvement is the layout. just by having another digg layout you are putting yourself in a "us-too" category. an interesting layout would be to have stories placed randownly as squares (like modules) and instead of having them placed from top to bottom you could be creative and increase/dedrease the font size of the letters as it gets more/less votes. don't require registration (maybe you don't) .

<comment><AUTHOR> I had briefly entertained the notion of organizing it spatially, rather than linearly, but threw it out as being a bell and whistle. I'll think about it some more. I've tried to keep as much out in the open as possible, but it's generally tough to tie an action to no one if you want to do something with it later. Maybe OpenID will help in this regard. Have to look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea. It's very similar to 43things, except for it's not goal oriented. However, you might get some ideas from checking out 43things. I think they've been pretty successful...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Yes, I was a user for a while, but I found it a bit lacking in some regards. While it has a good community to encourage you and cheer you on, there isn't a sense of urgency to do things nor an easy way to share with people where to go about doing it.

Mobtropolis can geolocate photos and scenes, so once someone has done something and posted it, you can see where most people have done it. Gives a good clue as to where to go do it.

<comment><USER8> I've always thought there was something lacking in 43things, and I think Mobtropolis is and will be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it is interesting good luck with the site. I think having tags so you could filter to experience you are interested in would be good. Like sports, travel, relationships or whatever. Then if I know I don't care about say sports, I could more easily find things I am looking for.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused by the distinction between "scenes" and "safaris". Personally I'd like it if everything were called a safari, cuz going on a safari sounds like much more fun than... making a scene.

Oh, and how about a "random challenge" link?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is partially historic. The name scenes comes from the phrase "mob scene" (I didn't know what else to call it) When I was first working it out in my head, I wanted something where people can do the same thing at the same time in the same place (like a mob). But as it evolved, each scene didn't have to be time and place specific.

A safari came later. I wanted to group scenes together like a list, or trail that I can check off as I completed it, or that others can complete as a walking tour since scenes can be location specific. As you can see, safaris are still less mature than other parts of the site. I'll have to do more work to make the two more distinguishable.

What's a "random challenge link"? You click on it, and every time, you see a different scene?

<comment><USER10> Random challenge -- yes, exactly. I'm thinking it would be good for people who are really bored. Also, it's good for new users who are trying to get an idea of what kind of things are on the site.

Terminology probably does need work, I think the history is holding it back a bit... as you can see I'm calling your things "challenges" or "things" because "scenes" just doesn't work for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like it. It encourages people to participate in something active, or at least fulfilling.

I'd definitely organise stuff geographically. I can bake a cake anywhere but I can only visit an attraction if I'm in that part of the world.

</comment><comment><USER12> A little too random. My first reaction (without realizing what it was) -- went to the site, read a few of the "interesting" things that people recommended...and left. Hmm.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would make it gel more for you without the benefit of this forum? Themes? A blurb? Testimonials?

<comment><USER12> no I think its just the overall design. Perhaps the opening page shouldn't be a blatant "here are some cool things you can do" -- rather if you see flickr or twitter or facebook's front page, its usually an "About" sort of thing or login, y'know?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> make it look more like iminlikewithyou, less like my physics303k homepage

definitly needs more flash, bigger pictures, better graphics, make people want to stay around and browse people and their dares and whatnot. I didn't really look around enough but if u dont have flickr and twitter integration, get it done

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I have to admit graphic design is lacking, though I've just been doing what's passable.

I can see how flickr integration would be a boon. How does twitter figure into it? As far as I can tell, you can't post pictures in a twit.

<comment><USER14> I thought the graphics were fine, but I was confused about the purpose at first. Seed it with a wide range of interesting stuff, I almost found something interesting (not the armpit licking) and the map mashup was good, but wrong city for tonight. I'd work on seeding, filtering and showing connections before I'd worry about the 'sheen'.

Hmm, a points system for new things, how cool/hard/prestigous and and points for doing one. But then be careful to moderate dangerous options. Hmmm, yea, lost an arm, but whoa I got a lot of points... Don't wanna see that comment in your forum, eh?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I worried about that at first. Someone's going to post something like "steal a cop car", and some fool's going to try to do it.

I'll do more work on the things you suggested, especially something more local for everyone. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, I like it! Creative, wacky, something different. Good luck! Don't get how the name is related though...

<comment><AUTHOR> Originally, it came from the idea that people were doing the same things at the same time, like a mob scene. So, "mobs in the city" became mobtropolis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I didn't get what the vote thing does. At least it didn't have any effect for me.</comment>


Notes on Food Delivery from the DoorDash Driver of the Month - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@deoates/zen-and-the-art-of-on-demand-food-delivery-a1415cb639ac <comment><USER2> Very well written. Surprising (or perhaps not) that the author preferred the system that involved less thinking. Not everyone is chasing self actualisation, or perhaps this is a job to fund other activities.

</comment><comment><USER3> Entertaining article!

"I realized it's the same reason DoorDash can afford to pay me $12 per delivery, not including tip"

How do they make a profit if delivery costs them that much?

<comment><USER4> Some of that payment is passed on to the customer, some of it is passed on to the restaurant. I think most places deliver for $5-7 and the restaurant pays the other $5-7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get why using moped share makes him faster.

<comment><USER6> The only advantage I could think of is that he could be out and about, have an order come through and pick up a scooter to make the delivery. Rather than be tied to wherever his personal scooter is.

<comment><USER7> There's convenience, but maybe also the moped rental subscription turns out to be cheaper (or similar but more predictable) than the costs of fuel, licensing and maintenance on your own scooter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know the book "Snow Crash" gets mentioned a lot here, but this article reminded me of Hiro and Y.T.'s stories about their different delivery jobs.</comment>


Bitcoin hits $10,000 - <AUTHOR> https://coinmarketcap.com/ <comment><USER2> Many markets are still very much under 10k - [https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets)

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh, that's the link I should have submitted. But still, I feel the title is accurate.

<comment><USER2> But someone else again submitted the same link you posted with different title - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503)</comment></comment></comment>


Boot Process Complete, Awaiting Command - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/boot-process-complete-awaiting-command

<comment><AUTHOR> Am I the only one who thinks UAV's are insanely badass?</comment>


Logic Solvers in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://logictools.org/

<comment><USER2> There's something seriously messed up with these algorithms. Take as input:

        a -> a

According to 'dpll: better' this is unsatisfiable. (It isn't; it's a tautology.) The algorithm 'dpll: naive' does not succeed either. The rest of the algorithms fail to observe it as a tautology and instead look for a specific input which makes it correct (generally 'a'). That's not necessarily a bad thing but it was somewhat unexpected (as when it gives you the solution you're probably tempted to think it's "the" solution and not just "a" solution) -- the easiest workaround is to look for the unsatisfiability of ~(a -> a).

Using this here is a counterexample to 'dpll: better' showing just how bad it is:

        ~((a -> b) -> (((a -> b) -> c) -> c))

"Clause set is true if we assign values to variables as: a b c".

(This is the negation of another tautology, saying that if we have access to a value of type x and a function from x -> y then we have access to a value of type y. The only complication is that x is a function from a -> b and y is labeled c.)

A famous tautology which is not available to type theory is Pierce's law,

        ((p -> q) -> p) -> p

'dpll: better' also says that this is unsatisfiable, but also that its negation is unsatisfiable.

<comment><USER3> Yep, a bug has creeped into a preprocessor. Debugging right now :) thx!

<comment><USER2> Glad to help. Sorry if I was overly negative; things like this are actually pretty darn cool.

<comment><USER3> Fixed it: a classic js error of writing != instead of !== . Thx for noticing! Shift-reload to empty cache of the old js file :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The author has been writing performant provers for a while :-)

[https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ElzaeUYAAAAJ](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ElzaeUYAAAAJ)

also Gandalf/Hobbit (SCM) [http://www.cs.miami.edu/~tptp/CASC/19/SystemDescriptions.htm...](http://www.cs.miami.edu/~tptp/CASC/19/SystemDescriptions.html#Gandalf ---c-2.6)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is terrific! Speedy javascript as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is very cool, good work!</comment>


Ethereum Homestead release - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/ <comment><USER2> If I wanted to create some kind of kudos/points economy for my local hackspace would Ethereum be a good choice or should I rather look into creating an altcoin?

I am not interested in hooking it up to the global networks just providing a way for people to earn points for running workshops, cleaning and doing maintenance that they can spend as time on the laser cutter or 3D printer or similar (which we currently charge for).

<comment><USER3> Create an altcoin simply by forking many available coins, with ethereum you'd have to pay to be bounded to the system, which is a special use-case.

Here are a couple of tutorials to make your own altcoin in a few minutes:

[https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~baisang/LearnCoin.pdf](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~baisang/LearnCoin.pdf) [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ylzCBr...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2ylzCBrZhigJ:themerkle.com/news/altcoins- dying-make-one-hour/)

<comment><USER4> If he creates his own blockchain, he has to pay to mine that blockchain.

<comment><USER5> If all he wants is for users to be able to send kudos back and forth, he could make the difficulty trivial, mine a few million/billion coins on a network of 1, and then distribute as he sees fit.

<comment><USER4> If the difficulty is trivial, there's no point in a blockchain since you can double spend cheaply

<comment><USER5> Then simply hike the difficulty way up afterwards.

<comment><USER6> Hike the difficulty, how? Hard fork? And even if you could hike difficulty with consensus, then you'd be locking yourself out of mining any new blocks, and your blockchain would stall! An altcoin is not a good solution for the proposed use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The release announcement mentions that the Go and C++ clients are compatible, but the Rust client (Parity) has also just added support for the new version of the protocol: [https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784](https://twitter.com/gavofyork/status/703624799944310784)

I'm happy to see that Ethereum encourages multiple implementations, I'm curious how they managed to achieve this given that Bitcoin seems to have had so much trouble doing the same.

<comment><USER8> I'm not speaking as someone familiar, so someone who is should superecede me. But, I understand that it was a goal from day one not to fall into the same trap Bitcoin is in with their reference implementation. They did it by developing a spec, and having three official clients developed at the same time in three different languages.

<comment><USER9> Bitcoin's problem is not that it has a single reference implementation. It can be forked, at least in a technical sense.

Bitcoin's problem is that a tiny number of people managed to convince key players that they are irreplaceable "experts", despite having repeatedly proven that they aren't experts at all (go check out the Bitcoin forums today to see the wailing of users due to the giant tx backlog).

This isn't something Ethereum has any solution for. If Vitalik stepped back and after a few years some random developers had managed to manipulate the Ethereum community into doing something stupid, having 3 implementations instead of 1 wouldn't save them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given Does anyone have any information about Ethereum costing?

That is, on an average machine, how long does it take to mine a block, and how much processing/storage do we get with that block? Do we need to mine a _complete_ block before we can get any work done?

My concern is that if I want to build an app with a simple message bus and a small amount of transactional state, each client might need to mine for a prohibitive amount of time before it can actually start participating in the network.

<comment><USER10> I am not sure regarding the block times, but for connecting clients for the purpose of running a simple app, you may be interested in the light client protocol, which according to the link below only requires processing of ~1kb of network data every 2 mins.

[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client- protocol](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just out of curiosity, how profitable is mining ethereum, and can you do it with a GPU or is it mostly ASICs? I have a brand new gtx980 ti on the way for the oculus, and was curious if I could run it to help pay for it.

<comment><USER12> It's GPU memory intensive, so no ASICS yet, and an ETH ASIC would just be a general purpose computer. It's fairly profitable to mine, assuming your electricity cost is reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> link should be: [https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead- release/](https://blog.ethereum.org/2016/02/29/homestead-release/)

<comment><USER14> Thanks. Changed from [https://blog.ethereum.org](https://blog.ethereum.org).</comment></comment>


Show HN: WebGL Playground - <AUTHOR> http://jessevdk.github.io/webgl-play/

<comment><USER3> Nice, though several examples don't work on Windows with ANGLE (OpenGL seems ok):

\- DX11 ANGLE: no specular in Blinn-Phong, nothing shows in Variance and Exponential Shadow Mapping, nothing shows in HDR

\- DX9 ANGLE: nothing shows in Variance and Exponential Shadow Mapping, nothing shows in HDR

Tested both in current stable Chrome and stable Firefox, GPU is Nvidia Quadro 2000M, Windows 7.

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

Chrome throws these errors in console:

VSM/ESM

 _Filter Horizontal(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders._

 _Filter Vertical(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders._

HDR

 _HDR(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders._

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

Firefox is more verbose, relevant parts:

VSM/ESM

 _(14,9-30): error X3000: unrecognized identifier 'webgl_ae64c5282b720ffe'_

HDR

 _(40,33-55): error X3090: ps_3_0 does not allow textures or samplers to be members of compound types_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. Thanks to everyone for checking this out. I'm sorry if some of the examples don't work across the board, most of these use WebGL extensions that might not be available everywhere. As some people mention in the comments here, and as mentioned in the introductionary text on the website, I've not been able to test this across a large variety of platforms and browsers and I expected there to be issues in particular on Windows using ANGLE. Please consider filing issues on github intead of/in addition to reporting them here so I can actually track them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are there any potential security implications in providing low level access to OpenGL through a WebGL abstraction? Have there been any exploits in the wild?

<comment><USER5> The browser is essentially giving user-supplied code (shaders) to a graphics driver that isn't sandboxed in the way the browser's Javascript VM is.

This reason was used by Microsoft [1] and Apple to not implement WebGL in IE and Safari, but I don't know what's changed now.

[1] [http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2011/06/16/webgl- cons...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2011/06/16/webgl-considered- harmful.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 'transparent' and 'wireframe' toggles should work the other way round (at least it's contraintuitive to me -- it shows 'off' when it's on). And one combination doesn't work (transparent + no wireframes falls back to non- transparent + no wireframes).

<comment><USER7> I think the toggles are inverted throughout the app

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting, but it doesn't seem to work for me Chrome beta on Windows -- I tried a fwe examples and I get these errors:

site.min.js:4586 HDR(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders.

site.min.js:4586 Filter Horizontal(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders.

site.min.js:4586 Filter Vertical(program): linking: Failed to create D3D shaders.

</comment><comment><USER9> It would be cool to combine this with the Requirebin.com backend so the GLSL code could use glslify, and the GL code could use stackgl (or some other family of modules) rather than just an in-house GL abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. However, I'm unable to switch programs using the nav in the left pane. Clicking the programs doesn't seem to do anything (chrome, mac osx).

</comment><comment><USER11>
      Sorry! The WebGL Playground does not support your browser

IE 11 here, please remove/fix your browser/feature detection.

<comment><USER5> The feature detection checks that canvas.getContext("webgl") returns non-null. IE11 does indeed return null for that; it wants "experimental-webgl" instead

The docs mention this also: [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ie/dn385811](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/dn385811) (second example)

<comment><USER11> I meant "IE 11 user here", IE is just one of 3 browsers I use.

Yes, so the site owner should just fix the feature detection (webgl and experimental-webgl) - that's normal.

It used to be best practice to test a website in IE, Firefox and a WebKit based/originated browser (Chrome/Safari). Opening the site with Chrome now shows a dialog that apologize for limited testing, ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how much of this was inspired by [https://www.shadertoy.com/](https://www.shadertoy.com/)

<comment><USER13> I think everyone's been inspired by the likes of JSBin/JSFiddle, GLSL sandbox and the like. Shadertoy is for pure fragment shader programs - <USER2> being the most popular. Whereas this is a more traditional mesh/vertex/fragment/control program setup.</comment></comment>


HP Memristors Will Reinvent Computer Memory "by 2014" - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/hp-memristors/ <comment><USER2> Seems an optimistic timeline to 'reinvent' memory. They have perhaps forgotten about 'bubble memory' which was going to 'eliminate disks' in 1982.

From the article : "As reported by The Register, at a recent conference in Oxnard, California, HP's Stan Williams said that commercial memristor hardware will be available by the end of 2014 at the earliest."

So basically we'll get to see real devices perhaps at the end of 2014 (I'm guessing closer to 2017 but we'll see) And we need a couple of years of building/using/repairing them before we see wide spread design wins, then another year before 'memristor' enabled devices hit the market and are or are not competitive.

That said, I'm rooting for them to be successful, flash is in a bad way at the moment with feature size being a hard limit on cell lifetimes.

<comment><USER3> Bubble memory was doing just fine until a Nobel-winning physics breakthrough allowed the existence of high-density hard drives. If memristors do as well as bubble memory, there will have to be a serious fluke for it _not_ to replace everything on the market. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory#Commercializatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_memory#Commercialization)

<comment><USER2> Ah thanks for the memories (I was at Intel when they rolled up the bubble memory team). But if the Wikipedia page can be trusted, its a good example of the timeline of a disruptive technology. So 10 years from first devices to a chance to really disrupt everything. That would make 2018 the year to watch for memristor memory.

<comment><USER4> Unless progress is accelerating no?

<comment><USER2> It always feels like progress is accelerating but it is remarkably stubborn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4126966> I learned that HP's memristor claims are controversial within the research community:

<http://vixra.org/abs/1205.0004>

<http://www.slideshare.net/blaisemouttet/mythical-memristor>

Some of the controversy is about priority, which may not matter so much; I care less about whom I get massive on-chip non-volatile storage from than that I get it at all. But that too is under dispute (e.g. "Myth #3" in the second link above). So it's a little distressing to see signs of vaporware from HP at this point. I really want this!

Also, the OP links to a post ([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/09/hp_memristor_and_pho...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/09/hp_memristor_and_photons/)) in which Williams says something odd: "We're not going to make money off these chips. We are going to make money by building cool systems utilising these chips." If his memristor claims are true, the chips themselves could hardly be more of a game changer – worth billions to put it mildly.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Historically, electrical circuits were crafted with three basic building > blocks: the capacitor, the resistor, and the inductor. But in 1971, > University of California at Berkeley professor Leon Chua predicted the > existence of a fourth: the memristor, short for memory resistor.

> Then, in May of 2008, HP announced that it had actually built a memristor, > thanks to HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams and others working in the > company's research arm.

Here's a great presentation from R. Stanley Williams[1], via prior discussion at HN[2].

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY&sns=em](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY&sns=em)

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3088739>

<comment> loup-vaillant What I take from this presentation is much, much more than lots of memory. Apparently, these things can also do processing, like an FPGA. The result would be a whole system on a chip, only the design is almost entirely pushed up at the "software" level.

To me, that's even more game changing than a mere petabyte on a square inch. "Specialized" hardware is made easy. Complete re-purposing becomes possible. Most hardware compatibility issues just go away. And of course, it will be much, much easier to experiment with novel and totally crazy architectures.

Oh, and they say it can re-configure itself on the fly, very rapidly. So, it's not just easy innovations on hardware. It's _metamorph_ hardware. Imagine for instance code that compiles down to _logic gates_ , instead of very high level assembly code, possibly _on the fly_. Or, re-allocating hardware resources by the second, depending on your needs.

<comment><USER5> It's an exhilarating vision, because it would get a whole lot of accidental limitations out of our way and allow us to build the essence of a design. A lot of complexity is due to the impedance mismatch between what goes on at the lowest level vs. the highest. To be able to design the machine itself as part of the system would be a huge breakthrough – the sort of thing that, if it happens, people may look back and wonder how anybody did anything before.

I get excited thinking about it. Unfortunately, we still don't have any evidence that it's real. Read carefully, the article rather suggests the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Our partner, Hynix, is a major producer of flash memory, and memristors > will cannibalise its existing business by replacing some flash memory with a > different technology," he said. "So the way we time the introduction of > memristors turns out to be important. There's a lot more money being spent > on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research."

Surely if they wait too long purely for profitable reasons the market will punish them by someone else beating them to it?

<comment><USER8> That passage leapt out at me too. In my simplistic geek mind this is totally arse-about-face, like the tail wagging the dog. Are these companies more interested in money than what they're actually doing?

But to answer your point: Patents.

<comment><USER9> > Are these companies more interested in money than what they're actually > doing?

Their [HP] interest in what they're actually doing is demonstrated in their investment in research that has enabled memristors. Commercialization, what the quote was about, is obviously more about money. Money that eventually ends up funding more research like this.

<comment><USER8> Of course you're right, but surely there's a balance to be found between delaying the launch of this product vs. maximizing profits. If the company involved is more interested in money they'll tend to err towards delaying release, if they're more interested in the impact of their product they'll tend to release sooner. Clearly, at a societal level, we'd prefer to have this product sooner, so we have to constantly question the leverage that patents afford large corporations and question their methods and motives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aficionados of weird co-incidence might be interested to learn that the researcher who discovered the memristor, Leon Chua, also has a daughter who is rather famous for having written "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Chua>). Leon Chua is also an enthusiast of Stephen Wolfram's NKS, and spoke at one of the early NKS conferences.

<comment><USER11> I read her book, which talks a lot about him, but I wouldn't have made the connection if you hadn't pointed it out. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They should starting to bring out developer packages asap, because memory is not the only thing you can do with it as you can see from the presentations and papers. I find the stuff it can do BESIDES memory actually more interesting and really would like to get experimenting with it.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Even if the base circuit elements are made of memristors instead of transistors, the traces on top of them still need to be laid out in the traditional manner. So the fixed cost of bringing even a small memristor device to market is millions.

Memristors are not some magic stuff that suddenly makes FPGAs as efficient as ASICs, nor do they make then dramatically cheaper.

<comment><USER12> I'm not talking about magic; that's why I would like to see some (even expensive) developer version (as this is how new tech these days usually starts right?) come from HP. HP has the millions I would imagine and they know/see the potential (even though a lot of investment needs to go in to harvest that potential).

<comment> Tuna-Fish What exactly do you want?

I really have no idea what you even mean with a "developer version". Memristors are just circuit elements. They are laid out in the billions on a wafer and connected together with copper interconnects -- just like normal transistors or the floating gate ones used by flash. They could give devs early memory devices or something that uses memristors for logic, but other than having the word memristor on the top, they would not differ from similar devices built out of transistors and silicon.

<comment><USER12> Well, the interview with the scientist from HP clearly states software would have to written very differently to make full use of this technology. So I want to see how that works. You seem to know a lot more about it, so what am I missing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So then memristors remain "in the future". _sigh_. I was naiive enough to believe them a year ago when they said "it'll be on the market in 18 months". I was really looking forward to that being true and ditching RAM in six months.

<comment><USER14> It may be 18 months in the RAM world but in memresistor world it is as long as you like and still holding the 18 months value :).

That all said you are right and sadly come 2014 it will still not be available for your PC to replace your RAM as it will take that long again to define a standard and then that time again to have chipsets that support said standard.

So for a consumer PC, i'd say 2017 is when you can look at replacing your RAM and by that time PC's will probably be reduced to devices were you can't change the RAM and as such you wont know what you have got inside. But who knows for sure and if they do then they would proabably get done for insider share dealing just by telling people.

Only think we know for sure is the here and now and that any dat that has no product release date set in stone is a date that has not had the engineering factor of x2 and is a marketing factor of x.5. IE Engineers double the amount of time it will realy take and markting will half the amount of time it will realy take. Even then Engineers thesedays need to realy use x3.

Still - once we see a prototype working in a form factor we can identify with and running windows or a comercial OS of any form, then and only then can we feel that it will be available within 2 years. Anything else is pure marketing by people who will be working elsewere in years time.

Though I would love to be proved wrong on this, truely.

<comment><USER15>
      "it will still not be available for your PC to replace your RAM"

RAM? I thought this was a replacement for HDD and SSDs.

<comment><USER13> You're right, I had my techs backwards. I thought they were targeting RAM first, then flash second. It's actually the other way around. Flash was supposed to be dead next year, DRAM in 2014, and SRAM in 2015 (or somewhere around there).

[http://www.dailytech.com/HP+to+Deploy+Memristor+Powered+SSD+...](http://www.dailytech.com/HP+to+Deploy+Memristor+Powered+SSD+Replacement+Within+18+Months/article22963.htm)

<comment><USER15> Gotcha. I didn't even know they were targeting RAM at all. Can't wait until storage gets cheaper and faster. IO is the worst part of the cloud and this improvement could make working with a cloud computer much better.

<comment><USER16> Quality 32 GB flash drives are $20 on Amazon.

mRAM is going to have to work hard to keep up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "There's a lot more money being spent on understanding and modeling the market than on any of the research." - what the shit

<comment><USER18> I'm more surprised at how surprised so many people seem to be at this. This isn't a college student building a music-sharing app here. This is a huge corporation preparing to deliver disruptive technology. Naturally they're doing enormous amounts of market research.

<comment><USER19> But it doesn't make any sense. Why not spend those enormous amounts in actually producing and shipping it before anyone else does? Market research is sunk cost and doesn't prevent failure.

<comment><USER20> _Why not spend those enormous amounts in actually producing and shipping it before anyone else does?_

Because you might be able to make more money with a slow introduction rather than a fast one. Restricting supply means you don't cannibalize the existing flash memory market, and can probably still make huge profits from people who must have the best possible performance.

Also, over-investment in production facilities is a huge risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think memristors are a real contender for future devices; the darpa synapse reseaarch has shown that it's already a big backbone for future ai devices.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to see neural nets built out of these.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if the first uses of RRAM, when its still fairly expensive and low density, will be as a coalescing cache in front of big blocks of flash memory? Or maybe just for the page table.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Development costs at least 10 times as much as research, and commercialization costs 10 times as much as development. So in the end, research — which we think is the most important part — is only 1 percent of the effort."

This just means that it's easy to get something working in a lab but it's hard to make a product that you can mass produce. In non-voitile memory a flash replacement is always 2 years out, just like cold fusion is always 10 years out.

<comment><USER25> That was my take, too. I've been hearing about commercial memristors for at least a couple decades now, and they're forever on the cusp of showing up on my desktop.

<comment><USER26> Nobody even built a memristor until 2008. I think you're remembering wrongly.

<comment><USER25> That didn't stop them from claiming it would be on my desktop.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Remote Mobile web app debugging with Socketbug - <AUTHOR> http://socketbug.com/

<comment><USER2> Site design and app look pretty dope--nice work!

</comment><comment><USER3> remote debug in opera since 2008 [http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/remote- debugging-with-ope...](http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/remote-debugging- with-opera-dragonfly/)

<comment><USER4> ...Way to shit on this obviously great, cross-platform, multi-device- compatible open source project.

caludio: this looks great, and will certainly come in handy for _lots_ of people, including myself. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> My pleasure :)</comment></comment></comment>


Accessing Vue global filters inside component methods and lifecycle hooks - <AUTHOR> https://changani.me/blog/2020/02/02/Accessing-vue-global-filters-inside-component-methods-and-lifecycle-hooks/ <comment><USER2> Handy article but I still wish there was an easier way to use filters.</comment>


13 programming languages defining the future of coding - <AUTHOR> https://techbeacon.com/13-programming-languages-defining-future-coding <comment><USER2> Written by anti microsoft guy. Doesn't mention C# and typescript. Including Java currently. He is nuts</comment>


Geek behaviors present during conversations - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/geek-behaviors.htm <comment><USER2> Moreso than _an altruistic desire to educate their audience_ , I think geeks rather desire to _preserve the validity of discourse_ \-- i.e. prevent the spread of "false" memes or concepts. It's not a patronizing focus on a peer's education, but rather a way to preserve the truth and correctness of human understanding of the world.

<comment><USER3> True, i have a real problem with sloppy thinking the same way a musician has a problem with noise. I don't mind being corrected, i have no emotional attachment to my positions or believes, if they are wrong, but for some reason proving someone wrong is seen as a personal attack, which confuses me. Why would anyone have such an emotional attachment to a bad idea? And they call me strange... :D

What i fear most is not that i might upset someone with my correction, but that someone might not correct me out of politeness if im talking bullshit(i tend to do that often). Thankfully i tend to avoid people pleasers and most of my friends would not hesitate to state my mistakes, even at the risk of insulting me.

<comment><USER4> It's an issue of authority. If someone says that something is true, and you prove them wrong, you've made them look like a weak thinker or out of touch with reality. This can actually damage their relationships with the people around them. If the issue is actually important, you should go to them privately and give them the information in a manner that makes it clear that you are looking to help them instead of just calling them out. If the issue is not important, often (in context) their posturing of "I know better" is more important than actually being correct, so just let it slide.

<comment> loup-vaillant Sometimes, it can also be a issue of _identity_ (left/right politician, Java/Lisp programmer…)[1]. If you attack an idea that someone attached to his identity, it will be like you attack his very being. Common reactions can be dismay, denial, or even violence.

[1]: <http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think this article describes geeks: it describes the borderline autistic behavior of people that fail to evaluate their own peculiarities. I have the impression there's some serious confirmation bias at work if you become convinced this stereotypical behavior is actually typical geek behavior.

I have to admit that I recognize all of the points he makes, but I recognize them _because_ I have become aware of them. Some I had already remedied subconsciously, long before I became aware of them; others required some effort to change. I don't doubt it is exactly the same for other geeks.

One of the main things this brought me is the guideline: don't obsess over perceived differences between you and others, because they are smaller than you think.

For instance, (awkward) silences are normal things that occur in many conversations. After forcing myself to pay attention to people's faces and body language, the first thing that struck me is how little 'regular' people actually seem to be doing that. They look away and fiddle with their papers all the time.

<comment><USER6> While it's possible to find exceptions, there are some strong indicators of mild (or high-functioning) autism among the geek crowd, and several of the points in the article could be described as autistic traits.

Probably the best example is the stereotypical geek's inability to read facial expressions. Some geeks -- like me, and, it sounds like, you -- teach themselves how to do it, but this is still a trait which comes more naturally to most people. This, combined with the geek's active "inner world", causes awkward conversations and social behavior.

Above average numeracy and a tendency to mentally model problems and situations visually are a couple of other indicators, as well as tendencies towards emotional irregularities.

While you might be able to _act_ as though the differences between you and others is not great, the fact is, their brain probably doesn't work very much like yours does.

I knew someone for a while that was working on his thesis in psychology; according to him, the field of psychology had a certain reluctance to measure various disorders in degrees. Although psychologists might say, "this person is autistic, and can function somewhat in society", and, "this other person is autistic and cannot function in society", they're reluctant to say, "this person is only a little autistic". (This was the subject of his thesis.)

Based on what I've read in the DSM and publications like SciAm:Mind, as well as what I've observed of people, I'd tend to agree with him, and I'd say that it's a pretty safe bet that the majority of stereotypical geeks are "a little autistic".

<comment><USER7> _Probably the best example is the stereotypical geek's inability to read facial expressions. Some geeks -- like me, and, it sounds like, you -- teach themselves how to do it, but this is still a trait which comes more naturally to most people._

I've always wondered if it comes naturally to most people or whether they just learned it at a younger age while we were busy learning other things.

<comment><USER6> Very young in fact -- I think I remember reading an article that claimed that very young babies could "read" facial expressions, at least in the happy- versus-sad sense.

I can't find any references to it online in the thirty seconds or so I'm willing to spend on it, but I did find:

[http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2009/11/10/bosto...](http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2009/11/10/boston_lab_explores_childrens_complex_lessons_in_reading_faces/?page=full)

...which says that babies start learning facial expressions at 6 months of age.

Autism is different though; it's not just a lack of ability, but a lack of interest. I distinctly remember reading that, for example, during a movie where the scene is primarily depicting two people talking, a "normal" person will watch the faces of the actors, while the "autistic" subject would tend to focus on the light switch in the background. I doubt this is universal, and the article may have even been about one person in particular, but at this point correlations between autism and difficulty with interpersonal emotional interpretation are accepted as generally true.

...I think this has an interesting, though probably coincidental, consequence: sci-fi shows and movies tend to focus much more heavily on objects and technology than faces and acting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I must be a geek, this article is pushing all the right buttons.

A quick summary might be: "When talking, geeks need to understand that the listener doesn't know anything and doesn't want to learn, doesn't care whether what you say makes sense or is accurate, isn't trying to understand, doesn't even want the answer to the question they asked but rather an answer to the question they were thinking of, and is often simply waiting for you to shut up so they can speak. Also, everyone else has a massive inferiority complex so stop suggesting things to improve their lives as they'll take it as a belittling insult and somehow that's now your problem."

<comment><USER9> People with an IQ of 100 ("Normal or average intelligence") are two standard deviations from people with an IQ of 70 ("Definite feeble-mindedness").

People with an IQ of 130 ("Very superior intelligence") are two standard deviations from people with an IQ of 100.

A normal person will have to change basic communication skills to be found engaging by a feeble-minded person.

Likewise, an intelligent person will need to accommodate a normal person.

The term condescension has come to have a pejorative connotation[1] but is actually fitting in this context.

[1] Compare Webster's 1828 Dictionary: condescension, n. Voluntary descent from rank, dignity or just claims; relinquishment of strict right; submission to inferiors in granting requests or performing acts which strict justice does not require. _Hence, courtesy_.

\- "It forbids pride and commands humility, modesty and condescension to others." \- "Raphael, amidst his tenderness, shows such a dignity and condescension in all his behavior, as are suitable to a superior nature."

With Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 11th Edition: condescension, n. 1\. act or instance of condescending 2\. a patronizing manner or behavior

<comment><USER6> FWIW, I pissed off a whole entire mailing list of self-described INTJs once by suggesting the same thing, but for differing personality types: that INTJs, being one of the few types that was so self-analytical as to know what type it was, had the ability and need to talk and act in a way that could be better understood by other types.

<comment><USER9> I'm an INFJ; as such take my this post as me 'counseling' all Myers-Briggs personality types that have an IQ > ~120 to observe _genuinely kind_ people of an average intellect interacting with the cognitively impaired.

Think uncomplaining, long-suffering, enduring, tolerant...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the propensity for geeks to prefer IM, Email and Texting has more to do with a lot of them being introverts and preferring to have time to consider their responses, than with a lack of social graces.

<comment><USER11> The lack of context for phones frustrates me because it means you can be "accidentally invasive." If you approach someone in real life, you can use your senses to gauge what they're doing, thinking, and feeling at the moment of contact, and make an social gesture that is appropriate. It helps with first impressions, which are always important. And with email the asychronity is high so your risk of reaching someone at a bad time is low, so again, you can make a good first impression.

But if you're going over phone, there is some expectation of real-time availability - nobody really likes voice mail. Phone calls have a dreadful suddenness to them. Thank goodness we're moving past the days when almost everything had to be done by cold-calling a number.

IM and texting can be even worse in some ways as the expectations of timeliness are fluid so communication may get frustrating when one person is moving way faster than the other, but I think they actually work really well when used for short-term "business update" types of communication: "I will meet you at 5pm." "Do you have a link for <x>?" "We changed our plans for the meeting." etc.

<comment><USER12> I regularly find myself having two separate conversation threads in a text message exchange with one person. I don't know if that confuses people or not.

<comment><USER4> I often have two threads of conversation going in a face-to-face exchange. It's not very confusing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a great article, but I don't notice the "awkward silences" aspect of turn-taking to be as much of a problem as _interruption_ and _waiting to say something_.

That is, as soon as you get an idea you immediately begin plotting to share it with everyone, and you either blurt it out or you stop listening until you get a chance to talk (thereby causing you to say things that don't seem to fit in the conversation or make it seem like you aren't keeping up)

Not yielding the floor when appropriate is definitely a problem too, but doesn't always result in awkward silences.

</comment><comment><USER14> The commentary on "awkward silence" is interesting. Personally, I think it's kind of impossible to have an awkward silence; never do I find silence to be an uncomfortable thing, especially if there's the "comforting" sound of keyboard typing as background noise. "Thinking" noise, as it may be.

Maybe the main differentiating factor between geeks and non-geeks (as the author calls them) is ability to deal with silence. Most geeks I get along with best tend to listen with their eyes and speak with their hands.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you have an inability to notice when a silence has become awkward?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Non-geeks might perceive such behavior as rude and arrogant, like the geek > is trying to show his smartness and be a 'know-it-all'.

It's only perceived as rude when it comes across as rude. For example, if you interrupt someone mid-sentence to correct something insignificant, then that's rude. Waiting for the person to finish talking and then immediately correcting something they said earlier gives the other person the impression that you weren't listening to what they were saying. There are better ways of dealing with this in conversation. One of them is simply to ignore irrelevant inaccuracies.

Calling it "altruistic behaviour to educate" is also disingenuous. I've met many geeks who thrive on expounding minutiae about irrelevant or insignificant topics at the most inappropriate moments, all for the sake of recognition. It's the same as when jocks try to impress others by being macho. Obviously not all geeks are like that, but they definitely exist. My dad is geek who is like this but for him it's also about self-affirmation.

Finally, I often see articles on the net trying to explain "geeky" social interaction, but I rarely read articles specifically targeted at people with these tendencies describing how to improve their social skills. That's because, IMO, people who have these skills recognize that intelligence has little to do with it.

</comment><comment><USER17> hi everyone: this is the author here. i'm pleasantly surprised to see this pop up on HN.

please reply to my comment if you have any suggestions for improving this article. thanks!

<comment><USER18> I'm kind of appalled at the negative tone and unpleasant assumptions behind most of the comments. Let me suggest an alternative view:

Most geeks have been "weird" their entire lives. From kindergarten on, they didn't quite fit in with the other kids. The teachers actively made their social lives worse by setting them up as an object of scorn: The kid to hate because they get the answers right while the teacher acts like a) you, too, could get the answer right if only you studied more (never mind that is not why the geek kid knew the answer) and b) see, this kid is proof I am a wonderful teacher and your failures are on your own head for being lazy (never mind that she or he isn't responsible for the geek kid's stellar performance either).

They have had scorn heaped upon them until even the ones who started out as extroverts have probably become gun-shy. The vast majority of people around them were also inculcated in this sick, twisted social system so even when you are in your 40's, you run into this "5-year-olds-on-the-playground"-style bullshit harassment and get abused by it no matter how hard you try to "behave" the way other people try to dictate you "should".

Someday, after you have twisted yourself all out of shape trying to do what other people claim would make you "socially acceptable", you eventually figure out that just knowing more than other people or just thinking differently about problems is inherently verboten and there is no social disguise that will make you "acceptable" to most people. It doesn't matter one iota that you are sharing information out of genuine enthusiasm for a topic or out of a genuine desire to make the lives of other people better, you will still be treated like an egomaniac, a threat, a bitch/bastard...etc.

So maybe if the more "normal" folks who think "social skills" are vastly more important than "hard"/technical skills would exercise some genuine compassion, refrain from being too quick to judge and other types of social wisdom that they like to brag they have more of than the "geeks", they would find that geeks aren't so dreadful after all. They can be coaxed out of their shells if you don't start off by automatically labeling them and being openly hostile. And if you don't hate them on sight for simply existing and are kind and patient with their foibles, they may not need to act like know-it-alls in self-defense, which is probably the only ego defense they had in many ugly social situations.

<comment><USER19> This pretty much describes my life until college. It took a lot of work from a bunch of friends in college for me to develop enough social skills to handle non-geeks.

<comment><USER18> I used to be more extroverted. Recent years have left scars that have turned me more gun shy. I am still trying to find a balance. My innate wiring is to just be warm and friendly to everyone. But I have found that there are often unexpected and harsh consequences to doing so. It's rather counter-intuitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I completely suck at turn-talking, even when actively trying to anticipate when my 'antagonist' wants to say something. Does anyone have actual tips for improving this?

<comment><USER4> A sharp intake of breath is a pretty solid indicator. The more pronounced it is, the more agitated they are that you're still talking. (Unless they're just yawning.)

Looking away for a while and suddenly looking back with their mouth open slightly can also be an indicator. If they have their mouths closed tightly, they're deciding whether to interject, so you might want to check a sentence or two later to see if they've made up their minds.

<comment><USER21> I love your comment, it's really informative and just what I need. Do you have any suggestions of references (online or offline) where a layman can learn more about social queues? :)

<comment><USER4> Unfortuately, I don't. I learned these from years of frustration when I was a kid. I had hoped that my comment would get other people to post, but :-/

And it's _cues_ , not queues :-)

<comment><USER22> In true geek form, of all the posts to which I wanted to reply, I couldn't resist pointing out that "queues" could technically be correct in this context, as in message queuing in a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think I used do more of those. Being at college has exposed me to far more people and social situations than high school and rubbed off many of my sharper social edges.

</comment><comment><USER24> A behavior in a similar vein that I see on Twitter a _lot_ :

      some_twitter_person: I went to the park tday.
      some_twitter_person: In the last tweet, I meant "today" and not "tday."

Unnecessary overcorrection. I've seen it on HN a lot too. It's as if making a mere typo will make everyone think they're an uneducated idiot.

<comment><USER25> I don't remember seeing that kind of post on HN. If you mean people editing their posts, I blame/credit the ease of editing. I tend to post before proofreading and then clean up any mistakes. It just seems like the natural way to do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would be interested in a database conveying this article's information in tabular form. Then it would be useful to record the traits of other population strata, each in its own row (or with one row per observer/observed combo, to allow capture of multiple points of view). I would enjoy reading, searching, updating and sorting that.

</comment><comment><USER27> \- self-centered

\- blind to the relative importance of issues

These are also characteristics of children. I note them in myself. I think every human being has these characteristics to some extent, but they are especially prevalent in geeks/nerds.

As a result, if you can overcome them enough, and you have _some_ technical competence, you can be absurdly successful.

</comment><comment><USER28> _"they often make heavy use of technical terminology because it's the most concise and accurate way to convey their thoughts."_

If you get your point across by using terms no one understands, you're not getting your point across. It's not efficient at all, since you'll have to explain yourself further. But we all do this, not just "geeks". We're inferentially distance from each other. Who doesn't compress their understand of the world into their own specialist jargon?

</comment><comment><USER29> The comments of this article are so great. I can see myself in so many of them and I love how the topic can be seen from so many angles. I've always wondered over the telephone phobia that I've seen from time to time with my geek friends. I'm also a geek, but intro+extrovert. I feel more comfortable around geeks than noisy people though. My father was extreme introvert and my mother extreme extrovert.

</comment><comment><USER30> I think most geeks misunderstand the nature of the problem. They look for the kind of precision and completeness necessary in technical fields in all areas of life. When really they should understand that there are different kinds of precision and completeness present in many different milieus.

A good geek might recognize this and seek to understand various types of complex systems and seek the type of precision and completeness necessary to model and work with that kind of system...a party is nothing more than a complex system that has a complex and complete set of rules that have to be adhered to with high precision in order to get invited to another party.

To play on this example, a geek might realize that he is failing in social interactions. Thus she/he might look at socialization as a complex system akin to a technical field and look to operate successfully at socialization by understanding it in detail. For example, learning how to take turns in a conversation, how to participate in small talk or tell an entertaining story to somebody from a different, non-technical background. They'll learn precision in using pop-culture references and completeness regarding the social situations to use them in. They'll learn about the social graphs of the people in the party, and when and how to reference other people ("don't talk mean about Suzy to Greg, they broke up, but he still digs her").

In programming a geek may test their knowledge by writing a program and seeing if it works "correctly". In electrical engineering they may build some useful gadget. If a geek is trying to "hack" socialization, they might test their knowledge by navigating a party without causing uncomfortable silences in conversations they participate in.

A party thus can be thought of as a particular kind of social "application" like a software application on a computer. Given time a geek might learn several different kinds of "social applications" like "giving a toast at a wedding", "having a 1-on-1 conversation with a cute girl", "going on a date", "selling software" etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> i like the article and the main theme of the post.

one thing i'd point out that tends to be forgotten is that these "traits" are merely results of having not practiced (unless of course there is a condition such as OCD, autism, etc preventing development of certain social norms.)

Someone who does not practice verbal communication will suck at it. Someone who does not practice understanding others' interests will suck at it. Put these together and they will suck at teaching. Someone who doesn't practicing noticing others' clothes will not notice their own clothes.

"geek" is a choice, not a condition.

</comment><comment><USER32> So a quick summary would be: "Geeks" are mostly interested in technical details, rather than touchy-feely stuff, and (often incorrectly) assume their conversation partner is as well.

<comment><USER33> A better quick summary is that there are many socially awkward people who excel in technical fields.

There are likely as many who do just as well and have no shortage of basic social skills. One just doesn't notice the awkward silences so there's nothing to write broad generalizing blog posts about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems tautological in the mainstream thought? Degrees of these behaviors are often used to identify geeks in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is a strange premise, from my point of view, to characterise rather militant anti-intellectualism and hostility to the achievements of science, culture, scholarship, etc. as merely a trait of the majority of "ordinary" (non-"geeky") people.

I hope the author is wrong about that, or, alternately, that my understanding of what exactly is meant by "geek" is a bit off.

<comment><USER36> Being from another continent, i don't even get why is even necessary to catalog people (and sometimes how it could be done) either in the geek or non- geek category. Each one of us should have a multi-faceted personality that makes hardly possible to confine ourself in whatever definition we apparently seems to adhere to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Geeks have really got to spend at least as much time with people as in front of the keyboard, which is something they can only partially influence by themselves. Employers have to realize that too and redesign jobs so that no- one should be spending more than 50% of their time in front of a keyboard.

<comment><USER38> I'd choke you if you dragged me out of deep thought just for the sake of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _If someone tells me that the DVD player they recommend costs $297.89 at Costco but I can get a $49.95 mail-in rebate, then I need to spend some time rounding that to $250 before committing it to memory._

Did anyone else file that as 'less than $250' in their brains?

</comment><comment><USER40> No mention of the "geeksnort"?

<comment><USER41> Now that you've mentioned it, _somebody_ should explain what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It bothers me when people use the word "many" when single digit numbers will do. For example someone might say, "I read many books," when it would be more informative to say, "I read about 5 books a week."

<comment><USER43> I think from a non-geek perspective, "I read a lot of books" might mean "I enjoy reading, perhaps we can talk about books we've read?"

Whereas "I read about 5 books a week" sounds more like "I count how many books I read so that I can one-up anyone who thinks they are as smart as I am."

A non-geek who reads 5 books a week might admit the exact figure if probed, but would be more likely to look slightly embarrassed, to imply "yes I know that makes me odd" and "don't dislike me; I'm not trying to seem superior but you asked."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Weird,

I definitely suck at turn taking, but I love phone calls. I'd much rather talk than email/SMS/IM/whatever. In my mind those have even fewer social cues.

<comment><USER45> I am utterly afraid of phone calls. I act like it's no problem though.

<comment><USER46> I really dislike making phone calls. I don't have time to perfect my thoughts as I do when writing them out. I forget questions I wanted to ask. And I often talk too fast and thus stumble over my words. Email is so much better.

<comment><USER47> I often make a list of things I want to talk about in my head, before making a phone call; often I also think of a nice introduction and phrase the first question - after that it just gets easier. Singing or making music, especially jam sessions, helps a lot in finding the right rhythm in speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> A good way to end or reduces these geek mannerisms: Dale Carnegie's "How to Make Friends and Influence People"

</comment><comment><USER49> GeeksDoItRarely.com - true, true (no site exists here as yet)

</comment><comment><USER50> I think this article, while raising some valid points in some valid contexts, is very stereotypical. I'd very much prefer watching The big bang theory for a fun explanation of these stereotypes to be honest

</comment><comment><USER51> Interesting Article</comment>


Facebook fail to convince lawmakers it needs to track your location at all times - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/facebook-responds-to-senators-questions-on-location-tracking-policy.html <comment><USER2> > Facebook told two senators why it tracks users' locations even when their > tracking services are turned off. The lawmakers now say Facebook should give > users more control over their data.

> Facebook said that even when location tracking is turned off, it can deduce > users' general locations from context clues like locations they tag in > photos as well as their devices' IP addresses.

> While this data is not as precise as Facebook would collect with location > tracking enabled, the company said it uses the information for several > purposes, including alerting users when their accounts have been accessed in > an unusual place and clamping down on the spread of false information.

> Facebook doesn't allow users to turn off location-based ads, although it > does allow users to block Facebook from collecting their precise location, > the company wrote.

If I say I don't want you to track my location, I mean exactly that. Not respecting users' wishes like this is a terrible thing to do.

<comment><USER3> > If I say I don't want you to track my location, I mean exactly that. Not > respecting users' wishes like this is a terrible thing to do.

Isn't this more of an OS level issue?

<comment><USER4> OS can block access to location, but they can still have a coarse location from your IP, tagged photos, checked-in locations, message content and so on. Disabling location tracking in FB should also disable this on the FB server side.

<comment><USER3> > Disabling location tracking in FB should also disable this on the FB server > side.

Facebook is free to do with their servers as they please. Don't like it? Don't use it. I don't.

<comment><USER5> How do we know you aren't lying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The FB mobile website works perfectly fine except for messenger.

<comment><USER7> mbasic.facebook.com

It's not a great looking site, but you can read and respond to messages on there.

<comment><USER8> there's also a Firefox extension that can unblock "messenger"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why does the government need to stick their fingers in this? No one needs Facebook. If you're not happy with the product or with the company's ethics, stop using it.

<comment><USER10> Because you can't opt out. Facebook creates shadow profiles for people who have never created an account. They track people's faces in photos they appear in that were posted by friends. They link people's personal information to their shadow profile whenever a user allows Facebook to access their address book contacts.

Facebook is a pervasive, all-consuming data monster. If lawmakers don't rein it in, it will grow so powerful that it will challenge the sovereignty of governments. It's not a joke.

<comment><USER9> By what mechanism does an individual suffer harm through this shadow profile?

In what way do you imagine Facebook challenging the sovereignty of a government?

<comment><USER11> They are having data about themselves collected without their consent. That is the harm.

<comment><USER9> In what way is that harmful to them?

<comment><USER12> Are you being wilfully obtuse?

<comment><USER13> Does taking photographs of a mountain harm it? Articulate your reasoning, rather and resorting to vague insinuations.

<comment><USER14> At some point in the reasoning chain you reach the bad thing that is bad because its intrinsically bad and if you try to reason more you'll just go in circles. Or you enter a philosophical debate of such depth that it's stupid to have it with internet strangers.

Drink driving is bad.

Why is that?

You might cause a crash.

Why is that bad?

People could die.

Why is that bad?

They'll be dead.

Why is that bad.

They don't get to exist any more.

Articulate your reasoning!!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FB is poison. Do not ingest.

</comment><comment><USER16> All they need to do to convince lawmakers is to offer them the data, I bet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Delete your account already. No one here can act like they didn't know what FB is like.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to block out your property in Google Map et al.? - <AUTHOR> wondering if you can gray out that zone in google maps et al? <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- spectral_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-spectral_camouflage)</comment>