Any1 working on/has a "hardware" tech startup? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Hardware is, err, hard. Scaling to the masses means reliability engineering and thoughts given to logistics, manufacturing, etc.

Getting a version 1 out the door can be extremely expensive. Perhaps the revolution in China is changing this, making it much easier to build things in 10s and 100s.

And any interesting product will also have software. This makes it a superset of software startups.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a better question would be: What parts of the hardware market are suited for startups, given the various capital needs and industry landscape. I'd actually be very interested to hear from people about that.

<comment><USER4> I've been thinking about a cheap, scalable, multi-gigabit server, complete with about 40 gigs of ram, tcp offload engines and session logging. Prices on all of these parts have gone down and it might be something to pursue. Who needs a netscalar?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> nope. but bug labs is.. [http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2006/05/introducing_bug.h...](http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2006/05/introducing_bug.html) [http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/07/30/bugLabsInitialRe...](http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/07/30/bugLabsInitialReview.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 99% of entrepreneurs are working on web apps. Is there any1 here whoz tech startup involves building hardware.

<comment><USER6> One of the startups we funded this summer is working on hardware.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is cool. Waiting for Demo Day

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes.

</comment><comment><USER8> yes

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm doing a plain old piece of software for a start up. You know, the kind you install onto your machine and it integrates nicely with the operating system. Yea, I miss those days too. Sorry, I want to do hardware in the future though.</comment>


Spirit.js – easily animate objects on the web - <AUTHOR> https://spiritjs.io/ <comment><USER2> This will make for an excellent HN post once people can actually try it. Landing pages with email signups aren't a great fit for this site, though this is an impressive one.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a _beautiful_ landing page. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER4> Something tells me this isn't going to be free. Although the landing page might leave you with the idea that is.

<comment><USER5> The website (features section) says that the library will be open-source.

<comment><USER6> It says the API will be open source, so maybe the tool itself won't. We'll see...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems strongly inspired by Macromedia Flash/Studio, the authoring application for creating Flash animations.

<comment><USER8> Hilarious, my first reaction at seeing the landing page was, "oh that interface.. haven't seen that in a while.. haven't touched flash in a looong time..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish something like this existed as a desktop app to output animation spritesheets from drawings.

The only application that works on Mac OS that does that is Flash. You can draw something, make it "tween" to a new position/rotation/size etc and output .pngs.

<comment><USER10> There is Spine and Spriter. They both support what you want (and much more).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The ghosts are cute.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks pretty sweet. I can't see much use case for it though to be honest. Animation's while reading is distracting, but maybe it could be useful for some interactive tutorial.

</comment><comment><USER13> So you can export as GIFs? That would be cool, but I am skeptic.

LE: I say this because the animations on the site are gifs, and I assumed that they were made with spiritjs itself.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is so excellent and looks fun. I'm really unconfident with my web animating abilities, and I feel I can learn a lot from this project! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER15> Strange that all of the animations under "Features" are gifs, and not actually animated by spirit.js.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that's what I said. Maybe the tool has an export as GIF feature, which would make it awesome :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cool intro videos for your startup's landing page? - <AUTHOR>

I figured this would be a good place to ask. Does anyone have any recommendations for flash design shops or individuals who specialize in video intros for a website's product or web app?<p>The video intro on the Dropbox site would be an example of a great video intro and the kind I'm looking for. <comment><USER2> You will be excluding iPad and iPhone users but you probably know that already.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks.. changed the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> appshows.com</comment>


Consciousness as a State of Matter - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 <comment><USER2> I am glad this paper has been written, but already by page 3 there are serious problems with it.

For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other words, consciousness is independent of something like memory.

Yet Max's list on page 3 has stuff like "independence", "utility", "integration" which have nothing to do with observations of what consciousness is actually like. Rather, they are more like high-level ideas of what human beings are like.

But we don't need to explain human beings (complex biological organisms that walk around and do stuff). Science has got that covered already, at least kind of. So if you are going to clearly think about consciousness, you need to factor out what consciousness really is and look at the properties of that.

This is supposed to be a foundational principle of science: that your hypotheses are attempts to explain things that are actually observed. The first step is to observe things carefully! You don't just go making up hypotheses.

So it's a giant red flag any time a scientist writes a paper about consciousness where they conflate it with memory in some way (which is almost every time). It's a red flag because it indicates that the scientist has not actually spent any time observing consciousness, because they aren't noticing things that are obvious to people who have done that.

(You might think that because we are all walking around conscious every day, there would be no need to observe consciousness, but this isn't true. We walk around in a space governed by Newtonian physics, but it took until Newton to figure out this thing called inertia and that a frictional force is required to make things stop, etc, because if you don't look carefully and make careful measurements, most of the everyday world doesn't appear that way at all. Same thing with consciousness.)

<comment><USER3> > For example: It is an easily observable phenomenon (e.g. by anyone who > meditates) that you can be conscious without remembering anything. In other > words, consciousness is independent of something like memory.

If you're meditating, how do you know that you're meditating without having, at minimum, a working short-term memory? If meditating actually disabled your memory, wouldn't you immediately forget that you were meditating and stop?

<comment><USER4> The ultimate of meditation is to stay in here-now, be present in a present. So technically and logically speaking, you don't need a memory in such state.

<comment><USER5> Now the question is, do meditators just hallucinate a feeling that gets processed into a memory of having achieved such a state?

<comment><USER4> By hallucinate you mean, not knowing what/where you are or doing, in that particular moment? Then yes, one can use that word. The simplest analogy of here-now is when you are watching an exceptional movie (as per your taste) and you get lost in those moments of watching. The same phenomenon is apparent in observing other forms of arts (songs, paintings etc).

So, are such states hallucination? Every person (human being) knows for sure that they are real.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given the amount of different seemingly unrelated terms in there:

      quantum factorization
      Hilbert & Fourier space
      tensor factorization of matrices
      Hilbert-Schmidt superoperators
      neural-network-based consciousness
      error-correcting codes
      condensed matter criticality
      Quantum Darwinism program
      ...

I have to ask just to be certain: This paper is the real deal, and not auto- generated, right?

<comment><USER7> quantom factorization, hilbert spaces, fourier transforms and error correcting codes, all of these would be found in any quantum mechanics 101 course, definitely far from unrelated.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure I agree with this, after skimming the paper. For instance, the author does not seem to be using terms like _quantum factorization_ in the usual way (In the sense of a problem tackled by Shor's algorithm).

<comment><USER9> I've only glanced at the paper, but it looks to me as if he's using it in _another_ perfectly usual way, namely referring to situations where the wavefunction and/or the Hilbert space it lives in can be written exactly or approximately as a product over simpler things. There's nothing wrong with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As soon as I saw the Title of this paper, there were two ideas that sprung up:

1)"Sokal Hoax"

2)David Deutsch, Max Tegmark, Some Other trouble-maker

Max Tegmark has done similar things before:[1]. He is also related to the FQXi which is funded by an organization that has sometimes promoted explicit religious agendas in a scientific context. However we should be judging every paper by its merits alone & the rigor of its arguments. The only problem is that work of this nature is very interdisciplinary, so who is qualified?

[1][http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-is-the-universe- actu...](http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-is-the-universe-actually- made-of-math)

</comment><comment><USER11> That crunching, gasping sound you can hear is Luboš Motl choking on his cornflakes.

<comment><USER12> I have to say, if we're the things rendering this universe, it would be a helluva lot easier to code something similar up over coding up string theory.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, we just kind of threw that together in Perl to meet the deadline! ;;

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Information is not matter, it's spiritual by its essence. Information can be stored in matter (physical medium), but in itself it's not matter at all. Consciousness lies in the realm of information, or how it's traditionally called a spiritual world. In essence however there is a metaphysical view that there is no conceptual separation between spiritual and physical (or putting it in other terms, physical world is also defined with information). The separation is only that of perception. That can bridge the two approaches.

<comment><USER15> How would you define information?

<comment><USER14> That's not easy. It's the definitive essence of things. To give an example, when you know something, and write that down. The written words are physical, but the essence they convey (the concept, the information) is not physical at all. When others read that, they don't consume the physical words (though they use them as a medium). They consume information which they contain.

Here is a good article on this subject: [http://philpapers.org/rec/MATBEA](http://philpapers.org/rec/MATBEA)

<comment><USER15> But information is intimately tied to matter, no? Information is capable of having an affect on matter: when I store information on a CD, that information is capable of having an "interesting" affect on a CD player to produce music, or words on a page have an "interesting" affect on the reader. Information is abstract, but I can't call it "spiritual".

What is the difference between a random string of bits and, say, a huffman coded string of audio? Both have seemingly random distributions. The informational aspect comes with its ability to cause an "interesting" affect in an information-coupled hunk of matter. It seems wrong to call the random string information when it cannot produce a low-probability, surprising outcome when it interacts with a specific hunk of matter. But the encoded audio stream does exactly that!

Independent of a hunk of matter capable of decoding it, can a string of bits be said to carry information?

<comment><USER14> _> But information is intimately tied to matter, no?_

Rather it's other way around. Matter is tied to information. The matter is the medium for it, but information can be in itself. It's commonly expressed with the metaphor of a vessel. Matter is a vessel which is filled with essence (which thus binds it). But the filling itself is unbound until it's expressed through the vessel (medium).

 _> Information is capable of having an affect on matter_

Definitely, as I said above, there is an approach which says they aren't conceptually separated (but only perceptually).

 _> Information is abstract, but I can't call it "spiritual"._

How do you define "spiritual"? According to R' Boruch of Kosov for example, spiritual can be understood as abstract, or information-type. It was understood similarly by Tsiolkovsky.

<comment><USER15> I think we're mostly in agreement as far as matter being the medium for information. But can information exist independent of matter? If not then does it make sense to reify information as if it is its own entity? Is it really helpful to decouple the two concepts?

<comment><USER14> According to the view which puts information as primary, it not only can exist independent of matter, it defines the matter.

<comment><USER15> That may be true from a quantum physics perspective, but it's not very useful to us at the scale we live on (analogous to relativity vs quantum mechanics). I'm asking so many questions because I've been trying to come up with a useful working definition of information. It's surprisingly hard.

<comment><USER14> It surely is hard.

According to mystics it's very useful practically for our relation and interaction with the world and spiritual elevation. I.e. it can be put out of the abstract theory into very practical humane terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow. That's a lot of words.

How exactly does consciousness "emerge" from matter? Are there some kind of psychophysical bits that aren't currently accounted for in physics? Surely it's not merely epiphenomenal. How do intentions affect the physical world as seems to be happening when our minds move our bodies? What is the solution, here, to the mind-body problem?

I just finished reading Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" which highlights some of the salient issues with reductionist explanations of consciousness, cognition, and value. I don't think these things are _just_ a state of matter.

[http://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo- Darwinian-C...](http://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Cosmos-Materialist-Neo-Darwinian- Conception/dp/0199919755)

<comment><USER17> There is no "mind emerging from matter" in the same way a hand does not "emerge" from fingers and a palm. This is because the label we apply is only in our heads. Reality is perfectly ok just being a bunch of quantum interactions; it is humans who have to label things "chair" "hand" "conciousness". Reality is reductionistic.

<comment><USER16> I don't agree that conscious experience is necessarily reducible. When I put a piece of cheesecake in my mouth, certain electrical signals will likely be firing in my brain, but those signals don't mean what it's like to consciously experience cheesecake in my mouth. That is, the signals themselves aren't indicative of the quality of my experience that only I, myself, can have in my conscious existence. The signals are only a physical correlate to my experience. I don't _experience_ electrical signals in my brain. My experience is different than them.

My point is, there is other stuff out there in the universe (mental stuff) that is different than physical stuff, that seems almost impossible to be explained _as_ physical stuff. I believe in the physical sciences, evolution, and mathematics, but I don't think that they _fully_ encapsulate all that there is, nor can they definitively explain things like consciousness (they at least need a little more added to them).

<comment><USER18> > My point is, there is other stuff out there in the universe (mental stuff) > that is different than physical stuff, that seems almost impossible to be > explained as physical stuff. I believe in the physical sciences, evolution, > and mathematics, but I don't think that they fully encapsulate all that > there is, nor can they definitively explain things like consciousness (they > at least need a little more added to them).

See, physics _has_ explained the mechanics of what happens when you put cheesecake in your mouth. You _do_ experience electrical signals in your brain. It _is_ reproducible.

You're just refusing to correlate that phenomena to what you _feel_ , which is okay, because it's not entirely obvious, feeling is an internal feedback process. But consider this mental experiment: if I blindfold you and stimulate your brain the same way as cheesecake in your mouth by the use of electrodes, would you be able to discern?

<comment><USER19> Let's put it another way. I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is that?

You simply can't explain that with physics. You can explain the physical symptoms of pain - like crying or sweaing. But not the feeling of pain. And the reason for that is that you won't be able to define the feeling of pain. Crying or sweating is definable (or reducible), it's just a complex motion of physical particles. But what's the feeling of pain (not the physical symptoms)?

<comment><USER18> > I feel pain when the atoms in my brain are in certain configurations. Why is > that?

That's tautological.

You feel pain when your brain is in a particular set of states. Your brain is in one of those particular states. You feel pain.

There's no underlying "why", it's the definition of pain itself.

> You simply can't explain that with physics.

You can explain the _mechanism_ with physics. What I think you mean is that you can't describe, subjectively, how you feel with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm a physical scientist, work in biology and computer science, but cannot understand this paper for the life of me. Can somebody sum it up? It seems to start from a premise that makes no sense ("computronium" as a form of physical matter distinct from other forms of matter) which strongly contradicts the current mainstream understanding of vitalism and dualism.

<comment><USER18> I find it really strange that it is necessary to talk about quantum physics or the nature of time to explore the concept of consciousness. I thought it was pretty clear by now that consciousness is a macroscopic, emergent feature, seeing what very very simple neural networks models are able to do.

<comment><USER21> > consciousness is a macroscopic, emergent feature

So far everybody agrees, but if you try to define emergent you get into trouble. So is consciousness weakly or strongly emerging? Is there something special about qualia? So far, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has given a good definition, let alone a really good argument for either side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Renaming metaphysical dualism doesn't change the fact that it's metaphysical dualism. It's just a new label on the same old can of worms. How do we tell conscious matter from non-conscious matter? By finding or failing to find the non-material property of consciousness. It's perhaps a bit more scientific than relying on souls, but only by virtue of not positing life after death or an immortal being or some other manifold of meta-physics.

Being a materialist is all well and good, so long as one takes it seriously, and there are only two serious materialist positions: Deny the idea that mental constructs have any reality [and ignore the paradox required for denial to have any meaning] or posit mind as an inherent property of all matter and live with the consequences of universal animism. Any other form of materialism is a weak waffling half measure.

<comment><USER23> Within my very limited grasp of the paper, it seems to me it is asserting precisely the opposite of your second claim. Tegmark seems to me to be proposing a limited set of properties that an assemblage of matter must have in order to exhibit, or perhaps to implement, consciousness. So he is denying a "universal animism" (because the properties are not univerally present), and attributing consciousness to operations of matter, so not presuming "mental constructs" apart from matter either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Paul Adams (macarthur fellow 1986) teaches a class on self organization of the brain, and he begins with similar physics analogies involving phase changes. You can check out his stuff here: [http://www.syndar.org/](http://www.syndar.org/)

<comment><USER25> thank you !!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Tegmark also featured yesterday on HuffPo live: [http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/math-our- universe/5...](http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/math-our- universe/52bc659a2b8c2a24c500092d)

</comment><comment><USER27> "How We Became Posthuman" by N. Katherine Hayles - really interesting book that traces the trajectory of how (among other trhings) information came to be considered (im)material essence of consciousness, a "thing" that exists independent of our embodied experience - she succinctly (and briefly) covers ground from turing to norbert weiner to the macy conferences , systems theory, Hans Moravec and so on. The book was published in 1999 I think and makes frequent reference to Francisco Varela's book "The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience", which I think touches on a lot of the subjects discussed in this thread (ie, creating a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology) - I think both these books are very well written and may provide valuable context to those who are interested:

[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo376...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3769963.html)

[http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/embodied- mind](http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/embodied-mind)

</comment><comment><USER28> Ok. Can anyone explain how Consciousness could be a state of Matter in _Plain English_? Because quantum mechanics voodoo?

<comment><USER29> Are you made of matter? Are you concious?

If so then the matter you are made of is concious; it is matter that is in a state of conciousness.

<comment><USER30> That's an odd statement. Is there precedent for attributing emergent phenomenon to the pieces? Because that is what seems to be happening here. To my eyes, if a system is conscious, that does not mean the pieces that make the system are conscious. Consciousness is an emergent property of the system.

Snowflakes are pretty. The water molecules in the snowflake do not inherent this; they are not themselves pretty as a result of being in the pretty snowflake. (Although you could consider them beautiful for other reasons. From a life-sciences and/or chemistry point of view, water is pretty beautiful)

But then again, I'm an engineer with a passing interest in chemistry, not a quantum physicist, so of course I see everything as systems. To me nothing they talk about makes sense anyway.

<comment><USER31> States of matter are emergent. A single atom cannot be said to be a gas, liquid or solid, only a sufficiently large group of them.

<comment><USER30> Still, a snowflake is not a state of matter. You cannot say "Oh if we increase the pressure it will enter phase X and thus the snowflake state of matter". It is built upon a state of matter (crystaline solid), no?

<comment><USER32> A snowflake is second-tier emergence (this is a made-up term). Hydrogen and oxygen atoms do not have states of matter. Water molecules, as collections of H and O atoms in specific arrangements, have states of matter. Snowflakes are collections of water molecules in specific arrangements and in specific states of matter. A snowman. A family of snowmen. The general practice of creating snowmen. And so on and so on.

<comment><USER30> Right, so the ice is not a snowflake, but the snowflake is made of ice. Similarly, organic chemicals are not a consciousness, but a consciousness emerges (we think) in a lump of organic chemicals. Do you disagree?

P.S. A snowman isn't exactly an emergent property. Now, an avalanche system might be...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So if we come to discover that time is fundamental instead of emergent, it could disprove his hypothesis of how consciousness is emergent.

That's at least one way in which he makes his hypothesis testable.

Just, please, no one forward this article to any Republican legislators and draw their attention to the NSF grants that supported the research.

</comment><comment><USER34> Rred the abstract, was about to call it BS, then I realized this was written by Max Tegmark!

So definitely worth reading carefully.

</comment><comment><USER35> His whole idea of "consciousness as a state of matter" thing might be taken a bit more seriously if he could provide a conscious object...

who doesn't want a sentient sword?

<comment><USER36> Easy, but it has to be an object that is processing information in complex ways. From the first page:

"I have long contended that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways "

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This guy really hates Penrose:

"...Penrose and others have spec- ulated that gravity is crucial for a proper understanding of quantum mechanics even on small scales relevant to brains and laboratory experiments, and that it causes non-unitary wavefunction collapse [35]. Yet the Occam's razor approach is clearly the commonly held view that neither relativistic, gravitational nor non-unitary effects are central to understanding consciousness or how con- scious observers perceive their immediate surroundings: astronauts appear to still perceive themselves in a semi- classical 3D space even when they are effectively in a zero- gravity environment..." Ugh. That is really lame.

People still cite his 1999 article [1] on how the brain can't be quantum, as if that was the end of the discussion. Meh.

Anyway, now he seems to be saying the opposite of this, while cleverly avoiding contradicting (or even citing) this earlier work.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/quantph/9907009](http://arxiv.org/abs/quantph/9907009)

</comment><comment><USER19> Sigh... they're completely clueless. I'm starting to think that I'm the only one who understands consciousness and it's not that complicated really. Hint: the first and most important step is to define "consciousness", specify what exactly does that word mean. Investigating a very vague word with many possible meanings is pointless.

<comment><USER19> Reason for the downvote?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think Tegmark is a straight up genius. interested in reading this article,, but, has he crossed the line from genius into madness?

</comment><comment><USER39> There's physics and there's metaphysics. That's known since the times of Aristotle and Plato. Attempts by physicists to solve the "hard problem of consciousness" are doomed to fail. Different tools are necessary for each "magisterium". Philosophers and Theologians are better equipped to address that problem and write more coherent and logically consistent papers. A transcendental problem should have a transcendental / fundamental answer and there's nothing fundamental about a bunch of equations. I lack the ability and the time to express the last point more eloquently.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone with ideas on how can I start my "perceptronium mining" business?

</comment><comment><USER41> Real, fake, don't care. Reading that abstract was pure joy.

<comment><USER8> arXiv's "General Physics" and "General Math" categories are great for finding these kinds of papers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> One might find another one of Tegmark's papers of note: [http://arxiv.org/abs/quantph/9907009](http://arxiv.org/abs/quantph/9907009). I've barely skimmed it, but being vaguely familiar with how decoherence a la Zurek is supposed to work (had a homework on it last year, regrettably), the timescales he notes seem about right.

</comment><comment><USER43> "perceptronium"?

<comment><USER26> See also: 'utilitronium'. [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Utilitronium](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Utilitronium)

> Utilitronium is relatively homogeneous matter optimized for maximum utility > (like computronium is optimized for maximum computing power). For a > paperclip maximiz[ing artificial intelligence], utilitronium is paperclips. > For more complex values, no homogeneous organization of matter will have > optimal utility.

These sorts of terms are popular in the utilitarianism/rationality/friendly AI communities.

<comment><USER44> These sorts of terms are 'dangerous' if you like, because it's very easy to invent new words or phrases without giving them any actual _meaning_... but inventing the word is often enough for people to latch on to. The best argument is from Wittgenstein:

What if the diviner tells us that when he holds the rod he feels that the water is five feet under the ground? or that he feels that a mixture of copper and gold is five feet under the ground? Suppose that to our doubts he answered: "You can estimate a length when you see it. Why shouldn't I have a different way of estimating it?" If we understand the idea of such an estimation, we shall get clear about the nature of our doubts about the statements of the diviner, and of the man who said he felt the visual image behind the bridge of his nose. There is the statement: "this pencil is five inches long", and the statement, "I feel that this pencil is five inches long", and we must get clear about the relation of the grammar of the first statement to the grammar of the second. To the statement "I feel in my hand that the water is three feet under the ground" we should like to answer: "I don't know what this means." But diviner would say: "Surely you know what it means. You know what 'three feet under the ground' means, and you know what 'I feel' means!" But I should answer him: I know what a word means in certain contexts. Thus I understand the phrase "three feet under the ground", say in the connections "The measurement has shown that the water runs three feet under the ground", "If we dig three feet deep we are going to strike water", "The depth of the water is three feet by the eye". But the use of the expression "a feeling in my hands of water being three feet under the ground" has yet to be explained to me. [http://www.geocities.jp/mickindex/wittgenstein/witt_blue_en....](http://www.geocities.jp/mickindex/wittgenstein/witt_blue_en.html)

<comment><USER29> I understand what the concept of computronium means. It makes a certain kind of sense. The problem I have is that both a slide rule and an iPhone are computronium, yet there is little about their organisation or physical function that is similar. I'm not sure what saying that they are 'computronium' does for us.

Furthermore computronium would presumably need a power source, facilities for maintenance or repair, heat dissipation, protection from external disruption, etc. I don't think it's a given that an optimal design would be in any way homogenous. Ultimately I think it's very naive and simplistic way of thinking about things, but if it's just intended as a shorthand for the purposes of thought experiments that's fine. I'm just concerned that some people might take the idea too literally.

<comment><USER26> If computronium is a substance 'optimized for maximum computing power', then neither an iPhone or a slide rule are computronium.

Computronium by that definition would be more like an entire planet terraformed to be a massive supercomputer - something with maximum possible computation density.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Sounds more philosophical rather than being quantum physics. With lots and lots of big words.

Maybe at one point quantum physics becomes philosophy.

Also, Apart from explaining the quantum states Schrödinger's cat has always felt to be more of a philosophical thought experiment rather than being mathematical or quantum one.

</comment><comment><USER46> Huxley was a mystic. He knew his stuff :-)

Headlessness is a synonym for mindlessness.

Only way out is practice mindfulness.

<comment><USER46> Downvoted, haha, I guess most people didn't know about Huxley's psychedelic experiments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> When does a perceptual schematic become the bitter mote of a soul...

</comment><comment><USER48> What they're trying to do is address Copenhagen indeterminacy by assuming that the collapse of the wavefunction involves the ontologically similar definition of mental states. How does a mental state cause a collapse of the wavefunction at all? — This is the Quantum Measurement problem. [EDIT:] A better question, then, is _when_ does a mental state cause a collapse, assuming that it _can_ , or _should be able to_ ontologically speaking. Does a materialist framework answer this question?

Statistically speaking collapse of the wavefunction and quantum decoherence have the same signature, such that we never know when observation (mental states) causes collapse. To investigate consciousness as matter is to assert the ontological underpinnings of mental states as part of the internal causal nexus of the quantum system.

I'm still collecting my thoughts on this subject here: [https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/#xl6a68x/NLd6c9](https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/#xl6a68x/NLd6c9)

The gist is that observation (including our tools used for observation, along with indexical subjective states) itself has to be treated as a quantum system, _not as a classical system_ [0]. And matter can be described by quantum mechanics.

[0]: [http://quantum-ethics.org/](http://quantum-ethics.org/)

<comment><USER49> A mental state doesn't _cause_ the collapse of the wavefunction. (For example, in the Schroedinger's Cat setup, not only is the cat a perfectly good observer, but so is the detector.) Rather, the collapse of the wavefunction _may_ cause a change in someone's mental state - or it may cause a change in nobody's mental state, if it is unobserved by any human.

A quantum mechanical "observer" does not need to be a human, or even an animal.

<comment><USER50> While we can have mechanical detectors in experiment setups that are part of these experiments, the fact is that there is no way to conclusively say that the presence of consciousness does not play a role in the collapse of the wave function. All experiments we do are done by conscious humans, there is always a conscious observer part of the experiment. That is kind of the conundrum for which after 100+ years there still is no definitive answer brought forward by science.

You should also realize that you are positing something equally crazy by implying causation the other way around, meaning that the collapse of the wave function somehow can cause changes to the mental state of a conscious person at breathtakingly large distances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Bong physics!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best CA to buy a SSL certificate? - taha-sh I'm looking for a good Certificate Authority to buy a SSL certificate from. I've found many ones, but don't know the best option. I've heard that www.ssl.com is a great one, is it?<p>I want your advice on this. <comment><AUTHOR> [https://letsencrypt.org/](https://letsencrypt.org/) should be ready shortly.

</comment><comment><USER2> What criteria would you use to judge whether one is better than the other? Price? Trust?

Also, what kind of SSL Cert are you looking for? There's a big difference between EV certs, and say a single domain cert, wildcard, multiple-domains, etc.

For single domains, I've had pretty good luck with Comodo through Namecheap. It generally costs 9.99/yr for Single domain, and I've even used their multiple-domain certs.

but yeah, more info would definitely help give you a better recommendation.

<comment> taha-sh Thanks for your answer. I'm sorry I had to clarify my question more.

When I say the best, I mean for the overall experience. It should be reliable and easy to use. Price is important, but it's not my main concern.

The certificate type is a single-domain certificate. I'll check what you suggested, thanks :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've had a pretty good experience with [https://www.startcom.org/](https://www.startcom.org/).

<comment><USER4> I've started to not like them. They have been stopping me from getting free certs if the site even remotely looks like an ecom site. I'd rather pay a bit and not get hassled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can try [https://comodosslstore.com](https://comodosslstore.com) for best price, feature and return policy. It's offers unlimited reissue, Unlimited server licenses.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had ok experiences with Comodo for wildcard certs (through Namecheap and direct). Both times the cert never arrived in my inbox after domain verification. Had to contact support but then they (re?)sent it straightaway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found lowest provider of ssl certificate ([https://www.cheapsslshop.com/](https://www.cheapsslshop.com/)).

</comment><comment><USER8> I bought a couple of times a AlphaSSl from [https://ssl2buy.com](https://ssl2buy.com), where I got the email directly from AlphaSSL :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Namecheap Domain Validation cert for $9

</comment><comment><USER10> I've heard good things about Digicert</comment>


U.S. attorney general: Hollywood, tech companies "pawns of Chinese influence" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-barr/attorney-general-barr-takes-aim-at-hollywood-disney-for-censoring-films-to-appease-china-idUSKCN24H2JT <comment><USER2> I'm not sure any major company has either 1) not done business with China or 2) not seriously _tried_ to do business with China.

The massive emerging market there was too much of a $$$ opportunity for them to ignore.

Yes, there's a difference between, say, a fast food chain that tries to get a foot hold in China and a technology company that helps provide tools used to limit rights of free speech etc. However, this is a matter of degree, not kind.

All business with China that helps advance their economy helps to legitimize their regime, and also gives China a significant bit of influence over even companies' non-China businesses. When a company's business is China is so critical to lose that it will subject itself to China's will even outside of China, that company is complicit in the same way, just to a lesser degree, as these tech companies providing more direct support.

<comment><USER3> The profit made from every Big Mac is money that leaves China and goes into the pocket of a foreign investor. This is infinitely more valuable than McDonalds making a tweet that supports Hong Kong. China knows this, which is why it's so hard for a foreign company to do business there even if you don't consider all the censorship laws.

<comment><USER4> Is believe MacDonald's China its owned by China, they sold all their assets a few years ago because their business model is largely real estate and you can only lease hold land for 99 years in China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is so much to unpack here that it's difficult to even get started. The US government has encouraged companies to work with China for decades. I remember it being big news when GM opened a joint venture in China in 1997.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM)

The Clinton administration pushed hard to increase trade with China and make it easier for American companies to outsource manufacturing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Relations_Act_of_2000)

This continued unabated through the Bush and Obama presidencies, even as it became increasingly clear that US relations with China were going off the rails. There were significant signs that the Chinese government was not playing fair, particularly around IP theft, but the legislative and executive branches did _nothing_ visible about it. Hundreds or thousands of American companies (including google) were hacked into or had intellectual property stolen with no legal recourse.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hundreds-of- china-s...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/fbi-probes-hundreds-of-china-spy- cases)

Chinese military groups also hacked into the employee database for the US federal government.

[https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected- opm-...](https://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-25-million-affected-opm-hack- sources/story?id=32332731)

Tech companies, like google, are acutely aware that the current Chinese government is extremely capricious and will block an entire company from the country to incubate their own competitor. Many tech companies want to work in china, but of major american companies, they seem to be the _most_ cautious.

Given all this context, for Barr to turn around and say that US tech companies are "pawns" is infuriating. Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with China. They are not getting those laws out of Congress or the Justice Department, and everyone is the worse for it.

<comment><USER6> > Virtually every large american company needs clear laws on working with > China. I partially agree. Yes, the Federal government should heavily > regulate trade with China.

But companies don't need to wait on the Government to do what is right. Companies could have ignored any Government push to do business in China.

Outsourcing ethics to Government regulation is just plain wrong.

<comment><USER7> > Outsourcing ethics to Government regulation is just plain wrong.

This is a category error. Companies have an existential incentive to chase profits (and their managers can be sued by the shareholders for doing anything less). Their incentive to avoid violating laws, morals, and ethics is far lower.

> is just plain wrong

What is the consequence? Does anyone in the USA strictly avoid buying anything from any company with dubious ethics?

We all have knee-jerk reactions to outrage, but where we either (1) don't have enough transparency to know or (2) don't have reasonable alternatives, there is no ability for individual non-governmental entities to shape those incentives. The closest we get are internet mobs organizing boycotts, but lots of people reject that method for completely rational reasons.

<comment><USER6> > This is a category error. Companies have an existential incentive to chase > profits (and their managers can be sued by the shareholders for doing > anything less). Their incentive to avoid violating laws, morals, and ethics > is far lower.

Holding firm to a strong sense of ethics and morals is a risky thing to do. Whether you're representing a company, or just acting as an individual. But that risk does not justify NOT holding firm.

So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and morals, I'd suggest finding a new job. Or, just maybe, your shareholders aren't so blinded by greed that they would not support your company doing what is right.

<comment><USER8> > So, if you run a company, and you're afraid of getting sued by your > shareholders for not pursuing profit at the expense of your ethics and > morals, I'd suggest finding a new job.

Who's to say that's not exactly what normally happens? In which case it should surprise no one that those who remain are disproportionately lacking in ethics and morals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What it really comes down to is determining if we are doing the Cold War thing or not.

To many of us, the cold war is over, and the other 300 years of rolling the nation state concept across the world is over too. As it is very easy to operate in a borderless global economy - at least between major economic unions - if you are privileged enough.

If you absolutely need people to pick a side again, just say so. Otherwise you need to realize that its all in your head, not everyone is looking at the world the same way, both/all major countries are very similar and this will always be a "trigger" for you when people point it out.

But if this is really so irreconcilable and necessary for people to pick a side because we're doing the cold war thing again, then you need to say so. Americans will pick America if thats what its coming down to. But just assuming we are in that state and that everyone else is assuming the same thing, thats just going to go nowhere.

<comment><USER10> The problem is, if you think you're not in a Cold War while the other guy thinks you are. Before you realize it, it's already too late.

<comment><USER11> I think one point the grandparent is alluding to is that _there are more than two ways to slice up the world_. Cold-War thinking assumes a bipolar world - Allied vs. Axis, U.S. vs. Russia, NATO vs. Warsaw Pact, now U.S. vs. China.

But that's not the only way to look at the world. Even restricting yourself to dualities, you could also view it as Commerce vs. Guardians [1], people who think for themselves vs. people whose opinions come from those around them [2], zero-sum thinking vs. positive-sum thinking, or those who divide people into two groups vs. those who don't. With many of those lenses the nation- state as a social organizing principle is obsolete: people look out for their own interests and make contracts with each other when it's mutually beneficial.

I think this is a particularly useful worldview when it comes to large mega- corps. Apple is on Apple's side, and to some extent on their customer's side; _both_ the CCP and the AG dislike them.

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

[2] [http://paulgraham.com/orth.html](http://paulgraham.com/orth.html)

<comment><USER9> Grandparent poster here, this is exactly what I was aiming to say regarding the nation-state as a social organizing principle being obsolete and the dualities being equally irrelevant.

The final thing I would say is that communism _lost_ , except in name alone, so that makes this perspective so much easier! All major powers reformed to market based economies and dropped the strict marxist ideologies, even if some teach it and don't point out the contradictions.

<comment><USER12> "communism lost, except in name alone" \- unfortunately not according the CCP / Xi.

They/He still thinks China are winning according the Communism/Socialism principals and not before the Deng's market reform 30/40 years ago.

<comment><USER9> that's exactly what I am referring to, they do teach marxist ideals but they don't teach the contradictions to their populace while their free trade zones and market based reforms grow and grow and are wildly popular

this is very easy to integrate into, compared to not having 7 special economic zones and administrative regions, and massive metropolitan areas supporting those zones.

<comment> T-A > market based reforms grow and grow

[https://www.ft.com/content/3e37af94-17f8-11e9-b191-175523b59...](https://www.ft.com/content/3e37af94-17f8-11e9-b191-175523b59d1d)

<comment><USER9> if "the people's Congress" wants to shut off all markets as handicap non-state owned enterprises, they have the power and ideology to do so

there is no assurance of private enterprise there

regardless, it is possible to operate in the here and now and stash resources and titles in the caymans as fast as you can

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The same companies (rightfully) saying "Black Lives Matter" are willing to suspend Hong Kong protestors to appease the CCP.

Just shows you how genuine their motives are, in case you had any doubts

<comment><USER14> Top athletes, celebrities from Hollywood etc all virtue signal while ignoring the problems going on in China and are willing to sell out to China. Since the COVID, China has been blatantly racist towards blacks and the US embassy had to notify people about the "Discrimination against African-Americans". Yet this got ZERO attention:

> China McDonald's apologises for Guangzhou ban on black people

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-52274326](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52274326)

[https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/health-alert-u-s- consul...](https://china.usembassy-china.org.cn/health-alert-u-s-consulate- general-guangzhou-peoples-republic-of-china/)

> In response to an increase in COVID-19 infections, officials in the > Guangzhou metropolitan area escalated scrutiny of foreign nationals. As part > of this campaign, police ordered bars and restaurants not to serve clients > who appear to be of African origin. Moreover, local officials launched a > round of mandatory tests for COVID-19, followed by mandatory self- > quarantine, for anyone with "African contacts," regardless of recent travel > history or previous quarantine completion. African-Americans have also > reported that some businesses and hotels refuse to do business with them. > The U.S. Consulate General advises African-Americans or those who believe > Chinese officials may suspect them of having contact with nationals of > African countries to avoid the Guangzhou metropolitan area until further > notice. Without advance warning, officials might require such individuals to > submit to a COVID-19 test and undergo 14 days of supervised quarantine at > their own expense.

> All U.S. citizens in China are subject to local law. If you violate Chinese > laws, even unknowingly, you may be arrested, expelled, or imprisoned. The > Chinese legal system can be opaque, and the interpretation and enforcement > of local laws may be arbitrary. The judiciary does not enjoy independence > from political influence. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in China may > be subject to heightened scrutiny by Chinese local law enforcement and state > security. They should carry identity documents at all times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the concern that's being identified in all these stories? It would be good to have an enumeration of clear concerns.

Is it that:

1) the companies are letting Americans' hardware be controlled / data escape and be monitored in China, or

2) that people in China subject to their laws (un-American as those laws may be) are being monitored (and worse)?

Because if it's the first topic, how do we not manage to buy/require/put in technical safeguards against our own people being monitored, or our equipment being taken over remotely? If we can't even do that, then how is any equipment we buy safe? But if we do, then is the argument that we're helping China get stronger by contributing to their economy or technological dominance? And that's undesirable to have a power shift that decreases our standing?

Who's responsible for deciding what standing we want to have in the world? Who's guiding that steering wheel and what's the destination? I daresay it's odd for the administration to be speaking up about this one thing, when it's mute on so many other factors that set our technological dominance.

Or if the 2nd argument, how far do our laws extend? Is that a principle to be applied to all countries by us, that they should not do things to their own citizens that would be illegal here? If we want universally respected laws to apply to other countries, I would think we could do ourselves a favor by respecting other laws and organizations that we currently choose to say are not in our convenience to follow.

Or is it something else? If you want me to be patriotic, tell me what I'm signing up for.

<comment><USER16> The specific concern here is cultural manipulation by the CCP with far-future- looking roadmaps to undermine and dominate their economic rivals.

For example, Disney as a Yuan-focused propaganda engine for CCP values cannot produce a remake of Robin Hood, which is a strongly indvidualistic narrative.

Driving a generation of strongly "powerful, central government is the best way to solve problems" values to children and young people paves they way for teens and twentysomethings to adopt CCP-sympathetic narratives in media and social media.

FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>

<comment><USER17> > _FYI, if you stand up two false straw men, you look like a collaborator with > the CCP. <joke> You communist. </joke>_

This breaks the site guidelines—quite badly actually. Insinuating that someone is a "collaborator" is...well, it's hard to believe that we've returned to an age where people do this kind of thing, however trivially on the internet. Adding joke tags doesn't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow.

Would you mind reading [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and using HN in the intended spirit? Note that they include:

 _Assume good faith._

" _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email email@example.com and we'll look at the data._"

Edit: so far, every comment your account has posted has been using HN for political/ideological/national battle. That's not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do this, so please don't misuse HN this way. No, that's not because we're communist collaborators—it's because we're trying to protect HN from flamewar, regardless of which angle the flamebait flies in from.

<comment><USER18> It's clearly tongue in cheek, how can you not see that? I mean there are joke tags!

<comment><USER17> " _Adding joke tags doesn 't help much, and it's notable that you didn't wrap your entire insinuation in them anyhow._"

<comment><USER18> [edit] Retracting my unnecessary jab around the moderator's comments being modified several times and their moderation leaving a lot to be desired. The latter was rude and uncalled for.

<comment><USER19> I'll refrain from commenting on you personally, but I will say that I've been here for around a decade and dang's moderation has been _excellent_ over that entire period.

Sometimes it has even been aimed at my comments, and I cannot really cite a single example where I feel dang has been unfair.

I would also note that you failed to even attempt to say _why_ you think dang's moderation was lacking, here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They need to be called out. The amount of virtue signaling these companies do in the US does not excuse their actions elsewhere.

This is not confined to the US either, countries in other parts of the world will engage in actions for the Chinese government they would not do at home or without great public fanfare about how they are against it.

<comment><USER21> What is the difference between virtue signaling and marketing when a corporation is doing it?

<comment><USER22> I think virtue signaling would be saying something to stave off public criticism with no direct monetary benefit, and marketing would be like companies that support gay rights because it means they can sell a bunch of rainbow colored merchandise during pride month.

<comment><USER23> What motive would a company (of sufficient size) have to signal virtue if not in pursuit of profits? Companies without an all powerful strongman on top are amoral, and primarily in the U.S. are only concerned with their shareholders as opposed to all stake holders in the chain's long term value and health.

[https://www.inc.com/maureen-kline/why-debate-over- stakeholde...](https://www.inc.com/maureen-kline/why-debate-over-stakeholder- value-vs-shareholder-value-is-all-wrong.html)

<comment><USER24> It depends on the company - Disney needs to signal virtue because virtue is part of their brand and everyone knows who they are, Thomson Reuters is not that well known and only need to signal virtue to their valuable employees who might not want to stay at some place they found too scummy (but who knows, money is a great persuader), Monsanto - I don't know, I somehow feel virtue is not on-brand where they're concerned and signalling would make people uneasy.

<comment><USER25> Yet Disney celebrated Pride month even though they had to know that it would cause criticism from the "Focus on the Family" crowd.

[https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2020/06/recognize- pri...](https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2020/06/recognize-pride- month-2020-with-the-new-rainbow-disney-collection/)

<comment><USER23> I think you could argue this is also about money. Disney parks have already won nearly every family in America. Most families would like to take their kids to Disney. Pride month probably only minorly affects that. Now how will Disney Parks keep showing a healthy growth rate? Well, they'll need to tap into new markets. What kind of tactics can they use to lure those new markets to the parks?

I just don't believe altruism or pure evil exists in these large orgs. I'm sure there are exceptions to prove the rule, but it's rare you'll see an action by a large corporation that can't be explained by money and growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Barr suggested that Apple iPhones "wouldn't be sold (in China) if they were > impervious to penetration by Chinese authorities." He suggested American > tech companies were imposing a "double standard."

He has a point there, but I am not sure I'd want to support Apple opening up to government authorities here.

</comment><comment><USER27> The best defence for Taiwan against China is to be an indispensible trading partner. Once China is self sufficient in IC fab. then increasingly aggressive moves against Taiwan could be more likely. I fear for Taiwan in the long term.

US foreign policy often turns out to be short sighted.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Barr suggested that Apple iPhones "wouldn't be sold (in China) if they were > impervious to penetration by Chinese authorities." He suggested American > tech companies were imposing a "double standard."

<comment><USER29> Meanwhile Barr is insisting that all encryption tools, in order to be legal in the US, need to give copies of the keys to the government... you know to keep us safe from terrorists. And tax cheats. And pirated movie bootleggers.

<comment><USER30> Bingo. It's worthwhile to ask to what degree U.S. corporations should be doing business in Chinese markets, but it's also worthwhile keeping in mind that no U.S. administration is a purely disinterested party when they're raising these criticisms -- and this administration in particular, and this U.S. attorney general in particular, has a pretty strong track record of deliberately stoking partisan flames and finding "enemies" both within and without. China is the chosen foreign enemy, but tech companies are increasingly the chosen _domestic_ enemy.

<comment><USER16> At least he complained that there was a double-standard where the CCP gets the data and the US doesn't.

We know he wants the US to get the data, too. We know that neither should.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is like pitching feature requests during a sev-1 call. It's an election year (nothing will be done on this), there's a raging pandemic (nothing will be done on this). I know we've all interviewed for other places while still employed but damn I usually do it with less gusto and publicity.

</comment><comment><USER32> This has to be considered in a nuanced way. Note that I'm calling "China" the country's leadership as expressed by their official stance, not the individuals or the general population.

\- China does pressure operations with other countries.

\- China does not have a USA aligned value system

\- China is getting quite successful - parity with the US is either here or not far off.

\- China is influencing tech companies in a steak-dinner sort of way.

\- China does certain things that verge on, or simply are, sleazy.

I would suggest the thing to get excited about, and appropriate boundary setting, would be the sleaze. I look forward to a friendly competition with the Chinese system, where we're both competing to be excellent and trading top places. That seems to be something the AG is concerned about- I don't mind being in second place, if the race is adequately fair. ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> Multinational corporations have no loyalty to anything except their shareholders. Politicians should not feign surprise when they do not align with national interest.

<comment><USER34> That's only because they choose to. The "Fiduciary obligation to shareholders" thing is not only wrong, but it isn't the way a system needs to work.

A corporation, which is a legal entity that owns capital, production and services, is composed of people. Those people could use the powers of the corporation to advance the well being of its community.

<comment><USER35> Too often people skim over the fact that the corporation is a legal entity, and its nature is defined by the laws that sanction it.

A corporate charter can be revoked, and the laws of the corporation can be modified. We don't have to be fatalistic about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This about the USG not having as many spying capabilities as China, not about shoring up spying capabilities of China.

For reference EARNIT act

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act- violates-c...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-act-violates- constitution)

</comment><comment><USER37> I detest Trump (voted for Clinton) and most, if not all, senior members of his administration, including Barr. But that doesn't prevent me from ultimately being OK with some of their statements/actions, even if they're all for the wrong reasons. The regime in China represents evil on a scale that is probably unprecedented in Earth's history, and anything that can stop or slow its world domination should be welcomed or at the very least acquiesced to. That regime is bad for the overwhelming majority of Chinese people (regardless of race and religion), bad for everyone else, and bad for the planet.

The above paragraph risks triggering some knee-jerk "what about the US/NATO?" responses. Let me save you the trouble: the West is guilty of countless crimes, especially against non-White people. But at least for some periods in history, most citizens of most Western countries were not systematically disenfranchised, monitored, disappeared, tortured, and killed. Yes, living in America while being Black, Hispanic, Arab (that's me), Muslim (ditto), etc. there's still a lot of anxiety, discrimination, and even danger. But it's incredibly naive to think the people of China are not orders of magnitude more oppressed and in constant fear for their livelihoods, lives, and loved ones.

<comment><USER26> I feel the same as you. I am also an immigrant that came to the USA escaping a country where people were suffering after decades of oppression and a string of socialist dictatorships. Seeing the actions of the CCP being normalized and defended in the USA concerns me a lot.

<comment><USER37> I didn't immigrate to the US, my parents did. From Syria. I lived there for a few years, and it's absolutely infuriating how some Americans equate their government with Assad, CCP, Khamenei, Putin, Kim, Duterte, etc.

<comment><USER38> Exactly its not as if we do not have issue in the USA and we did have a dark history (slavery for example). I think many Americans do not know how good we have it. In some ways our worst enemy is ourselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm not sure this is true. Many tech companies I've worked for in the past have had a lot of trouble operating in China. Some don't even try.

The NBA on the other hand. I love Steve Kerr. He tweets daily about Trump and how he abuses human rights, but ask him about HK and he gets quite really quick. If a man that rich is afraid to say something - thats a tremendous amount of power. I just don't see this type influence on the tech industry.

<comment><USER40> Employing your line of thought - noone should condemn anything unless they condemn everything antithetical to their principals/views.

Furthermore, Kerr is an employee and whatever statement he makes on HK would be inconsequential but also extremely harmful to his employer and co-workers. If actual change is wanted then we should divert our attention to the government where the real change happen.

<comment><USER26> > Employing your line of thought - noone should condemn anything unless they > condemn everything antithetical to their principals/views.

Yes, it is called hypocrisy.

The individual in question has a powerful speech platform due to his role. Such power should be used responsibly.

Moreover, why aren't statements against the USA government harmful to businesses? Because we have free speech. We should protect it, and denounce the actors in the world trying to censor us.

<comment><USER39> Steering this back to Google's decision to pull out of China after exploits - the Tech Industry has expressed views that have cost it significant amounts of revenue. We've fought back unlike other industries.

<comment><USER26> True, the individuals that stopped dragonfly are commendable. However, that was not all of Google.

<comment><USER41> The parent is referring to when Google pulled out of China in 2010, after having actually operated a google.cn for several years: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)

<comment><USER26> That was in 2010. Then in 2018 Google was caught building dragonfly which was a CCP requirement compatible version of their search engine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_\(search_engine\))

Google is a big organization. There is clearly tons of employees there protecting free speech, but there are also other people who are okay just taking the cash. It's hard to treat Google as an entity only on one side of the fence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The Chinese have definitely asked the emperor about the size of his cauldron. I would be shocked if Xi isn't regretting his change in stance the last ten years.

</comment><comment><USER43> I see the East Coast power centers having waning influence on the Pacific Rim states of the West Coast, who are uniquely positioned to work with Asian countries

<comment><USER44> I see that the global center of capital is continuing its millenia long westward migration. Past the US west coast, and into China. From Prometheus Rising:

> Brooks Adams also noted that centralized capital (the accumulation of wealth > in the hands of a few inter-related families) seems to have been moving > steadily West throughout recorded history. The first major accumulations are > to be found in Sumer; the center of money-power then shifted to Egypt, to > Greece, to the Italian peninsula, to various parts of Germany, and then to > London. At the time Brooks Adams was writing (c. 1900) he saw the balance > teetering between London and New York, and he predicted that the decline of > the English Empire would shift the balance to New York within the first half > of the 20th Century. He seems to have been right. Brooks Adams had no theory > as to why this Westward movement of wealth had been going on for 6000 years. > He merely observed the pattern. The shift is still continuing, in the > opinion of many. For instance, Carl Oglesby in The Cowboy vs. Yankee War, > sees American politics since 1950 dominated by a struggle between "old > Yankee wealth" (the New York-Boston axis, which replaced London after 1900) > and "new Cowboy wealth" (Texas-California oil-and-aerospace billionaires). > As of 1997, it looks like the Cowboys are winning; which is what one would > expect if there were a real "law" behind Adams' East-West migration of > capital.

Californication has come and gone.

<comment><USER45> The opposite is true if we look at data.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business/china-capital- flight...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/business/china-capital-flight-trade- war-us/index.html)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-11/china- hid...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-11/china-hidden- capital-flight-at-a-record-in-2019-iif-says)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would only manufacture something in china if there is a part of the stack that is essential and cannot be copied. There again I would do this for any external manufacturer because you can guarantee that if your product is ever a success it will be copied somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> It should be very clear that the US government wants to manufacture consent towards a trade war or cold war rather than actually care about human rights or national security. They're so quick to pull the trigger to ruin Hong Kong's economy, but they have yet to do anything to support asylum seekers.

</comment><comment><USER47> Funny how Barr doesn't mention Russia.

[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia- funded-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded- facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor)

<comment><USER48> Indeed. It seems pretty clear that Russia will want another Crimea style victory, and with an extraordinarily strong ally in the Whitehouse it makes sense to lay the groundwork for that now. (I'm not exactly sure how this will work since this time both sides have strategic nukes.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino- Soviet_border_conflict](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino- Soviet_border_conflict)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Conveniently left out are all the Republican-friendly companies and industries which do the same (and more). Automobile, equipment manufacturers, aircrafts, fast food, clothing, sports leagues...everyone bows down to money. This is the obvious result of our capitalist system. What's the point in calling out a handful of tech companies?

<comment><USER50> Because they have inordinate influence, same as with all the movie studios that are now heavily reliant on China for money. Most countries don't do great stuff constantly, but China is definitely outdoing itself the last few years: \- Hong Kong \- Organ harvesting \- Enslave/sterilize Muslim minorities \- Sinking Vietnamese fishing boats \- Killing Indian soldiers \- Coverup of the whole virus situation until it was too late \- Constantly threatening invasion of Taiwan (likely to happen this decade)

Saying "but muh business" is wrong. Either you think these actions are fine, or you think they are wrong and you can see the clear path where these are leading. Last time we kept on appeasing a dictatorial ethnostate the world took a while to recover.

<comment><USER51> Ehh you could say the same about the US.

The US is currently: bombing several countries, putting asylum seekers in high density prisons, blatantly ignoring a global pandemic, assassinating foreign leaders, disproportionately killing and imprisoning black people, using its currency to maintain global hegemony, starting trade wars with pretty much everyone, allies included, spying on the entire world, allies included, emitting a disproportionate amount of carbon, actively rolling back environmental protections, etc etc

The US isn't that different than China, some might consider US imperialism to be a greater evil. If it is wrong for companies to operate in China, how can you justify them operating in the United States?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The US Attorney General gives a lot of indicators of corruption. At the very least, the current US Presidential administration gives a lot of indications of unfairly favoring some companies over others. Why should we believe the US Attorney General on this?

</comment><comment><USER7> > He added that Hollywood has routinely caved into pressure and censored their > films "to appease the Chinese Communist Party."

First point: it's the Chinese government. In China, the government has the ability to shape business actions far more than in the US, because sovereignty. Calling it "CCP" feels political, even if it is accurate.

Hypocrisy, coming from the federal government of the USA, who does the exact same thing when Hollywood wants to use any part of the DoD[1].

It shouldn't happen in either case, but it does. And this US Attorney General isn't a relevant neutral source for this message. It just looks like he's making a political statement from a White House that is in the middle of a multi-faceted trade war negotiation with the same entities being criticized here. Also note that this US Attorney General's office is the one which is seeking extradition of the CFO of Huawei[2] from Canada which has been verbally acknowledged by Barr's boss as negotiation leverage in the trade war.

> I suspect Walt Disney would be disheartened to see how the company he > founded deals with the foreign dictatorships of our day

Walt Disney was politically hard right after the US entered WW2 and joined the Second Red Scare on the side of Senator McCarthy. I honestly don't care what he would say today.

Also worth nothing that Ronald Reagan was also a movie propagandist for the US Army in WW2 and was another loud voice like Senator McCarthy during the Second Red Scare. It was the moral panic / cancel culture of its day.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military- entertainment_complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military- entertainment_complex)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou#Detention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meng_Wanzhou#Detention)

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

</comment><comment><USER53> Most of these are publicly traded companies. They aren't owned by the U.S. government.

Companies will act in the best interests of the company and only it's largest shareholders.

U.S. citizens need to get it through their heads that they can't count on companies to be patriotic.

Republicans are selling out the U.S. to corporations, but they have this false notion that corporations are loyal to a government for some stupid reason.

We'll unless they are Chinese companies, because all Chinese companies are partially owned by the Chinese Government so they are loyal to China, or else.

IBM cooperated with Nazi Germany, as did GM, Ford and dupont, etc. GM and Ford were dragging their feet converting factories in the U.S. for war production, but they did so willingly in Germany.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/daily/nov98/n...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm)

<comment><USER54> Publicly traded companies wouldn't exist given Chinese government rule. It is a short term interest to support that government, when long term, it could ultimately lead to the shareholder's removal or dilution by the government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Original title: "Attorney General Barr accuses Hollywood, Big Tech of collaborating with China"

<comment> blaser-waffle He's not wrong.

But it also doesn't make him any less of an asshole -- Barr is a shady character.

<comment><USER16> This.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Barr didn't seem too concerned about foreign influence when it came to a national security advisor lying to the government about cash payments from Turkey and illegal coordination with Russia.

<comment><USER57> Those allegations turned out to be false.

<comment><USER25> Flynn admitted lying.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/defense/4217...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/policy/defense/421780-turkey- and-michael-flynn-five-things-to-know%3famp)

<comment><USER58> Only because he was pressured to, to save himself and his son financially.

This is an incredible scandal which didn't come to light since the DOJ dropped the case against him.

The prosecutors colluded with his _own law firm_ to deny him justice.

This has all come out since Syndey Powell took his case.

<comment><USER25> It's amazing how the law and order types who are always standing up for law enforcement are the first to say that the justice system unfairly pressures defendants when its one of their own.....

Oh and by the way, "The Hill" is definitely not part of the "liberal media."

<comment><USER59> According to his bio, he's a Harvard graduate.

I don't see how someone with that kind of education could be so easily mislead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Our "intelligence" and leadership groups in this country are nothing more than a farce.

This is comical.

</comment><comment><USER61> And the republican leadership all the way to the top have become "pawns of Russian influence" \- I can tell you which is more damaging to the sovereignty of this nation...

<comment><USER62> Based on your sources and thorough analysis, ok, I'll take your word on it.

<comment><USER61> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/cia- russia...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/cia-russia-putin- trump/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/trump-putin- ru...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/trump-putin-russia- afghanistan-us-soliders-bounty)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/us/politics/trump- putin-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/us/politics/trump- putin-g7.html)

[https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/donald-trump- putin-h...](https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/donald-trump-putin- helsinki-summit/index.html)

Ignoring the whole Roger Stone + wikileaks, Flynn, Manafort, etc.

The list goes on, and on, and on. But you already knew that.

<comment><USER62> 1\. Opinion piece

2\. Lots of "allegedly"

3\. Trump favors Russia in G7, apparently that means our leadership is under Russian influence

4\. Trumps denial of influence

Not too convincing so far.

<comment><USER61> Lol, intelligence from CIA sources is an opinion piece? Let me guess, Trump is the best president of your lifetime?

I notice you failed to address manafort, stone, and Flynn. None of which was "allegedly".

<comment><USER62> It's an opinion piece from one person who worked at the CIA and just is "don't bother working with Russia, they aren't interest".

Clear proof of Trumps collusion with Russia!

Let me guess, you think the secret Russian dossier is real?

<comment><USER61> Third time not addressing the arrests, convenient.

Also have yet to explain why the president is asking the CIA to share intel with an enemy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Trump has become a pawn of Russian influence.

<comment><USER47> He's been groomed for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The same xenophobic rhetoric repeated ad naseum. It's only natural that US industries would work with the second largest economy in the world.</comment>


Ask HN: Having trouble finding 2 past submissions; can anyone help? - <AUTHOR>

1. There was a post in the last 1-3 months for a site that offered photographs of (mostly) Apple devices out in the real world. I vaguely remember a photograph of a macbook on a picnic table. They were offering real photographs/settings for you to lay a screenshot of your website into. 2. There was a post in the past couple weeks for a tool that (as of it's posting) tracked python package and NPM releases. You pay monthly to get notifications about releases of various packages you're interested in. They promised support for Ruby  gems in the near future on their blog.<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> #2 sounds like <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224499></comment>


Teach yourself you to Hack in 6-9 months - <AUTHOR> http://iamelgringo.blogspot.com/2008/05/teach-yourself-you-to-hack-in-6-9.html <comment><USER2> Correct title: "Become a Web-savy Pythonista in 6-9 months"

If you want to become a hacker, develop these traits: 1\. A deep interest in technology, particularly programming and computers, and a habit of fueling this interest by learning and tinkering. 2\. A sense of pride in one's work and a desire to compete with oneself.

That's it. Really. I've always understood a 'hacker' to be someone who programs (or something similar) because he enjoys it. That is, as Aristotle would say, he hacks for the sake of hacking as opposed to for the sake of something else (like making a living.) If you become like that, knowledge and skill should come naturally.

If you want a set of things to learn: 1\. Some programming languages, the more the better, but use discretion: Make sure you learn them well enough to use them. 2\. Unix. 3\. Windows. (like you're going to be able to avoid it.) 4\. Math. 5\. A text editor. Preferably Emacs and Vim. (learn both of them) 6\. Web protocols: TCP/IP, HTTP, FTP, when and how to use them. 7\. Markup Languages (including HTML but don't stop there) 8\. Whatever else interests you.

You don't have to know anything about computers to be a 'hacker' in the original sense of the word, but it seems to have narrowed it's scope in general usage.

Some background: <http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html> <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html> <http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html> <http://alum.mit.edu/ne/whatmatters/200304/hack.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> I titled the post "Learn how to hack..." because of the "Ask YC: How do I become a hacker?" posts that keep coming up, not because I think that following these steps will make you a hacker. When people ask, "How do I become a hacker?" on this forum, they tend to mean, "How do I make web apps?" and that's the question that I answered.

I tried to correct that in some of the edits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Has the word "hacker" really become so devalued around here that it's now considered something you can "become" from a standing start, by following a six-to-nine-month course of study?

<comment><USER4> I don't really understand the meaning of this word anymore. Seems like in the past it meant someone with super-top-notch-elite skills who could crack into the world bank or pentagon or something. Nowadays it seems to be closer to "programmer".

<comment><USER5>
        Nowadays it seems to be closer to "programmer"

Actually, that's the _original_ meaning: <http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html>

<comment><USER4> That still looks more like "really good programmer".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article has a major, major fault. It implies that learning happens step by step, and to learn new things you have to stop what you're doing and move onto the next thing.

This is not how it works. Well, in my case. The way I learn, and have learnt for the past several years, is by diving in head-first and facing the facts 1,000 times at once. I didn't learn python, then learn MySQL. No, I learn Django which taught me the two, plus how to build a web framework, how to do unit and functional testing, how to scale and deploy application, how to interact with organized and structural programing, and how to be the best programer I can be.

Learning doesn't happen step by step, it happens in a vast flow. In high school, did they teach you how to write an essay, then let you write a little English, then move onto History? No, they threw you in head-first with 6 or more classes a day, and made you face the facts. If you really want to learn how to "Hack", dive in face first, don't think about the consequences, fight for your life and do what ever you can do to learn new things.

<comment><USER7> Learning Django is not at all synonymous with learning Python and certainly not at all synonymous with learning SQL. The entire point of a framework is to abstract out things such as SQL via the use of an ORM. While learning Django you do indeed learn the syntax and common of libraries of Python, but it's hardly a good way to learn a lot about the language.

Diving in head first is a great way to learn by trial and error, but it should create a splintering effect. You start learning Django which uses Python; you like Python and go out and start learning more about it. This eventually splinters out into branches where you go elsewhere to learn about more fundamental programming concepts. You learn about this funky "SQL" stuff that Django is writing behind the scenes and branch out to learn how to write SQL queries yourself and concepts like indexes, triggers, stored procedures, locking levels...

But to say Django "teaches" you things like Python, SQL and scaling... it's naive and may even be insulting to anyone who has dedicated the years of their life required to truly _learn_ these topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even if you master a programming language and have no clue about algorithms, it won't work.

<comment><USER9> That really depends on what you want to do. For most webapps, the algorithm you need already exists in a library, and your job is to tap into it.

For those apps that require serious algorithmic innovation, your best bet is to start with a math degree, or (at the very least) a profound interest in mathematics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> this post seems to equate hack with "how to build a webapp" being able to hack it should imply the ability to do webapps, but the converse is certainly not the case.

</comment><comment><USER11> forgot 1 step; make a developer friend. having someone u can get help from - lessens frustration and helps tremendous ly

<comment><USER12> Better yet: find a handful of ambitious novices like yourself, as well as a dev friend. Get together regularly and frequently with the novices to learn together; invite the dev friend every once in a while when you get stuck as a group.

I think I just described a micro-university.

<comment><USER13> Or you could attend SuperHappyDevHouse.

<comment><USER12> in NC?

<comment><USER14> Well, potentially...

<http://termie.pbwiki.com/HowToDevHouse>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> think the people who are not hackers view the term "hackers" as more of a person who makes something from nothing. hacking in my mind has a lot of allusions to trying to get through a jungle with a machete. It's a rough quick way to get something done.

I don't think many on this site see their hacker status having anything to do with quick and dirty but I think perhaps the general populous views it that way.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Learn-to-Hack" could be a good startup. I am sure anyone who reads HN and cannot code would love to learn how to. If you are a good hacker and you love to share your knowledge you can certainly build a loyal community may you start "Learn-to-Hack" blog/web app.

Now having said that I think it is important for people who cannot code to know that "Hacking" is a lifestyle and not really a skill or a profession. At least that is the vibe I get from the ones I know. I think Hacking dates back to thousands of years back. Like hacking "fire", "huts". Hacking is now refered to software I guess. I dont think you can learn to be a Hacker. As a matter of fact I am not even sure that all coders are hackers.

<comment><USER17> <http://www.hacketyhack.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Learning Python [...] is a very nice introduction to an actual programming language."

What's an actual programming language?

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Why did you decide to leave lisp out?

</comment><comment><USER19> this is useful, thanks

</comment><comment><USER20> I personally think that someone who has a hacker inside them trying to get out is intrinsically curious and focused enough to obtain the answers on his or her own . . . if you need to ask around you don't really have it in you . . .</comment>


The last Incan suspension bridge is made entirely of grass and woven by hand - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/06/10/the_last_incan_suspension_bridge_is_made_entirely_of_grass_and_woven_by.html?wpsrc=theweek <comment><USER2> > The Incas never invented the wheel...

In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it's just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull things. It's an accident of geography, and the article would be better off without the vaguely racist opening about how the "primitive" Incans were able to do amazing things with fibres even though they never "figured out" this other stuff.

<comment><USER3> _In fact, the Incans did know about wheels, it 's just that wheels are considerably less useful when you don't have any large pack animals to pull things._

The Incans did not have the wheel (when we refer to people having the wheel, we mean with an axle). They used wood beams to roll things around, but that's not a wheel. As far as I know, the only group that had the wheel in the Americas were the ancient Mexicans.

Further, devices like wheel barrows and carts are incredibly useful with or without pack animals. Doubly so if you had the incredible manpower that the Incans had where you can easily just use humans to pull them instead of pack animals. Wheels aren't just for hauling things around either, it is hard to express how _incredibly_ useful potter's wheels has been for the last five thousand years.

<comment><USER4> I think Incans lived in the mountains and lacked lots of flat ground with which to roll things around. So they did develop some wheel-like devices, but they never applied them in things like wheel barrows or carts because those are just not that useful going up and down mountains.

<comment><USER3> On well worn paths on moderate to even heavy inclines, a cart is still highly effective at reducing manpower necessary to move heavy objects (like the giant stones the Incans moved).

The Incans didn't not have the wheel because they wouldn't have found it useful. The Incans didn't have the wheel and axle because it wasn't an obvious invention.

All evidence points to the wheel in the "old world" (ugh, I hate that term) being invented in one place at one time. It wasn't obvious. It wasn't simultaneously invented by hundreds of people across Europe, Asia and Africa. It was simply copied everywhere and Europe, Asia and Africa were fortunate enough to be connected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a condensed version of a longer article: [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/world_of_wonders/2011/02/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/world_of_wonders/2011/02/the_last_incan_grass_bridge.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not really a 500-year-old bridge if they install a new one every year...

<comment><USER7> That's actually a famous paradox - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)

<comment><USER8> This isn't that, though. They're not replacing the bridge strand-by-strand; they construct an entirely new bridge each year then get rid of the old one.

<comment><USER9> They use the old bridge to bootstrap the new bridge, by pulling the new ropes across. Each bridge is a descendent of the previous bridge. The continuity makes a "500 year old bridge".

These bridges were intended to be temporary, whereas stone or metal bridges are intended to be permanent. You are comparing apples to oranges.

The new bridge and the old bridge are actually the same bridge, just made with different materials.

<comment><USER10> The bridges are in the same location, but they are not the same bridge.

One references location ('the bridge that crosses the river over there'), the other pertains to the physical composition that makes every thing unique (the bridge made of _those_ specific fibers).

It'd be like claiming the different people that inhabit the same house over the span of 100 years are all the same people, because they're all humans. They're all people, and they all inhabited the house ('the people in that house'), but they in fact possess different unique identity.

<comment><USER11> This is like the Platonic HN comment. Person hears about an interesting problem in another field (yeah, the ship of Theseus is actually interesting. That's why people still discuss it), asserts the solution after having thought about it for two minutes, then provides a useless analogy. Good work, you solved the problem! All those philosophers can quit their adjunct professorships and go bootstrap some social web companies now.

<comment><USER12> ...no, the point was that it wasn't a ship of theseus situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In some areas, such as agriculture, modern technology still has much to learn from the achievements of the Incas. The amount of land under cultivation in the Andes is still a fraction of what it once was.

<comment><USER14> > The amount of land under cultivation in the Andes is still a fraction of > what it once was.

And yet I haven't heard of famines in the past few years – which, given Europe's history before 'modern technology' came along, should happen every now and then with the older methods.

Certainly modern agriculture does have some drawbacks, and with an appropriate set of priorities, you can probably claim that it is worse than what we had 200 years ago, but it works surprisingly well at feeding seven billion people while at the same time only requiring a tiny fraction of said seven billion people to actually be employed in agriculture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also related, a "living bridge" in India

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongriat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nongriat)

<comment><USER16> They are quite amazing: [http://www.picturesw.com/2012/08/the-natural-root- bridges-of...](http://www.picturesw.com/2012/08/the-natural-root-bridges-of- cherrapunji.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "developing a language of knotted strings known as quipo, which has yet to be decoded"

Sigh, not this crap again. I bought a book in Arequipa or Cusco back in 2004 or so that described in detail a large amount of quipu that had been found in the area. Just reading the Wikipedia article would have been enough for this author to debunk this Incan mythical nonsense. It's pretty widely settled now that quipu are a system for counting and bookkeeping and is not a writing system in the sense that it translates words or sounds into written equivalents. E.g. you had to know that red knots represented mules and yellow ones baskets of corn (it's obviously much more complex than this). It's still a writing system and indubitably very useful and ingenious for and of the Incans, but we do know a bunch about it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read that as "made entirely of glass" and was imagining a rope bridge made out of glass strands. Could be pretty cool at night if the strands were light pipes and you lit up the ends...

<comment><USER19> Same here. And the mention of "fibre" in the article made me think along the same lines.

If I hadn't misread I would have been impressed by the bridge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> But how did they string the bridge across the _first_ time?

<comment><USER21> Start by pulling across a string (with an arrow, or by climbing over to the other side with it). Use that string to pull over a cord, use that cord to pull over a rope, use that rope to pull over a bridge.

<comment><USER22> Modern suspension bridges are started that same exact way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Bridge of San Luis Rey might be my favorite novel.

</comment><comment> ryan-allen I thought Incan only looked after domain names?</comment>