Singing road strikes wrong chord with Dutch villagers - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-road/singing-road-strikes-wrong-chord-with-dutch-villagers-idUSKBN1HH39O <comment><USER2> Lancaster, California has a musical road - like the Dutch road, there were complaints about the noise from residents; it was torn up and a new one built out in the desert.

In both cases, it was mistuned [1] because of a miscommunication about whether the dimensions for the spacing of rumble strip grooves included the width of the groove itself.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0)

</comment><comment><USER3> When I was a kid, my dad was the mayor of our town. This story reminded me of his time in office.

For example, they did a venture with a contractor using a new paving technique, in an attempt to lower future costs for street paving. When it didn't work, there was a clause protecting the city and the work was repaired at no / little cost. Of course the local newspaper raked the city over the coals for the burden of long construction times, completely ignoring that local government had attempted to do something innovative and cost-saving for its citizens.

In another case, the downtown area had become destitute, especially as the main shopping area shifted to the outskirts of town. In an effort to revitalize, the city put up new decorative lamp posts, flower baskets, and did an attractive concrete stamping on new sidewalks. Once again, everybody complained about government waste, when really the city was trying to do what it could to make it a more attractive community and encourage more businesses to reopen / stay downtown.

My point is, while perhaps the singing road didn't have its desired outcome, I give them credit for trying to do something novel.

<comment><USER4> > Once again, everybody complained about government waste, when really the > city was trying to do what it could to make it a more attractive community > and encourage more businesses to reopen / stay downtown.

Having grown up in an area with no sense of style or flourish, I can appreciate the sentiment behind that. Every time I go to Japan or most of the west coast I'm blown away by how much effort goes into making the community look...nice.

However, all too often, a city's attempt to do this involves a contractor or supplier charging obscene amounts of money for the end result. Hence the accusations of waste.

Case in point: Sandy Springs, GA recently paid $99,333 for the city's new _logo_. The result is the caliber of work I'd expect from a Fiverr task.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of an infamous episode from my hometown's history: the surprise 'Welcome' sign installed by the county's Art Commission. It was widely panned and ended up being taken down after two months. Looking back at it now, the sign was indeed somewhat tacky, but the perception that the county had done this without seeking local input is what really drove the vitriol.

[0]: [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Saying-Goodbye-to- Castro...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Saying-Goodbye-to-Castro- Valley-Welcome-Sign-2795148.php) [1]: [https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2011/07/22/castro-valley- canoe-...](https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2011/07/22/castro-valley-canoe-sign- sunk/)

<comment><USER6> Wow, crazy story! "Let's secretly decide to put up this eyesore, spend $100k of taxpayer money on it, then when people don't like it, try to re-educate them and convince them to like it." Classic case of government waste and arrogance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The noise level was well within legal norms, but the provincial authorities wisely choose to remove the 'singing road' after speaking with the local residents affected by the noise.

Ostensibly, the musical effect was a secondary objective; the primary purpose of this experiment was to test the durability of the specific type of rumble strips used¹.

1: [http://www.lc.nl/friesland/Gedeputeerde-Zingende-weg-zou- tot...](http://www.lc.nl/friesland/Gedeputeerde-Zingende-weg-zou-tot-na-zomer- blijven-liggen-23078507.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Long ago I once saw an ad for a kind of swag: ribbons that attached to balloons. There were ridges impressed onto the ribbon so that you could draw your thumbnail down it and it would play a sound using the balloon as the diaphragm. The ad was for a company that would put your recording onto the ribbons, your jingle or slogan or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tom Scott drives along a _Californian_ singing road:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef93WmlEho0)

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if something similar could be employed to produce a noise canceling effect on jake brakes?

Obviously you wouldn't be able to get it spot on because of speed vs engine RPM but you could at least tune it for the popular combinations.

<comment><USER11> Noise cancellation is all about phase and you have no way of knowing what the revs are on the jake brake (which is essentially an engine running as a compressor so it reduces speed rather than that it adds speed).

So while it may help in isolated cases it is going to _amplify_ the noise for the remainder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't believe the level of disfunctionality a local authority must attain to even contemplate such an infrastructure. I realize not everyone in local government can be a genius, but the collective IQ/EQ of this must be substantially south of 100. Then again, I know a local mayor that had cobblestones placed on a 30 meter stretch of road, officially to revive a picturesque and photogenic atmosphere near the village church, unofficially because it was right in front of the house of his political opponent which he hoped would be driven insane by the noise.

<comment><USER10> I can imagine this. It's like my hometown, but in Europe.

This is exactly the kind of poorly thought out, money wasting boondoggle projects you get when government is a gravy train not held accountable by it's source of funding.

Right now my hometown is engaged in all manner of hand wringing over a pet cemetery. They also put in more bike trail where a rail line was and spent millions of dollars tearing down rail bridge and building a more visually pleasing bike bridge. They must be expecting some fat cyclists since apparently just converting the rail bridge wasn't appropriate. The police are thoroughly overpaid and overstaffed and all run side businesses on taxpayer time.

It sucks that you have to under-fund and under-staff local government and services in order to get them to be well behaved (which to me means do their jobs without screwing around and wasting too many resources on non-mission critical crap) but I guess that's just how it is. If you just keep naively feeding the monster (e.g. "oh, you've squandered all your money on new cop cars and your building is falling down, well we'll give you the money this time but please pinky promise you don't do this again") it will grow big enough that you can't control it.

Edit: I know my last paragraph won't be popular here because it conflicts greatly with the politics of the typical HN reader but I'd appreciate it if you'd actually try and refute something I said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's something similar in New Mexico.

[http://thesingingroad.com/](http://thesingingroad.com/)

<comment><USER14> Importantly, it's _outside_ of town and there are no houses very close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am told that if you back up on it, you hear "Paul is dead".

<comment><USER16> The (Dutch) text under the video linked in another comment states that some people actually do drive the wrong way over it (when there is no other traffic, I hope).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would have been nice if the reporter let us listen to the road without them talking over it.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDPcM_1vJs&t=43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgDPcM_1vJs&t=43s)

<comment><USER19> It's interesting how you still observe the doppler effect even though the road isn't moving.

<comment><USER20> I think this explanation makes sense?

The source of the noise at any given moment is where the tire is (or has just caused) the strip to vibrate. That point is moving away from the observer about as fast as the car is moving away from the observer

So, the doppler effect is present since the point of friction is moving to a different point on the road, even if the road is stationary.

<comment><USER21> I think your explanation is correct, apart from that i do not think it is the tire that causes the strip to vibrate as much as it is the strip that causes the tire to vibrate.

If it is the tire that makes the noise, it is no surprise that there is a Doppler shift.

<comment><USER22> I don't think the tire is vibrating at an audible frequency. The tire colliding with the road creates a burst of air, and since these 'bursts' are moving you have a doppler effect.

In theory you could create the same effect by setting off fireworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A completely useless video which doesn't even play the full song for us to listen to. Why are news companies so braindead?

</comment><comment><USER24> "byres"</comment>


Show HN: Likeplum.com a knowledge marketplace, like yahoo answers on steroids - <AUTHOR> https://www.likeplum.com/user/learn/programming

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, I'd love any feedback for the site that you can provide. We had our soft launch last month and have been working to grow out user base. Any feedback or marketing ideas are appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> Question: do you already have medical professionals giving qualified medical treatments via your service?</comment>


Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Without a doubt, the best book I read in 2017 was the three body problem (first in a trilogy). I actually came across it in an interview with Alina Cohen of Initialized via the 20 minute VC podcast. It intrigued me to not know what it was about, and I recommend that people who are interested in reading it go in with as little information as possible.

Going to start the second one this weekend :)

<comment><USER3> this has been recommended to me quite often by my girlfriend. i should really get to it.

<comment><USER2> If you're like me, you will be gripped as quickly as the first chapter!

<comment><USER4> The second one is going to blow your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was a book a girl recommended me after our 2nd date :). The book made me think about who I am in a different way. I really recommend it, especially for those depressed because of no social life. The book is funny and scientific. Also gives some good advice.

Awkward: The Science of Why We're Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome Book by Ty Tashiro

</comment><comment><USER6> Seeing Ourselves Through Technology by Jill Walker Rettberg. It's a useful read for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of self representation through technology. Every time you tweet, take a selfie, like a facebook post or track your running, you're doing it to perhaps signal something to others or to document yourself. The book gives a good history on the topic and goes into people's motivations for self representation.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't recall if I read Ann Leckie's "Ancillary Justice" this year or last year. It was excellent.

I have only a few pages left of Neal Stephenson's "REAMDE", which turns out to be better than I had dared hope.

<comment><USER8> I came here to recommend _Ancillary Justice_ too. A surprising, awesome sci-fi novel that won the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I read a few good books this year, all of them non-fiction. Some that come to mind are:

"Worldviews - An Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science" by Richard DeWitt. Instead of doing a history-only or philosophy-only take on the topic, I really enjoyed how DeWitt meshed these two viewpoints and examined how they inter-played with each other. It overthrew forever my image of the ancients as a group of irrational, superstitious people who believed in such funny notions as the Sun and the planets orbiting the Earth. DeWitt nicely explains how given the data that they had, their conclusions were very much rational. For example, it's very difficult to imagine from our everyday experience that earth could be orbiting the Sun at a speed of some 30 km/sec.

"A History of the World" by Andrew Marr. I find history a simultaneously fascinating and frustrating subject. Fascinating, because a good knowledge of history makes the present day world seem a lot more meaningful and un- arbitrary. Frustrating, because it's difficult to find a history book that's not just a list of facts and dates. Marr's work walks us through history via vivid portrayals of interesting personalities and events. I found the accompanying documentary series equally interesting as well.

"The Philosophy of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as Rational and Cognitive Psychotherapy" by Donald Robertson. This book examines the common grounds between stoic (and to far lesser extent, Buddhist) philosophies and modern cognitive behavioral therapy. It also lists some of the tools in the stoic's tool-chest to tackle common anxieties and worries about life. The nice thing about this book is that it teaches you to treat philosophy as a method of self-therapy, which immediately opens up an ancient fund of literature to tackle day to day problems.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Aeon 14 novels following Tanis Richards[1] have been a consistently good read. The Intrepid Saga and The Orion War series. Haven't ventured into the other offshoots as yet.

The Dome Trilogy[2] was also pretty good, as are the Rho Agenda series[3][4][5].

And if you prefer horror to sci-fi, the I Am Not a Serial Killer series[6] was very good overall, although I thought it lost some steam in the last two books.

And finally, The Rosie Project[7] was so completely charming I ended up reading it straight through in one night.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper](https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6426890.M_D_Cooper)

[2] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected- rain](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25501349-unexpected-rain)

[3] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho- agenda](https://www.goodreads.com/series/61746-the-rho-agenda)

[4] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda- incep...](https://www.goodreads.com/series/142618-the-rho-agenda-inception)

[5] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda- assimilat...](https://www.goodreads.com/series/175066-rho-agenda-assimilation)

[6] [https://www.goodreads.com/series/49883-john- cleaver](https://www.goodreads.com/series/49883-john-cleaver)

[7] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18015965-the-rosie- proje...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18015965-the-rosie-project)

<comment><USER11> +1 for feel-good Rosie Project. The sequel is nice, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll give you my 3 favorites of the year:

\- The Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. The shooting of Garfield is the framing of this book. It covers a time period I knew such little about (~1880s), so I learned so much reading it. Just a crazy, interesting story in many ways.

\- The Forever War, by Filkins. Sort of a series of vignettes by a reporter covering Afghanistan, then Iraq during the war. I still don't know what to think / feel about it, but I've recommended the book several times.

\- Barbarians at the Gate, by Burroughs, Helyar. A classic that I put off reading for years because I thought it would be a slog (it's sort of long), but I finished in a week. I love business history / case study books, and this is one of the most famous, for good reason. If you like this also check out Predator's Ball, which I read this year. It's about Milken and the junk bond era.

<comment><USER13> "now that the world is on fire and the barbarians are at the gate you have the audacity to come to me for help."

Sorry, couldn't resist :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not finished yet. Genome- Matt Ridley. The guy knows how to take a "dry" subject and spin a nice story around the central subject. Was recommended by Naval Ravikant on the Shane Parrish's Knowledge Project podcast. Makes even more sense to me now that I actually work for a NGS company.

<comment><USER15> This was one of Mark Zuckerberg's book recommendations. It's a great book to get a basic understanding of the Genome. I read most of the books he recommended and all gave me a new view of the world. I've since changed my view of him. Facebook was not an accident. He truly is a deep thinker and understands what it takes to move Facebook forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Top four this year listed below. Two fiction, two non-fiction.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucial_Conversations%3A_Tools...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucial_Conversations%3A_Tools_for_Talking_When_Stakes_Are_High)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_Recognition_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_Recognition_\(novel\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty- Four](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four)

</comment><comment><USER17> Oooh 2017 has been a year of heavy reading. There's a few for very different reasons:

\- Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson

\- Functional Programming in JS by Michael Fogus

\- The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

\- Why the Tories Won by Tim Ross

\- The Game by Neil Strauss (as a story of self-destruction and a guide on how not to treat women).

\- Built to Sell by John Warrilow

\- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

I'm currently reading a handful of books on statistics and UX. This may change before the end of the year.

I think there's a few I might return to that are half done but I guess the fact I've put them down half way through disqualifies from being "the best".

Amd just to finish: I love these book posts. A good deal of books I read come from these :)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for sharing. I read Steve Jobs by Isaacson and it was great and very in-depth! I also want to desperately read his latest biography on Leonardo da Vinci before the year end as heard it is awesome.

<comment><USER17> Oh I didn't know he had released one on da Vinci! Thanks for the heads up.

Einstein is a great book. I also recommend the NatGeo series after reading it - it's based on the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic "Dune". Amazing both for the entertainment value as well as for the thought-provoking ecological/sociopolitical ideas.

<comment><USER20> I think the director of Blade Runner 2049 is working on a Dune movie

<comment><USER19> I'd pay to see it. BR2049 was amazing IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The DAO of Capital by Mark Spitznagel, it basically talks about an investing approach where "one gains by losing and loses by gaining.", it is very insightful because it explains a strategy and effect I have seen work everywhere. Where people who suffer hardship early on, become stronger to deal with things, whereas people who do not suffer hardship early on get wiped off when real hardship arrives.

His whole strategy is about how to do things in life by not trying to take the greedy algorithm [1] strategy where you choose the most logically beneficial outcome at each step and hoping to find the global optimum. Rather he talks about how various organisms in nature take a less than optimal step in the short run, but in a roundabout way they win big.

Spitznagel runs a billion-dollar hedge fund based on the same strategy, and his investment approach is to make less profit in the immediate future, only to make a humongous profit in the long-term future. He has demonstrated this strategy with his fund in 2015 when the market flash crashed and he made billions.

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

</comment><comment><USER22> Code Complete, Clean Code, and Debugging were profoundly educational to me as a junior developer. The Obstacle is the Way helped me deal with personal issues, but it's still a work in progress. The Joy of Less was a great introduction to minimalism. I just started reading Neuromancer but its got me hooked on the scifi/cyberpunk genre.

</comment><comment><USER23> Absolutely, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. He crafts a beautiful story.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand was a long one, but very very good also.

Lastly, The Empire of Austria: Its Rise and Present Power by John S. C. Abbott. It gave me a deeper understanding and historical context on where I am currently based.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pretty popular and not a niche book, but I enjoyed Give and Take by Adam Grant very much [0].

\- [0] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-give-and- take/](https://www.robinwieruch.de/lessons-learned-give-and-take/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance

Red Rising and sequels by Pierce Brown

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

(I read Three Body Problem + sequels in 2016. The first book I thought was ok. I really liked the second book - The Dark Forest - the Dark Forest theory of the universe I thought was quite interesting)

<comment><USER26> Red Rising was great!

Also: Bobiverse [https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/192752-bobiverse)

First Conquest [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21519728-first- conquest](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21519728-first-conquest)

Lost Colonies Trilogy [https://www.goodreads.com/series/166573-lost-colonies- trilog...](https://www.goodreads.com/series/166573-lost-colonies-trilogy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tim Wu's "The Master Switch". A history of communications industries in the United States with an emphasis on consolidation / industrial organization and its effects on free speech.

</comment><comment><USER28> Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

<comment><USER29> My second favorite book I read this year was Sapiens which is also really good in case anyone is interested. I mention it because AFAIK, the book the person I'm responding to recommended is a follow-up of sorts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Fiction: A Little Life, not about technology but a very eye-opening set of perspectives I've never read before. Cried on the El twice while reading it.

Nonfiction: Master of the Senate by Rob Caro. Lyndon Johnson's years in the senate (1949-1960) with an incredibly rich historical backdrop and detail. Caro is known for writing about power and how powerful people have wielded it, and this is a master work. Paints a very human picture of an extremely effective politician.

<comment><USER31> I read it a few years ago, but I must second _Master of the Senate_. Probably _the_ best book on American politics I have ever read.

<comment><USER32> If you like Caro's work check out The Power Broker.

<comment><USER33> I actually much prefer the years of LBJ to the power broker. Caro uses the extra length to go soon much deeper.

<comment><USER31> I've read all Caro's work. I greatly enjoyed them all, although the last book felt like it lost its way about halfway through. Hopefully volume five will be back on track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The Oyster War: The True Story of a Small Farm, Big Politics, and the Future of Wilderness in America by Summer Brennan. I learned more about oysters than I thought possible, the history of oyster farming, and a lot about the setting aside of land for national parks. It doesn't drag at all, and the author does a great job of trying to stay relatively neutral. She does explain her conclusions at the end, but only have you have formed your own.

</comment><comment><USER35> [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21094755-command-and- con...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21094755-command-and-control)

Command and Control by Eric Schlosser

A great history of the US nuclear stockpile interwoven with the story of a specific silo accident

</comment><comment><USER20> I am currently reading the Strugatsky brothers' "The Doomed City". The history of the book and its fanfare intrigued me. Sci Fi played an important role in Russian history as authors treaded carefully with their criticisms of the State. This book was written and went unreleased for decades in fear of retribution.

</comment><comment><USER36> Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Highest possible recommendation. Everyone I've urged to read it has loved it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Tim O'Reilly's WTF - What's the future. The single best part was where he details how O'Reilly forecasts the future. But great chapters on open data and also the clearest explanation on how and why the economy has changed in the past fifty years.

</comment><comment><USER38> End of the World Running Club - I picked it up for £1 on kindle and its about a group running the length of the UK to make the boat leaving the UK following a asteroid strike

Also liking Shoe Dog by Phil Knight at the moment

</comment><comment><USER39> Not done with it yet but listening to a great audiobook from Audible called Shoe Dog about the founding of Nike. Great story of the tough grind of starting a business. Recommended on the Acquired podcast.

</comment><comment><USER40> One of the best books I've read ever! Haskell Programming: [http://haskellbook.com/index.html](http://haskellbook.com/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Deep Work by Cal Newport

</comment><comment><USER42> Jaron Lanier's "Dawn of the New Everything". Beautiful description of his journey in VR and how Silicon Valley has evolved from the early 80s.

</comment><comment><USER43> Shoe Dog - Phil Knight

I read this book based on the recommendation of Bill Gates. It was one of the best books I have read in a while

</comment><comment><USER44> Travels with Charley in search of America

</comment><comment><USER45> The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

</comment><comment><USER46> leonardo da vinci bio by walter isaacson came out this year. very in-depth & excellently researched

</comment><comment><USER47> Principles by Ray Dalio, and its not even close. Best book of 2017 imo.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sapiens by Noah Harari or When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

</comment><comment><USER49> Angel by Jason Calacanis

Traction by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares

</comment><comment><USER50> The Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins

<comment><USER36> Agree this is great, should be required reading for anyone who wants to hit Financial Independence. Natural fit for HN readers.

<comment><USER51> I think it should be read by everybody, period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "An American Sickness"

</comment><comment><USER53> Teaming with microbes

</comment><comment><USER54> "Between Facts and Norms" by Juergen Habermas. A voice of clarity for a time of confusion and rancor.</comment>


Generating Matter and Antimatter from Nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101208130038.htm

<comment><USER2> _a high-energy electron beam combined with an intense laser pulse could rip apart a vacuum into its fundamental matter and antimatter components_

I'm not a physicist, but this sounds wrong. Vacuum doesn't have "matter and antimatter components", it's vacuum.

<comment><USER3> This is going to be a bit weird when you're used to interacting with the universe at a macroscopic level, but the vacuum is actually more like a cosmic bank account. On balance it is at '0', but locally there can be small 'offenses' which create pairs of particles that spontaneously annihilate (again, in pairs) before anybody gets a chance to notice.

As long as the books balance (particles and anti-particles created in equal proportions) the universe does not seem to care, it even does not care if these particles are in existence for a longer period of time, or are separated by distances large enough that you can notice them.

This also apparently is one of the more interesting pieces of the puzzle about where all this stuff came from in the first place and has been used to postulate the existence of an 'anti-universe'.

<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67O3TH20100825>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pair production is not a new phenomenon, it's been known since Einstein. This is the fundamental way particle colliders work.

<comment><USER5> But it seems they managed to do it at a pretty large scale, this time, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original was submitted yesterday:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1986505>

It garnered no discussion, and sank without trace.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where Nothing = massive amounts of energy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Please correct any misunderstandings I may have in the following:

* Vacuum has no mass (gravitational attraction). * Normal matter has mass. * Vacuum is composed of matter and antimatter. * Therefore, antimatter has negative mass (negative gravitational attraction).

<comment><USER9> Its tricky to answer, as I am limited to browsing wikipedia pages on these topics and no more knowledgeable than you are on the topic :-). One obvious alternative to your line of thinking is that the matter+anti-matter that is created in a vacuum is not 'normal' (using your position on normal matter), and has no mass.

One of the wikipedia pages seems to support that:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles> "As such, virtual particles are also excitations of the underlying fields, but are detectable only as forces but not particles."

It seems to have something to do with normally existing only for a very short time, and affecting the universe only on a very short range that these virtual particles get away with appearing to not having a mass from the point of view of the rest of the universe. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> so this is not creating something out of nothing is it? it is figuring out that what we thought was nothing is really something, no?

could've said, "vacuum != nothing" imho.

<comment><USER11> Then what is 'nothing'?

<comment><USER10> "That which rocks dream about." -Aristotle</comment></comment></comment>


Google's $8.5 million Buzz settlement a go - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/02/google_buzz_settlement_preliminary_settlement/

<comment><USER2> This is ridiculous. So two lawyers are getting paid 2.125 million dollars (25% of the $8.5M settlement) for suing Google on my behalf over something I don't mind? I never signed up to make a couple of guys millionaires from a complaint about a free service.

Is there a way to protest this kind of absurd class action suit and reduce the payout?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but just to make sure everybody understands it's only the lawyers (and dubious privacy organizations) who get paid, they sent out an email to every Google Mail user stating (quote):

" _Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011._ "

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> here is what I sent Google in response:

I love Gmail. I've loved it since the beginning when I got an invite code from [redacted] and I think it has just gotten better and better over the years. But, I am disappointed that you didn't commit to being more careful with how you handle privacy leaks with new products. Either make a commitment that you won't intentionally do something like this again, or admit that your plan is to "educate" people about auto-added privacy-violating products that ride on Gmail's coattails. If you plan on going the latter route, please let me know so I can switch to a different email provider now.</comment>


Some Hollywood Types Do Actually Get Web 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/08/02/some-hollywood-types-do-actually-get-web-2-0 <comment><USER2> You bet they do! Have you seen this?

<http://www.searchwithkevin.com></comment>


Toward a NoSQL taxonomy - <AUTHOR> http://www.dbms2.com/2010/03/14/nosql-taxonomy/

<comment><USER2> His taxonomy agrees nicely with the visual survey at <http://blog.nahurst.com/visual-guide-to-nosql-systems> (submitted yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190772>)</comment>


Erlangers, Use Labels - <AUTHOR> http://zxq9.com/archives/1337 <comment><USER2> > Which versions force your eyes to do less jumping around?

Maybe I'm weird but the author's first examples are easier to read. Having labels is good when there is a non-trivial nested mess, but nothing comes for free. When the idiom is well-understood, being overly explicit ends up with more noise. In the first examples, I'm looking at 1 paragraph of code and understand what's going on. In the supposedly improved examples, labels force a mental dereferencing and a jump to different code paragraphs. Sometimes I don't want to scroll throughout the file (or lookup references) to understand something that's logically part of the same unit of processing.

Of course if the lamdas end up doing a lot of work then the overall structure gets lost and a label would be the right thing to do. But code is no exception to the rule "write for your audience". In this case, the audience is the compiler and humans which are versed in the idioms and style of that environment.

<comment><USER3> Agree entirely. My eyes are jumping around most on his last, "preferred" version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This kind of thing is always a balancing act.

There's the argument that implementation details should be hidden, therefore separate named functions should be defined and their behaviour should be clear from the name. In my experience, those who go too far in this direction may not be used to first class functions; for example, I worked on a PHP project which dated way before the addition of closures, and even their JS had no lambdas: all functions, even trivial one-liners which were only used once, were given top-level, globally-scoped names, defined all together in a separate file.

There's the argument that each expression shouldn't do too much, hence pulling a lambda out into a (locally scoped) name.

There's the argument that variables which are only used once should be written inline to avoid the mental cost of indirection.

There's the argument that values should have the tightest possible scope.

There's the argument that common 'utility functions' should be pulled out to a separate place.

In situations like this, I usually favour doing the 'real work' in a locally scoped function, and writing the argument-plumbing inline. That lies somewhere in between the author's "labelled_lambda" (tightly scoped definitions, but conflates processing with argument juggling) and "isolated_functions" (separates processing from argument juggling, but has a wider scope).

PS: Having only dabbled in Erlang, to me the real problem exposed by those examples is the lack of a combined lambda/case, e.g. as (eventually) found in Haskell [https://unknownparallel.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/the-long- an...](https://unknownparallel.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/the-long-and-epic- journey-of-lambdacase-2/)

<comment><USER5> > PS: Having only dabbled in Erlang, to me the real problem exposed by those > examples is the lack of a combined lambda/case,

All lambda in Erlang is case:

        do_whatever(Keys, SomeParameter) ->
          Lookups = lists:map(fun external_lookup/1, Keys),
          lists:foreach(fun
            ({ok, V}) -> do_side_effecty_thing(V, SomeParameter);
            ({error, R}) -> report_some_failure(R)
          end, Lookups).

<comment><USER6> I came away with a similar reaction, but there is no need to map separately first: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13136056)

Sometimes I do wish Erlang had something like F#'s active patterns because it'd make this sort of thing trivial to add to standard pattern expressions. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to add it myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the sentiment but a better example should have been chosen. The first example given is very easy to read and not at all confusing while the last is much more verbose and hence harder to parse for non-experts.

I see that for serious Erlangers it would make a lot of sense but for people like me who only dabble in it the first is probably as easy or even easier to read than the rest. And the ones using list comprehension are the worst whether they use named functions or not.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why not

      do_whatever(Keys, SomeParameter) ->
        lists:foreach(fun(Key) -> maybe_do_stuff(Key, SomeParameter) end, Keys).
      //...

Still simple, wins a line, removes the ugly ExecIfFound name

</comment><comment><USER6> There might be a good alternative. Sometimes it's that one function right in the case expression that prevents lifting the matching to the function head (which is considered good style in Erlang).

To do this you could try wrapping the list:foreach itself rather than worry about the inner function, leading to something which seems more concise and in one piece, leaving the more generic iteration to a well named function:

        -spec do_whatever(Keys, SomeParameter) -> ok when
            Keys :: [some_kind_of_key()],
            SomeParameter :: term().
        do_whatever(Keys, SomeParameter) ->
            lookup_each(fun
                ({ok, Value}) -> do_side_effecty_thing(Value, SomeParameter);
                ({error, Reason}) -> report_some_failure(Reason)
            end, Keys).

        lookup_each(Fn, Keys) ->
            lists:foreach(fun (Key) -> Fn(external_lookup(Key)) end, Keys).

</comment><comment><USER9> Would I be correct in thinking this is a similar argument those put forward by GvR against the desirability of multi-line lambdas in Python? i.e. once you need multiple lines then you probably should be naming them.

<comment><USER10> Yes. There's no pride in jamming the most amount of code into one line unless you're entering a contest.

<comment><USER4> Surely it's the current one-line* restriction which forces "jamming the most amount of code into one line".

Allowing multiple lines, by definition, allows breaking up those lines.

* It's not actually one-line, it's one expression; Python's just picky about where you're allowed to break up an expression over multiple lines. For example see [http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99243...](http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/99243/why-doesnt-python-allow-multi-line-lambdas/252546#252546)

<comment><USER11> I don't think GP meant one editor line, but one "line of code".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> for the list comprehension, why not

``` do_whatever(Keys, SomeParameter) -> [case external_lookup(Key) of {ok, V} -> do_side_effecty_thing(V, SomeParameter); {error, R} -> report_some_failure(R) end || Key <\- Keys], ok. ```

or

``` [begin some_func(Key), other_func(Key) end || Key <\- Keys]. ```

if only the value of other_func() needs to be in the result list.

<comment><USER13> FWIW HN does not do markdown[0], let alone markdown extensions like triple- backtick code blocks.

[0] it implements a very small subset of markdown badly: emphasis (with no escape so it tends to break when you try to use multiplication signs in your comments) and indented "code" blocks

<comment><USER14> HN works fine with multiplication signs ("×"), it's asterisks that are problematic.</comment></comment></comment>


How much does it cost to be Batman?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/02/how-much-does-it-cost-to-be-batman/

<comment><AUTHOR> "Assuming he's already around, how much does it cost to be Batman for, say, a year?"

more details on this: [http://economicstudents.com/2013/01/what-economics-can- teach...](http://economicstudents.com/2013/01/what-economics-can-teach-us- about-batman/)

</comment><comment><USER2> In the Nolan trilogy, all of his gadgets were already made by Wayne Enterprise for some other purposes or are shuttered projects. With data from batman's adventure, they can use the data to refine the prototype. Batman also doesn't fight villains constantly.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Assuming he's already around, how much does it cost to be Batman for, say, a year?" found the detailed report on the link:

[http://economicstudents.com/2013/01/what-economics-can- teach...](http://economicstudents.com/2013/01/what-economics-can-teach-us- about-batman/)</comment></comment>


The Suffocation of Democracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/ <comment><USER2> An interesting - and more tech-related question - is why democracy can be so easily suffocated these days.. and what we can do - or rather _must_ do - about it:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18151698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18151698)</comment>


Ask HN: what is your ROI of publishing your web app on Google Apps Marketplace? - <AUTHOR>

I am considering publishing one of my web apps on the Google Apps Marketplace but I am wondering if it is worth it ($100 + dev time to integrate).<p>What is your experience with it? Did you get good results? <comment><AUTHOR> Feeling lonely.</comment>


Ask HN: NYC HN Meetup? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a decent NYC population on HN? If so, let's plan a meeting in the city in the next week or two, and make some friends! Feel free to post any places to go/things to do that would be interesting. <comment><USER2> <http://groups.google.com/group/nyyc>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, awesome. I just applied to join.</comment></comment>


The Hallmarks of Crackpottery, Part 1: Two Comments - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/10/the_hallmarks_of_crackpottery.php

<comment><USER2> When I first saw the rationals placed in 1-1 correspondence with the integers I pointed out there were lots of mappings that don't work, e.g., mapping every integer to itself, thereby not having any integers left over for nontrivial fractions. The instructor didn't have the right answer handy, and many of us were confused. Sometimes Z and Q had the same cardinality, sometimes they didn't?

Here's one answer: it's like saying you can get from New York to Boston, then producing a map that demonstrates the route. There are many other routes that don't take you to Boston, but so what? All you need do is demonstrate _A_ map that gets you there -- you don't care about all the wrong ways to do something.

I wish the instructor had hit me over the head with that at the time. Perhaps we were too busy dodging Velociraptors and chasing those cute Neanderthal girls...</comment>


The Future of Gaming: a Portrait of the New Gamers - <AUTHOR> http://www.latd.com/2011/08/23/the-future-of-gaming-a-portrait-of-the-new-gamers/

<comment><USER3> I was hoping to hear something about demographics, but it seems to be wishful- thinking about games being something more than an entertainment medium. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't. On the more prosaic question of what will change in the pursuit of separating people from money with video games:

1) Gamers will continue to get older, more female, and richer.

2) Games will increasingly use -- and players will expect -- variable monetization such as item sales ("Free2Play"), aggressive discounting/bundling via e.g. Steam, and the like. This will cause aggressive price discrimination. A large portion of the "traditional" game audience will be very discomfit by this. They will be ignored.

3) The AAA games industry, built on games with feature-film budgets which need feature-film audiences to be profitable, radically contracts to serving the needs of a few intersecting core markets. Almost everything you see will be sequels and variations on themes which are known to work, such as $PERSONALITY $SPORT $YEAR.

4) Spending on games by teenagers increases because disposable games on their mobile devices perversely bring in more revenue than full-price traditional games, since a) they can trivially effect payment for things on their mobiles and b) piracy has almost totally cannibalized traditional games.

5) Physical distribution of games becomes a niche industry which attracts the worst possible kind of gaming customer. Steam and a few winners in social/MMORPG/MOBA/etc games print money. GameStop collapses with the used game market, with the thin edge of the wedge being account-locked bonuses with retail games which destroy their resale value among core gamers, and continuing organic growth of Steam and similar platforms.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a citation for [4b]? Piracy is certainly an issue, but it's not as much of an issue as you think, particularly in the console space.

Plus, with internet-based authentication schemes (eg. Starcraft 2) plus online games (eg. MMOs), it appears that even on PC, piracy is not as damaging as it once was.

Personally, as someone who works in the Games Industry, I disagree both with piracy as a cause, but also even with the fact that 'traditional games are dying'. Traditional games - from First Person Shooters, to Real Time Strategy, to Third Person Action games are all doing very well.

I think what you are noticing is that the game market as a whole is swelling, propelled by the newer, larger markets - social games, mobile games etc. - <USER2> thus traditional games are a much smaller part of it than before. But to say that they are dying? That is a mistaken position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, but I feel like I read this article 4 years ago. Every couple of years some research firm comes out with a study on "The New Gamer" and who they are - "Not just basement dwellers anymore!"...

I'm not saying it's not worthwhile to continue running these studies (let's be honest, plenty of companies will pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy them). But I think defining each study as "The New XXXX" is disingenuous.

Gamers are evolving over time, and the increasingly broadening scope of games are bringing in more and more casual gamers, and also creating an opportunity for first-time gamers to not feel entirely overwhelmed. That's been happening for years though, with developers like PopCap, BigFishGames, and WildTangent. It's nothing new.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sorry for an off-topic post but what a terrible website. With Javascript disabled I got a black window (with the article already available in the HTML source). With Javascript enabled it loaded for 14 seconds (yeah, I started counting). And the result was really not worth it for reading a simply article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be loading in a reasonable amount of time for me.</comment></comment>


Google's browser bug battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/security/72239/google-s-browser-bug-battle <comment><USER2> A lot of these ITWorld posts are just link bait... (they all come from one user too). Grr.

Anyway - I submitted the original source of this to save a few clicks :) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=719496></comment>


Alan Kay on Dijkstra (1997) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KivesLMncs

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course the full talk also has some merit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY)

</comment><comment><USER2> reminds me of the light hearted fights between theoretical physicists</comment>


How to trigger a content script beforeload in a Firefox addon vs Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://blog.webmynd.com/2011/04/04/equivalent-to-beforeload-event-for-firefox-extensions/

<comment><USER2> I spent this morning porting my Firefox add-on to Google Chrome. Chrome's API isn't as powerful but so much easier to pick up, I think this article illustrates the difference perfectly!</comment>


Nate Silver's 2012 Election Forecast (Obama 50.5%) - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/election-forecast-obama-begins-with-tenuous-advantage/

<comment><USER2> The really interesting content is the explanation of what goes into creating the election models. Basically, polls (with all their problems) and some very basic economic stats. Can HN denizens whip up a better model using public data?

</comment><comment><USER3> Misleading headline. 61.8% chance of winning. Expected 50.5% of popular vote.</comment>


H-1B: Nearly three-quarters of Valley techies are foreign - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/17/h-1b-foreign-citizens-make-up-nearly-three-quarters-of-silicon-valley-tech-workforce-report-says/? <comment> cbm-vic-20 As long as these "techies" are making 10-15% more than their green-carded and citizen peers with equivalent experience and skill, that seems like a win-win.

If they're not making more than green-carded and citizen peers, that's a flaw in the system that should be corrected. The H1-B program is intended to bring in high-skill foreign workers, and the only way to not drive down wages of green-card or citizen workers would be to ensure they cost more to employ. If everyone is playing by the rules, it's a win-win for everyone: companies get positions filled, the foreign worker gets a good wage, and the green-card and citizen worker salaries also rise.

In practice, though, H1-B becomes indentured servitude, since they cannot freely move between companies.

<comment><USER3> > In practice, though, H1-B becomes indentured servitude, since they cannot > freely move between companies.

This hasn't been true for at least 10 years (maybe more). It is entirely possible to change jobs on an H-1B. The new company needs to file a new application (called a transfer) for you and premium process it, which adds 2-3 weeks to the process of a job change. Cumbersome? Yes. Indentured servitude? Only if your skills are useful to your company alone.

As of January 2017, H-1B workers are also officially allowed one 60-day period of unemployment, so it's also not true we live in terror of losing our jobs lest we have to pack up and ship out the very next day.

I'm not denying the system could be better still e.g. don't require a new application every time you change your job, unless it's a completely different type of job or less salary, eliminate per-country quotas for green cards because of which hundreds of thousands of Indians and Chinese stick around on H-1Bs for years, allow 60-day periods of unemployment after any job longer than 6 months, or a lifetime 180-day limit. But it is frustrating to hear the amount of misinformation that flies around - the comments section of that article is a cesspool of misunderstanding and fear-mongering.

<comment><USER4> >It is entirely possible to change jobs on an H-1B.

It is and it's quite easy when your H-1B has not been extended past 6 years. Then it becomes interesting and this is what people colloquially refer as "indentured servitude".

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate? It's always been my understanding that the visa can be extended past 6 years in 1-3 year increments if you have an approved I-140. Without losing your "place" in the green card line.

<comment><USER4> It can be extended if you have an approved I-140 but also if you have a pending I-140. What's going to happen if you switch the job on a pending I-140? And an I-140 could be pending for years in case you are not aware. Even approved I-140 (after 180 days) is not clear cut because the AC21, which allows this, states something to the effect that it's fine if you change to a similar job. How similar? It's up to the USCIS to decide.

<comment><USER3> > What's going to happen if you switch the job on a pending I-140? And an > I-140 could be pending for years in case you are not aware.

The I-140 can be premium processed. How could it be pending for years? Your new employer restarts the PERM process with the priority date from your old application. For Indians and Chinese with multi-decade GC waits it makes no difference if you have to restart because your priority date doesn't change so it's not like you'd get a GC faster by staying with your current employer. For everyone else, you're stuck with your current employer for maybe a year or two until you get a GC.

> Even approved I-140 (after 180 days) is not clear cut because the AC21, > which allows this, states something to the effect that it's fine if you > change to a similar job. How similar? It's up to the USCIS to decide.

All true and valid points. Hence I said the system could be better. Eliminating per-country GC caps seems like the most expedient solution.

<comment><USER4> >The I-140 can be premium processed. How could it be pending for years?

"Premium processing" just means that your premium fee is refunded if the application is not approved in the short time. It can totally go for any period of time imaginable even without lawyers filing it in such a way as to ensure a couple of RFEs.

>Your new employer restarts the PERM process with the priority date from your old application.

Meanwhile you are on a 1 year H1B extension, which cannot be extended until you have a new pending I140. Which, in turn (if memory serves) requires 1 year and 1 day left in status to file (though there are probably ways around it too).

> Hence I said the system could be better.

I am not arguing that system could not be better, I am arguing against "mythbusting" of ease of switching jobs on H1B. It's easy on a fresh H1B but it's very complicated later and this is the reason people don't often do that on >6 years H1B (practically with 5+ years you are already running into the issues with I140).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if it's necessarily dependence or not. I think SV has trouble enticing US citizens from the rest of the country to move here because they won't pay enough to provide a similar quality of life. In the 20years I've been here I've had to transfer tech from places like MD, NJ and Texas. In all cases we managed to retain very few of the engineers from those locations. If I had to guess we'd get 1 out of every 30 engineers to move to the valley. The primary reason we could convince so few was the high cost of housing. In those days the difference wasn't anywhere near what it is now. recently at the big web monopoly I work at, we hired a director level from Colorado. After a year, he chose not to move due to high costs of housing despite >$300k salary and probably a very valuable RSU package. He left.

I think wages in the Valley would be significantly higher if companies had to entice US citizens to move here. I think the wages would be higher because they'd have to provide quality of life/lifestyle at similar levels to elsewhere. The relief valve of foreign workers, the vast majority simply want a green card allows people to accept a lower standard of living relative to the rest of the US.

That and the fact that once established foreign workers tend to hire same. Example: my Chinese colleagues only seem to be able to refer other a Chinese when we are hiring. Don't mean to pick on them, other groups do it too. But also in 20 years I've never once seen a Chinese colleague refer a non-Chinese National (or even Chinese-American) for an open req.

<comment><USER3> > But also in 20 years I've never once seen a Chinese colleague refer a non- > Chinese National (or even Chinese-American) for an open req.

What you're describing is a feature/bug of referral-based hiring and has nothing to do with specific groups or nationalities. People tend to refer their friends, and other people they've worked with. I'm not denying it would be good for everyone to leave their social bubbles and make some new friends though :-)

<comment><USER5> Sorry but I disagree. I've worked with all types and have no issue pushing folks I think are talented regardless of background. I've hired all kinds of people. If you don't think what I'm referring to is an issue then you either haven't been around very long or you are ignoring the obvious.

<comment><USER3> I'm not disagreeing there's an issue, I'm just not sure that it's deliberate. People refer who they know socially or have worked with in the past - <USER2> friends will tell you they're looking for a new job, but your current co- workers mostly won't. And most people tend to stay within their own cultural bubbles when it comes to making friends, both because it's easy, and because making friends with anyone as an adult is hard. I too, am very happy to refer anyone talented regardless of background, and I think most people are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title tricks the reader into assuming "foreign" means "H-1B".

Should it be resubmitted with a less misleading title?

<comment><USER7> The headline is further misleading by saying "foreign citizens" when the study was talking about workers who were "foreign born." A U.S. citizen who was born abroad is not foreign.

<comment><USER8> > _A U.S. citizen who was born abroad is not foreign_

This is a relatively tiny demographic. About 50,000 US babies per year are born abroad. Compared to over 4 million native births per year. So about ~1.2%.

<comment><USER3> They may have meant naturalized US citizens.

<comment><USER7> Yep. People like Sergey Brin, Max Levchin, et al. would count as "foreign" under the metric of the study in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The only way the US can maintain its high standard of living is through immigration of the best from other countries. The Chinese government is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. (See [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609038/chinas-ai- awakenin...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609038/chinas-ai-awakening/) ) Whichever country wins the AI race will become the new superpower. If the top Chinese engineers can be persuaded to immigrate to the US then we can win this race. If not we will lose economically and militarily to China.

When companies like Disney use H-1B to replace American workers with cheaper immigrant workers that's a problem. This is a misuse of H-1B and it needs to stop. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater!

<comment><USER10> This implies that other nations must necessarily have a lower standard of living, while the US is importing their people.

Few countries import graduate researchers on the scale that the US does -- and China, notably, does not, even though it seems like a credible threat in your eyes.

Something is wrong with the US if it can't foster domestic talent to an appropriate degree so as to remain competitive. In the long run, the US will not have a standard of living so much higher than that of other nations. A lot of that lead is a direct consequence of the outcome of the second world war, and a lot of the rest is due to inheriting British institutions -- the legal system, and broad respect for rule of law -- at a time when few of the governments around today were even formed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder where American-born geeks are? Is there any stats on how many techies that American education system produces year by year?

<comment><USER12> I believe that companies (like SV) that value density and speed of hiring would emphasize H1-B hires. (Not cost - if a company is utilizing H1-B's to save money, they are fraudulently abusing the system)

There are many companies that do not have those same values, and the work required for H1-B hires is not worth it.</comment></comment>


It's Time for the 99% to Give Back to the 1% - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/#1d44403270c5 <comment><USER2> The fantasists are back. If you can create so much value by yourself why even remain in society and crib for decades on end. Go create the value and enjoy it. Show us. No one will come to your wonderland to steal the fruits of your genius.

If this anti-human ideology actually worked, these self appointed geniuses would have long left society and created value all by themselves, but currently its as petty as putting up a stall in a club and refusing to pay the fees.

It takes a huge amount of time, generational effort and resources to build a functioning civilized society in which everyone is vested and thus peaceful. Nothing is free, and it appears its the 'makers' who want to be the takers while feigning a childish self serving ignorance of how civilization works.

Even animal species that are social look out for one another in order to survive and thrive, human social instincts are far more sophisticated. To deny it altogether and seek to reduce human relations to economic interactions is to regress to barbarism.

<comment><USER3> He didn't say people can create value by themselves. I recommend you read the article more closely and truly understand what he's saying.

I would argue his argument is overly simplistic for two reasons:

* many of those who engage in nonremunerative work contribute just as much as those who have accumulated millions. Saying the 99% owe the 1% is just as much of an over-generalization as the reverse

* many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially harmful, like politicians turned corporate lobbyists who earn millions getting subsidies and regulatory barriers to competition for their employers, or like public sector bureaucrats who sway public opinion in support of useless government work just to ensure their department budget continues to grow.

<comment><USER4> _many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially harmful_

Like SCL/Cambridge Analytica.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jesus. Hasn't the Randian philosophy been deconstructed enough?

No income tax for someone that earns $1m+, but taxes on those who earn less? In what entirely silver-spoon-born-and-bred entitled mind does this possibly make sense?

Taxes create the infrastructure that makes society possible and the bigger the business / industry, the more it requires basic infrastructure in order to grow or maintain itself.

What more do people earning $1m+ want? Can they not sustain themselves and their families on $1m per year? Do they want to create enough value that their children no longer need to work? If so, then what of their value of hard work? What about the natural instinct of bequeathing their role as "boss" to one of their children? That doesn't feel earnt to me?

What of the large financial institutions role in money laundering and sub- prime mortgage disasters and where that has left the 99%?

Look at some of the findings of the banking royal commission in Australia to see the kinds of things large financial institutions do as run-of-the-mill if they're not regulated. These institutions are run by people earning significant coin and take advantage of those who are already struggling financially - the very reason they seek advice / help on financial matters.

I'm making assumptions above and targeting financial institutions above others, but the article name-dropped Goldman Sachs, and the golden parachutes and massive salaries that the kinds of people he's talking about already get make it sound as if he's complaining about how the silver spoon tastes.

The author of the article is a member of the Ayn Rand Institute. Which likely means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to question these beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one ages.

Also: Harry Binswanger was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He is an heir to the Binswanger Glass Company, founded in 1872 by Samuel Binswanger

In that context, this article sounds like "waaaaah, I'm hard-done-by, taxes are holding me back, government help me - by intervening as a government that doesn't believe in intervening"

<comment><USER6> > Which likely means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to > question these beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one > ages.

That explains why I'm having a hard time gauging whether or not this article is satire.

<comment><USER7> A keen appreciation for satire and a strong BS meter means occasionally assuming that crazy positions are satire rather than evidence of craziness. On the other hand, this kind of bias can also be called charitable, so it's not a bad way to go through life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I applaud this evidently self-made man. I only wish I could tell him that there is a place in the world where his exceptionalism can soar and he can live his laissez-faire dream:

Somalia.

Let's help this man emigrate.

<comment><USER8> A failed socialist state that actually saw many improvements during its collapse into anarchy doesn't seem to help your point.

<comment><USER7> Oh right, the author in the article isn't advocating laissez-faire at all. He's advocating that the underclasses pay the taxes for the state services (such as police) that would keep the state from descending into anarchy. He wants socialism for the rich.

<comment><USER8> So what does that have to do with Somalia

<comment><USER7> I'm saying that laissez-faire is what Somalia actually is. The author says he advocates laissez-faire, but I'd guess he wouldn't be happy if he got it.

Instead, the author is a hypocrite who just wants rich people left alone, but others very much not left alone. This worldview is typically accompanied by an astonishingly naive accounting of the benefits that one must enjoy from society to attain their position. Objectivism, as espoused by this article's author and Ayn Rand alike, is a childish and cruel ideology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be interested to read his opinions on top managers getting huge leaves after bringing companies belly up, or those who happily decimate their workforce without thinking of the consequences. In the old times one could claim a piece of land then cultivate it, mine it or use it as he/she wanted; surely not easy at all, but bureaucracy was next to not existent. Today one needs to own a land, then get permits, etc. My point is that we shifted towards a society where you have to own something even to start. People losing their job today cannot count on the same opportunities jobless people had centuries ago, so they have to work for someone; if they lose their job they're essentially dead.

<comment><USER10> If I had to guess, I'd say that he'd tell you, that those managers "managed" (haha, get it?) to prevent the worst of bad losses to shareholders and got paid accordingly, and/or that said payments were contractually agreed on.

I can't bring myself to categorically disagree with either of those positions, because big business, fundamentally, is about setting common goals for absurdly large groups of people and to operate within even (much) larger groups of people in the real world. Complicated situations are bound to arise, and even if a manager failed to save a company, their contract entitles them to bonuses for whatever business goals they did achieve. If they managed to get that agreement signed beforehand, it needs to be honored, because binding contracts are a really fundamental building block of society, that needs to stay intact.

It's legitimate, though, to question the payment amounts and business goals they were bound on, as well as whether payments were made, that they were not entitled to. That's where our taxes need to fund a strong justice system, that can bring corruption suits to such cases.

Also, I'm sympathetic to situations and feelings of people being ground up in corrupt systems and I think we really need to understand how capitalism- apologists insulate themselves against those feelings by focussing on the guilt of weak people for not taking care of themselves. It's a coping mechanism, that helps when one has been of the receiving end of things before, but on the way up. It also protects from the guilt of not being able to help everybody, that one would like to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of Atlas Shrugged.

>It's not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. Problem is not all of the 1% is Steve Jobs, Henry Ford or Warren Buffett. It also includes, for example, royal families whose contribution is not intellectual.

>When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible:

And something which Ms. Rand forgot to include in her statement, which is the desire of customers to buy the product the factory produces.

>In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns.

Paying someone less than the value they provide is what makes capitalism work. Not even CEOs or founders are exempt from this law, though I'm sure more than one skates awfully close.

>Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity."

Not sure how deep GS was involved but here goes - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008)

>There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

Plus the need to finance the bodyguards for the New World Order (aka The War Machine.)

<comment><USER4> Plenty of CEOs are paid more than the value they provide.

<comment><USER11> I'll go along with that as an opening for a later discussion. But consider the value of a CEO is probably more than just profits generated - or to use a Moneyball term - "wins above replacement."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let's dispell another popular myth: Demand and Supply isn't nessecarily an indicator of value. It only follows value, if the power balance is close to equilibrium. Otherwise, Power picks and shapes the demand it wants. How much value has been lost to superior marketing?

<comment><USER12> there are flaws in supply and demand sure, but it's mostly working. Is there a more effective model? The labour theory of value is clearly inferior given high levels of automation and serves much better as a yardstick in Marx' analyses of capitalism than as a fundamental basis of value.

<comment><USER10> I'm certain, that there is a more effective model. It might or might not be known at this point in time and it might even be closer to social constructivism than to mechanistic pragmatism. Can you tell for sure?

In any case, that's not the point I'm trying to litigate.

What I'm trying to get at: Given the obvious flaws in pure capitalism (as there would be in any "pure" ideology), how can we reject the need for checks and balances?

<comment><USER12> one of the benefits of supply and demand is that it encourages innovation via the creation of untapped demand for novel products. I don't know what your idea of a constructivist model of value would be, but in my eyes that's an important role that LToV is incapable of fulfilling.

Of course pure capitalism is a silly idea, assuming everyone is homo economicus you'd end up looping back round to feudalistic stratification via the Matthew effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)). Of course everyone is not homo economicus so it'd likely be less bad than that, but there are still plenty of sociopaths who would achieve much more success when the restraints are lifted.

<comment><USER10> I don't know as much about labour theory, as you seem to think I do. I'm not trying to argue for any ideology and I find the reduction to a duality between supply-demand and labor-entitle overly simplistic. Those are ideological landmarks, for sure, but both are volatile in nature and both happen, whether it's allowed or not (even though the decision to allow is a big one).

Since you asked me about a constructivist model of value, let me try at a sketch (and put qualify with "in my mind" as necessary):

First and foremost, value is information, because it's a relation over facts, so relates facts to one another, puts them in perspective. What I think many people would call "true" or "real" values are those that can easily be considered facts in and of themselves, because all their relatives are known facts.

Those values, when considered closely, are few and far between and many intellectual currents, including science, have been devoted to finding more of them.

Social constructivism (a category, that includes capitalism as well as marxism, basically every model talking about people doing things with their lives), has the inherent problem that many of its facts are unknown. That's because people keep them secret, because they are part of their private lives, that they don't want other people to know about. Also, people change over time and so do their private facts.

Hence, in social sciences, it's _even_ harder to find meaningful true values and successful models have to account for large degrees of individual freedom.

Coming back to your argument, I categorically agree, that supply-demand creates untapped demand. I don't categorically agree, that that's a good thing. More concretely: Sure, free expression has promoted many good things, still, everybody has their own line about what they want to be allowed to be promoted and/or even sold.

In practice, I think for a functional state, it's much more common to defend the free market against yet another asshole that just found out that destructive behavior can give you a temporary advantage, but didn't quite figure out the calculation of long-term costs and / or doesn't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The vast majority of people who have opinions on Ayn Rand or her philosophy of Objectivism haven't read a word of what she wrote and are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her ideas. Whether such failure is due to ability or dishonesty doesn't really matter.

Note the ad hom comments in this thread dismissing the content of this article because Binswanger inherited his money. Nobody has "deconstructed" Rand's ideas because they are true and because modern intellectuals are unable to rebut her arguments they are reduced to smears and gross misrepresentations of an important intellectual achievement.

My advice; read Rand's work firsthand and judge her ideas for yourself.

<comment><USER5> "dismissing the content of this article because Binswanger inherited his money"

That fact should pretty much exclude Binswanger from having a public opinion on it because, whilst he may have worked hard for what he's got, the very fact of his being an 'heir' means his opinions will always be coloured by the likelihood of a life born into privilege.

Even if the ideas presented make sense in a highly-complex interwoven society, having articles written by someone potentially starting with heavy assistance will not help their cause. Get a genuine gutter-to-penthouse self-made person to write up how the common worker should be more thankful to their upper management and company-owners that they rarely see, much less have any interaction with. I'd read that with interest.

(Disclaimer: I've not read Rand, so I'm knowingly squarely within dmfdmf's crosshairs. I understand the basic concepts, but do need to actually read the source material - and am planning to do so, in order that I can "deconstruct" properly)

<comment><USER13> The truth or falsehood of the content is independent of Binswanger's income source and can be verified apart from that fact. This is the meaning of Ad Hominem fallacy, to get people to dismiss an argument not because it is false but because of some supposed flaw or fact about the person making the argument. Moreover, this is the exact method by which the Communists dismissed the objections to communism, accusing anyone who defended property rights as "bourgeois" and biased because they owned property. They established multiple brutal dictatorships last century that led to the death of millions and are still active today.

I truly hope you follow through with your intent, ignore the smears and misrepresentations, and read Rand firsthand and judge for yourself. As the first book I recommend _Philosophy Who Needs It_ followed by _The Virtue of Selfishness_ and leave the politics for later. Rand argued that politics follows from ethics and that is where the debate needs to shift if you want to understand the dire state of the world.

<comment><USER14> You opened with this: _The vast majority of people who have opinions on Ayn Rand or her philosophy of Objectivism haven 't read a word of what she wrote and are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her ideas._

That is ad hominem against a straw man, so I'm applying grains of salt heavily to your commitment to logical and rhetorical integrity.

<comment><USER13> My logical and rhetorical integrity is intact, you don't really know what ad hominem means.

It means to raise some irrelevant fact about the person making the argument as a reason to dismiss what the person is claiming. E.g. don't listen to Binswanger because he is rich.

The vast majority of people who attack or dismiss or smear Ayn Rand have not (or superficially) read what she wrote but this is a fact that IS relevant to whether their opinion on Ayn Rand has any merit so its not ad hom.

<comment><USER14> Reassertion of your unsupported claim about who has and hasn't read something still isn't an argument, it's stil a straw man. Do you have any substance to offer?

<comment><USER13> Before we move on to your new Straw Man accusation, let's close out your old accusation that my argument is Ad Hom. Do you concede that point, if not why?

<comment><USER14> There's nothing new here.

 _That is ad hominem against a straw man, so I'm applying grains of salt heavily to your commitment to logical and rhetorical integrity._

Is the first thing I said. Meanwhile I stand by it, but it seemed prudent to break it down point by point until you had nowhere left to go. "All of these people I must invented haven't even read the books!" Is still just what I said it was.

<comment><USER13> The implication of your position (i.e., that my argument is Ad Hom) is that the validity or merit of someone's opinion of Ayn Rand's work is independent of whether they have read her work or not is absurd on the face of it. It implies that people can have valid or valuable opinions on subjects of which they are completely ignorant. These implications are independent of whether my claim is true or false (which, I agree, is a disputable point or at least one that must be validated).

> Meanwhile I stand by it...

You can stand all you want but your position is not defensible in logic. I will repeat what I previously stated: You do not know what Ad Hom means. I know this for a fact because you fail to see an obvious implication of your position. We can address the validity of my claim but only if you see that my argument is not Ad Hom. If not then there is not much else to discuss.

<comment><USER14> _...are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her ideas._

Remember saying that? I'm getting tired of having to "remind" you of what has been said, so yes, we're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The people of North Korea are encouraged to be grateful to their dear leader. He is a man of many superior talents talents clearly - it's in a North Korean newspaper and many posters too - and is responsible for improving the life of his citizens who have not created anything of value like Steve jobs or Henry Ford.

Of course western civilisation is not a dictatorship. For example we would never tolerate a leaders son or wife taking control of a countries executive powers.

</comment><comment><USER16> Most of the 1% is built on my penny is shinier than yours but I'll go ahead let you have it for 2 of your ugly pennies. Not sure I'd call that a win-win.

<comment><USER12> your metaphor was lost on me. Do you mind clarifying?

<comment><USER17> The metaphor there is trying to gouge/scam someone by pretending like the shininess of a penny is tied to its value. I can't read the article because of the paywall, but I'm a

<comment><USER18> > but I'm a

Did you intentionally leave that to the HN comment reader to finish?

<comment><USER6> His comment is also behind a paywall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Same old story. People rail against taxes, but want the things taxes pay for.

I'm sure you could find someone making the same rant 150 years ago.

<comment><USER6> This is way worse than that -- he's literally saying that paying laborers is an "inhuman draining of the productive."

> But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, > receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job > requires of him.

> The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless > ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus > of all of their brains.

That's an enormously toxic view of the bulk of humanity.

Maybe he should head out to Trump Country and say to all those blue collar types that he feels they are hopelessly inept and contribute nothing to society and would starve without men like himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Solyndra was not some one off government boondoggle. It was the recipient of government loan guarantees from the Department of Energy intended to inject investment into the monopoly run, risk averse energy sector. The same program financed and incubated fracking.

Despite this comment, I'm not sure if this is satire or not.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've always enjoyed reading Objectivist writing. There's something gleefully iconoclastic about it that I appreciate.

I would find it much more appealing if I didn't find the ideas so repulsive.

</comment><comment> a-fried-egg Lip service

</comment><comment><USER22> Okie Dokie</comment>


Building an Email Service in the Cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/Eweaver/bluerunner-building-an-email-service-in-the-cloud

<comment><USER2> Is there a PDF/PPT link anywhere? I am not in the mood to put up with a flash nightmare.</comment>


The cost to train an AI system is improving at 50x the pace of Moore's Law - <AUTHOR> https://ark-invest.com/analyst-research/ai-training/ <comment><USER2> Resnet-50 with DawnBench settings is a very poor choice for illustrating this trend. The main technique driving this reduction in cost-to-train has been finding arcane, fast training schedules. This sounds good until you realize its a type of sleight of hand where finding that schedule takes tens of thousands of dollars (usually more) that isn't counted in cost-to-train, but is a real-world cost you would experience if you want to train models.

However, I think the overall trend this article talks about is accurate. There has been an increased focus on cost-to-train and you can see that with models like EfficientNet where NAS is used to optimize both accuracy and model size jointly.

<comment><USER3> I would guess that this means DawnBench is basically working. You'll get some "overfit" training schedule optimizations, but hopefully amongst those you'll end up with some improvements you can take to other models.

We also seem to be moving more towards a world where big problem-specific models are shared (BERT, GPT), so that the base time to train doesn't matter much unless you're doing model architecture research. For most end-use cases in language and perception, you'll end up picking up a 99%-trained model, and fine tuning on your particular version of the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an odd framing.

Training has become much more accessible, due to a variety of things (ASICs, offerings from public clouds, innovations on the data science side). Comparing it to Moore's Law doesn't make any sense to me, though.

Moore's Law is an observation on the pace of increase of a tightly scoped thing, the number of transistors.

The cost of training a model is not a single "thing," it's a cumulative effect of many things, including things as fluid as cloud pricing.

Completely possible that I'm missing something obvious, though.

<comment><USER5> > _Comparing it to Moore 's Law doesn't make any sense to me, though._

I assume it's meant as a qualitative comparison rather than a meaningful quantitative one. Sort of a (sub-)cultural touchstone to illustrate a point about which phase of development we're in.

With CPUs, during the phase of consistent year after year exponential growth, there were ripple effects on software. For example, for a while it was cost- prohibitive to run HTTPS for everything, then CPUs got faster and it wasn't anymore. So during that phase, you expected all kinds of things to keep changing.

If deep learning is in a similar phase, then whatever the numbers are, we can expect other things to keep changing as a result.

<comment> Const-me > then CPUs got faster and it wasn't anymore

The enabling tech was AES-NI instruction set, not the speed.

Agree on the rest. The main reason why modern CPUs and GPUs all have 16-bit floats is probably the deep learning trend.

<comment><USER6> If it hadn't been aes-ni, it would have been chacha, which is much faster than unaccelerated aes and close to the speed of accelerated aes.

Phones use https without a problem, and those haven't had hw-accelerated aes until recently.

<comment><USER7> A phone needing to set up a dozen HTTPS sockets is nothing for the CPU to do even without acceleration. A server needing to consistently set up hundreds of HTTPS sockets is where AES-NI and other accelerated crypto instructions becomes useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are some domains that a solo developer could build something commercially compelling to capture some of this $37 trillion? Are there any workflows or tools or efficiencies that could be easily realized as a commercial offering that would not require massive man hours to implement?

<comment><USER9> Take any domain that requires classification work that has not yet been targeted and make a run for it. You likely will be able to adapt one of the existing nets or even use transfer learning to outperform a human. That's the low hanging fruit.

For instance: quality control: abnormality detection (for instance: in medicine), agriculture (lots of movement there right now), parts inspection, assembly inspection, sorting and so on. There are more applications for this stuff than you might think at first glance, essentially if a toddler can do it and it is a job right now that's a good target.

<comment><USER10> anything that's even remotely profitable is already taken

<comment><USER11> Ah yes, of course. There will never be A new profitable ML startup until the end of time. Makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER12> People said the same thing about SaaS 5 years ago

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ark Invest are the creators of the ARKK [1] and ARKW ETFs that have become retail darlings, mainly because they're heavily invested in TSLA.

They pride themselves on this type of fundamental, bottom up analysis on the market.

It's fine.. I don't know if I agree with using Moore's law which is fundamentally about hardware, with the cost to run a "system" which is a combination of customized hardware and new software techniques

[1] [https://pages.etflogic.io/?ticker=ARKK](https://pages.etflogic.io/?ticker=ARKK)

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember this article from 2018: [https://medium.com/the-mission/why- building-your-own-deep-le...](https://medium.com/the-mission/why-building- your-own-deep-learning-computer-is-10x-cheaper-than-aws-b1c91b55ce8c)

Hackernews discussion for the article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18063893)

It really is interesting how this is changing the dynamics of neural network training. Now it is affordable to train a useful network on the cloud, whereas 2 years ago that would be reserved to companies with either bigger investments or an already consolidated product.

<comment><USER15> > Now it is affordable to train a useful network on the cloud

I honestly don't see how anything changed significantly in past 2 years. Benchmarks indicate that a V100 is barely 2x the performance of an RTX 2080 Ti [1] and a V100 is

• $2.50/h at Google [2]

• $13.46/h (4xV100) at Microsoft Azure [3]

• $12.24/h (4xV100) at AWS [4]

• ~$2.80/h (2xV100, 1 month) at LeaderGPU [5]

• ~$3.38/h (4xV100, 1 month) at Exoscale [6]

Other smaller cloud providers are in a similar price range to [5] and [6] (read: GCE, Azure and AWS are way overpriced...).

Using the 2x figure from [1] and adjusting the price for the build to a 2080 Ti and an AMD R9 3950X instead of the TR results in similar figures to the article you provided.

Please point me to any resources that show how the content of the article doesn't apply anymore, 2 years later. I'd be very interested to learn what actually changed (if anything).

NVIDIA's new A100 platform might be a game changer, but it's not yet available in public cloud offerings.

[1] [https://lambdalabs.com/blog/best-gpu-tensorflow-2080-ti- vs-v...](https://lambdalabs.com/blog/best-gpu-tensorflow-2080-ti-vs-v100-vs- titan-v-vs-1080-ti-benchmark/)

[2] [https://cloud.google.com/compute/gpus- pricing](https://cloud.google.com/compute/gpus-pricing)

[3] [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual- ma...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual- machines/linux/)

[4] [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on- demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/)

[5] [https://www.leadergpu.com/#chose-best](https://www.leadergpu.com/#chose- best)

[6] [https://www.exoscale.com/gpu/](https://www.exoscale.com/gpu/)

<comment><USER16> Another data point:

"For example, we recently internally benchmarked an Inferentia instance (inf1.2xlarge) against a GPU instance with an almost identical spot price (g4dn.xlarge) and found that, when serving the same ResNet50 model on Cortex, the Inferentia instance offered a more than 4x speedup."

[https://towardsdatascience.com/why-every-company-will- have-m...](https://towardsdatascience.com/why-every-company-will-have-machine- learning-engineers-soon-b7bc515a53b4)

<comment><USER15> That data point talks about _inference_ though, and nobody's arguing that deployment and inference have improved significantly over the past years.

I'm referring to training and fine-tuning, not inference, which - let's be honest - can be done on a phone these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would really like a thorough analysis on how expensive it is to multiply large matrices, which is the most expensive part of a transformer training for example according to the profiler. Is there some Moore's law or similar trend?

</comment><comment><USER18> It is regrettable if an equivalent to the self-fulfilling prophecy of Moore's "Law" (originally an astute observation and forecast, but not remotely a law) became a driver/limiter in this field as well, even more so if it's a straight transplant for soundbite reasons rather than through any impartial and thoughtful analysis.

<comment><USER19> One thing I've wondered is if Moore's Law is good or bad, in the sense of how fast should we have been able to improve IC technology. Was progress limited by business decisions or is this as fast as improvements could take place?

A thought experiment: suppose we meet aliens who are remarkably similar to ourselves and have an IC industry. Would they be impressed by our Moore's law progress, or wonder why we took so long?

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law), third paragraph of the header, claims that Moore's Law drove targets in R&D and manufacturing, but does not cite a reference for this claim.

"Moore's prediction has been used in the semiconductor industry to guide long- term planning and to set targets for research and development."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The cost to collect the huge amounts of needed to train meaningful models is surely not growing at this rate.

</comment><comment><USER22> Despite nvidia vaguely prohibiting users from using their desktop cards for machine learning in any sort of data center-like or server-like capacity. Hopefully AMDs ml support / OpenCl will continue improving

<comment><USER23> Last I saw, they don't even support ROCm on their recent Navi cards, so I'd be hesitant.

<comment><USER24> Wow. This is really disappointing to see. ([https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/issues/887](https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm/issues/887))

I guess PlaidML might be a viable option?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does it mean that the cost to train something like gpt3 by OpenAI will reduce from 12 million dollars to less next year ? If so how much will it reduce to ?

</comment><comment><USER26> It was probably because very inefficient to begin with.

<comment><USER27> Indeed nonexistent

</comment></comment><comment> bra-ket "AI" is not really appropriate name for what it is

</comment><comment><USER28> tl;dr: Training learners is becoming cheaper every year, thanks to big tech companies pushing hardware and software.</comment>


BICEP2 all over again? Researchers place Higgs boson discovery in doubt - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2014-11-bicep2-higgs-boson-discovery.html

<comment><USER2> Well they need to come up with a better theory and better method of finding it. The current one seems to be broken, and finds Higgs imposters as a false positive.</comment>


Gov IIX - <AUTHOR> http://infovegan.com/2010/07/22/gov-iix

<comment><USER2> It's difficult to imagine how one could have a "Gov 2.0" in analogy to a "Web 2.0" without massive decentralization and disintermediation, two critical aspects of Web 2.0. But that's not happening. Power continues to centralize in DC and we continue to step-by-step lurch ever closer to the sort of failure you get when you completely centralize all power.

At best, transparency is an enabling step towards Gov IIX, perhaps even a necessary step, but right now I see no evidence that any aspect of our Gov is actually decentralizing or disintermediating (since after all it would be disintermediating _itself_ ). Until that happens, "Gov 2.0" talk is just "Gov 1.0"'s attempts to rhetorically dress itself in the glory of the Web so it can use it as cover to grab more power while telling credulous webbies that it's actually _them_ getting the power.

Kind of getting closer to the ideas in the original essay, the interesting question is whether the 2.0/IIX social forces will sweep away the current governmental structure even if it doesn't like it and actively fights it. Obama's election involved the left coming together in a 2.0 style to elect him, though the coalition seems to have fallen apart after that, and the Tea Party is no more and no less than the conservatives and the libertarians in temporary alliance doing the same thing, but in both cases just feeding their energies back into Gov 1.0. Neither of these forces are going away, even if they're still only starting up in fits and starts on the year scale. At some point, do they become so vital that they begin to truly control the government, and truly start forcing it to decentralize power? There are some good ways that could turn out, there are some bad (localized tyranny-of-the- majority is still a tyranny-of-the-majority). Or will Gov 1.0 finally centralize enough power in the industrialized western world to completely shut that down? (Are they "on the clock"?)

Interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to mention that the whole "gov 2.0" movement is at best a 0.1 level update. It adds new functionality, but doesn't break backwards compatibility with previous versions.

<comment><USER4> It's a play on "web 2.0", moving from cathedrals and walled gardens to a fully visible system where anyone can get information about any part. I'm sure they've done lots of things poorly and the specifications meetings have been hell but I don't see how anyone can oppose the general idea/direction.

<comment><USER3> I know. It was a joke. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Completely uninstall OS X apps from the command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Keithbsmiley/zap <comment><USER2> This is cool, but it doesn't seem to good _as_ good a job as AppZapper/AppCleaner/CleanMyMac when completely uninstalling something. I found a couple apps (esp those with preference pane entries) where there were some leftovers that the other cleaners would've caught. Regardless, it's cool to have an option for the command line.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's wrong with rm -rf /Path/To/Application?

<comment><AUTHOR> That doesn't remove all of the associated preferences, caches, and other stuff the application could have left around.</comment></comment>