Apple Dominates App Store Search Results, Thwarting Competitors - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-dominates-app-store-search-results-thwarting-competitors-11563897221?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> The New York Times ran an article yesterday covering the same topic. I don't have a WSJ subscription, so I don't know if they reference the New York Times article.

"How Apple's Apps Topped Rivals in the App Store It Controls", Sept 9, 2019

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/09/technology/ap...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/09/technology/apple- app-store-competition.html)

<comment><USER3> HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20916809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20916809)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The world of atoms is the same as the world of bits: you really want to control the means of distribution. Uncreative product managers at platform companies target the most successful apps first. You can pick the winners of the evolutionary process, take a skim while you're learning and then copy them with something using private APIs. I don't think that's wrong necessarily but people seem shocked every time it happens to them.

<comment><USER5> My question is, why aren't the folks at the platform companies who do this worried about biting the hand that feeds them? Haven't they seen platforms get pilloried before? Aren't they worried about alienating developers and decreasing the value of the platform?

Or is it the death of a thousand cuts, where each product manager thinks "ah, just this one time won't hurt"?

<comment><USER6> There are business that must have an mobile app and a website, you can't screw half of your customers and tell them to buy other phone. Developers did not like to develop for IE but the businesses had no choice to support IE because the customers were demanding it.

So as a individual you can decide to buy an Android but as a business sometimes(maybe most of the time ?) you can't decide not to support iOS or Android, you have to support both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They changed that: [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/09/09/apple-adjusts-app- store...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/09/09/apple-adjusts-app-store-search- algorithm/)

<comment><USER8> Yeah the article is dated I don't know why people are pretending why this is new

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And could someone please explain where there's an expectation of equal access and right to appear with a certain preference in a closed app store's search results? Or not to have your app's functionality copied by anyone else?

<comment><USER10> Your question is worded to suggest you are not actually open to the answer, but I will try anyway: in antitrust law. You cannot create an open App Store ecosystem, invite in outside developers, and then pivot and kill them all off by steering customers to your own app. Closing off your previously-open ecosystem can be illegal. Read Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Servs.

<comment><USER9> I am open to explanations. I'm especially interested in how a phone manufacturer that is 3rd place among others can be said to have a monopoly over the market. Or do you mean just for iPhone apps? Because at that point, how fine do you get to dice it to find a monopoly? I'm sure that once you slice it thin enough, almost any company can be said to have a monopoly. Where does it end? Joe's Pizza has a monopoly on the sale of pizza on the 300 block of Main Street, and has been trying to keep out competitors by buying the store next door.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The app store is not only keeping the competition down but is hampering innovation. At the size of this business this is an existential threat to Apple's ecosystem as old ideas get tired and new can not get a toehold. They really need to get out of being an abysmal marketing platform and focus on distribution mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't cool, but it doesn't bother me too much because iOS app store search has been useless from day one. It should almost never be used unless you already know what you're looking for. There are better places to find music or notetaking apps to download.

</comment><comment><USER13> Serious question: how is this different than a grocery story making their own cheaper versions of products and placing them in better locations throughout their store? Large grocery chains do this on a large scale today, right?

<comment><USER14> Hmmm, one could choose other grocery stores to distribute their products but developers can only distribute their app in one store.

If you spent months or years developing an app and apple reject it, you have no way to go. You can't make it android or web without significant rework. Even if it is accepted, it might get sherlocked by Apple in WWDC. Not to mention your app could break every year at this time round when new iOS is released.

This is the risk of an indie iOS developers and the risk have not lessen over the years.

Here one heartbreaking post from an indie developer:

[https://qnoid.com/2019/09/06/Apple- Developer.html](https://qnoid.com/2019/09/06/Apple-Developer.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is from July, would appreciate a title tag.

<comment><USER16> This is effectively a re-post from yesterday, a way to take two bites out of the same Apple.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py watching a video of bill gates on the indoor toilets project now vs in the 90s giving DOJ depos is like watching xergiok get his eyes back

The DOJ isn't a subtle instrument and there are a lot of up-and-comers gunning for this (yelp, for example, was part of the group that lobbied margrethe vestager to take down G in europe)

The investigations that are coming into the tech cos will going to be like gladiatorial combat. It will be like the microsoft hearings combined with the kavanaugh confirmation combined with the mel brooks passion movie</comment>


Yahoo loses key mysql developer - <AUTHOR> http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/010336.html

<comment><USER2> At least this is a primary source instead of the typical "Arrington misrepresents the facts to get ad revenue". Refreshing.

<comment><USER3> There is supposed to be a standing rule against linkjacking (link directly to the primary source instead of a blog post about it if possible).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> now if twitter could hire him, that would be great

<comment><USER4> funny, I was just thinking that. I'd love to work on twitter, not so much because I care about the service, but because it's fundamentally hard, and that's cool. Personally I wonder why someone hasn't already transitioned Twitter to a publish-subscribe architecture internally, and used a bunch of queues to buffer the impact of load spikes ( a slow tweet is not the same as a dropped tweet! ). But who knows if MySQL is really the best backbone for that anyways.

I will be interested to see where Zawodny _does_ go. His tools have been worth a lot to me over the years, and he communicates well, so he ought to provide a ton of value to whatever his next gig may be.

Too bad for Yahoo. This and other high-profile departures may be coincidental, but rule #1 of a successful career is that you don't burn your bridges. So the kind words on exit don't really mean anything to me. I've pulled this sort of stunt before myself, as I swam away from a sinking ship whispering sweet nothings to the crew.

<comment><USER5> _I'd love to work on twitter, not so much because I care about the service, but because it's fundamentally hard_

Either I'm missing something, you're missing something, or we have different opinions of what "fundamentally hard" means. What's so hard about twitter? You can keep recent tweets in RAM and maintain on-disk per-user "all your friends' old tweets" files.

<comment><USER6> When I read "fundamentally hard", I think NP-hard. What is NP-hard about twitter? Am I missing something or is this a reference to a systems development issue?

<comment><USER4> Realtime and near-realtime is hard in practical terms, not mathematical terms. I work on the latter, and some days I miss working on the former.

If it were easy to get it right, and profitable to execute correctly, I have to imagine that a competitor would have done so by now. But given the time and resource constraints, it seems that the problem remains difficult to manage, and I've always enjoyed that sort of challenge.

Developing heuristics for increasing statistical power, robustness, or informativeness is a mostly cerebral pursuit. Operations is more bloody in- the-trenches mud wrestling. And sometimes I look out from the ivory tower and I miss it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yahoo is getting desperate. Have you noticed all the adds on the radio for jobs? I wonder who would want to jump in a sinking ship right now.

Unless they flush out most of the management fat, and political-cooporate overhead, and start from semi-scratch, they will never be an attractive place fore great people.

Who wants to work for bozos anyways.

<comment><USER8> > Who wants to work for bozos anyways.

The article is about Yahoo!, not Amaz... Oh, I thought you said "Bezos." Nevermind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> best take on this: "Last one out, turn off the lights."

-John Gruber (Daring Fireball)

<comment><USER10> The best take is a cliche repeated by a marginally famous blogger?</comment></comment>


Fractal music, hypercards, and more (1914) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/psy341k/gilden/readings/Gardner-WhiteBrown&FractalMusic.pdf

<comment><USER2> I believe 1914 was when Martin Gardner was born not the date of publication which I think was 1992. Discussion of hypercards in 1914 would have been very interesting to say the least.</comment>


Google's HTML/CSS 3D Buckyball - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly enough, they did it with "pure" HTML/CSS, plus 2 images for the nodes & connections.

I was a bit surprised that they didn't use canvas, which seems to be all the rage these days. I'm assuming this implementation, however, works on IE.

<comment><USER2> They did use HTML/CSS for display/rendering of the buckyball, but they also _did_ use Javascript for animation and interaction.

Just to be clear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, sorry.

I meant that they refrained from using canvas/svg/flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It should come with a warning that its gonna peg a cpu on my macbook with firefox. Google is my homepage. I don't expect to lose half my battery by opening firefox and stepping away for 20 minutes.

<comment><USER4> I'm a little surprised by that since it's just HTML and CSS. And mac chrome's having no problems; my fan's not even spinning.

<comment><USER5> > since it's just HTML and CSS

I've tried gadgets like this many times (though nothing as cool as that buckyball) and it's been my experience every time. It's slow _because_ it's just HTML and CSS.

<comment><USER6> Very fast here, chrome on ubuntu.

<comment><USER5> True, but Chrome is the exception, with it's awesome JS JIT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can anyone explain how they made it? I am not that good at HTML or CSS.

<comment><USER8> Emulated 3D - similar to how oldschool NES/SNES games did "3D" games. Each sprite is simply scaled down to make it appear further away. Transforms are used as well for the rotation of the node joints. The hardest part of all this is probably just the z-order business (the z-axis stacking).

<comment><USER9> To expand on how the joints rotate: the CSS styles use a translation of a large CSS sprite image, which consists of 90 stacked images of the joint at various stages of rotation over 180 degrees. Even older browsers that only support translation transforms will work just as well. (Angles must be rounded to the nearest 2 degrees, which would explain some jumpiness.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> HTML/CSS + JavaScript.

</comment><comment><USER11> No permalink?</comment>


Shark Eats Entrepreneur Alive - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/10/08/shark-eats-entrepreneur-alive/

<comment><USER2> I have a technique I used many times to train myself to resist better: I accept invitations to meals offered by real-estate companies.

They will employ every high-pressure tactic in the book and then some that are considered crimes against Humanity and in more civilized societies are punishable by death. You will be able to observe a sequence of increasingly confrontational salespeople, male and female, pretty and ugly, that seem hell- bent on selling you some nice time-share in a chain of resorts. You will also see others succumb and be applauded for making a really stupid business decision.

I advise you to do it as many times as it takes for you to master the game. You may consider yourself ready when you consistently beat up the final boss and get your prize (usually tickets for some tourist attraction). I particularly like to play rude paying more attention to the food than to the salesperson, interrupting and leaving the table to get more food.

Do it a couple times a year, just for the kick of it.

It's like an immersive videogame.

OTOH, your faith on Humanity may end up a bit scratched. That's a small price to pay for this kind of enlightenment.

</comment><comment><USER3> The naivety of some people is just scary.

If you are being approached _always_ be on your guard.

An 'investor' (I use the word lightly here ;) ) that wants to pressure you to do a deal is afraid you'll wise up, find something or that you'll back out. So, help them a bit and back out. On the spot.

A good relationship can be built slowly if there appears to be time pressure you will likely make a decision that's not to your advantage. Good decisions are made from a position of strength. Time pressure erodes that strength.

<comment><USER4> In general, it's solid advice to always refuse solicitors and not make decisions under time pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If someone will not talk to your co-founder, that is a huge red flag.

Either they are taking advantage of you, and know the co-founder will catch on. Or they have issues with the co-founder, which tells you that the moment conflict arises, they will shut down communications and frustrate you.

A lack of communication is an immediate deal-breaker on any of my projects.

</comment><comment><USER6> I expected something completely different based on the title...

<comment><USER7> "The founder of XYZ, reportedly missing since last friday was found alive when some fishermen off the coast of ABC cut open the belly of a freshly captured shark. Along with the founder, the fisherman also found some kittens, a few pieces of string and a whiteboard marker."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _He wants to put $xxK of his money into his developers in [third world country]..._

That is equal parts terrifying and awe-inspiring for its sheer brazenness.

<comment><USER9> It's easy to imagine how it could work, though. "I have programmers _ready and waiting_ to work on _your idea_..."

<comment><USER10> Programmers are standing by, please commit now!! If you commit within the next 24 hours, I will even take 10% stake for no extra charge. As a bonus offer we will even get rid of your co-founder. What are you waiting for, commit now!!

-for the sense of humor challenged, the above is a joke-

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somehow, "considering giving up equity in exchange for services that add only dubious value" equates to "being eating alive."

Then again, I suppose fewer people would read a post titled "Entrepeneur considers letting shark bite"...

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you not agree that if the entrepreneur took the deal, it would kill his company? If so, a _kill_ , in shark language, is appropriately described by _eaten alive_.

<comment><USER12> I do not agree because I don't know how 10% stake and "third world" developers may kill. I'm not saying they can't, just being curious.

<comment><USER13> You don't know how transferring your development offshore to a group that reports to an outside investor can kill a company?

Just asking for clarification here... Honestly sounds like a What The (Cluster) Fuck in the making...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The simple fact that the entrepreneur knew to ask the question shows that he already knew the answer. He wants to go with his gut and reject this; he's just looking for a little vote of confidence.

<comment><USER15> If were the tech co-founder I'd dump this guy immediately. I presume he is in a biz-dev position - if he's too dumb or indecisive for this, he has no business being in... uh, business.

<comment><USER16> That, plus the fact that he is basically indecisive about selling his co- founder down the river or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Run like hell, Say no firmly and forever.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would there be any legal recourse for the technical co-founder in this case?</comment>


Symantec says change your Facebook password now - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/05/symantec-says-change-your-facebook-password-now/

<comment><USER2> Original source: [http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/facebook- applications-...](http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/facebook-applications- accidentally-leaking-access-third-parties)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, does changing your password instantly lock out every web-app that I've connected to my Facebook account? Or merely the stupid ones that allow me to ask my Friends what their favorite flavor of ice cream is?

</comment><comment><USER4> What's glossed over here is that this is _only_ an issue if you're allowed the offline_access extended permission:

From the article:

 _By default, most access tokens expire after a short time, however the application can request offline access tokens which allow them to use these tokens until you change your password, even when you aren't logged in._

Further, Facebook explicitly revokes tokens when you change your password.

<comment><USER5> _Further, Facebook explicitly revokes tokens when you change your password._

Do you have a reference for that? Seriously, I'm working on Oauth stuff and I would like as much information as possible.

<comment><USER6> Under "Using The Access Token"

        If the user changes their password, the access token expires
        or the user deauthorizes your app in the App Dashboard, the
        Graph API will issue an HTTP 400 and return the error in the
        body of the response:

from <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As far as I know, an Oauth token should independent of one's password (that is, in fact, their purpose).

If there are Oauth tokens giving excess permission floating around, I assume the proper approach would be to remove permission from the your various apps and then give it to them again.

But what do I know? Well, other than Facebook's own documentation and Oauth documentation?

<comment><USER7> My understanding is that this was a bug with the previous authentication scheme, _before_ they rolled out OAuth. Changing your password revokes old tokens for all authentication schemes and thus mitigates the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oooh, it was going so well and then they snarkily implied that security is increased by regular password rotation. Sad.</comment>


Cheap, clean stoves were supposed to save millions of lives – what happened? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-cheap-clean-stoves-were-supposed-to-save-millions-of-lives-what-happened/2015/10/29/c0b98f38-77fa-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html <comment><USER2> Ethanol stoves are actually great for this problem... very low emissions, and fuel that is easy and safe to store and can be produced locally. In many parts of the world, there are abundant non-food sources of mash... kelp, mesquite seeds, cattails, etc... and community scale production is much more efficient than the bizarre government subsidized ethanol industry in the US that uses GE corn with that requires a lot of energy input and has a high energy cost for transportation to and from the centralized production facilities.

I'm not sure how it is "undeveloped" countries but around here is quite illegal to make your own fuel in this way however... it is, after all, the "A" in BATF. It seems that without addressing such issues, the "clean" stoves will not be popular because locals would need to keep paying some "authority" (government or otherwise) for access to the fuel, and money is much more scarce than dung in many places.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not sure how it is "undeveloped" countries but around here is quite > illegal to make your own fuel in this way however...

Not sure what you mean by "in this way", but it is quite legal to make ethanol fuel for your own use in the US.

<comment><USER2> You have to get a license from the BATF to do so, and you are limited to 10,000 gallons per year (which is plenty). To get the license you have to give them permission to enter your property without a warrant to inspect whenever they like, and you have to keep meticulous records to account for every gallon produced. By "in this way" I meant a means through which normal people can make their own fuel with a low barrier to entry and little or no risk of fines and/or jail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds to me like it is working, is what happened.

> Although these cookstoves produce fewer emissions than open fires, burning > biomass fuels in them still releases plenty of toxins

For toxins that actually matter, that's smoke in layperson terms.

So what if the benefits are only partially there. It still rocks.

It makes me suspicions that the study where all the stovetops were no longer being used, was just picked as an example because it failed.

And as to electricity and gas being better, that's nice, the doers can continue down the biomass efficiency road while this is still being discussed.

<comment><USER5> That was my take-away too.

They had an idea to fix a problem, it worked but not as well as hoped, so now they're learning and iterating. Sounds like any experimental project (or startup).

They got 28 million stoves out with a budget of $10m/year (times 5 years?). Big deal if they haven't saved the world yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "As yet, no biomass stove in the world is clean enough to be truly health > protective in household use," says Kirk Smith, a professor of global > environmental health at the University of California at Berkeley and the > leading health researcher on cookstoves.

My understanding is that rocket stoves[1] are extremely efficient and non- polluting. Is that incorrect, or are rocket stoves not profitable for the concerns promoting this sort of effort?

> "With their system of government, they can kind of dictate what happens," > notes Jim Jetter, a senior research engineer who tests cookstoves for the > EPA.

Well, yes, it helps if one can sentence holdouts to the _laogai_.

> much like some American cooks like the flavor of meat grilled over charcoal.

Only some? I'm pretty sure that _everyone_ prefers the flavour of food cooked over good lump charcoal.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> _> Perhaps more research could apprehend what actually works_

No, not really. Since the obvious solution (i.e. the one that has worked everywhere in the world it's been tried) is affordable grid scale electricity - which at this point means fossil or nuclear - and the west is apparently hellbent on preventing the devolping world from having this, it's unlikely any future research will come up with anything of any actual utility.

<comment><USER8> There is actually even simpler solution. Build a chimney and exhaust the burning fumes directly to the outside. Problem solved.

These people are living two centuries in the past so proved, simple and local solutions would be the best.

<comment><USER9> You solution doesn't take into account any of the issues discovered in the implementation of the stove programs. Not only is the issue more complex than you acknowledge, but it's this kind of "we can fix this problem by making them do things our way" attitude that severely hinders progress on the issue.

<comment><USER8> The article did not evaluate such issues. If you could point to any background information then I would be interested.

<comment><USER9> A significant portion of the article is devoted to such issues.

"Even if people are aware of the health risks of cooking over open fires (and many are not), they are reluctant to abandon cooking methods embedded in their culture."

"Women had stopped using the stoves because they didn't like the design or because the stoves broke, burned more wood (not less, as intended) or didn't get foods hot enough."

"Indian women surveyed by the Stockholm Environment Institute said they prefer to cook roti, a flatbread eaten with every meal, in a clay oven using a mix of firewood and cow dung because they can both fry and bake the bread and the fuels improve the taste — much like some American cooks like the flavor of meat grilled over charcoal."

"The affordable ones are inadequate, and the good ones are unaffordable." (How do you expect a group of people unable to afford a stove to afford retrofitting their home with a chimney?)

Your chimney solution solves none of these problems. When attempting to address an issue in developing nations, it's importent to analyze exactly how people are implementing he solution on the ground. Cultural grandstanding as seen in these comments does nothing to solve the problem.

<comment><USER8> I meant the usage of chimneys, but yes, I could imagine how these claims can be extended to that too.

Now * How do you expect a group of people unable to afford a stove to afford retrofitting their home with a chimney? *

I am from nation with very poor and repressed background, but we managed to do that.

For building a functioning oven with a chimney you do not need a lot of fancy material - just bricks, mortar (or can be even made from clay rich earth) and a iron plate.

Of course these gadgets are expensive and stupid and this was my original criticism.

* Your chimney solution solves none of these problems. *

We do not know that as it was not even considered as it seems to me from the article. Instead they tried to sell complicated industrial products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Solar panels + batteries will have an enormous impact in a lot of countries. Once ppl buy a stove it is 'free' to use vs having to buy fuel every time (like pellets or ethanol). Will take 10-15 years but it is coming. Combine this with satellite internet and the living standard will radically increase.

<comment><USER11> Cooking use very much energy compared to led lamps or even tvs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do not have time to read this bag of words but I searched for the word "chimney" and I did not find it.

See, there is your problem and a big fat hint for a solution.

Most countries in northern hemisphere solved this problem more than century ago and it amazes me how this solution is not even mentioned once.

<comment><USER12> These populations aren't mentally incompetent, they use chimneys. The issue is that chimney's aren't 100% efficient and only remove the pollution from the home, not the surrounding environment. The pollution becomes pervasive when an entire city of 100,000+ people is cooking with biomass fuel. Your chimney's exhaust is just another person's air when it's as concentrated as you'd find in places like those described in the article.

<comment><USER13> Look at the woman in the article picture: she's not using a chimney, and she has to squat to cook. German women were cooking standing up (building fires on raised stone platforms), with chimneys to vent away smoke, in the 17th century. (See Fernand Braudel, _The Structures of Everyday Life_.) Draw your own conclusions: pathological loyalty to tradition or lack of imagination; or severe lack of capital and calories; or what?

<comment><USER14> This comment made me think of the Japanese kamado or the traditional Russian stove, but see this discussion of the Lorena adobe stove [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_stove#Lorena_adobe_stove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_stove#Lorena_adobe_stove)

One problem is that ceramic stoves with a large thermal mass may take a lot more fuel to fire. In colder northern regions with plentiful fuel, the high thermal mass is an advantage because it can help keep the house warm. But in a tropical setting, open indoor fires may be more efficient at quickly heating food, especially when deforestation is a problem.

<comment><USER13> What Braudel discussed was an assembly with an oven underneath, and a raised hearth on top. You didn't have to heat the stove -- just build a fire on the top surface (with a chimney and smoke hood directly above), and cook with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A solsource solar cooker I gave to a friend's family in the Rajasthan desert still works as advertised a year later. These are desperate needed around refugee camps where locals clash with refugees looking for firewood.

</comment><comment><USER13> While we're at it, check out [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal- efficiency-co...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency- cooking-stoves.html) . I found this on the human-powered cranes article ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10499228)) -- and it's arguing that the developed world should go back to open cooking fires!

Admittedly, the argument isn't very strong (the grid may be dirty, but it's not _that_ dirty); but it's interesting and strange that it can be made at all.

</comment><comment><USER16> "We know what's best for rural Indian poor" proclaims millionaire with her own catering.

Still, at least India has a rocket going to Mars even if its children don't have toilets and clean water.

<comment><USER17> > Still, at least India has a rocket going to Mars even if its children don't > have toilets and clean water.

Fallacy of Relative Privation?

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

<comment><USER16> Like Kim Il Jong eating while his people starve, I guess that's the same fallacy

<comment><USER18> That is not the same fallacy. That is one person who controls the nation sitting on an immense amount of wealth while his people starve. India doesn't have a huge wealth tucked under its bed that it refuses to redistribute to its citizens.

Let me put this into perspective for you, even distributing 1 billion dollars to its citizens barely makes each person richer by only a dollar!

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the perspective, I feel so stupid.

I'm sure spending $1bn on clean water and sewage in the some of the most populous cities on earth would be equally pointless.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook intern visualizes friendships, draws world map - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/visualizing-friendships/469716398919

<comment><USER2> Someone outside Facebook tried to do the same with a US map and was sued by Facebook. Data in, data out only for Facebook.

[http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how- to-s...](http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/02/how-to-split-up- the-us.html)

<comment><USER3> I think FB disliked his map because it showed how poor the connections between areas where. FB's map pretends that all areas are equal and focuses on the global nature of their network.

<comment><USER4> No, I believe it was because he tried to publish his dataset. As Loic said, "Data out only for Facebook."

The worst part of the whole debacle was that Facebook's robots.txt file explicitly allowed the crawling of this data.

<comment><USER3> I don't think your reading into the situation deep enough. FB changed their robots.txt file becaue they reolized they wanted to keep that information private. But, what caused them to want to make it private?

Well the reality is: _Looking at the network of US cities, it's been remarkable to see how groups of them form clusters, with strong connections locally but few contacts outside the cluster._

vs this PR peice that says:

 _It's not just a pretty picture, it's a reaffirmation of the impact we have in connecting people, even across oceans and borders._

PS: _Visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, you manipulate the lens used to present the data from a certain angle._ aka, To make something with the right look takes not just data but the correct manipulations of that data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're interested: Russia is missing because we've got one _very_ similar social network[1][2] that's got arguably more features and arrived to the market a year or so earlier than facebook got its russian localization.

[1] <http://vk.com>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vkontakte>

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure that this is a development that happened all over the World. Germany had its own Facebook clone [1] early on and it absolutely dominated before Facebook entered the German market [2]. That's now no more the case.

To quote StudiVZ CEO Riedl: "There is now no more direct battle against the global player Facebook." [3]

It's interesting to see that the Facebook clone worked in Russia but didn't in other places.

[1] StudiVZ: <http://www.studivz.net/>

[2] StudiVZ was founded in November 2005 (a whole year earlier than Vkontakte), Facebook was localized in early 2008

[3] A week ago, in an interview (German): [http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/studivz- ch...](http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/it-medien/studivz-chef-clemens- riedl-es-gibt-keinen-kampf-gegen-facebook-mehr;2706777;0)

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting case. I might make some wild guesses based on what I see:

1\. vk ports features from fb 3 to 6 months after they appear (share-widget, like-widget, connect-widget, possible friends)

2\. vk's got a comprehensive search engine with lots of filters by age, city, gender, current status (married, single, in active search etc.). Lots of people I know use vk for dating. I might be missing something, but I didn't find such a thing for facebook.

3\. vk's got _native_ music and video upload. By native I mean that you don't use any third party application/service to do this. Everything's hosted on vk's servers. That's the reason copyright owners sued vk several times (RIAA even blacklisted the guys). However, they [copyright holders] lost in all the court cases.

4\. VK offers _cheap_ contextual ads. While not exactly a killer feature, it is very nifty for business, -- they only charge per-click and if you get the targeting and ad text right, you'll get more visitors than you need.

5\. Another random guess is that it's easier for a German than for a Russian to migrate to English service.

<comment><USER7> _5\. Another random guess is that it's easier for a German than for a Russian to migrate to English service._

In principle, Facebook is localised. I could imagine that few apps are translated to German though, and even fewer to Russian, except those built by native developers; (I don't use any apps, so I don't know) that native developer pool ought to be the same as the one building VK (or VZ) apps. Assuming Facebook does a decent job of filtering localised apps, I can't imagine this to be a massive issue for users.

I can only assume the media upload is what keeps people coming back.

All of the other reasons you mention seem to be reasons why businesses would prefer VK over Facebook, but surely it's the _users_ that are the key?

<comment><USER8> "I can only assume the media upload is what keeps people coming back."

People keep coming back because that's where their friends are.

<comment><USER6> See, that's what I would have thought about StudiVZ and yet Facebook could spread in Germany like a wildfire. StudiVZ still has millions of users but Facebook has those same users, too. (This is only anecdotal evidence but Facebook also seems like the busier place to me, activity has transitioned from StudiVZ to Facebook.)

This tells me that even if a social network seems to have a particular market cornered, a competitor still has a chance. (Which, I think, is quite nice to know.) Network effects are obviously important and have to be considered by anyone who wants to build a social network but I think there are certain properties of social networks that dampen network effects: Signing up is easy and free, for one, and rebuilding the social graph, while some work, is far from tedious. You only have to add some friends and recommendations get you the rest of the way.

<comment><USER9> It might be just a Russian phenomenon. Are there any other countries where Google is not the dominant search engine?

<comment><USER10> Baidu-Baidu in China.

<comment><USER11> And for a bit of a non-obvious one, Seznam in the Czech Republic.

<comment><USER12> I wonder if Seznam really is more popular than Google in ČR. Do you have any data to support this? Also I wonder what the deal is with Jyxo.cz. How much behind Seznam is it nowadays? Wasn't it technically superior?

<comment><USER11> My citation for the Seznam claim is "I read it on English Wikipedia". I have no idea if it's accurate. Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _backgroundify!_ (removed branding, resized to 1920x1200): <http://s3.amazonaws.com/fb-world-image/fb-worldmap.jpg>

The US / Canadian border in the West is interesting. It seems between west of the great lakes and east of Seattle there isn't much connection across the border.

<comment><USER14> zoomed <http://zoom.it/9qx1>

<comment><USER15> Could just be a graphing anomaly, or that there aren't many people living on either side of the border in those areas.

<comment><USER16> I've been in that area. I think it is real.

It is a lot easier to move around and work on one side of the border or the other, which leads to people naturally not meeting people on the other side.

In the east there are so many more people and there is so much cross border traffic due to trade (particularly from the auto industry) that a lot more cross border connections exist.

<comment><USER17> I've been to the Eastern part of the border: Stanstead, Quebec/Vermont. Over there, some of the buildings are right on the border. One of the guys I worked with lived in apartments which had their parking lot technically in the US.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanstead,_Quebec#Geography>

Check out the library:

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

<http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,948520,00.html>

As for the west coast, let's not forget about the geographical anomaly known as "Point Roberts":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts#Geography>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's the same Paul Butler that posted about A/B testing a CV [http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my- resu...](http://paulbutler.org/archives/experiment-in-testing-my-resume/)

<comment><USER19> I wonder if google found him by posting this A/B Resume test.

<comment><USER20> You mean Facebook?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's really interesting that you can clearly see the differences between West Germany from East Germany, even 20 years after the reunification. Also the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 80 years after the end of the World War I.

I also wonder who those users in North Korea are.

<comment><USER22> Those are all Kim Jong-il

<comment><USER23> Kim Jong Il is friend to all Korean people, but the map does not reflect that?

<comment><USER24> He is a true friend to all those Koreans. But the map only shows those who have computers. AND access to internet. Which would be his family, government and more or less that's it. The rest would love to show their friendship and devotion to Kim but can't - lack of computers is killing them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What I want to know is, were the 10MM pairs all people who make their friendship data public? For people in urban areas, this is sufficiently anonymous. But for those faint dots in the middle of nowhere, is it?

I think very carefully before I reveal any information publicly about my users. Sometimes seemingly aggregate information isn't.

</comment><comment><USER26> Seems to comply pretty well with this <http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of- social-networks/>

Notice the conspicuous absence of China, Russia and Brazil.

<comment><USER27> Why auspicious?

<comment><USER26> Because I'm an idiot and meant conspicuous. I'll be editing that now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Am I reading it right? R generated that?

<comment><USER29> You're surprised? Why?

<comment><USER30> I can't speak for the poster you're responding to, but if it's easy to make things that pretty in R, I suddenly want to learn it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> the lack of china is pretty interesting. russia is practically non-existent too, but it's much larger (especially with this map projection) with a much smaller population.

<comment><USER32> The lack of China on the map was interesting to me as well. I believe that Facebook being blocked in China has quite a bit to do with it.

<comment><USER33> Not really. The real reason is 2 letters long: QQ

EDIT: To explain and not be snarky, QQ is an IM/portal/social network/web mail/social game platform that is actually larger than Facebook. (Over 600 million active last I checked.) They completely dominate every aspect of Chinese web software.

<comment><USER34> There would be many more using Facebook if it wasn't blocked. I'm not sure how it's doing now but I remember lots of students last year were joining xiaonei which is just a facebook duplicate for Chinese students only.

IMO many of these sites are blocked in China so Chinese companies can dominate the domestic market rather than for political reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about a real hi-res version, or a vectorized version, or dare I dream, the raw data?

This looks pretty, but it'd be more interesting to me if I could explore it some.

</comment><comment><USER36> All that dark may be attributed to numerous things as alluded to already: lack of development, lack of human settlement, poverty, simply not on fb

The border region between the Canadian prairie provinces and the American plains may be because the cities aren't smack against the border as in BC/WASH. or Ontario/NY etc.

The few dots in NK could be those few expats or SK/foreign tourists, or NK operatives logging in. NK does have a twitter account.

Anyway, the map is stunning and i think its a great visual of the inequalities, especially between Africa and the global North. It might also highlight the irrelevance of fb in regions where community (not the same as digitized "communication") is more necessary, strong and relevant to the life and survival mechanisms therein than costly technologies elsewhere.

<comment><USER37> > The few dots in NK could be those few expats or SK/foreign tourists, or NK > operatives logging in. NK does have a twitter account.

It's not based on IP, but based on self-stated resident city.

<comment><USER36> ah, thanks. i guess we can exclude tourists then. could also be fans of the regime from outside of the country.. who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting. In Germany you can still distinct clearly the former eastern part, which has less facebook activity. You see the 'island' of Berlin, though. For your informaion: The union of Germany was 20 years ago...

Anyway, I'm not a fan of facebook, google and the like, as it's not obvious that the consumer pays the big bill in the end. People think of great, free services but all the billions those company make come secretly from our pockets. (Via created consumer trends, higher prices that other companies can take due to the consumer information they buy from facebook)

</comment><comment><USER39> Weird: Sardinia is much brighter than Corsica (density for Corsica (34 hab. per km2) is about half the density of Sardinia (70 hab. per km2), so I guess that explains it?)

Weirder: Portugal (11M people, 114 hab. per km2) is much brighter than Spain (44M people, 93 hab. per km2): the difference in density does not seem to explain the difference on the map. Are Spaniards less social than the Portuguese?

<comment><USER40> In Spain, Tuenti is considerably more popular (Spanish equivalent of Facebook). This probably explains the density difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> this might not represent "real human relationships".. people playing games like mafia wars (45 million users) keep adding hundreds of other players as friends..

</comment><comment><USER42> Nice piece of data visualization there. +1 for using great circles instead of straight lines.

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks a little like that brief orbital shot of the Borg future Earth, doesn't it?

<comment><USER44> Or the Taelon Commonality, for Earth, Final Conflict fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Brazil is almost totally dark; Orkut effect?

<comment><USER43> I'm pretty sure that's just the Amazon.

<comment><USER46> It's both effects. If we had an Orkut map it would be like this but with the brightness much amplified. The coast and the South would be as bright as (say) Mexico.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Its interesting to see many connections within India. Also India and countries in Western Asia seem more connected than India and US (which is what I was expecting assuming the FB population in India)

<comment><USER48> >Its interesting to see many connections within India.

The map is quite predictable to some extent too. Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata are clearly visible, and I think I see Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai as well, albeit as less brighter dots. Bangalore not being a bright dot is curious in itself - is it that people here are more networked with other cities and countries rather than within the city?

>Also India and countries in Western Asia seem more connected than India and US (which is what I was expecting assuming the FB population in India)

How do you see something like that? I found it pretty difficult to keep track of the lines. If that were true, it would be pretty interesting indeed.

<comment><USER47> i see some bright lines between indian cities esp mumbai and the gulf region.

btw, i wonder who you are....as you are also a Sundar

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Beautiful. This belongs in the MoMA.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's interesting how sub-Saharan Africa is still a mostly dark continent. Also interesting are the connections between the Kurds from Turkey and those from present-day Iraq, and how people from Baghdad are still more or less connected to those from the northern parts of Iraq (there's still a major Sunni presence in there as far as I know).

</comment><comment><USER51> Really shows how entrenched the established players are in the emerging markets. Russia has VK (VKontakte), China has QQ (and supposedly blocks FB too), Brazil has Orkut. Makes me kind of admire Facebook for being able to take so much market share in Western Europe, despite home-grown alternatives there.

</comment><comment><USER52> Neat. It is interesting how similar this rendering is to Chris Harrison's city-to-city map: [http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/wor...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/medium/worldBlack.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER53> I think the giant bright line through central Mexico into Arizona is pretty funny.

<comment><USER54> That "giant bright line" tracks along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean/Gulf of California. Why is it funny? There is a major highway there, and many populous cities along the shore. As you go inland a ways there is a giant desert and then a giant mountain range – it seems reasonable that such areas are thus less populated. Many parts of that map have "giant bright lines" along coastlines (for example, Spain, Australia, northwest Africa).

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Were it possible to gather the data, it'd be interesting to see a breakdown of how the connections were made. I'm curious whether more were a result of travel/temporary visits or relocation/permanent moves.

</comment><comment><USER56> They don't use Facebook in Russia?

Jokes aside, this is an amazing marketing/hiring tool for Facebook. I hope they print this on billboards.

</comment><comment><USER57> why use euclidean distance in the function for defining weights? Doesn't it mean cities that are farther in distance with fewer friend connections would get a higher weight than cities that are close by? Not sure how it helps visualize or how to interpret it.

<comment><USER58> Presumably they're using euclidean distance to scale _down_ the brightness of long-distance links -- to ensure that long-distance relationships don't overpower short ones in the visualization. Otherwise, a pair of friends thousands of miles apart would be contributing the same "energy" to the image as a thousand pairs a few miles apart... You'd never be able to see local detail in the areas heavily crossed by global connections (e.g. the Caribbean).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Russians don't use Facbook.

edit. I love this map. China and Russia are black holes.

</comment><comment><USER60> looks familiar [http://www.masterresource.org/wp- content/uploads/2009/12/ear...](http://www.masterresource.org/wp- content/uploads/2009/12/earth_night.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER61> It would be interesting to see this with full spectral progression

</comment><comment><USER62> Oh, China, you are so dark...

</comment><comment><USER63> So beautiful

</comment><comment><USER64> So where's Kevin Bacon?

</comment><comment><USER65> This is really amazing. Nice!</comment>


Four NOs of a Serious Code Reviewer - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2015/02/09/serious-code-reviewer.html <comment><USER2> Uugggghhh.

I think this list hits cultural problems more than anything else and is largely incomplete. It would be better mentioned as:

* Don't be polite

* If code style is what keeps you up at night then you aren't a good programmer

Politeness is dishonesty. It is an excuse to lie because the lie less hurtful than the shame and disgrace of the truth. This is bullshit.

I am a military guy, so for me nothing is more important than honesty and mutual respect. Kindness is a quality not valued at all. Hurt me with honesty, since I am an adult I can take it. If this is a problem for you I will view you as a weak coward one hand, but more importantly I will perceive that you are a liar and not worthy of trust on any level.

We live in a wonderful modern world of awesome static analysis tools. Code style is something that can be automatically analyzed, validated, and largely corrected. There is absolutely no need for human intervention in this regard. If code style is your biggest concern during a code review I will view you as primarily incompetent since you have no ability to prioritize what is actually important. I will also view you as an expired dinosaur for spending manual time on tasks better served by software.</comment>


How a Fake Typhus Epidemic Saved a Polish City From the Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-a-fake-typhus-epidemic-saved-a-polish-city-from-the-nazis <comment><USER3> Nice hack. There are many stories from that period, one of my favourite ones is about Witold Pilecki [1] among several things like founding secret army he was basically responsible for intel on concentration camps - people didn't know what was happening there/they didn't believe they were mass killing people; so he arranged himself to be taken to Auschwitz, organised resistance there, built communication device with mates to send info out; after sitting there for more than two years waiting for allies to take it over he decided to speak to them personally, so he escaped and did manage but west said they can't do it without soviets and soviets didn't want to do it; then he started organising resistance just in case soviets are going to take over govt - <USER2> was right, they did... his story goes on and on [1].

[1] [http://www.poloniainstitute.net/witold-pilecki-bravery- beyon...](http://www.poloniainstitute.net/witold-pilecki-bravery-beyond- measure/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I grew up there and had no idea about the story. Yet I had to memorize egyptian pharaohs and tons of dates of historic events which everybody forgot a week later.

Anyway, a "glimpse into Rozwadow today" photo seems slightly biased. It's a small town but it doesn't looks that bad[1] (knowing HN probably only first few of you will be able to check that..)

1\. [http://fotografialotnicza.blox.pl/tagi_b/190925/Stalowa- Wola...](http://fotografialotnicza.blox.pl/tagi_b/190925/Stalowa-Wola.html)

<comment><USER5> Why forget the dates after the effort shoving them in?

And why not ask what is the value of knowing the dates of important events? The polish school system is hardly unique in this requirement.

I hated memorizing dates as a kid. Horrible at short term memory. But I was good at putting them in long term memory. Now what I hated anchors my understanding of history.

For example, does the modern Polish state obtaining independence have any meaning except in the 20s and 30s? (That is after the fall of the Czar, after WW1, before the Molotov pact). Despite Polish longing, 1917 had to happen. 1917 is an anchor.

Or consider that the discovery of America, 1492, happened less than 40 years after the fall of Constantinople and in the same year as the fall of Granada (ending the Reconquista). 1492 (and 1453) is another anchor

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > because the Germans were inclined to avoid such territories and the > population was __relatively free __from atrocities

The small comforts one accepts in times of war.

Amazing story, thank you for posting.</comment>


Machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, within a few decades. - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

<comment><USER2> When I look at history I don't see people that expected incorrect rates of growth, I see people that predicted incorrect directions of growth.

When nuclear power was new people predicted the future would be shaped by massive amounts of clean/cheap power. When air travel was new we predicted that everyone would fly everywhere.

The singularity is our version of the fusion powered car, or the personal jetpack.

<comment><USER3> Very good point, but computing devices don't have scaling problems that the other technologies you listed have. Nuclear _would_ have had a similar generality if, for example, you could safely run a fission power device on your phone, for example -- but you can't; it just didn't scale down at the required safety level. Similarly, air travel doesn't scale down as people thought it would (still no flying cars) even though it works very well on large scale (airlines, combined, have near monopoly on long-distance travel). Computing scales both up (supercomputers) and down (cell phones). It may be that current silicon chips won't scale down to cellular level, but it also may be that (a) such scaling is not required for human-level AI (I believe it isn't), or that (b) other technologies such as graphene may replace silicon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The assertion in the title is nonsense because "human intelligence" is not properly understood at this point. There is still much debate as to what drives the brain, and whether there is more to human intelligence than just the physical brain. Even if we could completely duplicate a human brain biologically, would it just start working automatically? Would it have feelings? Would it be able to learn if we could attach sensory inputs? This is not known. It's quite possible that there is _much_ more to human intelligence than massive computing power.

See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_problem>

<comment><USER3> > There is still much debate as to what drives the brain

There is no debate. The short answer is: sugar.

> whether there is more to human intelligence than just the physical brain

No.

> Even if we could completely duplicate a human brain biologically, would it > just start working automatically

Not unless you teach it. Humans who grow up in the wild on their own are quite ape-like -- clearly, human brain doesn't start working automatically on its own (at least working _well_ ). Also, as demonstrated by machine learning, you can teach a non-biological system just as efficiently as you can teach a biological one, which means that the fist AI will reside (or already resides) on a run-of-the-mill silicon chip.

> Would it be able to learn if we could attach sensory inputs?

It would have to, otherwise it would not be human-level AI by definition.

> It's quite possible that there is much more to human intelligence than > massive computing power.

Yes, and that is years of learning and good enough ( _just_ good enough) learning algorithms.

> See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_problem>

My foot tells me it doesn't have that problem.

<comment><USER5> Since you seem to know this stuff, I had a couple of questions.

> Not unless you teach it. Humans who grow up in the wild on their own are > quite ape-like -- clearly, human brain doesn't start working automatically > on its own

I find this very interesting. Are there some articles/papers that I can look in to?

> also, as demonstrated by machine learning, you can teach a non-biological > system just as efficiently as you can teach a biological one

Is there something you can refer me to that compares the efficiency of learning in humans vs machines?

<comment><USER3> > Are there some articles/papers that I can look in to?

There was little real science done because "real" science is when you do experiments, and a study of this kind would involve the so-called forbidden experiment, which would create a huge ethical stir. The most often-cited report is this one: [http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/2053957/g...](http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Publication/2053957/genie- a-psycholinguistic-study-of-a-modern-day-wild-child)

Here is a brief Powerpoint with an overview of interesting cases: [http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING411/ppt/d39-FeralChildren....](http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING411/ppt/d39-FeralChildren.ppt)

While it is often said that it is hard to draw conclusions from the few reports that exist -- I think that the one conclusion that can be drawn is that nearly everything that makes us "human-like" is a product of learning and social interaction. No confirmed "feral" child has ever been reported to have acquired language in the full sense of the term.

> Is there something you can refer me to that compares the efficiency of > learning in humans vs machines?

Just look up any introduction on machine learning. Nearly everything we do every day (recognizing objects, thinking in terms of goals, etc.) involves a classification problem, and every classification problem can be reduced to a regression on data. So there is nothing more fundamental to learning than fitting a model to data. Humans are pretty efficient learners, but they have their limits (your Bayesian spam filter is probably more efficient than you on recognizing spam, even though it may fail in a few cases because it doesn't quite "live" in the world you live in, meaning that its world model is not as deep/rich as yours). To acquire a deep/rich world model, you would need more training (provided you have a correctly balanced algorithm), which would ultimately be as expensive as raising a child. There is no reason though to think that it won't be done one day.

<comment><USER6> The no free lunch theorem has killed all such hopes for me.

<comment><USER3> Don't see an argument here. One could also use your theorem to arrive to the exactly opposite conclusion: AI will happen and will eat your lunch, therefore there will be no free lunch.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps you are unaware of this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like this is pretty non sequitur. He seems to imply that above some magic number of transistors intelligence will simply manifest itself. Intelligence is more than just computational power.

<comment><USER8> He might be right, though. Intelligence might arise as an emergent property of some complex system. For example, automated trading.

There's no telling really. It also depends on how you define intelligence. It doesn't necessarily have to be (explicitly simulated) human intelligence.

(Mind that intelligence in humans wasn't created on demand either. It arose as an emergent property of the mammalian brain, due to evolutionary pressures)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I understand the cynicism of many people here, and I totally agree that there is a lot more to intelligence than mere computational ability.

Then I type "adress of resurunt in adelide", it autocorrects to "address of restaurant in adelaide" and shows me a list of restaurants in my city.

I tell my phone to navigate to one, and it understands me and displays a map with route directions from my current location.

I wonder if anyone in my city has deployed SceneTap yet, and laugh to myself at how weak it is. I mean - it can only count the number of people in a bar and identify if they are male or female. I wonder why they aren't rating the attractiveness of the people there instead? [2]

Driving my car, I swear at the bad drivers ahead of me, and wish the cars here were driverless. It's crazy it has taken so long! Ok, I understand back in 2004 no cars managed to finish the DARPA challenge across the desert, and the winner in 2005 said "The impossible has been achieved" when his team's car finished[3] - but that was 6 years ago! Anyone would think this was complicated or something.

Then I come on HN, and see everyone bitching about how ignorant it is to think computers could ever be intelligent. I agree of course - it's obvious that chess is no test of intelligence, nor is spelling correction, nor is contextual instructions, nor is machine vision, nor is driving a car, nor is breaking CAPTCHAs[4]!!!

The Turing test - now that's a true test of intelligence. At least until it is passed - then _obviously_ it's a flawed test.

[1] [http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/28/using- facial-...](http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/28/using-facial- recognition-technology-to-choose-which-bar-to-go-to/)

[2] <http://www.springerlink.com/content/t75552811t449746/>

[3] <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171673,00.html>

[4] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1897932>

</comment><comment><USER10> No, no it won't. This is the same statement that has been made consistently since the invention of computers. But the fact is, that despite our increases in computational power, and our high degree of success with specific tasks, we still don't even know what general "intelligence" really means, beyond "what humans do."

Until we have a reasonable definition for intelligence and consciousness (which I would argue are related), we'll always be moving the goalposts, and machine intelligence will always be a "few decades" away.

<comment><USER11> The following two statements are not incompossible:

1\. At each time T, we believe that "machine intelligence", according to the definition in use at time T, is a few decades away;

2\. At each time T, we're right.

In other words, the fact that in thirty years we'll still be talking about how we'll have machine intelligence one day, has nothing to do with the fact that by that point we'll already have machine intelligence as we _currently_ conceive it.

<comment><USER12> _The following two statements are not incompossible: 1\. At each time T, we believe that "machine intelligence", according to the definition in use at time T, is a few decades away; 2\. At each time T, we're right._

They're not incompatible, but the second one isn't true.

It's true that a few decades ago some folks thought that a computer capable of playing good chess would be true "machine intelligence". But they also thought such a computer would be able to carry on a sensible conversation and generally act like a _person_.

It turns out that playing a decent game of chess was easier than we thought, but building a HAL-like computer (man, I just realised that movie is nearly fifty years old!) is still incredibly difficult.

Still, I shouldn't even be talking about "building" an intelligent computer. The hardware is the easy part, the software is the hard part. Surely by now, all the supercomputers in the world are quite capable of simulating a rat's brain. But are they? Hell no, nobody has ever written a rat-brain simulation and nobody has the foggiest idea how to start.

<comment><USER6> Supposedly the human brain is only on the order of petaflops, so we should be able to simulate it at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It always seemed self-evident to me that to attain something like human intelligence, machines would have to share human human visual and auditory senses and be bootstrapped to a point where some great influx of knowledge could take place.

We now have that body of knowledge, audio, visual, and instantaneous worldwide communications.

I have to agree with Kurzweil that, surely machines that broadly exceed humans cannot be far away, though it may be their poetry will leave something to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to disagree with Kurzweil here. I remember in one of the Kinect videos, the researcher who worked on the mic array explained that the billion neurons allowed such a level of processing that we could extract info from the noise easily.

The amount of computational resources needed to combat information overload on one sense organ is immense. To be able to pull that off with 5 organs, regulate body function, make inferences with ease, apply vast swaths of info to fields completely unrelated to the underlying information is just immense. Although, I can see a budding brain peripherals market in about 2050+. It is just that we need a lot more than computational resources to emulate the brain.

One interesting quote I took away from a cognition class (the only one I considered legit in our Psych dept.) was that we tend to compare our brain to the most advanced tech of the moment. My gut feeling says that the current computational models we use are not adequate representations of the human mind and potentially a socratic approach also might fall short.

<comment><USER15> Just to pick on one piece of your argument : the difference between 1 sense organ and 5 is only a 5-fold increase. Even worst case it's like a 25-fold increase (network effect, etc). But a 25-fold increase should take less than a decade - as demonstrated by the power of the processor in your phone...

But I'll definitely agree that true AI is a difficult target to aim at, since AFAIK no-one knows what the important magical bit of intelligence is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> By 2026, apparently: "But because we're doubling the rate of progress every decade, we'll see a century of progress–at today's rate–in only 25 calendar years."

"In line with my earlier predictions, supercomputers will achieve one human brain capacity by 2010, and personal computers will do so by around 2020. By 2030, it will take a village of human brains (around a thousand) to match $1000 of computing."

So, have super computers achieved one human brain's worth of computing? I believe we're only in the petaflop range, which is a factor of 10^10 behind his prediction.

At any rate, I believe AI is logically impossible.

<comment><USER16> Estimates of the computing power of human brain vary widely, the ones that have some logic behind them range from 0.1 to 1000 petaflops. IMHO, they tend to be very "pro-brain", and should be seen as an upper limit.

Currently, the fastest supercomputer does abt 8 petaflops. This might be already 80 times more than the power of a human brain. And it could be less.. but where is your 10^10 factor from?

<comment><USER6> Ah, whoops, I took his human race number. n/m, seems we're on track for computational performance, or even ahead of schedule.

Sweet, I should start seeing human type sentience any day now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Machine intelligence will soon diverge from Kurzweil's hyper-optimistic predictions and timetables so dramatically that he won't be able to gloss over it any longer.

As for where AI stands today, I'd say we're not even at the level of simulating a jellyfish, or even a single cell. Simulated protein folding is still a pipe-dream for our fastest supercomputers, nevermind simulating the intelligence of a sentient being.

On top of that, algorithmic systems as we understand them may be a shallow model of what it means to have 'human intelligence'. How do you design a circuit that feels pain, or know when you've succeeded?

</comment><comment><USER18> Definitely true for sufficiently weak definitions of "human intelligence". E.g. already true for "chess-playing" ability.

Incientally, "a few decades" means "just after we get fusion power" right?

</comment><comment><USER19> Will strong AI ever enjoy a gin and tonic at the end of work on a summer's day? Will it ever feel the endorphin release from a strong run on the treadmill? Of course these are rhetorical questions. AI, however you define it, is a machine, a tool. It may become arbitrarily powerful, but that's all it will ever be; and it will always be a creation of man.

<comment><USER15> And when the AI designs a machine that is superior to it, and superior to anything that man has designed - then what? Or are you suggesting that humans are 'by definition' the only beings that can be said to have created something?

The AI (or its progeny) might disagree - and be able to argue pretty convincingly... After all, somewhere down the line they'll be much smarter than any human.

Or are you also arguing that human intelligence is some kind of asymptotic limit? Tell that to a kid that's smarter than its parents, or teachers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Summary of every post from KurzweilAI.net since it's launch years ago:

"Machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence and a singularity will happen. Why? Technology gets more advanced."

Broken record...

<comment><USER21> Somebody needs to introduce Kurzweil to the concept of the asymptote.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Something like this maybe?

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8464115/graph_test.html>

<comment><USER15> But unless you've got evidence that we've started to 'turn the other corner', doesn't your graph suggest that the level of technology is going to increase by the same factor as it did since the (say) 1950s?

And even then, maybe the AI level of technology is below the level to which we might be tending towards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mitch Kapor and Ray Kurzweil made a public bet on this back in 2002. Mitch challenged that "By 2029 no computer - or 'machine intelligence' - will have passed the Turing Test." Stakes: $20k to the EFF or Kurzweil Foundation depending on the winner. See: <http://longbets.org/1/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i would not say it is impossible. predicting the futuere is so difficult and things are changing so fast. i agree with the author "kurzweil" that we will first enter a hybrid phase between machines and humans. later, machines will surpass humans. the progress of tech evolution is getting faster and faster and i can't see right now what should stop this. i'm not a scientist, but what i can read in the article looks very logic and therefore i agree with kurzweil.

</comment><comment><USER23> That great. I've got so many questions.

<comment><USER23> Ouch! I got beat up over this. I still think it's funny. This man vs. machine appears on HN from time to time, and it probably will continue for another three decades. I've just gotta ask, are we really accomplishing anything here?</comment></comment>


Brain behind IBM Watson - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@giacaglia/how-ibm-watson-works-40d8d5185ac8 <comment><AUTHOR> IBM uses the brand 'Watson" to market its A.I. developments. It's worth understanding what is under the hood to see if the same techniques could be applied to Watson Health, or other initiatives

<comment><USER2> Watson Health is struggling: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/robotics/artificial-i...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/robotics/artificial-intelligence/layoffs-at-watson-health-reveal-ibms- problem-with-ai)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> IBM is dead by now. Will see if the RedHat acquisition will ever pay off

</comment><comment><USER4> IBM Watson is behind the trends. They need to jump into the Deep Learning boat...</comment>


Want to accomplish your goals? Become a finisher - <AUTHOR> http://simpleprogrammer.com/2014/12/29/want-accomplish-goals-become-finisher/

<comment><USER2> Saying no is so important, but hard to do. So, how do you say no to the shiny objects? Well, you have to have a long term goal.

It's ok for long term goals to change, but if you don't have that guidestar, you end up haring off, and even if you finish projects, they aren't cohesive. Take it from me, I've done this (check out my blog, in my profile, if you don't believe me).

Of course, like much advice, this is much easier said than done.</comment>


The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/roko_s_basilisk_the_most_terrifying_thought_experiment_of_all_time.html <comment><USER2> Nothing here yet, but let's get going guys!

[https://github.com/carlitoselmago/roko- basilisk](https://github.com/carlitoselmago/roko-basilisk)

</comment><comment><USER3> the most boring and easy to dismiss thought experiment of all time

Its possible sure, but so are an infinite count of other terrifying-but-if- they-are-true-are-entirely-out-of-our-control futures.</comment>


Transfer of Wikipedia sites from GoDaddy complete - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/09/transfer-of-wikipedia-sites-from-godaddy-complete/ <comment><USER2> Can someone give some insight why so many high-profile companies use MarkMonitor? What exactly is so compelling about their domain registration services? Why is that even Internet juggernauts are unable to take care of domain name registration themselves? How much does it cost (they didn't seem to have a price list)?

<comment><USER3> A company would have to become an ICANN registrar to be able to register their own domains, in addition to having to setup registration agreements in every other country TLD that those companies do business in (google.co.uk, microsoft.ru, etc.). That would require a lot more money and overhead than just letting MarkMonitor do it, which specializes in this sort of thing.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but why not use any other domain registrar? i.e. any consumer registrar.

<comment><USER4> I work at a consumer registrar, the only thing you need to do in order for us to hand over control of a domain to you is put a company logo on a word document, stamp it and fax it to us.

This does not apply to larger clients, but then if you're already looking for that kind of service it makes sense to go to a company that specialises in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good stuff.

Though I am somewhat shocked any high profile sites are still using GoDaddy at this point ...

<comment><USER6> Unless Godaddy offers some service I'm not aware of, its probably just one of those things that happens when you're just getting started. You end up never changing it due to the work required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one disappointed by this move? They moved to a registrar so split between their role as registrar and their stance as anti-piracy that they couldn't even take a stand on SOPA?

[http://startupdispatch.com/analysis/analysis-9-of- top-500-we...](http://startupdispatch.com/analysis/analysis-9-of- top-500-websites-registered-with-godaddy-22-with-markmonitor/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was considering moving to <http://www.namecheap.com/>. I guess that's equally good when it comes to general protection for domains.</comment>


Ask HN: Was Y2K ever really a threat? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if y2k was baseless or real. <comment><USER2> Absolutely a "threat". There were numerous systems in corporations running old software in COBOL, and other un-exciting languages. There were numerous databases with 2 bytes for the year field.

The "threat" is qualified in that these systems would have surely crashed or produced bad results if un-patched. They clearly needed to be fixed.

Was the threat as dire as alarmists said? Was civilization on the brink? We'll never know really, because a slew of contractors and developers audited systems, monkey patched, and upgraded. Problem solved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I didn't live(sentiently at least) through Y2K and your response was perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Video about the END OF TIME. UNIX time that is, and it talks about the Y2K issue. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQ691PTKsA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJQ691PTKsA)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks that's a great video.</comment></comment>


The Coker Hill Haunting 2: The Events - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangehistory.net/2018/03/03/coker-hill-haunting/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand why many people (myself included) fear ghosts?

If I heard something go bump in the night it would freak me out. Yet I've never read of a historic event of haunting where the ghost (or whatever phenomenon) actually did anything terrible. Tipping stuff over, opening doors, or in this case knocking on wood, isn't exactly threatening. Yet if that were me I'd split out of that house faster than you can say Casper :-)

I don't think it's the fear of the unknown. I see unknown stuff all the time that's not at all frightening. There's something about poltergeist (or poltergeist-seeming natural phenomenon) that's just too much.

My wife and her sister both claim to have seen the same ghost from separate rooms. In a house where someone was known to have died, one night she saw a man wearing older clothing standing in her bedroom doorway, looking at her with a puzzled look on his face. She blinked and he was gone. Her sister from her bedroom saw the same man. Only once, and it never happened again.

<comment><USER3> Maybe this is a case of mixing cause and effect. It might not be you fearing the ghost but rather your fear creating it in the first place.

<comment><USER2> Except the order is backwards. Stimulus then response. You're going along just fine then _bam_ a noise and you jump.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. First of all you might not be aware that you are not "fine" at all. On a subconscious level you might already be fearful. And then of course your perceptions might trick you. While you might certainly think that the noise you heard was the first thing you noted, there could have been several other inputs that set you up so that the particular noise sounded more suspicious or louder or unlikely...

<comment><USER2> No I'm saying the surprise comes from nowhere. Anyway, it's theoretical for me. I can't say I've ever seen any ghost, just been spooked by noises when I was otherwise perfectly happy.

Question remains though: Why do many fear ghosts? There's really nothing frightening about them that I can see, and I don't believe fear of the unknown is the cause.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to make sure my code requires fewer changes when reviewed by a senior - <AUTHOR> I'm a junior SE at a startup;  most of the time, my code requires quite some changes during the code review process. It really frustrates me and make me feel like a fraud.
From your experiences, how can I make sure that my code is solid enough that it does not require too many changes when reviewed by a Senior Engineer. Any advices, and book recommendations are welcome. Thanks <comment><USER2> > I'm a junior SE at a startup; most of the time, my code requires quite some > changes during the code review process. It really frustrates me and make me > feel like a fraud.

You're _junior_. You still learn. Your code is _not expected_ to be good until you get more training, and then you'll no longer be junior.

> From your experiences, how can I make sure that my code is solid enough that > it does not require too many changes when reviewed by a Senior Engineer.

This is something you should be asking your reviewers. We don't know what you are lacking, as we haven't seen your code.

<comment><USER3> Yup! You could also try asking your reviewers to write out some coding guidelines. You can refer to these as a checklist before putting your code up for review.

Or if you are really adventurous, start making this document yourself as you get feedback. The guide can includes things like coding style as well as mistakes to avoid "prefer do loops over while loops", "always check for nulls after $API_CALL". (As a bonus here, you will make mistakes in your doc and you'll get additional feedback: more learning opportunities.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is a problem you'll solve with books.

To some extent code is a matter of taste, and good taste is more important than you'd think.

You need to talk about each change and figure out what is driving it. Why was it wrong in that place when it was right yesterday. Figure out the general rules they are trying to follow and try not to make the same mistake twice.

I know it's frustrating and demoralising but please view it as mentoring. In this industry, so many juniors never get the experience your getting and never learn how to code well. Please stop viewing changes as a personal failure.

If you are getting many corrections you might want to slow down a bit. Properly test before committing and give the code a read through as if you were reviewing it.

You don't say what kind of changes they are making. You need to figure out patterns there.

If your senior is being an ass that's different. There are bullies in every walk of life. If that's the case try to keep them sweet.

When I was younger and felt more experienced devs were getting at me, I often realise they meant well but were bad at communicating and particularly imagining the situation from my perspective on order to spot gaps in my knowledge. Ask them to pick out and talk you through how they would improve your code for an hour a week?

In terms of avoiding getting people mad, mistakes are fine but repeat mistakes are not, so really focus on not needing the able correction twice.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been reviewing code for a long time, and I've had lots of my own code reviewed. You have to learn to accept code reviews as mentoring and learning and striving for consistency across the team. If you think of reviews as a contest of egos or a test to pass you aren't getting the most out of it. Most juniors now days don't get the opportunity to have a more experienced programmer review their code.

Main problems I see when reviewing code:

1\. Doesn't meet requirements, or requirements not understood. If you aren't clear on what you're supposed to deliver before you start coding you need to ask questions. Make a plan, identify intermediate goals, have someone else validate your approach.

2\. Over-engineering. Solve the problem assigned. Don't create more problems or try to plan for every eventuality. Prefer simple, understandable solutions.

3\. Not tested. Test carefully. Then test again. I don't mean just making all the lights green in TDD. You should go test carefully and make sure you see expected behavior according to requirements. Think about edge cases. Build testability, logging, etc. in from the start.

4\. Sloppy work. Read your code. This is called desk checking. Review your code before someone else does. It's surprising how many obvious errors you can find just reading through code.

5\. Idiosyncratic style. If your team has written standards, follow them. If not propose that the team define and follow some standards. In lieu of that make your code look like what the senior devs produce. Lots of time is wasted resolving disagreements over things like indenting and variable naming.

If you have the luxury of code reviews keep notes about what your reviewer asked you to change. Determine if the issues are style, efficiency, lack of testing or sloppy work, or misunderstood requirements. Change your approach, and talk to the team if you think there's something everyone can do to address the issues.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've reviewed a lot of code. The three biggest things that help junior devs (really every dev) produce better quality code for code reviews are:

1\. Use a linter. For example, eslint in JavaScript, and pycodestyle (formerly pep8) in Python.

2\. Use an automated code quality service. Most have an open source free tier. The ones I know of are: Landscape, Codacy, and Code Climate. You can see a trivial example of their buttons (click through for reports) on my one-file repo here [1].

3\. Read more advanced books to learn the more advanced patterns. Software engineering quality is mostly about using abstractions and paradigms well.

Also, keep in mind: Always aim to be consistent with the existing codebase even if it goes against your personal style or beliefs. Consistency makes it easier for a team to actively develop together. If your team has a style guide, know those conventions; if they don't, default to best practices per your framework / language.

Another thing you can do is read and study code written by very experienced devs. Think of things like your framework itself or the standard library of your language. You'll learn more advanced features there as well. There is plenty of role model code in the wild.

[1]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/tag- brain](https://github.com/tedmiston/tag-brain)

</comment><comment><USER7> 1) Never rush. Take as much time as you need to solve a task. Ensure that the code you have written is as good as possible. It should be "almost perfect."

1b) You write "solid enough" which is the wrong goal if you want to improve. You must strive for perfection because that gives you the most skill improvement per unit of time invested.

2) Write down what criticism your code is getting. Try and extrapolate. For example, if your code causes a NullPointerException on certain inputs, see if you can figure out why you made that error and what you should keep in mind to not make it in the future.

3\. Seek input from people more experienced. Like on Stack Overflow, the sister site Code Review ([http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)) or among colleagues.

4\. Never give up. And practice, practice, practice!

</comment><comment><USER8> You can't. I am a senior who still gets things flagged at code review. It's not an exam, but a form of quality control. Best to ask the reviewer why each time. Decide if you agree with them. Sometimes it is a matter of taste as someone else said.

Learning SOLID etc will go some way to help.

</comment><comment><USER9> Make a list of the things that are unacceptable. See if you can extract out a few 'themes' that exist.

Are the problems in coding; like comments and spacing and variable names. If so, make a check list for yourself and make sure that you correct these prior to the review.

Are they design? Read up on doing design prior to writing code, and attempt to create a design up front that is more palatable to those above you.

Is the problem requirements or domain knowledge? Look up "requirements engineering", there are a lot of techniques to use to assist in understanding the problem domain and the software requirements.

TLDR. write down the problems, identify the root cause, make that better.

</comment><comment><USER10> Continue learning. There's nothing you can do _right now_ to stop seniors from spotting problems in your code. That's completely normal. In the meantime, you can change your attitude. It's not supposed to make you feel frustrated or like a fraud. It's supposed to be both a quality gate and a learning experience. Any ego on either side of a code review makes it a worse experience.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is nothing much to do besides leaving your current environment in order to find a more flexible place, where you'd get more responsibilities even as a junior. What they don't tell you in college is that the organization in a professional environment has 2 extra layers of micro-management. It goes like this:

1- CEO

2- Expensive Senior management

3- Useless Middle Management

4- Babysiter Managerment (your direct report)

5-- PM's (product and project managers)

6-- Annoying colleagues who grab whatever authority is left from the previous layers

7- you</comment>


et al. - <AUTHOR> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qGuYgMsAAAAJ&hl=en <comment><USER2> The backstory on the stardom of Professor Et Al and Dr. Author on Google Scholar is here: [http://ideophone.org/some-things-you-need-to-know-about- goog...](http://ideophone.org/some-things-you-need-to-know-about-google- scholar/)

Essentially, both of these 'authors' are regarded as highly cited in numerous papers for obvious reasons and means you shouldn't take the citations on Google Scholar at face value.

Clever hack nevertheless.</comment>


EU force Facebook and Google to give police data under terrorism proposals - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/06/08/eu-force-facebook-google-give-police-data-terrorism-proposals/ <comment><USER2> It surprises me how supine governments are when dealing with these big tech companies. If I were in charge and Facebook refused to comply with a request for a terrorist's comms, I would 404 facebook.com across the UK as soon as the necessary blocks could be put in place. I imagine you'd have those comms in your inbox within half an hour.

<comment><USER3> It would be more likely that you would have a population up in arms and asking themselves if they will need to bring their own tar and feathers to the 'run these idiots out of town on a rail' party. Facebook is far more popular in the UK than any politician or party and I think the only thing that would happen within half an hour would be to table a vote of no confidence.

<comment><USER2> As if. The populace are even more disempowered than the government.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Bitcoin Mining Operations Perpetuating Weaknesses in SHA-256? - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible that bitcoin mining operations are actually generating the analog of a giant rainbow table to aid in the decryption of SHA-256 data?
Perhaps some mechanism that would facilitate a birthday attack, collisions, etc.?
I thought I'd float this out there to people who know more about cryptography and the weaknesses of these algorithms than I do. <comment><USER2> Unlike SHA-1, which has a 2^60 local-collision attack and a 160 bit output (so an 80 bit birthday bound), SHA-2 has no theoretical attacks and a 128 bit security bound.

You can do the math on how much it would cost to find a SHA-2 collision; for instance, you can steal Skein team member Jesse Walker's back of the envelope calculations, assigning 2^61 cycles and 2^8 dollars to a server-year. Now multiply the number of cycles a block of SHA256 takes by 2^128.

I don't think a direct attack on SHA256 is a productive use to put the world's computers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rainbow tables are a space time tradeoff for specific known inputs, since the BTC blocks are not generally 'known' nor do some blocks occur more frequently than others rainbow tables are useless. Even when passwords are merely salted rainbow tables are abandoned as not worth the time.

You could pregenerate a 'longer' chain, but the problem is the 'legnth' of the chain is calculated based on difficulty not number of blocks, so you'd need more computer power than all miners combined.

If you want to get cynical about US / Chinese approval for BTC it would probably be willingness to buy enough hardware to precompute a longer chain.

The algos to exploit are the RNGs used in the ECDSA portion of BTC which allow you to derive the private key and directly spend bitcoins, there aren't any currently known weaknesses in relation to SHA256 in BTC. The RNG issue is specific to certain implemenations of BTC and has nothing to do with the protocol itself. (Similar to how an exploit for apache is not a weakness in HTTP)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I think I phrased the question poorly as I wasn't suggesting a weakness in bitcoin, I was wondering whether there might be any value to the mining output.

<comment><USER3> The primary value of the mining output is heat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Miners are computing hashes for a very specific chunk of data. And it's also double SHA256 which is not used in any standard key-derivation function. Specialized mining machines implement a lot of shortcuts to optimise for that exact hashing (in silicon!) and are useless for anything except Bitcoin mining.</comment>


Show HN: Fengari v0.1.0 – Lua VM in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://daurnimator.com/post/172451162334/fengari-v010-released <comment><USER2> Is there any example of services using Lua to run code written by users either in the browser or in the server?

Not necessarily Fengari, it could be with a different library.</comment>


An example of Android's wonderful documentation (/sarcasm)  - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/android/reference/android/webkit/WebView.html

<comment><USER2> What's so bad about it?</comment>