Help a programmer called to ministry - <AUTHOR> http://jaysonrowe.blogspot.com/2014/07/fundraiser-for-seminary.html

<comment><USER2> I'm going to be forthcoming and state that I've always had trouble fathoming a religious programmer.

It's not there mere belief in _a_ god that baffles me. It's when one goes beyond the simple belief that the universe has a creator and enters the realm of Christianity that truly boggles my mind.

Programmers, in my experience, are logical people -- if not by their very nature, then through practice. While I do not believe that our universe has a god, I also don't find it at all unreasonable for one to believe that it does. But a religion layers a multitude of points on top of this notion and eliminates a lot of vagueness thereof. The creator's name is _this_. "His" plan for us is _this_.

I carry my own superstitions. I think it's something that the mind turns to in order to stay relatively sane. My answers to existential questions like "what happens when we die?" come from my numerous experiences with psychedelic chemicals, which have led me into transcendental contact with alien worlds beyond prior imagination. I imagine that that anyone might see or feel something that they are sure of, and need no more evidence. For some, that feeling is an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent god.

However, I (believe that I) am far less sure of myself. I might believe that the death of my physical body won't truly be the death of "me", but a transition to "something else" cosmically. (There's nothing particularly novel about that concept, and it's incredibly ubiquitous in both alternative and mainstream spirituality.) But even then, my beliefs remain fairly vague and nebulous, and I also (try to) acknowledge that I could very easily be wrong, and that when I kick the bucket that there will merely be nothing, forever.

But I have to ask, who in their right mind would want to give me money if I decided I wanted to devote my life to becoming an agent of my own beliefs?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you (mentally) cope with growth - <AUTHOR>

Preface: Posted from a throw away account as this post seriously sounds like "whine, whine, whine....poor me look how awesome everything is going".
We are a two person startup smack bang in the start of a capital raise, experiencing our first real significant interest from multiple big customers, releasing / testing the next iteration of our platform and also I have just had my first daughter 5 weeks ago (she's awesome)!
How do you shake that feeling that its all a house of cards, that someone will uncover that really you've got no idea whats going on? What are some good mental strategies to use for focusing on the important things while you've got a million balls in the air? How do you keep your focus on the things that matter (both to the company and your personal life).
Essentially how do you keep that overwhelmed feeling from tripping you up when it matters most? <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I wish I had your problems.

That said, I've had plenty of my own when leading high-priority projects for BigCo. What I find most helpful is to realize that at the absolute worst case, if you screw everything up or drop all the balls, you are essentially back to where you would be if you had not tried at all or chosen to check out. And so pretty much everything you do is an improvement on the status quo, you're just trying to make the best improvement you can.</comment>


Frequent fliers who flew too much (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/05/business/la-fi-0506-golden-ticket-20120506 <comment><USER2> I really hate the way companies abuse the court system to get out of unfavorable deals. If you sold the ticket and didn't explicitly outline exceptions you can't then get mad just because someone is taking advantage of the very same benefits they paid for. The Vroom guy (great name btw) seems to have particularly gotten screwed because at the time he bought his ticket it wasn't illegal to resell seats. He never violated the contract he signed. It's also pretty questionable to call booking two seats and only using one to be fraud. What if he just didn't want a neighbor, or he was overweight and needed the extra room? Either way he technically paid for the seat so AA not being able sell the seat twice is not really his problem.

<comment><USER3> It's actually better for the airline, since they actually use less fuel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can we block the latimes.com from HN until it's available in the EU again?

<comment><USER5> The Outline link works just fine: [https://outline.com/cdUx8n](https://outline.com/cdUx8n)

<comment><USER6> "Just fine"

I just read the article in its entirety and Outline is missing something like 75% of the article's contents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> V-2 Link unavailable from the EU.

</comment><comment><USER7> Both subjects male, so why on earth did they fail to title it 'The Men Who Flew Too Much'?</comment>


How we improved Python packaging and distribution - <AUTHOR> https://rhodecode.com/blog/45/how-we-improved-python-packaging-distribution

<comment> j-kidd Here's my old school setup:

Deployment: `easy_install -U` from a local pypi

Packaging: `setup.py bdist_egg` and `setup.py bdist_wininst`

Dependencies: declare in setup.py, fetch via yolk

To test if everything works, just create a blank virtualenv and easy_install.

This has been working fine for me for years on Linux and Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do packages with dependencies in C still require compiling during pip install?

<comment><USER2> While pip does not support binary eggs, easy_install still does. If you want binary distribution with pip you need to use wheels (as you are, of course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems like a bad idea to delete the existing sandbox before downloading everything and installing.

A better idea is to move it to a temp location in the first step, and only delete it after the new version has installed correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I put it on the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> packaging and distribution are definitely python's weak points... for deploying to (internal) servers i've really been liking docker.

<comment><USER5> I have worked with PECL, CPAN, and I find pip to be quite easy and virtualenv pretty cool. Arguably npm is better, but relatively speaking, I think it is py2/3 split that is pythons weakest point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still install binary eggs and easy_install occasionally. Why didn't those fit in with pip?

<comment><USER2> For hysterical reasons, pip has never supported binary eggs. Wheels are the replacement of the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Geez, installation of the enterprise python software seems to be very complicated...

<comment><AUTHOR> Now it's not anymore thanks to the Installer and all the improvements we did (as explained at the blog post).

But normally it is, yes.</comment></comment>


Trojan-ridden warning system implicated in Spanair crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20/spanair_malware/ <comment><USER2> So the article only says the on board computer was working incorrectly not triggering the alarms and suggests it had been infected with a trojan. No evidence given, which raises questions. Besides, I believe it would be quite a task to hack into the computer of and old MD-82. Seems unlikely. If it's terrorists, bombs would be cheaper.</comment>


When Sports Betting Is Legal, the Value of Game Data Soars - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/sports/sports-betting.html <comment><USER2> "Some legal experts, like Ryan Rodenberg, an associate professor of sports law at Florida State University, believe that, as with musical recordings and other copyrighted material, courts will find that real-time sports data is owned by those who produce it: the leagues and their players.

Others dismiss that view. Marc Edelman, a professor of law at Baruch College, said he believed that only "pre-scripted" events were subject to copyright — meaning that while professional wrestling performances might qualify, football, basketball and other true competitions would not."

<comment><USER3> I don't think either would fall under copyright. As to the first, the Second Circuit has held (in a widely cited case) that NBA game data is not subject to copyright: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Ass%27n_v....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Ass%27n_v._Motorola,_Inc). The guiding rule, under the Supreme Court's _Feist_ case, is that facts cannot be protected. What happened at an NBA game is a fact; the fact itself cannot be copyrighted. Only an expression of that fact (an article or radio segment reporting on it) can be protected.

<comment><USER4> Fixed link: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Ass%27n_v....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Ass%27n_v._Motorola,_Inc%2E)

> The district court held that Motorola and STATS did not infringe NBA's > copyright because only facts from the broadcasts, not the broadcasts > themselves were transmitted. The Second Circuit Court agreed with the > district court's argument that the "[d]efendants provide purely factual > information which any patron of an NBA game could acquire from the arena > without any involvement from the director, cameramen, or others who > contribute to the originality of the broadcast" [939 F. Supp. at 1094].

It's a really fascinating line that the court drew. The concept that a certain player scores a 3 pointer with around 2 seconds left on the clock is clearly a fact knowable to every patron. But what about the exact location from which they took the shot? What about the number of milliseconds the ball was in the air, or the angle at which the shot was launched? These are facts that mere humans cannot access with accuracy; they require the involvement of cameras, camera operators, and other entities characteristic of a copyrightable expression of the fact. If I were to use these to create a 3D simulation of a game, would that not be a derivative work of the film from which I obtained sufficient facts to make that simulation? Where do we decide that pixels on a video feed are more special than other parts of the content?

<comment><USER3> > Where do we decide that pixels on a video feed are more special than other > parts of the content?

It comes from the Copyright Act: 17 USC 102 states that copyright protects "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." It also states that in "no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work."

The way this has been interpreted is as a dichotomy between ideas/facts and expression. You might use very expensive equipment to, for example, map the ocean floor. That data cannot be copyrighted. But a video visualization of that data could be copyrighted.

The result is, as you point out, somewhat unintuitive in that case, since generating the data is the hard part, not creating the visualization. But that's where Congress chose to draw the line in order to circumscribe the scope of copyright.

<comment><USER5> > The result is, as you point out, somewhat unintuitive in that case, since > generating the data is the hard part, not creating the visualization. But > that's where Congress chose to draw the line in order to circumscribe the > scope of copyright.

And then the fun part, where data owners intentionally add false data to catch people. As a false item, it's not protected under the fact exclusion, so any inclusion of it is clear infringement.

<comment><USER6> Wow really? That's devilishly ingenious. Do you have examples of that?

<comment><USER7> Here's an example in the cartography world:

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

<comment><USER5> Yeah, there are equivalents in the yellow/white pages industry, from what I've heard. That wikipedia page shows that it doesn't always work, but it is an interesting idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not new. Sports betting has been legal in most parts of the World for some time. Football data in Europe is so expensive, very good businesses like Opta can make a very nice living from it. Go get a quote for them for Premier League games alone: thousands a year for only some of the data.

For years, people getting into sports analytics have done so via baseball (and the Sabremetrics community), and the NBA because the data has not been seen of commercial utility. It's been collected by fans.

That will change dramatically, but it should be resisted. Leagues and players should embrace open data because it will in the long-term lead to analysis that helps them, but more importantly, fosters a deeper interest in their game and therefore makes their own careers more valuable.

<comment><USER9> > Football data in Europe is so expensive

Depending on which data you need, there are already some good sources of free football data.[1][2][3]

Someone has also conveniently wrapped much of this in an R library.[4]

Football is actually one of the better sports in terms of easily obtainable data at no cost. Rugby is much more difficult to find extensive datasets, although there are some interesting attempts.[5]

Decent cricket data also exists in a few places[6], but generally requires faster and more regular updating. However, there are R libraries for cricket data too.[7] This one scrapes from the ESPN Cricinfo site.

It is possible to obtain horse racing data for the UK and Ireland at a reasonable price, for personal use[8] and Hong Kong does a great job of making a huge volume of horse racing data available at no cost, but not in a particularly machine usable format (extensive scraping required). Sadly, other large racing jurisdictions such as Australia and the US don't have anything free, or even reasonably priced, as far as I'm aware. Ray Paulick has covered this as a general problem for the sport for a few years now.[9]

[1][http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php](http://www.football- data.co.uk/data.php)

[2][https://github.com/openfootball](https://github.com/openfootball)

[3][https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData](https://github.com/jokecamp/FootballData)

[4][https://github.com/dashee87/footballR](https://github.com/dashee87/footballR)

[5][http://api.drop22.net/](http://api.drop22.net/)

[6][https://cricsheet.org/](https://cricsheet.org/)

[7][https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr](https://github.com/tvganesh/cricketr)

[8][https://www.betwise.co.uk/](https://www.betwise.co.uk/)

[9] [https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse- rac...](https://www.paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/gardner-horse-racing- statistics-and-data-locked-away-from-most-players-and-fans/)

<comment><USER10> I would argue that almost all of that information in your post is stats not data.

The type of data that people in this thread are talking about would be more in-line with detailed positional information about each of the players on a football pitch over 90 minutes. In a cricket context, it would be more along the lines of the exact release angle and speed for each of the bowlers.

This type of information is clearly available, as Michael Caley is able to quickly generate xG maps for an entire game[1], but I do not believe it's public.

Your [9] link points out that much more information is available to baseball betters, but even baseball has a significant walled garden in terms of data. For example, the raw data used to generate the stats in [2] is not open to the public.

[1] [https://twitter.com/caley_graphics](https://twitter.com/caley_graphics)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzPKlQXo6hk)

<comment><USER9> You make a good point and my post requires clarity.

My links were all to post-event data, not live in-play data sources. I still wouldn't call, for example in a cricket match, the number of wickets taken by a bowler a stat. It's just data. A stat is derived from the data, for example bowling stike rate or economy. Or that a trainer had a winner at a certain race track. That's just the post-event data. If you want to derive further statistics, you have to calculate it yourself.[1]

The links above just have, for the most part, raw event data.

[1] [https://blog.betwise.net/2018/06/19/loops-with-r- creating-a-...](https://blog.betwise.net/2018/06/19/loops-with-r-creating-a- racecard-with-trainer-and-jockey-stats/)

<comment><USER10> The number of wickets taken is a stat. The raw data that informs it is the collective set of all balls bowled by a bowler.

I'm not being needlessly pedantic, it's an important distinction when considering the level of analysis that one is able to perform. If you are doing major cricket analytics, you need ball-by-ball information, including as much information about the bowler's position, movement and arm motion, batter's position, movement and stroke information, how the field is set up, conditions of the pitch, situation in the match, etc.

For example, consider a situation where we're attempting to compare two bowlers. Bowler A may have got a wicket off a shot that 95% of batters would not play, whereas Bowler B did _not_ get a wicket despite bowling a ball that achieves a wicket 10% of the time. The stats suggest that bowler A is in better form, but a data-driven view of the game suggests that bowler B is actually in better form.

As it stands, stats are available in abundance for every major sport, but detailed data is not. If a better had access to the latter, and they were were able to parse it with an in-depth understanding of the sport, they'd be at a huge advantage versus betters that did not, and they would reap the benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> You are more than welcome to join in. I've started two open sports data initiatives. The world cup is the world's biggest sport event (3+ billion fans) but open data (or data services) are hard to find. See the football.db [1] or football.csv [1] projects for more. Enjoy the beautiful game with open data :-). [1] [https://github.com/openfootball](https://github.com/openfootball) [2] [https://github.com/footballcsv](https://github.com/footballcsv)

</comment><comment><USER12> This [1] was an interesting article from a 3 years ago about Tennis "Court Siders" \- people paid to transmit results of games back to betting syndicates faster than the official bookmaking results services. Kind of low-latency sports betting...

[1] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32402945](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32402945)

<comment><USER13> I wonder about the technical details. Data gathering hardware, just one button or two or more? What data is important to collect? Just points? What is the edge in doing this? Data quality? Latency? How much faster are you than TV feeds?

<comment><USER10> It is likely used with live betting systems(common on many gambling sites) where you can bet on the outcome of a single game of tennis. The line for the game will move with each point to reflect the new situation. If a better is able to get information about points seconds ahead of the other betters, they are able to make bets on the updated odds before the line moves as the rest of the betters react to the new information.

For example, consider a game with evenly matched opponents. At 0-0, the server might have odds at ~1.5, with the non-server having odds at ~2.7[1]. When the score moves to 0-15, the odds might move closer to even, eg 1.9/1.9. If you're able to get information about the first point ahead of the crowd and place a bet on the non-server at 2.7 when the true "predicted outcome" is closer to 1.9, you obviously have a massive advantage.

This can also be used to bet on sets or matches, but the advantage is much smaller. Still, a better with any sort of advantage will always win over the long term.

[1] Yes, those don't add up to 100%, welcome to the vig :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's absurd to try to control "data scraping" at events. Just like you should be able to scrape the public facing pages of any website (as recent legal cases have shown) you should should be able to attend an event and collect any data you like.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm excited to see what decentralized technologies like Augur and Gnosis do to disrupt some of these conversations. The question raised in the article about "who adjudicates data disputes" is one of the main features of Augur with it's decentralized oracles. Also if people can anonymously use a decentralized system to change the odds, it decreases the value of data from these paid sources.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am a consumer of such real time data and I can tell you from experience that where there is no competition quality drops and prices increase. I really, really hope they leave the market open.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Data on the second-by-second action — exactly when a goal is scored, where > it landed in the net, who had the assist — creates manifold betting > opportunities.

Will there be high-frequency sports betting, like HFT on financial markets? Why not?

<comment><USER15> Go look at the betfair.com exchange (if you are able). They handle several thousand bets/sec at high load. Plenty of high frequency traders there employing the same tricks as the city boys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On an aside, my friend is a full time sports better who has an extremely high ROI during football season on one of those Fantasy sites. He has difficulty making any money on other sports. I wonder why.

<comment><USER10> Variance. Unless your friend has sustained this performance over a number of years, it's probably just variance.

Most successful long-time sports betters are not playing on a level playing field. In order to beat the vig over the long term, a successful better must be privy to information that is unavailable to other betters, or at least the majority of betters. This either means a novel analytical technique, which is rare, or inside information.

The number of people who simply watch games closely and are able to discern information that allows them to bet successfully on future games _over the long term_ is exceptionally rare in the real world.</comment></comment>


That Little Lawsuit Against Uber Just Got Bigger - <AUTHOR> https://news.vice.com/article/that-little-lawsuit-against-uber-just-got-bigger-and-could-take-down-the-sharing-economy <comment><USER2> There was a craigslist ad trying to hire Uber drivers a few weeks ago claiming they pay 90k. Yeah right. MAYBE 90k before taxes, insurance, gas, wear and tear on your car, etc. I feel bad for anyone who actually believes those ads and gets sucked in, thinking they'll actually make that much.

</comment><comment><USER3>
        He called the clause "both procedurally and substantively
        unconscionable," since there was no clear way for drivers
        to opt out.

Huh? Yeah, there is a very clear way to opt out. Don't drive for a company if you don't agree with the contract offered. It's a contract and acceptance is one of the elements of the contract. There are other employment and contracting options for people who know how to operate a motor vehicle.

Near as I can tell, the argument presented by this judge is tantamount to declaring all clauses voidable since the company never presented a way for the drivers to edit their contract and present a modified contract for the company to accept (which the company would likely choose not to accept every single time).

<comment><USER4> Also, lots of Uber drivers also drive Lyft and cherry pick rides. I've been known to run both apps at once, but I'm not a serious enough driver to make it worth my while. It's pretty hard to argue you're an employee when you realistically can be working for 2 companies at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is almost six weeks old. 12/10/15

</comment><comment><USER6> The decision re: arbitration clause is huge.</comment>


Show HN: RightGIF - a better /giphy for Slack - <AUTHOR> https://rightgif.com <comment><AUTHOR> We built this little app over the weekend. We got sick of seeing bizarre or offensive Giphy gifs in our team's Slack channels. So we built this instead :)

Uses Slack button to add to your team. Use /gif [phrase] to get an _always_ suitable GIF!

<comment><USER2> /gif waaaaaaaaaaaaaawat

:/

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok...well... we still have some work to do. Sorry!

EDIT: we'll be adding the ability to up/down vote images and flag as inappropriate. Really keen to keep it clean!

<comment><USER2> Maybe put a button on the site under where you can test it to report an inappropriate gif?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hopefully no more boyband/teen tv gifs when you don't need them :D

</comment><comment><USER4> It actually finds relevant gifs - nice piece of algorithm here!

</comment><comment><USER2> Eeek! I think I broke it :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Turns out it crashed when it didn't find an image :) Small oversight...now fixed!</comment></comment>


This Startup Has Developed a New Artificial Intelligence That Can Beat Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2017/02/14/gamalon-artificial-intelligence-bayesian/#17edb182b78c <comment><USER2> " If you want to train the system to recognize a cat, for example, show it 10,000 pictures over and over again of every possible variation of what a cat looks like. But don't show it a dog, because then the AI will get really confused."

Umm, that's not how machine learning (or human learning) works. You can't learn to recognise something after seeing only positive examples.

<comment><USER3> Humans seem to be pretty good at it, so why not ?

If I show a kid 100 elephants, and one dolphin, it will in fact be aware that a dolphin is not an elephant. In fact, I bet it'd still be aware of that even if I were to include one dolphin in the sequence of elephants and claim it's an elephant. In fact I was curious and I have a kid. I was pretty sure they didn't know the difference between a bee and a praying mantis, so I used those (google images makes that really quick). "That's a different kind of bee daddy" is what came out. Now of course, you can say kids have seen lots of examples of animals already and therefore they have a lot of negative training data "stored in their memory". That's not how the mind works though. It doesn't go away and train itself at all.

And it's easy to devise an algorithm that does that too. Instead of using the positive examples to draw a decision boundary directly you use it to train both positive and negative features.

You can have independent features, negative features and positive features. Deep learning as it's commonly used gets you positive features, but really backprop just moves features away from independence of the input data. Learning the opposite question is easy as well. So combine this, running half- half positive and negative features. That gets you positive and negative features. So yes you can train, even with deep learning, on just a few examples. Backprop will convert independent features to either positive or negative features.

So now let's say I do that with 1000 9x9 convolutions and I train half of them positive and half of them negative. Would it be able to tell me a 64x64 dolphin is not an elephant ? Interesting question. I need to try, but I have little doubt that this will succeed, and get a decent success rate on identifying dolphins as non-elephants.

It is even possible to do deep online learning, especially if you don't care about different images having unequal weights. And there's plenty of algorithms that can do online learning by themselves as well. In fact, the quintessential reinforcement learning algorithm is pretty much the answer to the question "how can I update my probability distribution exactly given this extra piece of data".

<comment><USER4> > If I show a kid 100 elephants, and one dolphin, it will in fact be aware > that a dolphin is not an elephant.

Yes, because it has learned to distinguish the class "elephant" from the thousands of other things that it has already seen. If all the kid had _ever_ seen were 100 elephants, I'm pretty sure it would have a darn hard time telling dolphins and elephants apart. You dismiss this line of thinking, but consider the following:

Imagine yourself as having an entirely untrained sense. For example, let's say that I convert the image data of the elephant images into a sound pattern, and play them to you. After hearing all 100 elephants, it would be impossible for you to recognize a dolphin image's sound because there is no negative sample to tell elephant sounds apart from. All you could tell is that it's definitely an image as sound, as opposed to all the other sensory inputs that you've seen examples of.

<comment><USER3> Why wouldn't I be able to train negative classifiers ? Note that I do always have "negative" training data available : background noise for one, and I'm sure I can generate 10 other kinds but I don't think that's even necessary.

Backprop moves things away from equilibrium. It can do so in both directions. It can make a network more accurate, or more "inversely" accurate.

I guess what you mean is that seeing only positive examples will lead to a network that always answers "yes". And that is indeed a concern. So perhaps I should adjust my answer to hedge for that:

If the network trains a good positive feature for elephants, it will be able to train a good negative feature as well.

<comment><USER2> "Note that I do always have "negative" training data available"

Yes, _you_ do, but the model being trained with _only_ cat pictures doesn't.

"If the network trains a good positive feature for elephants, it will be able to train a good negative feature as well."

I'm not sure what you mean here. Let's say a positive feature for an elephant is a patch of grey. What's a good negative feature? And how would the model learn that the presence of that feature should make it less likely what it's seeing is an elephant.

<comment><USER3> Think of a decision boundary that a neural net makes. And let's assume it's a 3 dimensional surface. That surface is going to have peaks going up and peaks going down.

Backprop determines the differential with respect to the error. You can use that to lower the error in classification, but there's nothing preventing you from going the other way. You would normally descend into the valleys, but you can just as well climb the mountain, to find features that are extremely unlikely to be found on an elephant, and with more training you can find stuff that's commonly found on non-elephant things, and train those features on those.

What I mean is that if it only sees positive examples, it might conclude that anything means it's an elephant, regardless of what exactly it is. So that's why I have to qualify by saying a "good" feature.

Furthermore there are ways to generate good negative examples from the only positive input data. For instance, you can use random static as an input. Given that static (correctly generated) does not have any information content, there's nothing in there that's an elephant, and you can train it away from that. Other obvious ways to generate more data is to do reverse training : determine what input data would make the network say that that is absolutely not an elephant, after seeing a few elephants. Assume it gets that right, that it isn't an elephant. Insert some static to generate more data. Take that input, flip it, rotate it, zoom it, add static, change color distribution and train those as non-elephants.

Likewise, take the input pictures. There should be other stuff in there than elephants. So figure out which values trigger the network (not all pixels matter for the end result, in fact, most won't). Find the ones that don't matter for all pictures, and collage them together. Train as non-elephants. Do the same in reverse (find elephant pixels, and use those to paste more elephants in other pictures).

You need to do this to keep your data balanced : there should be equal number of positive and negative training generated items.

I'm not sure how you could get the adversarial network approach to work for this.

At this point, you have still not given it any negative example, but there's lots to train on.

<comment><USER2> "Find the ones that don't matter for all pictures, and collage them together. Train as non-elephants."

You're just creating negative examples manually, and then feeding them to the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you measure intelligence? What do they mean by "100 times more efficient" than tensorflow? Isn't Tensorflow just a framework that you create AIs with?

From my understanding we don't even have a good definition on human intelligence, so how can we measure it or/and artificial intelligence?

If someone has answers from me who have zero experience in the AI-field I would be happy.

<comment><USER6> Here is an interesting definition and way to measure intelligence [http://www.vetta.org/documents/AIQ.pdf](http://www.vetta.org/documents/AIQ.pdf)

an informal definition from the paper: "intelligence measures an agent's ability to achieve goals in a wide range of environments"

There is also a formal definition and a method of measuring it.

EDIT: a blog with a summary of the paper and source code [http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/aiq/](http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/aiq/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I visit that site, it blurs out everything and shows me a Quote of the Day that I don't care about. How can I actually read the article?

<comment><USER7> Continue to article button in the top right corner

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Maybe down the line it will consider offering its Bayesian machine learning > technique to outsiders, but it would be a hard sell as the tech industry has > adopted deep learning systems fanatically.

I call BS. Build a better mousetrap and ...

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems to be related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13644441)</comment>


Climate Change Will Force Us to Abandon Coastal Cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117799/climate-change-will-force-us-abandon-cities-if-we-dont-prepare-now

<comment><USER2> So, the end is neigh, we're all doomed... and also, the government sucks?

There must be some point to this article beyond the fear mongering... but somehow I'm completely missing it.

> So, fast forward a few centuries from now, what will the world look like?

You tell me... Where is the data? What are the studies? When do they say these coastal cities will have to be abandoned based on current trends?

Blah :-( .</comment>


Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway lost $50B in first quarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/warren-buffetts-berkshire-hathaway-lost-50-billion-in-first-quarter/ <comment><USER2> The loss is a paper loss i.e. the loss hasn't been realized.

BRK plans to, and has the capacity to hold on to their investments while their valuation has dropped.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not unusual or unexpected in the current environment. In addition, when you are invested in stocks, you don't loose anything until you sell. I'm sure Mr. Buffett has been at this point before and actually see it as a buying opportunity rather than a negative.

<comment><USER4> He made bank off the 2008 crisis - literally. Invested in a ton of big banks and made huge returns. He's more than been here before.</comment></comment>


Empathy makes us immoral, says a Yale psychologist - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1024303/empathy-makes-us-immoral-says-a-yale-psychologist/ <comment><USER2> "When we rely on empathy to make moral decisions, he says, we end up prioritizing the person whose suffering we can easily relate to over that of any number of others who seem more distant."

This article is not really discussing empathy, but rather limited or immature empathy, and sentimentalism. True empathy embraces not just the "victim", but also the perpetrator, bystanders, and others who might be affected. True empathy is about relating to those that are not easy to relate to.</comment>


Boeing faced 'limited' safety review from NASA while SpaceX got full examination - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/18/boeing-faced-only-limited-safety-review-nasa-while-spacex-got-full-examination/ <comment><USER2> To be clear, the "Safety Review" was particularly about ensuring that both companies had a drug-free workplace. One company's CEO smoked weed on camera and the other's did not, so you can imagine why one might get a different level of examination.

<comment><USER3> The idea that what a CEO does on his own time would somehow reflect on a drug- free workplace is pretty farfetched.

Is the CEO of Boeing a teetotaler? If not, should we launch an investigation? There might very well be drinking in the workplace.

<comment><USER4> You don't think the behavior of a CEO can reflect company values?

And I'm not surprised they make less effort verifying that for a longtime aerospace contractor and instead focus on the rocket startup that had a bit of a PR mishap. Would have preferred this to not be an issue at all, but not sure this was an option after this kind of public event. Hope it doesn't unnecessarily push sending humans to the ISS further back.

<comment><USER5> Boomer norms aside, is smoking weed really that bad compared to say, a CEO who likes to drink socially? It's not like he was caught hotboxing in his model 3 before his workday started.

<comment><USER6> It's funny how alcohol is objectively the far more dangerous and destructive drug, yet weed gets treated more harshly.

Disclaimer I drink but don't smoke, so if anything I'm biased against my point.

<comment><USER7> > It's funny how alcohol is objectively the far more dangerous and destructive > drug, yet weed gets treated more harshly.

There's also the angle that weed is federally illegal, so smoking it demonstrates an attitude that _compliance with rules_ is optional and subject to personal judgement. Someone with that attitude is probably more likely to choose to not comply with security procedures or secrecy commitments.

<comment><USER8> If a CEO posted a video on their way to work and breaking the speed limit would it have the same effect?

<comment><USER9> It definitely would. It would display some kind of arrogance and rule- flaunting. Not just regular-joe speeding. So yes, it would be viewed very negatively by both clearance and wall-steet. It's just poor judgement.

To have a mistress is fine. To get caught in a public spectacle is bad judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And here's Jeff trying to save himself from going through the same thing.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say. Is Jeff a personal friend of yours?

<comment><USER11> Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, and he also owns Blue Origin, another rocket company vying for government contracts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love how this is picked up but the article a few days ago about Boeing Starliner seat prices being twice as much as Dragon didn't get any attention.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds- bo...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/nasa-report-finds-boeing-seat- prices-are-60-higher-than-spacex/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirror: [https://outline.com/wCEspK](https://outline.com/wCEspK)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's the critical words: "Ultimately, NASA agreed to pay SpaceX $5 million for its review, and it proceeded. Boeing, however, said such a review would require an additional payment of about $25 million ... NASA balked at the cost and decided that a far more limited..."

Company A: D- negotiation skills w/ NASA (failed) Company B: A+ negotiation skills w/ NASA (passed)

</comment><comment><USER13> For sure we have to take care of our own guys...

</comment><comment><USER14> Musk should have had his security clearance revoked but apparently some VIPs get to break federal law.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think this?

He was engaged in what was legal on a local basis. Where is the risk to his security clearance? Blackmail is out since the behavior was clearly public.

Do his two puffs on a joint indicate some sort of allegiance to a foreign power?

Does the violation of any federal law or regulation disqualify someone from holding a security clearance?

<comment><USER15> Yes, the violation of federal law general disqualifies you from holding a security clearance.

<comment><USER16> Is weed against federal law?

<comment><USER17> Yes, yes it is.

<comment><USER16> How can something be against federal law yet still allowed in some states? I thought federal law applied across the whole USA?

<comment><USER9> I personally don't agree with the interpretation that drug control is a federal jurisdiction, but that is the status quo. Your second statement is true: Federal law DOES apply across all states. State law does not nullify or override this. There was a damn big bloody war over that question.

Allowed does not mean legal. That's why it is still illegal, but unenforced, in several states. A state _CANNOT_ legalize a controlled substance. To trust lax federal enforcement + state "legalization" is not a wise move. But practical.

And besides, security clearances come from the Feds not the states, so who's laws do you think they go by?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why LinkedIn is More Valuable than Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/ciocentral/2011/02/16/why-linkedin-is-more-valuable-than-facebook/

<comment><USER2> The article is pretty much a joke. It argues for the analytics and processes LinkedIn can help enterprise customers with. In reality, LinkedIn really is more like a replacement for Monster, Dice, etc. Most people use it as a way to either get their resume out or for people hiring to find people.

As a user, unless I pay, the site really offers me little. Groups are kinda eh, I can hook in my twitter stream, etc. The amount of content generated beyond one's profile is significantly lower than that of Facebook. Is a lot of what is posted on FB fluff? Maybe, but people generate content and engage with the service.

Furthermore, what LinkedIn provides the user is pretty stagnant. There isn't a way to determine if someone claims proficiency in a certain skill or a certain role, how good are they actually? We've started to finally see some interesting competition / augmentations with BranchedOut (on FB, of all things) and MixTent (built a top of LinkedIn).

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. On top of that, the discussion about time in app is an implicit straw man. It's no surprise that one set of metrics might be more important to LinkedIn versus for Facebook, but the relative importance of a set of metrics for two different businesses targeting different audiences is a weak argument for their relative valuations.

Facebook has fundamentally changed the way millions interact with their social circle; LinkedIn's impact is smaller by far. I find this a pretty simple explanation for much of the difference in their valuations.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone using redis for anything else than caching/queuing? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in this mostly because redis is limited to available RAM so even sorted sets can't be used for general data-storage (GBs of data)
All what I can dream of are caches/queues with predictable eviction strategies.
I'm eager (and thankful) to hear any other use-case for redis, really.
Background: I'm currently looking for something which can easily hold gigabytes of sorted data, with fast writes and set properties (no need to check for existence)... If it would support sharding it would be even more awesome :-) <comment><USER2> JuiceBox Games (mobile game company who has shut down by now) used Redis as primary data storage for their game HonorBound. Their engineering team wrote about this on their blog (unfortunately Web Archive link since the site no longer exists): [https://web.archive.org/web/20160229104854/http://blog.juice...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160229104854/http://blog.juiceboxmobile.com/2014/04/02/running- redis-in-a-production-environment/) It sounds like they weren't completely happy with the decision from the conclusion at the end.

Some of my personal projects I've also taken to use Redis as primary data storage. Due to the small scale, I haven't had any issue. I find it really nice and easy for small projects because you don't have to spend time on data schemas like SQL databases, and you also don't have as high of hardware requirements like Couchbase.

</comment><comment><USER3> We use it for distributed locks on resources. (Granted, that use case is also covered by just about any other network-accessible cache-like resource; we just happen to also use Redis for cache, so it was already conveniently on hand).

<comment><USER4> Redis is a bad choice for locks. Should be using ZK or something else that provides consensus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rate limiting (incr with timeout), counting, async resource locking.</comment>


Louie Mantia on the State of iOS UI Design - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mantia/status/1223302649849597953 <comment><USER2> nitter.net is down, so here is another Nitter instance:

[https://nitter.42l.fr/Mantia/status/1223302649849597953](https://nitter.42l.fr/Mantia/status/1223302649849597953)

Source: [https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances](https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances)</comment>


On the (Small) Number of Atoms in the Universe - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/atoms.html <comment><USER2> I like how Ken Jennings dealt with the 'Go complexity' analogy:

"Go is famously a more complex game than chess, with its larger board, longer games, and many more pieces. Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence team likes to say that there are more possible Go boards than atoms in the known universe, but that vastly _understates_ the computational problem. There are about 10^170 board positions in Go, and _only_ 10^80 atoms in the universe. That means that if there were as many parallel universes as there are atoms in our universe (!), then the _total_ number of atoms in _all_ those universes combined would be close to the possibilities on a single Go board."

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/03/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/03/google_s_alphago_defeated_go_champion_lee_sedol_ken_jennings_explains_what.html)

<comment><USER3> Comparing combinations with numbers of items is unfair.

In Go, the number of items is the number of pieces, and it's very small.

In the universe, the number of combinations of positions of all the atoms is, well, wonderful.

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone believes that Go is somehow more complex than the universe it is a subset of. The point is that enumerating all cases of Go is impossible and always will be, so more sophisticated analysis is required.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, enumerating all

208168199381979984699478633344862770286522453884530548425 639456820927419612738015378525648451698519643907259916015 628128546089888314427129715319317557736620397247064840935

positions in Go is impossible.

<comment><USER6> In your enumeration, what's the board look like at position 348277381979984699478633344862652779770286522453884530548425639456820927419612?

<comment><USER5> I can't say, because I didn't enumerate them. I only counted them. See

[http://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html](http://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html)

for the method used, which is a form of dynamic programming.

<comment><USER7> Though if it is dynamic programming, then it should be possible for you to answer dogecoinbase's question using not much more computational power than you used to count them in the first place, right?

If you think of dynamic programming as counting the number of paths in a directed graph (in this case, from skimming the paper, the nodes correspond to border states), then given a path number, you can trace the path backwards through the graph, as long as you remember the number of paths ending in every vertex.

<comment><USER5> Yes, you could if you preserved all intermediate counts. But the graph I used has 362 layers each of which can have up to 363 billion nodes, so I had to recycle the space used for the counts (4TB per layer). Also, I didn't even compute with full counts. I reconstructed them using the Chinese Remaineder theorem from 9 separate modular counts. So, yes it's possible, but highly impractical...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Scott Aaronson's blog post on large numbers is also a very interesting read:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html)

<comment><USER9> Very enjoyable.

However, I think I found a mistake:

"For example, '5 tetrated to the 3' means 5 raised to its own power 3 times, or 5^5^5"

(I am paraphrasing slightly here because the essay uses an image to show 5^5^5 in normal notation ([http://www.scottaaronson.com/cgi- bin/mimetex.cgi?5^{5^5})](http://www.scottaaronson.com/cgi- bin/mimetex.cgi?5^{5^5}\)))

However, shouldn't this be 5^5^5^5, if we're raising 5 to its own power three times?

<comment><USER10> Not quite - think of it this way:

5 x 3 = 5 + 5 + 5

5 ^ 3 = 5 x 5 x 5

5 t 3 = 5 ^ 5 ^ 5

Where t is tetration. Each one counts 3 fives.

<comment><USER9> Makes sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's another great one - and ballpark calculations point to it being likely true:

"..the number of atoms in a grapefruit is about equal to the number of blueberries you would need to fill up the entire sphere of planet Earth." [[https://capitolhillscience8.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/just- ho...](https://capitolhillscience8.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/just-how-small-is- an-atom-imagine-blueberries-stuffing-inside-the-entire-planet/)]

Edit: well, except that the Earth is shaped more like an oblate spheroid [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_the_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_the_Earth)]

<comment><USER12> Actually the Earth is nearly perfect, far more perfect than most any sphere with interact with in day to day life. The equatorial bulge is 20 miles or so, which is approximately .33% Technically an oblate spheroid, but barely.

<comment><USER13> There's a great Isaac Asimov essay on this topic: [http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm](http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm)

<comment><USER12> Great find, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm curious how the author found the link to this - I looked at Norvig's home page but could not find it, which made me wonder how many more goodies he's got up there that we don't know about!

<comment><USER15> [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=norvig.com&oq=norvig.com&a...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=norvig.com&oq=norvig.com&aqs=chrome..69i64j0l5.12302j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8#q=site:norvig.com)

There's a few interesting things on there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And it's even smaller if compared to Graham's number. Every time I try to imagine that one it feels like I'm going to mental asylum.

<comment><USER17> Related only to large numbers, but is there some theory about generalizing and extending our usual mathematical operators +, ×, and ^ (power)?

\+ applied N times becomes ×N

× applied N times becomes ^N

^ applied N times becomes ...?

etcetera

And would such a theory have any practical use?

<comment><USER18> Knuth's up-arrow notation is one of a few ways to address the addition->multiplication->exponentiation->tetration->... extensions: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up- arrow_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth%27s_up-arrow_notation)

As for practicalities, the mathematician in me will let the scientists deal with that.

<comment><USER19> I like the description of graham's number (by graham) using the up-arrow notation [https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo?t=31](https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo?t=31)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If 12megapixels can produce 10 to the power 86696638 images, and we came up with a way of enumerating those images, could we then build a function that given anyone of those images return the index of that image within reasonable time with current hardware. ie. "you have just taken 3999999987493th image"?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but it wouldn't save any space. As a thought experiment, think of it this way:

How would we enumerate all these several gazillion image possibilities?

Well. Let's say number one is all black. Every pixels and every channel is all zero in its value. And let's say the last image to be enumerated is all white. 255 for each pixel and each channel.

Every conceivable image is created in between these two ends. For example, image two is all black, but the last pixel has a value of 1 instead of 0 for its value channel.

Image 1840274917 has pixel 27581 slightly reddish.

Hey, wait a minute, you've just created an image format for describing the data within the image! The only space you're saving is that (given this format) you save space on darker images, because they're likely lower in the sequence.

But that's only because this specification demands that each image be the same exact size and can make assumptions based on that. A lossless format like PNG would be able to perform much better over a wider range of images. (Eg all white will be huge in our system, but cheap in PNG)

<comment><USER21> This numberphile video discusses a similar concept:

The 'Everything' Formula - [http://youtu.be/_s5RFgd59ao](http://youtu.be/_s5RFgd59ao)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The unintuitiveness of how many combinations you can get from such a small amount of items is why the birthday "paradox" is so interesting.

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

</comment><comment><USER23> There is a theory that states the number of atoms (well, electrons) in the universe is exactly 1.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- electron_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe)

<comment><USER24> But electrons interact with each other, don't they? How'd that work?

<comment><USER25> The electron goes forward and backward in time and interacts with itself. (In quantum field theory you can replace a positron with an electron going backwards in time). Regrettably the theory does not work, since it would predict the same number of electrons and positrons in the universe.

<comment><USER26> The positrons might be hiding in the protons!

<comment><USER27> Physics is sufficiently weird that I can't tell if this is just spitballing or an actual theory I haven't heard of before.

Edit: holy crap, these people think nucleons are made of muons that are made of electrons and positrons: [http://wlsprojects.com/structure-inside- proton.html](http://wlsprojects.com/structure-inside-proton.html) . Solves the matter vs antimatter problem, I guess.

<comment><USER26> The explanation I gave was the one used by Wheeler in a famous phone call with Feynman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think he's comparing apples with oranges: maybe 10^80 is not so big, but the number of configurations of the 10^80 atoms is huge.

<comment><USER29> That is entirely the point of the article.

<comment><USER30> It would be cool if there were more talk about properties we have observed of these configurations/which are more probable at any given instance, and efficient ways of computing such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reading this made me think how can you know the number of atoms in the universe (observable, smellable, touchable, whatever ). So I go and check on Wikipedia and of course its just a guesstimation based on assumptions and hypothesuses.

This again reminds me how science today is no different than religion. Of course there is nothing wrong with having the number based on assumptions , but take it out of the field of study and suddenly it is a fact :)

Like in this article and the discussion in HN where its just the number and its name, and the fact that this him be is just somebody's wild guess is totally ignored. Same with Jesus , he exists and he loves you and the fact that it was just somebody's idea is totally left out.

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel)

This is a fun, thought-provoking story about a large combination of things.

</comment><comment><USER33> Assuming space is quantized at the Planck scale, the numbers of atoms in the universe is tiny compared to the number of space points.

Assuming the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics is true, then the number of atoms includes all combinations of locations, momentum, etc., and the real number of atoms is vastly vastly greater than combinations of just about anything else you might imagine. (Except for combinations of configurations of quantized spacial points!)

</comment><comment><USER34> I'd argue the natural scale for thinking about the number of combinations is the log scale - in other words, the entropy. Entropy, like the number of atoms, is an additive property of a system.

From this point of view this article is inappropriately comparing two scales. It's nothing more than saying "e^x >> x for big x".

</comment><comment><USER35> If you believe in the axiom of choice (I don't) then you can imagine a process which has more degrees of freedom in in than anything at all.

<comment><USER36> It is an axiom, it is not something that you believe in. You assume it and you prove stuff with it. You do not and you prove stuff without it. If you are really good, you show what theorems require it.

You can believe or not in some physical reality to math (I happen to), and then the axioms do become somewhat more than just logic statements, but that is different.

<comment><USER37> > You can believe or not in some physical reality to math (I happen to)

I'm not so sure. Is there any evidence that the value of any physical quantity is an irrational number?

Math was originally inspired by physical reality, but I'm not sure it's so closely related that the concept of the Axiom of Choice being "true" even means anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The parallel you drew between such a day to day object and such an important matter is interesting. Do you know of another comparison like this?

</comment><comment><USER39> Such a small place, this universe.

Interesting POV.

</comment><comment><USER40> It actually boggles the mind that a 12-pixel image has more combinations than atoms in the universe (!!!).

<comment><USER41> Well, I think the example with 12-pixel image is a bit misleading, because the picture focuses reader's attention on those 12 pixels, while skipping over the fact that each pixel can have ~17 million colors. More appropriate representation would be a cuboid made of 3x4x24 blocks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> but atoms of universe are infinite...guy is so wrong

<comment><USER43> You should look up what "observable" universe means.</comment></comment>


Growing from 0 to 4M users on our fashion app with vertical machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@aldamiz/f8b7fc0a89d7 <comment><USER2> What is interesting to me is that this comes on a day when Bloomberg says "Americans are spending less on clothing". Full discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720)

<comment><USER3> Combining the ideas of both posts: You can spend less if you buy more targeted-to-you and higher-quality items that you'll wear more often. Finding these items and customers is a data (and marketing) problem.

E.g. I spend less overall than I did a few years ago but each item I buy is more expensive. I've learned the value in quality clothes. I give smaller batches of more money to well-picked retailers rather than lots of small batches of money to big-name mass-market retailers.

An app that capitalizes on people coming to this realization (and knows how to market and execute it well) could make a killing.

<comment><USER4> But aren't you wearing the same thing over and over? What's the point of quality clothes people see so often they think it is dirty or that you own three shirts? I just buy cheap clothes.

<comment><USER3> 3 is probably too few. People don't really pay that much attention to what you wear, I promise.

I usually wear my shirts twice and take them to the dry-cleaner after. I'll only go once if it's been a hot day or if the shirt has dirt/stains. Maybe 3 times if I didn't wear it all day.

Plus I have about 7 pairs of high-quality pants that work well in an office and are comfortable for weekends. Most shirts go with most pants. So I have like 70 outfits so it really doesn't feel limiting, especially if you add in a few sweaters, jackets, and shoes to bring the combinations way up.

I did the math on this once to figure out cost-per-wear of my shirts. I kept rough track of how many times I wore a favorite shirt of mine before tossing it. Roughly 100 times. The shirt was like $120. I paid about $0.75 per wear in drycleaning. So like $1.75/wear.

(I could wash and iron for myself to bring this way down to like $1/wear but I hate ironing so I just pay the drycleaner - I also could have gone another 50 or so wears but I spilled coffee on it and I could always see the stain even though nobody else could I'm sure.)

Compare that with a cheap H&M shirt I bought a few years ago for like $40 - I've worn it twice and don't look forward to wearing it again since it doesn't fit as well and is a bit too trendy in its style for me. Cost is like $20/wear. Save your money and buy higher-quality clothes :)

<comment><USER5> Your H&M example isn't great. The reason you didn't wear it a lot isn't because of the quality, but because you bought a shirt you didn't like. Save your money and only buy clothing you like.

<comment><USER3> That's a very good point! You'll save a _lot_ of money by being selective about what you buy.

I think I got suckered into the H&M marketing - it looked quite nice in store and it even felt nice the first time I wore it. But then I realized it only really went with one or two other things, and it didn't look quite as good after being dry-cleaned/washed, so it quickly lost most of its appeal.

<comment><USER6> > it didn't look quite as good after being dry-cleaned/washed

This is another reason to spend more money on clothes: quality materials look good as they age. I bought a Old Navy pullover which only lasted 2-3 washes before pilling like crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope that the company will also focus on employing women and raising the numbers of women in tech! :-) Given that the user base is female, it would make sense and bring the company value to have a diverse workplace.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is a nice detail about their process:

 _We launched an extremely early alpha of Chicisimo with one key functionality. We launched under another name and in another country. You couldn't even upload photos… but it allowed us to iterate with real data and get a lot of qualitative input. At some point, we launched the real Chicisimo, and removed this alpha from the App Store._

Just yesterday I was wondering where to begin searching for clothing related apps to see what is available in this space. Glad to see this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> About clothing apps, here are some ideas.

There are teams focusing on the social aspect and grow via influencers. I'd think about utilities (help me do something):

\- Help me decide what to wear: Chicisimo, Pinterest and (believe me) Google Images;

\- Help me manage my wardobre: Stylebook, Glamoutfit;

\- Help me be seen by others: Wear app, Lookbook and Chictopia (this last two worked really well on desktop);

\- Help me decide what to buy: ecommerce apps obvsly, or Liketoknowit; or the second-hang category of which several are working really well, and are more widely known.

\- Help me get feedback from my friends, no one really working I think, or feedback from the system (Echo Look -> Spark). And a new related category popping up: get feedback from a stylist with an in-app purchase model or even subscription; Wishi, Daam are some examples. This last category will be interesting to follow.

\- Polyvore - outfits ensembling;

\- Rent the Runway, Stitch Fix, Instagram obvsly. And I'm sure I'm missing many, but just trying to give you ideas of how to find inspiring apps.

I wonder if online fashion is like online music in 2005/6/7... with lots of noise, some tech focused products, and the spotify's of the world starting to be built. Fun times.

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming you're a woman, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but do you know if these apps work well for men's fasion? I think I have OK taste, but I'd like to get good.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a man:) Sorry I don't know about fashion apps for men. I feel teams are building the infrastructure focusing on the big opportunity (women's fashion). Then, expanding to other categories will be way easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> OT: This type of article ('how we hit the goldmine with xy') is always tempting to read but eventually a disappointment.

If someone had the plan to the goldmine why should he disclose it?

</comment><comment><USER11> What is the current state of the art for finding similar images? Is it auto- encoders nn's, convnets and then just use some sort of distance measure?

</comment><comment><USER12> That bullshit patent

</comment><comment><USER13> I really love how machine learning makes something mundane but yet exhausting, into something seamless and enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER14> Vertical ML is so 2017, it's all about diagonal ML

</comment><comment><USER15> Would you accept someone who has already has a FT job and wants to make more $ by doing remote on the side?

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm sad there's not a version of Chicisimo for guys :(

</comment><comment><USER16> So they made a search-engine based on deep learning for a specific (but quite large) target group.

How long do they think it will take Google to catch up, if they haven't already?

<comment><USER17> Is this target market big enough to interest Google?

<comment><USER18> Yes. We're talking fashion, so a pretty big market.

<comment><USER17> We're not talking "fashion". Not the whole industry. Just the market for an app like this.

<comment><USER18> Arguably everyone interested in fashion could be interested in an app like this.

<comment><USER17> And arguably everyone interested in reading could be interested in Google Reader, but even that didn't interest Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Was this the main point of the story? - "At some point, we were lucky to get noticed by the App Store team, and we've been featured as App of the Day throughout the world"

<comment><USER20> I read an interesting story on how to build a modern data-based product.

<comment><USER21> What's a non-data-based product?

<comment><USER22> one that doesn't leverage AI/ML as a core piece of functionality

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> They're growing women with their app?!</comment>


Epigrams of Programming - mr-blockchain https://cpsc.yale.edu/epigrams-programming <comment> mr-blockchain A must read for all coders here! See some great statements which seem to be true for us. Always be aware of them.</comment>


How to save money while paying for educational expenses abroad from India - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paxcredit.com/how-to-save-money-while-studying-abroad-e56fc794ccb <comment><USER2> Seems impressive on paper. Have to give it a try!

Also, how do you source better exchange rates than major banks?

<comment><USER3> Banks charges high commission rates. I guess these guys are providing wholesale rates to retail customers</comment></comment>


The Beginner's Guide to DevOps - <AUTHOR> http://logz.io/learn/what-is-devops/ <comment><USER2> Objection: they already have a "devops team", which according to numerous blog-posts and pundits in the ITosphere means they can't possibly be 'doing devops'. :-)</comment>


Twitter Followers Vanish Amid Inquiries into Fake Accounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/31/technology/social-media-bots-investigations.html <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16274811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16274811)</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone based in Los Angeles? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious how many people are working in (or previously from) Los Angeles, and what the tech community is like. 'Silicon Beach' is a moniker thrown around a lot and I was curious what the hot companies are (I know tinder, nasty gal, snapchat, myspace) and what people are working on in LA. <comment><USER2> There is a lot of startup activity in Santa Monica and Venice, hence the Silicon Beach name, but there are a few companies out in Hollywood and Beverly Hills too. I interviewed at Whisper when they were still in a house in Santa Monica, and it looked like a scene from a movie with beautiful people walking around and lounging by the pool (not a lot of coding that I saw).

I work at a startup called Merchant Centric out in Westlake Village (not a sexy startup hub). We make a dashboard for small businesses to manage their listings and reply to reviews on yelp, google, Facebook, etc.

I'd like to see a bigger startup community in the San Fernando Valley area. Woodland Hills/Warner Center is a hip place with lots of shopping, dining, and (shockingly) public transportation, and housing costs are half what they are in West LA.

<comment><AUTHOR> I concur. I spend a lot of time in Santa Monica and there seems to be a tech presence but (as someone new to tech) it is really hard to get the signal from the noise. I am really new, I am pretty proficient in HTML/CSS/SASS, JS and becoming functional in RoR. I am trying to find people in the tech community but there are a lot of people who have "App Ideas", are wantrapreneurs, or trying to acquire talent but have no idea what talent is (mostly media/entertainment/marketing people).

I just became comfortable talking about code, because I have pretty bad imposter-syndrome but the true coders are few and far between. I have met some cool and capable people at coloft (a coworking space) but the other spacing and events I have gone too are mostly SEO/Marketing and publicists. It is tough finding serious people on meetup.com. Carbonfive meetup is pretty legit, but it is hard to really meet people and just discuss technology. I too wish the community was bigger.

<comment><USER3> Of course you're gonna have a ton of wantrepreneurs in LA, it's LA after all and people like to do things that are cool, fashionable, hip; saying you "have an app idea" or are "starting a startup" is becoming commonplace. And it's always becoming increasingly annoying when meeting people and trying to have a conversation of substance. I can't count how many seemingly bright (and average) people I've met who have another idea for a chat app. Enough.

Additionally, you'll notice a ton of media/marketing/e-commerce in LA as this is what the culture really revolves around here. You won't see much enterprise or biotech as you would see in the Valley or San Diego, respectively. Social is also popular since kids these days love the idea of "build chat app, grow user base, raise tons of money, cash out." But most of knows these lottery tickets are extremely rare.

Personally, I don't understand how companies like Nasty Gal or Dollar Shave Club are tech by any means. Rolling out some e-commerce atop en existing platform / site is simply online retail / subscription vs. having anything propriety (they don't) but this is our my problem.

At my company, we do hardware, consumer electronics, software with AI and ML and more challenging issues. Sure, we love to have fun and do things that we enjoy but the whole "start another e-commerce site" is getting real old here. I too find myself in a pickle at times trying to find people in the area who love pure tech and can discuss and play around with things that matter. Way too much "biz dev" idiots here who think a blog is the next tumblr.

DM via Twitter if you want to chat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in LA. Moved here a year ago from SF. If I had to put a number on the difference, I'd say LA has about 20% the tech activity that SF has. Totally unscientific.

I base this on attendance at meetups, activity at co-working spaces, average skill/experience level of engineers I've met, and companies I've come across as a consultant.

Santa Monica, Venice and Pasadena seem to be the activity hubs.

I will say I have come across a whole lot of non-technical people looking for technical cofounders. That exists in SF as well, but much more so here (also completely unscientific).

<comment><USER3> If not less.

I can't do traditional meetups here anymore, I've met maybe 2-3 technical people who even know how to code a basic webpage and I've gone to over 2 dozens in Venice/SM and some "notable organizations" \- just tons of "biz dev" "marketing" and "media" people, great, but I guess WE are all looking for more hardcore tech-oriented people here.

I've met some great people at UCLA Venture Fund events (look them up) but what we should all do in this thread is organize a small HN meetup in LA.

LA is without a doubt growing, slowly but surely, and heading into the tech startup trajectory, even with all all the wantrepreneurs and media guys... Engineers and anyone with face stuck to screen for 10+ hours a day is going to have a tough time meeting like minded people in real life, hence is the nature of the beast.

What could be more powerful than bright people getting together to discuss cool stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is actually why I made this thread. I found an old link to a HN meetup on meetup.com. It was dead, and I had no info. I was actually looking for a good meetup. Once again, I am not a legendary developer, but I know my way around the command line. I am picking up rails, was hping to find a reasonable meetup. The one a mate went to said it was like 4 people in panera watching youtube videos...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm currently working remote for an LA based company.

Apparently Python/Django devs are hard to find in LA... instead I hear it's a lot of Java and .NET devs. I found that surprising, considering its proximity to SV/SF compared to say in the Midwest.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am in Inglewood,CA. Working on RubyMotion iOS Apps. Looking to get into building prototypes and maybe a part-time iOS Business. I am also heavily ready to jump into hyperlocal marketing apps monetized with automated e-commerce accounts.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hello

<comment><AUTHOR> hey?</comment></comment>


Skydeck Goes Social And Releases APIs - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/skydeck-goes-social-and-releases-apis-700-invites/ <comment><USER2> Xobni for the phone; Its like saying the "Youtube of documents" (Scribd) ... if your company is every quoted by someone else in the first position, Congratulations you've probably made it.</comment>


5 Torrent Files That Broke Mind Boggling Records - <AUTHOR> http://filesharingz.com/community/topic/192941-5-torrent-files-that-broke-mind-boggling-records/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone know of a place where you can see visualizations (maybe even in realtime) of the bitTorrent network?

</comment><comment><USER3> Article also available here: [http://torrentfreak.com/5-torrent-files-that- broke-mind-bogg...](http://torrentfreak.com/5-torrent-files-that-broke-mind- boggling-records-101107/)</comment>


The Threat of a U.S. Tech Worker Shortage - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/outsourcing/240000853

<comment><USER2> "leaders from tech, media, and financial giants, including Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon".

Big Software and Big Finance. Of course. At it again.

Want top talent? Pay the market rate just like every else does.

<comment><USER3> and don't retire engineers at 35</comment></comment>


How Kentucky Built the Country's Best Obamacare Website - <AUTHOR> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/how-kentucky-built-the-country-s-best-obamacare-website <comment><USER2> 3 month design, 3 month build, 3 month test

Keep it simple.

That was the philosophy. Don't bother reading the article, I just summed up the only info that wasn't just there to take up space.

Disappointing that this was light on any real details like who the contractor was, or if it was done by state employees. What the integration story was? Technology? Staffing count? Budget? You know, all those things which would speak to 'How' Kentucky built the site.

<comment><USER2> The sad part, this is the 'best' and I see a home page that even with a simple design pattern and a relatively easy technology stack - missed some pretty basic best practices that are virtually free from a technical effort perspective. 30 different HTTP calls on the home page, no bundling or minification, 4 404 errors, no CDN usage...but it works, I guess nothing else really matters if you meet that metric.

<comment><USER3> Looks like it was built with ASP.NET MVC 4, which has minification and bundling built in. Should be easy for them to take advantage of it... maybe they just ran out of time or don't care.

<comment><USER4> The bundling features in ASP.NET MVC 4 were at best release candidate and at worst beta until mid summer. I can see why using them may have made some developer's leery. Adding these features now as indicated by several other commentators should not be difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A site that looks like garbage but works really well is much better than a site that looks good but doesn't work at all.

<comment><USER6> Hmmm, do you really think it looks like "garbage"? I'm a back end developer, don't claim to have much taste in these things, but it strikes me as simple and straightforward, maybe not pretty, but not ugly.

And their images: tiny. Home page 32K, the one for individuals and families 26K. The old home page picture that used to be on Healthcare.gov is now gone, but I recall someone saying it, or another picture on the site, weighed in at 1.8M.

<comment><USER7> As a fellow backend developer, this KY site doesn't look ugly to me. It looks minimal, seems to be pretty easy to get around, and seems to fulfill its purpose very well. It loads incredibly fast, and the text is all easy to understand.

I'll take bland and functional over pretty and awkward any day when it's something this important to so many. Whoever did this for KY did a great job, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "SURESH PALDIA" likes to get his name into every block of JS code. Ref: [https://kyenroll.ky.gov/Scripts/HBECommonUtility.js](https://kyenroll.ky.gov/Scripts/HBECommonUtility.js)

Seems to be a common pattern with these gov websites or maybe the outsourcer. Bad quality code! Really really bad JS code chaining everything to the global prototype, hoisting issues indicate low comprehension about JS, no basic minification or cdn use et al.. awful. I hope they didn't spend in the millions to build that.

Now if these folks could code well they would probably also build out unit tests. Thus reducing the need for manual labor testing the site, logic etc and launching faster.

<comment><USER9> I really don't understand these statements. I agree that the code isn't particularly elegant and violates some best practices but who else should have written it? I see so many comments be it here or Reddit or anywhere really from know it all criticizing work people have done. If it's so easy for it to have been done the way you say then why does it never seem to be done that way.

It seems that the devs available to build these projects for the government aren't the best ones. The best ones must be at Facebook refactoring the Poke code.

<comment><USER10> > It seems that the devs available to build these projects for the government > aren't the best ones. The best ones must be at Facebook refactoring the Poke > code.

There are lots of companies on Silicon Valley writing great code that are doing things a lot more important than Facebook pokes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For perspective, twice Kentucky's entire state population commutes into Manhattan every weekday.

Scale matters.

<comment><USER12> Where are you getting these numbers? I get...

Manhattan commuters = 1.6M Kentucky population = 4.38M

[1] [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/more-people- com...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/more-people-commute-to- manhattan-than-any-other-county/?_r=0)

[2] [http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/21000.html](http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/21000.html)

<comment><USER13> [http://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/ManhattanCommuting.p...](http://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/ManhattanCommuting.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Forcing simplicity during design seems like a great way to avoid the complexity that takes over many larger projects. Too bad this couldn't be done nationally.

I'm curious what the cost of this system was. Or perhaps more importantly, what's the cost per person that will ultimately be covered.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the website: [https://kyenroll.ky.gov/](https://kyenroll.ky.gov/)

If I follow a link from the home page, for instance, [https://kyenroll.ky.gov/General/ContactUs](https://kyenroll.ky.gov/General/ContactUs) I can't use the back button any more.

<comment><USER16> Small Business >> Lets Get Started >> Create an Account Get "Object moved to here".

Seems like the most simple path has issues. Thought the "Object moved to here" link works.

<comment><USER16> Doing some type of single sign on integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Was anyone else sad when they saw 2 versions of jquery loading?

But props to working vs pretty. Working + pretty is best, but working + ugly beats broken + pretty.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 The important thing to note here is that a lot of states (but not all) that built their own exchanges are having similar success. Many states that decided to not build their own exchange, and thus saddled the federal government with another state to be responsible for, did so because they want the rollout to proceed poorly so that the law will fail.

</comment><comment><USER18> apparently it was built with ASPNET MVC

[http://builtwith.com/?https%3a%2f%2fkyenroll.ky.gov%2f](http://builtwith.com/?https%3a%2f%2fkyenroll.ky.gov%2f)

<comment><USER19> Relevant headers:

      Server:Microsoft-IIS/8.0
      X-AspNet-Version:4.0.30319
      X-AspNetMvc-Version:4.0
      X-Powered-By:ASP.NET

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is very low bar to be the "best" site-- Kentucky has only enrolled 26,000 people in a state with over 4.3 million residents.

<comment><USER2> Only around 5K were legit new enrolls, the rest were transplants from the state medicaid system

<comment><USER21> That's much more relevant vs. comparing to the total population, since 640,000 people are without insurance in Kentucky [1].

[1] [http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/10/2814767/governor- encourag...](http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/10/2814767/governor-encourages- kentuckians.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "The country's best Obamacare website"?

Isn't that like saying "the best Mexican restaurant in Montana"?

<comment><USER6> Feh, I'm sure Montana has some really good ones, and even "average" Mexican food tends to be quite good.

More importantly, the right wing sources I read, like _National Review Online_ ([http://nationalreview.com/corner/361577/assessing- exchanges-...](http://nationalreview.com/corner/361577/assessing-exchanges- yuval-levin)) agree that their site works, along with those of Nevada, Colorado, and Washington state.

I also give Hawaii and Oregon initial credit for _not_ launching their sites on Oct 1 because they knew they weren't ready. That takes a level of moral courage we didn't see from those running the Healthcare.gov effort.

<comment><USER23> Washington's didn't work for a few weeks after it was released. It also did things like send your password to you in plaintext.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is not apples to apples. I actually just went to the site and got a quote. The site works well and I don't want to diminish what they built, but I ended up getting quotes from like 3 different insurance companies. Compare that with dozens (if not hundreds) operating on the federal level.

<comment><USER6> What is the area like for the zipcode you supplied?

As _The New York Time_ has noted, in the Federal exchange the more rural areas have fewer providers and higher costs: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/business/health-law- fails-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/business/health-law-fails-to- keep-prices-low-in-rural-areas.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The website is very simple. Which means that it would not be a big deal to throw some media queries in and make it mobile friendly. This is 2013, I don't understand why rwd is still not applied everywhere.

<comment><USER26> There is a good reason not to apply / do mobile version in the beginning. A lot of websites don't run properly on mobile browsers and the API support vary in different mobile browsers. Hence, it's a good idea to keep them for desktop. And a lot of people wanted to register for the health care will either consult with a specialist (running off a dell computer) or home computer. Not a tablet or your android phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Political propaganda. Why is this on HN?

</comment><comment><USER28> tl;dr -- all Flash.

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone paying attention to the news back in 2001? Remember when Sun and the other tech companies were offering all kinds of totalitarian tech solutions (like national IDs) to "solve" terrorism. Ah, how times change.</comment>


Pokemon GO Dev Doesn't Like Pokevision, Tracking Apps - <AUTHOR> http://gamerant.com/pokemon-go-pokevision-tracker-app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mainly posted this because some folks may be interested from an API perspective.</comment>


Q&A with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, on hiring, growth, and its platform - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/03/04/qa-with-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg-on-hiring-growth-and-its-platform/

<comment><USER2> He really is the master at saying a lot of words and actually communicating nothing.

<comment><USER3> This happens a lot when you're a corporate schmuck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"... What is your role going to be now that you've hired a chief operating officer with wide-sweeping responsibilities? ..."_

An employment anti-pattern. Does Sheryl code? Is she under 30? [0]

[0] <http://feeds.feedburner.com/Ycombinator-StartupSchool> Mark ~ 2007 ~ Zuckerberg talk.</comment>


The Science of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-best-chocolate-chip-cookies.html <comment><USER2> I've made hundreds (thousands?) of batches of chocolate chip cookies. They're my favorite dessert!

I think this is a great article but I wanted to highlight some of what I've found to be key points for making the best cookies, at least for me personally.

1\. Butter should be soft, _not melted_. Melted butter makes flat cookies. (Some people like flat cookies -- you can melt your butter. Heathens.)

2\. Follow order of operations in the recipe. Butter is creamed with the sugar, then add wet ingredients, then add dry ingredients. Stir after each stage. Batter should be extremely smooth.

3\. Ideally, batter should be chilled in refrigerator before using. But this is not required, unless you melted your butter.

4\. Once formed, roll cookie dough balls in sugar before putting them on the parchment paper. Adds slightly crunchy, brown outer layer.

5\. Sprinkle some coarse salt on top, to taste.

6\. Use multiple types of chocolate chips. Specifically, I like a mixture of milk chips + semisweet chips. This makes the cookie flavor less boring.

edit: In terms of the base recipe, I use the Joy of Cooking recipe. Tollhouse chocolate chips also have a recipe on the packaging which is basically much the same.

<comment><USER3> Definitely agree on 1-3. I have found that chilling in the refrigerator also results in a better shape, plus I also like the way it divides the work (make the dough and clean up one day, then bake the next). I'll have to try 4, 5 and 6, those are great ideas.

My own tip to throw in the mix: if you naturally gravitate towards making big cookies (because who doesn't like a really big cookie?), try making small ones!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If all of this seems too complicated and you want an easy way to take cookies from fine / good to great, stick with your standard Tollhouse recipe, but let the dough sit in the fridge for a day or two (the linked article talks about this). Its a super easy way to give them a deep, toffee-like flavor.

Brown butter cookies are really good, but the nuttiness can be intense. Often I prefer regular creamed-butter recipes. Also, the #1 way people screw up browned-butter cookies is not letting the butter cool enough.

Also not a huge fan of the chopped chocolate. I prefer the pockets of chocolate that chips give rather than chocolate everywhere.

<comment><USER5> > stick with your standard Tollhouse recipe, but let the dough sit in the > fridge for a day or two

About 18 hours seems to be optimal (for me!) As well as letting the dough rest at least an hour to get closer to room temp before spooning to the baking sheet.

What is never talked about when analyzing a good tollhouse cookie is the underside pattern. There should be a 1/8"-1/4" noticeable line around the bottom of the outer edge. This is the fault line of where the base of the cookie starts to solidify from baking and the subsequent spreading action of the dough past this point in time, which 'rolls over' this fault line. This metric can tell you a lot regarding whether your dough has too much butter, too much sugar, too cold, too warm, too whipped during the creaming stage, too mixed after adding flour, oven temp, cooking time, baking surface, etc. Once you start getting anal-ytical about your 'process', this one metric is an easy visual that can pinpoint what went wrong or how to improve when you start controlling for variables. The tollhouse recipe is nearly the perfect set of ingredients but you can get a wide range of results just on process alone yet most people go straight to tinkering with the ingredient list to improve. Resist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an aside, whenever I need to make a can't miss recipe, I google that dish name + seriouseats food lab. Never had a fail from Kenji and his methodology in constructing recipes.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a long shot, but some years back Robert X. Cringley had a column talking about a company (possibly out of Israel) who did training for a business optimization technique. At at some point one of the owners decided to try it on chocolate chip recipes, and it worked out really well. Does that ring a bell for anyone?

<comment><USER8> From Google, "Bayesian Optimization for a Better Dessert": [https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/f52ac33bc9d1adecd3a8037a7009b185fd934f0e.pdf)

This is a lighter presentation of the same: [https://9to5google.com/2017/12/04/google-smart-cookie- recipe...](https://9to5google.com/2017/12/04/google-smart-cookie-recipe-ai/)

<comment><USER7> This wasn't what I was thinking of (time period was ~2010), but is very interesting nonetheless—so thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Close enough, I've spotted a minor mistake:

Butterscotch flavor from butter is done via esterification in high temperature, which does require both saturated fats, protein, right acidity and high heat. (Same ester is added to e.g. popcorn as flavoring.)

</comment><comment><USER10> This post appears to be inspired by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20281414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20281414)

I said I would only upvote it if that user posted it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone else remember the ML cookies at Google? Are they still doing that?</comment>