Juce: An extensive, mature, cross-platform C++ toolkit - <AUTHOR> http://www.juce.com/ <comment><USER2> A former client of mine considered Juce for a cross-platform project several years ago. It seems to be popular in the the audio programming segment. The biggest drawback is the lack of native look-and-feel; Juce apps don't "feel" native, and that's usually enough to keep it an also-ran for most use cases.

I don't really see the big advantage for these cross-plaform GUI frameworks, anyway. Trying to force a standard interface across diverse platforms means coming up with odd idioms or patterns to achieve a kind of artificial homogeneity. Better to concentrate effort on making the business logic cross- platform, IMO.

<comment><USER3> Nativity in UIs is over-rated imho. Tons of apps I'm regularly using do not have native UIs and still fare quite well. Heck, I'm not even sure what the native toolkit for my platform (Windows 7) would be. I guess WPF would be the closest thing?

Most notorious example would be Microsoft Office which afaik never has used native widgets, being always one step ahead of Windows UI design. Other examples out of my head are the whole Adobe suite (which is arguably a mess UI wise), both Firefox and Chrome, Spotify, Steam, Blender. iirc the Open/LibreOffice widgets are custom too. And of course GIMP has its own toolkit, even if it is spread bit beyond GIMP itself.

<comment><USER4> > Most notorious example would be Microsoft Office which afaik never has used > native widgets, being always one step ahead of Windows UI design.

And yet when Office switched to the ribbons interface, all hell broke loose. The moral being, people hate having to learn a new UI. Consistency matters.

<comment><USER3> But that is almost completely orthogonal to the issue of nativity. That is demonstrated by the fact that Office wasn't using native widgets before ribbon either and people were happy, and as a counter-example Metro/ModernUI is arguably the native UI for Windows 8 and that hasn't stopped people from disliking it.

<comment><USER4> Exactly--people were happy with the old UI, which, non-standard or not, was in place for ~ a decade. They really resented having to learn something new. Now repeat that experience once for every new application you want to use. It can be extremely frustrating.

<comment><USER5> The point is that "UI nativity" means things like "checkmarks in checkboxes should appear in the same way across all applications". It's pretty easy to distinguish a checkmark in a checkbox no matter what platform you're on, and real users don't care if it matches the rest of the platform exactly or not.

"UI nativity" is basically a way for design snobs to feel like they're making a contribution by whining about something trivial and irrelevant. A normal person can still recognize the meaning and doesn't care if the checkbox is beveled differently from app to app, and anyone who discards an application on such minor inconsistencies is not doing serious work anyway, and should be disregarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for all the sudden attention, HN readers - my website's just about surviving the onslaught! Hope some of you discover JUCE from reading this!

I'd just like to say that if anyone tries the demo app and finds it a bit tired and old-fashioned, that's because it is! We're in the middle of writing a new demo at the moment that'll show off a lot more of the library's cool features in a slick way, but it won't be ready for a couple of weeks. (Ideally I'd have waited until that was ready before getting HN'ed, but am still grateful for the hits!)

<comment><USER7> Cool to see you here Jules. I used Tracktion from around 2003-2008 and loved it. Always thought the UI was nice and I was excited when I found out about Juce. Whenever I get around to learning some DSP I'll use it to make plugins :)

<comment><USER6> Thanks! Actually, one of my big tasks over the next few months will be to redesign Tracktion's UI and try to make it look at bit more contemporary. Quite an interesting challenge!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worked at an audio company previously, and one of my main jobs was porting a large acoustic simulation suite from Juce to Qt (EAW Resolution).

Unless you really need the audio specific features that Juce includes (we didn't as we did everything in-house) there's really no point to using it.

Qt has a bigger community, more extensive (and IMO more well thought out) libraries, and as has already been mentioned, a native look and feel that can't be beat. Not to mention, Qt is completely free for personal and commercial use.

The only popular commercial app I know of that is using Juce is Smaart by rational acoustics. They used MFC before that if I recall, so obviously the cross-platform capabilities are a huge bonus. I still wondered why they didn't move to Qt like us though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oddly, I love everything about this except the Introjuicer, which basically Yet Another XML Based Build Tool.

Quote from the author:

        When I first decided to build the introjucer, my first
        approach was also to use cmake, but on investigating,
        it really was far simpler to just cut out the
        middle-man.

Dang~

Looks like I won't be using it after all; nothing I love less than learning new build systems.

<comment><USER10> I've used JUCE professionally for almost 2 years now and I find the introjucer to be a very poor substitute for CMake.

It is all GUI based and hardwired to a single XML file with predefined settings, so there just is not a lot of flexibility for setting up more complex projects nor sharing settings across projects.

Even the things that introjucer does support, it does not always do well, like icon support or keeping up with the latest iOS changes to Xcode for instance.

The general problem with JUCE is that is just a too ambitious project for one man and feels like a "well executed hobby" library instead of a "professional production" library. There are a lot of inconsistencies and bugs that you quickly run into when you dig deep enough into the library.

Issues are fixed and introduced on a daily basis, you have to be very careful when updating the latest "release" (which seem quite random) as your existing code could break.

[https://github.com/julianstorer/JUCE/commits/master](https://github.com/julianstorer/JUCE/commits/master)

That being said, I think the price for a commercial license of JUCE is a steal if you are working with C++ audio/DSP programming and it will save you a lot of time up front.

You just have to keep in mind that you will probably need to invest time in patching/extending JUCE due to the fact that only one guy is maintaining it and he only has so much time to work on it every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I looked into this for an audio app, and it looked really cool. Then I contacted him to find out what contingencies were in place because of the truck number of 1 (!!). I asked him if he had any business partner, or perhaps a dead man's agreement in place in the license by which if the company folded or he left it would revert to open source. Not only does he not, but he was a jerk about it, completely dismissive of it as a valid concern. No way would I put years of work into a project on a platform that might become stagnant because of his lack of foresight or understanding there. So I just used QT and other audio only toolkits. Pity, it's really neat looking.

<comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong - but there was commercial and GPL licences, are the GPL licences gone?

<comment><USER6> No.. it's still GPL.

<comment><USER12> Jules I am a real fan of your work, you are an inspiration - thanks for your response! Reading iain's comment again - I think he knows it is GPL already but for commercial users he's concerned that they would have to GPL their code to get updates if something unfortunate were to happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using JUCE for a couple of years for VST development. I've found it to be a very well put together library for audio work (diving straight into Steinberg's SDK is pretty daunting for someone new to audio like myself), and a lot just works out of the box.

There is strong leadership from Jules on the direction of the library which is generally a very good thing, though it does mean that sometimes there isn't much room to budge on controversial issues. Font rendering is one aspect that several have battled with for a while, I've struggled to get good crisp smaller fonts without resorting to using freetype. Jules argument seems to be that small fonts shouldn't be used period, therefore the library wont render them well (I think there are technical as well as philosophical reasons for this, particularly on OSX). While I agree they should generally be avoided, there are certain situations where this isn't the case (reproducing an exiting GUI for a client, fitting non-critical text in when screen real estate is at a premium etc).

Overall I would certainly recommend for anyone starting out in audio development, but be prepared to fiddle around with fonts; I'm not so familiar with the non-audio parts of the library.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks interesting, I come from a Qt background so cross-platform toolkits always have a bit of interest for me. It does seem like it's definitely for people building highly customised interfaces, rather than looking for OS-based look and feel but there's some nice bits. I think I'll give it a whirl when I've got time for a side project.

<comment><USER15> My first thought, as well, was why should I use JUCE over Qt. Especially considering license. I'll have to look more carefully through code.

<comment><USER14> Looking at it quickly, you should use JUCE over Qt if you're building a custom UI from scratch and you want a lot of multimedia help, you should use Qt if you're building a more traditional desktop application.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure if this is really true if you use Qt 5 and Qt Quick, which allows you incredible control over the look of your application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like how all the examples look like VST plugins. Seems that the horror that is VST GUI paid off, because it triggered someone to do better! (note: that's a completely uninformed guess)

I didn't know about this though, and will definitely consider it if I'm ever bound to C++ again.

I especially like how iOS and Android are targets. Easy to code, highly customizable, fast/native, cross platform mobile apps? Yes please! Sure, Qt can do all this too, but I suspect that many app designs might fit the "audio plugin" UI design attitude better. Especially if you have a designer who likes to .psd every single control.

<comment><USER18> if i never have to use VST GUI again, that wont be long enough.

honestly i think steinberg were pushing for using native widgets. i'm confused then, as to why the native UI system looks just.. terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Kind of weird how he wrote his own string class, as well as rewriting some other perfectly good standard library stuff.

His version of scoped_ptr seems to fake rvalue references without actually using rvalue references, but does so in a copy constructor. IMO this is a bit bonkers. If you're not going to use rvalue references I think move semantics is better done from a method, not a copy constructor.

Still looks like a handy library for wrapping things that are otherwise not portable.

Edit: I was mainly basing that comment from looking at juice_core... There's a crapton of other stuff too. Impressive for a one-person work.

<comment><USER20> _Kind of weird how he wrote his own string class, as well as rewriting some other perfectly good standard library stuff._

not _that_ weird: Qt and others do it as well. Not sure why though, maybe because at the time they started there was a lack of a decent std::string implementation on all platforms?

<comment><USER3> std::string is very low-level interface, and has eg. very little to no provisions for Unicode.

<comment><USER19> So build unicode routines on top. Don't make me put all my data in a non- standard datatype where another type already exists and is more common.

Users of C++ already have to deal with std::string and char * and possibly PWSTR if they are on Windows, why throw yet another type at them?

This reminds me of a joke I used to tell, it starts with a problem that there are too many string types, and the solution, somehow, always ends up being another string type...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to the About JUCE page the license is GPL, so you need a commercial license if you want to use it in a non-GPL project. The pricing doesn't look too bad if the library is solid (£399 for a single project, £699 for unlimited).

They really need a lighter color for the text on their website -- tough to read.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been using JUCE for various project for about 5 years. I really enjoy coding with it, once you understand the naming convention (which is different from everything I've used before), it's quite intuitive. If you use the API in a wrong way, it will assert somewhere inside the library, and the assert has a nice comment above it explaining what you did wrong.

The main benefit for me is the size of the executables - no other cross- platform GUI toolkit that I've used before can end up with such tiny executable files.

QT might be more powerful, but it's HUGE and that is a problem for most of the apps that I develop.

So great work Jules and do give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER23> I realize this may be slightly off-topic, but is there something like this that focuses on building cross-platform apps that have native UIs?

I've obviously seen wxWidgets, but I'd even be interested in commercial offerings.

<comment><USER24> They exist, but none of them I've run into are particularly good. I'd say that Qt is probably the least-bad, but it feels very "wrong" on OS X and only somewhat better on Windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> @julesrms: I'm looking through the docs and can't find the answer: Do the drawing functions support anti-aliased 2d primitives (lines, circles, etc)? I'm looking for a C++ 'Canvas' type object that's requires very little code setup; just let me open a window and give me an anti-aliased drawing surface. Could JUCE help me with that?

<comment><USER6> Yep, tons of anti-aliased 2D stuff, using either a 100% software renderer, CoreGraphics, or an openGL shader based renderer.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, I'll take a closer look then. How do you think it would handle with rendering massive images for canvas printing, like, say 3'x2'@300dpi or bigger pixels?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I'm sure that'd work fine. The Image class itself doesn't have any size limits. I guess that the openGL engine might hit GPU limits on texture size, but the software renderer should handle anything you throw at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This makes me wish that the developer of Sublime Text would release his UI toolkit. It's completely cross platform too.

<comment><USER23> I think one of the reasons Jon manages to pull it off so well is how basic it is. He has a 100% custom sidebar (very basic), but other than that he is using native menu controls and standard dialogs. Obviously the editor pane is the big custom component.

<comment><USER27> Sounds like Scintilla [http://www.scintilla.org/](http://www.scintilla.org/)

<comment><USER26> I used Scintilla a lot when working with AutoIt [1] - it's what powers their standard IDE, SCiTE. It's okay. But not nearly as powerful as Sublime.

We've started packaging Sublime config files into the installation too now. (I say we, I'm an MVP).

[1] [http://autoitscript.com](http://autoitscript.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Juce is great especially for audio plugin developers, an alternative in this area is WDL-ol. [https://github.com/olilarkin/wdl- ol](https://github.com/olilarkin/wdl-ol)

</comment><comment><USER29> been using it for years, its brilliant :)

I'm developing professional audio and 3d tools. In these areas, people expect a GUI that ignores native styles and looks identical cross-platform. That is precisely where juce excels.

</comment><comment><USER30> How did "toolkit" come to mean "GUI library"?

<comment><USER31> The Lisa had the Application Toolkit, which was a shared library written in Clascal (predecessor to Object Pascal) that had all of the basic behaviors of an application.

Then the Macintosh had its function library, called the Toolbox. That's where a great many people heard the term. (The Mac didn't have a framework, though it did get MacApp later - which was similar in design to the Application Toolkit and originally written in Object Pascal.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The editor in Juce apparently features C++ live-editing/hot-reloading [http://youtu.be/imkVkRg-geI](http://youtu.be/imkVkRg-geI)

<comment><USER6> Yes, but sadly still not yet released, due to me having absolutely no time to work on it :(

(Anyone who finds the Projucer project interesting and who might be interested in throwing some resources at it, please get in touch!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I looked at Juce a while a go when researching native GUI libraries and ended up choosing QT, but seeing that resolume uses Juce I might have another look at it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think I see the insides of a Lisp hiding inside ;-)

       http://www.juce.com/documentation/tutorials/valuetree-class

</comment><comment><USER34> All it needs is a spellchecker ;-)

</comment><comment><USER35> Juce is an incredible framework, jules is also a great guy, he implements stuff daily that the community requests. It makes creating C++ stuff even fun !</comment>


Strapping Up Riak - <AUTHOR> http://megam.info/2010/01/20/riak-strapping-up/

<comment><USER2> Very nice solution for the very common problem of load-balancers not supporting sticky sessions.

It's worth a read if you're in the web application business.</comment>


Transplanting the Mac's Central Processor: Gary Davidian and His 68000 Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://computerhistory.org/blog/transplanting-the-macs-central-processor-gary-davidian-and-his-68000-emulator/ <comment><USER2> I am most interested in the death of the 68k.

It seemed the low end chips didn't really beat the 6502. Some Sun workstations had real MMU capability and a real OS but the cost was enough that migration from the cheap chips to the high end was slow -- Mac and Amiga did not cross the bridge to 32-bit OS in that world. Apple, Sun, and everyone else who used the 68k jumped ship.

<comment><USER3> The 68000 (and 68010) hit a sweet spot. They were really good 16bit chips because they offered some of the benefits of 32bit computing. But by the late 80's clones created economies of scale and Intel's cross licensing meant there were cheaper chips from AMD and Cyrix. And then FPU's went on-chip and the Motorolla road map probably didn't foresee that until the wagon was well up a box canyon.</comment></comment>


How to Mirror Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.igeek.co.za/2009/10/16/how-to-mirror-wikipedia/

<comment><USER2> I was going to make a joke about just using

      wget --mirror http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

so I decided to try it first. After downloading the robots.txt, it stopped. I looked and saw the following:

      #
      # Sorry, wget in its recursive mode is a frequent problem.
      # Please read the man page and use it properly; there is a
      # --wait option you can use to set the delay between hits,
      # for instance.
      #
      User-agent: wget
      Disallow: /

</comment><comment><USER3> The english Wikipedia uses a massive number[1] of MediaWiki extensions. At the very least you are going to need parserfunctions (used in basically every template) and cite to properly display basically every article. Math, wikihiero, syntaxhilighting, poem and who knows how many others are needed for non-general pages. You'll also be missing images and getting them would require significant effort since there has not been a batch download in years and have to get images from en and commons.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version>

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't download the archive directly from Wikipedia - that wastes their bandwidth. Grab the torrent instead.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if this includes media like pictures and audio files? 20 gigs uncompressed seems way too small for all of the media on Wikipedia. Granted, it's >2 years old, but that still seems a bit shy.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't, due to licensing issues: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Whe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Where_are_images_and_uploaded_files)

<comment><USER5> That makes sense, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice initiative. Even though I trust the Wikimedia foundation, it _is_ a single point of failure. It'd be a waste for all the information to disappear if somehow they stop, or become unreachable, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

So, mirror what you can :-)

BTW: Is it possible to mirror incrementally? Downloading the 5.2GB file every time is a big waste of bandwidth.</comment>


H2O, a platform for creating, sharing and remixing open course materials - <AUTHOR> https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/ <comment><USER2> Some context for the unfamiliar:

H2O arose out of a law school, where the textbooks are basically just very expensive compilations of prior case law. Some publishers add additional comments and other materials to the casebooks, but for the most part, you're just paying for someone else to print out and excerpt public public domain material for you. Makes it a particularly good target for remixing.

<comment><USER3> Ah. That explains it - I clicked through the link and was disappointed to see it seems entirely dedicated to courses on law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unfortunate that it is restricted to .edu e-mail addresses. I taught a law class last year for which I used MIT's Nb.mit.edu platform. H20 would make a nice complement to that.

</comment><comment><USER5> H2O.ai has been around for a years so the title confused me, maybe project name spacing should be a thing

<comment><USER6> Hah, and there is yet another H2O, HTTP/2 server that I was thinking of.

[https://h2o.examp1e.net/](https://h2o.examp1e.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see something like this but for MOOCs. Some of the bigger sites are already doing this with micro-degrees on specific topics. But it would be great if anyone could mix and match the best or most relevant videos from different courses to create a meta-course.

<comment><USER8> I am working on building the Teaching app for iOS.

It will literally be called "Teaching" and it will be for teachers to collect youtube videos, articles etc. into a flipped classroom curriculum. Also will let them design quizzes to take in class. If the user switches the app to the background, it alerts the teacher to cheating. And so on. An all-in one solution.

By the way, if you want to join me on this project, email me (the button is at [https://qbix.com/about](https://qbix.com/about))

<comment><USER4> This sounds like an interesting project, I would like to know more about this.

<comment><USER8> Then email me. The link is above :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this considered an open alternative to LexisNexus case search?

If anyone is curious what this system offers, I suggest searching Facebook -> all categories

</comment><comment><USER6> Love the idea!

Unfortunately I can not participate, it says I must have an .edu email address.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is an .edu email address required?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's also an ml package for r www.h2o.ai

<comment><USER12> It's also water.

<comment><USER13> And a HTTP/2 web server. [https://h2o.examp1e.net/](https://h2o.examp1e.net/)</comment></comment></comment>


Feedback on FriendShuffle - StumbleUpon For Facebook Likes - <AUTHOR> http://friendshuffle.com/

<comment><USER3> I was turned off as soon as the list of permissions showed up:

Access my basic information: OK

Send me email: OK

Post to my Wall: No. Why do you need to post to my wall? To spam my friends? Do you have a better reason?

Access posts in my News Feed: No. There's private stuff in there which you don't need.

Access my data any time: No. I like the idea of my auth-token only lasting an hour. It limits the damage you can do.

<comment><USER4> Access to News Feed is required to pull content.

Posting is required for sharing.

Access data at any time allows you to stay connected so you don't have to sign in with facebook every time you go to the site.

<comment><USER3> This is incredibly misleading.

1\. You don't need access to my newsfeed to grab PUBLIC posts to my newsfeed, only private ones.

2\. Posting is NOT required for sharing, only for "sharing" without the user's explicit permission. You can always use stream.publish, show a FB lightbox and share. Or user share.php.

3\. You don't need to "login to FB every time you go to the site". An app can re-up the access token if there is a logged in Facebook account. If there isn't, you can ask the user to login. Again, this is typically used to pull data when you're not logged into FB at all.

Shady.

<comment><USER4> "sharing without the user's explicit permission" is what happens when you click "I like it too!".

A popup detracts from the user experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is like StumbleUpon on crack.

I wonder if they could add categories? Would be interesting to just browse articles, videos, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was going to suggest having a page that explains it without making me log in. I'm on the fence now. I am probably more likely to try it out if I have to log in. Maybe give an option for me to get out of the login box just so I can get more info?

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't that _"One of your friends liked this!"_ heading just a _little_ bit deceitful? As far as I can tell it doesn't talk to Facebook at all - <USER2> impressed.

<comment><USER8> the first thing the site does is ask you to connect with Facebook. Are you not seeing that?

<comment><USER7> _the first thing the site does is ask you to connect with Facebook. Are you not seeing that?_

I see the heading without connecting to Facebook.

I also see it hard-coded into the page's HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this shit is bananas

<comment><AUTHOR> please don't create a new account just to leave comments that aren't useful.</comment></comment>


Redditor claims that CREST gives the NCC Group test data and an unfair advantage - <AUTHOR> https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/i87d03/ncc_group_admits_its_training_data_was_leaked/g17ff6m/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was browsing r/netsec and came across this post[0] on how the NCC Group had training data leaked online and posted to Github[1].

The comment (as linked in this post) is a throwaway and makes some claims about this relationship. I figured it was interesting and worth a share (and perhaps discussion) here.

[0]: [https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/i87d03/ncc_group_ad...](https://old.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/i87d03/ncc_group_admits_its_training_data_was_leaked/)

[1]: [https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/11/ncc_group_crest_cheat...](https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/11/ncc_group_crest_cheat_sheets/)</comment>


Lessons from a RESTful API Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/138488770468/lessons-from-a-restful-api-redesign <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the author, and I've been working the RESTful API redesign for SigOpt. I've learned a lot about APIs over the last few months and I'm excited to share, and I'm always looking to learn more. Let me know if you have any questions/comments!</comment>


A Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambler-who-cracked-the-horse-racing-code <comment><USER2> Is there a service that provides summaries of long-form articles like this? I get that some people enjoy reading prose, but I'd like to know what the article is actually about. So far, I'm 5 pages in and still not sure what the insight is.

I really don't care about the decoration of this guy's office, which drugs he prefers, how his voice sounds, the atmosphere in a horse racing venue, the outcome of a specific horse race, not even this guy's entire life story.

What was his key invention?

Edit: Skimmed the rest, and it sounds like he was simply good at statistical analysis.

Other key parts of the article seem to be (remember, I skimmed): It was a betting system where effectively people bet against each other, not a bookmaker with fixed odds, so he basically became a bookmaker.

The rest reads like many other "smart gambling" stories:

\- others invested in his operation

\- he first was treated as a good customer, getting an "API" to place the bets programmatically, then got that revoked as the organizers realized that other gamblers might not like that he was winning so much (from them, effectively)

Overall, I learned nothing new, and wasted my time reading ten pages of drivel. This is why I _hate_ long-form journalism: You don't know whether the article contains any useful information until you've spent half an hour trying to find it in the description of people's looks, landscapes, weather, and similar chaff.

<comment><USER3> I guess you hate novels as well? I enjoy long indepth character centered articles and I think many other people do as well. The point of reading doesn't necessarily have to be about acquiring the most information in the densest representation.

Also if reading the article was a total waste of your valuable time, why are you commenting about it?

<comment><USER4> This is a poor comparison. I can understand the OP since a title like this generates interest as in "how did they do it", and I expect to learn something by reading the article. I won't be reading a novel with this same expectation; I read it for its entertainment value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After more than a hundred comments, I'm surprised no one mentioned this wonderful book by Adam Kucharski.

The Perfect Bet, How Science and Math are taking the Luck out of Gambling, Basic Books, 2016

I learned about his book after watching his talk, which is absolutely fantastic for anyone interested in the math of gambling.

[https://youtu.be/658xlubwnDc](https://youtu.be/658xlubwnDc)

Bill Benter is featured prominently in the book.

<comment><USER6> I saw the talk last year, which was great, but I didn't know he also wrote a book. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Last time this was discussed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16985413)

I've noticed a little uptick in stories about gambling here, I suspect there is a strain of us at HN interested in sports analytics for financial gain. Interesting. :-)

<comment><USER8> It's sort of amazing that given the fast-moving legalization of sports betting, there hasn't been a lot of VC action in the space, either on the platform side or on the content/services side.

I can count on one hand the number of funded companies over the past six or seven years, and I can think of only one that has exited. Might have something to do with vice provisions dictated by LPs, but it certainly seems like a ripe growth area.

<comment><USER9> There are an absolute ton of companies working in this area (mostly in the UK). But the reason they don't need VC capital is simple...they make a ton of money already (VC funds are naturally interested in capital-intensive businesses that are kind of junky...companies in this sector aren't capital- intensive and are usually obscenely profitable).

<comment><USER10> I won't say that's exactly true. I know Founder's fund have invested in a couple. I think the need for scale limits VC funded options to companies that are building things like a gambling exchange, but at that point, the funding sources might be better from quant traders/hedge funds as its closer to a capital markets type business. For instance:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports- ga...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-30/sports-gambling-is- quant-trading-firm-s-way-to-beat-market-odds)

<comment><USER9> The US market is not representative at all. It is basically nothing (and Susequehana's operation isn't large). Exchanges are cumulatively worth tens of billions and they are a tiny part of the market. Again, most of the people involved have no interest in VCs (I know a few people starting exchanges). They know nothing, and they usually have less money than them anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "[...] casino security, who were constantly on the lookout for card counting". Why this is something "forbidden", this isn't cheating, am I missing something? Anyway, how security can detect that someone counts cards? I assume gamblers are not doing that aloud.

<comment> GuB-42 Casinos are private properties, they can kick you out for any reason without having to justify themselves. Playing too well is one of these reasons.

Of course, kicking you out is the only thing they can do. They can't take your earnings, prosecute you, detain you, or use force unless you resist. Usually the player will be kindly asked to cash-in and leave.

Security can track your play patterns, your gains and losses. Card counting result in very characteristic patterns, and if your gains are too consistent to be explained by chance alone, they are going to watch closely. If you are just lucky, they will offer you free drinks, if you are an advantage player, you will be asked to leave, if you are a cheater, you are going to have problems.

Edit: I think there are some places where casinos can't just kick people out for no reasons. But anyways, there are ways of making card counting impractical. The use of continuous shuffling machines is one of them.

<comment><USER12> Card counters increase their bets when the see the deck as favorable. The casino watches for patterns.

<comment><USER13> And in fact, the casino also counts cards so they can correlate your bet changes with the state of the deck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's truly astounding to see the amount of people that Ed Thorp as well as his book Beat the dealer have influenced.

The amount of successful people in finance and other fields that mention him as an influence is not insignificant.

<comment><USER15> in case you haven't already, his autobiography "Man for all markets" is great.

<comment><USER7> Seconded: this is a truly great book, as is William Poundstone's "Fortune's Forumla" which describes Kelly Criterion: perhaps the most influential equation in trading and gambling in the history of either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It says he's still winning to this day. Makes me wonder if his current model is using Machine Learning (ML) techniques? Which leads me to wonder how successful ML techniques are with data rich sources of gambling and whether there are any syndicates I can join to invest in and let them do all the heavy lifting... I'm sure there's a whole world out there I am yet to discover.

<comment><USER17> But where would you even start discovery? I guess no one with a remotely useful idea wants to share it ...I did a bit of Googling after the article came out last year and apart from a few research papers and that Wired article about Joan Ginther, not much comes up.

I'm surprised he is openly talking about everything, but I suppose many others have caught up and there's not much to lose ...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, that's the conclusion I am coming to as well. The people with good models aren't going to talk about them. Even if they need investment they'll seek it privately. I guess I was thinking of a market where you can 'invest' your money in someone's model and they take a percentage of your winnings (that's their incentive for adding your money to the pool). Then it's a democratised race for whoever has the best model.

<comment><USER18> In horse racing where the bets are done via parimutuel[1], the challenge is that there's an upper bound on how much you can "invest" in a given wager without changing the odds. This makes it less likely that an expert will seek outside investment unless their model has them betting "wide" (lots of small bets vs. a few large ones).

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

<comment><USER7> Not everywhere does Parimutuel - the UK and Ireland for example have basically rejected it despite massive investment into on-course "Tote" systems.

<comment><USER19> Is there any hope for Together for the Tote?[1] I like to dream there is sometimes.

[1] [https://www.togetherforthetote.com](https://www.togetherforthetote.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want to make it clear I'm not advocating for any action with this post, but it did make me curious. Given the parenthetical of this article

>After costs, the Jockey Club's take goes to charity and the state, providing as much as a tenth of Hong Kong's tax revenue.

and previously,

>Hong Kong's population was then only about 5.5 million, but it bet more on horses than the entire U.S., reaching about $10 billion annually by the 1990s.

Isn't horse racing gambling a ripe area for the Hong Kong protesters to disrupt?

<comment><USER21> Disrupting HK's economy hurts HK, not China. China will gladly let HK devolve back into a fishing village.

<comment><USER22> A lot of international companies are in China and the rest of Asia via HK. Sure, they can move to Singapore, but China will invariably lose something.

<comment><USER21> Yes, some will move to Singapore, others to Shanghai. They won't stop doing business with China. They'll just move out of HK.

<comment><USER22> Those companies that could tolerate the conditions of operating directly in the mainland already have moved there, and they won't be eager to move now given all of Xi's backsliding. China is actually approaching a point in world relations that hasn't been lower since 1989.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since there's a lot of machine learning folks reading this, let me mention not too long ago, there was a kaggle competition on horse racing. The dataset is from Hong Kong Jockey Club, which is still available here

[https://www.kaggle.com/hrosebaby/horse-racing-dataset-for- ex...](https://www.kaggle.com/hrosebaby/horse-racing-dataset-for-experts-hong- kong)

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes these systems work. How they describe it is basically correct, although a lot more sophisticated. They are big operations, I've been employed by one. I've met names in that article. And that's all I'm saying. :-)

<comment><USER5> What is considered to have "worked". What kind of variance and drawdowns. How do you know it's not just luck -- just want to be provocative here.

<comment><USER23> Large org, existed for 10-20 years, 100-1000 employees, worldwide offices. Either worked, or had someone chucking some serious money at it for years down the drain.

<comment><USER5> I like this perspective : "chucking serious money down the drain" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Money laundering? Boastful lies? The truth? Probably never know for sure. Fun read anyway, wouldn't get carried away mind.

<comment><USER7> HK racing authorities have been all over him for decades - no money laundering, and no lies, his story all checks out.

<comment><USER19> He wasn't the only one either.

Other big names from around that time include Alan Woods[1](mentioned in the article), Australian Paul Makin[2], Rod Dufficy (also Australian)[3], the Manuel brothers from Adelaide[4] and the Eddington brothers from the UK.

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

[2] [http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/paul-makin- dies/](http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/paul-makin-dies/)

[3] [https://www.wired.com/2002/03/betting/](https://www.wired.com/2002/03/betting/)

[4] [https://www.theage.com.au/sport/racing/big-names-take-a- punt...](https://www.theage.com.au/sport/racing/big-names-take-a-punt-on- global-gambling-20030426-gdvlqy.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> More on Bill Benter. From what I heard, his model had worked well for a while, then faltered. It suffered large drawdowns, which is typical of machine learning models on behavioral data with feedbacks. The betting patterns could/have changed in response to the model predictions.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you find this interesting, live in London (or are willing to move), and want a job - email me.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _A breakthrough came when Benter hit on the idea of incorporating a data set > hiding in plain sight: the Jockey Club's publicly available betting odds. > Building his own set of odds from scratch had been profitable, but he found > that using the public odds as a starting point and refining them with his > proprietary algorithm was dramatically more profitable. He considered the > move his single most important innovation, and in the 1990-91 season, he > said, he won about $3 million._

The article suggests he came up with arbitrage vs. other bettors in 1990, a kind hedge fund for horse racing "without precedent".

On the contrary, my college roommate and I had _Dr. Z's Beat the Racetrack_ from 1987:

[https://smile.amazon.com/Dr-Beat-Racetrack-William- Ziemba/dp...](https://smile.amazon.com/Dr-Beat-Racetrack-William- Ziemba/dp/0688072216/)

> _Benter had achieved something without known precedent: a kind of horse- > racing hedge fund, and a quantitative one at that, using probabilistic > modeling to beat the market and deliver returns to investors._

In fact the 1987 edition was even preceded by _Beat the Racetrack_ by William Ziemba from 1983, a decade earlier than the innovation described in detail here:

[http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2012/05/beat- racetrack.htm...](http://www.betfairprotrader.co.uk/2012/05/beat- racetrack.html)

From the book blurb:

 _William Ziemba and Donald Hausch explain the fundamentals of track racing and show how patterns of public inefficiency in betting pools can lead to you reaping big payoffs. Rather than focusing on the complicated details of thoroughbred handicapping, the groundbreaking "Dr. Z" system offers mathematical models based on stock-market analysis._

 _William T. Ziemba is professor of management science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is an expert in operations research and portfolio management and has served as consultant to the Canadian government on lotteries and pari-mutuel betting systems. Donald B. Hausch has a doctorate in managerial economics and decision sciences from Northwestern University, and is currently teaching in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin, Madison._

</comment><comment><USER27> I believe David Walsh did something similar in Australia. He eventually spent his winnings on building a gigantic art museum (MONA) in Hobart.

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://outline.com/sfXdYZ](https://outline.com/sfXdYZ)

</comment><comment><USER29> "Calculated Bets" by Steven Skiena is a pretty good read if you're interested in this stuff.

<comment><USER30> I was just thinking of adding a comment about that book and the next comment I saw was yours! What are the odds? :-)

(Actually I didn't remember the name of the book, but I remembered the author and the jai-alai player in the cover.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> i'm sure this is being done now for every possible sport and location.

<comment><USER32> Met a professional football (soccer) better in a gambling convention here in the UK a few years back. He had a small team of AI computer scientists.

Told me his average bet size was £100,000, and his edge was in the region of ~1% (EV of £1,000 per bet). Interesting guy but you have to have a huge amount of cash and real belief in your model to ride out the variance!

Pretty sure he wanted to bet bigger but there was an issue with available volume.

<comment><USER7> The only place he's going to be able to get that size of bet on is on the exchanges, and even then it's going to be a struggle for many games. I'm guessing he's sticking to EPL games or Champions League, which means he has to be super, super sharp.

He'd actually make more money by betting less and looking to the smaller markets, I expect because the edge is likely multiples of 1% there. Strange that he hasn't.

<comment><USER9> No. You can bet multiples of £100k on the Asian books. There are people putting down millions on CL games with no issue (you can put down £100k+ on the Championship ffs). Exchanges represent a tiny fraction of the market (and only mugs bet on the main ones, you need to go through a white-label to get decent commission rates..again these are usually run by Asian bet brokers).

1% is also a fairly decent ROI. What you are missing is that you compound at 1% weekly. And if you are putting down bets on other leagues with a higher ROI, you are likely making well over 50%/year.

<comment><USER7> On that level of throughput, even on the main exchanges, they'll be paying 2% max, and perhaps less. Betfair's Premium Charge might be an issue, but a discussion could be had I'm sure, for that level of liquidity.

Going through the Asian books has problems. You're basically dealing with money launderers. Would you be happy to trust that process and team on £100k+ sized bets?

And I did not "miss" the 1% compounding. I get it. I do it myself. At 1% per game, if they're doing EPL, Championship, 2-3 other European leagues and CL, they should be getting 300% or more per year return, which means the £4m-£5m capital they have today to work be able to make those bets (minimum), will make them £10m profit in the next year.

If they are actually hitting those numbers, the Asian books will shut them down. If they are not hitting those numbers, well, they're not getting 1% per game.

I would strongly advise you don't take the stories people tell you in this area as direct, god's honest truth.

<comment><USER9> You don't seem to understand how or why Asian books exist (which does explain your odd views). You aren't dealing with money launderers (the only reason they have that reputation is because the Chinese govt calls people who buy foreign currency "money launderers" because buying foreign currency is, mostly, illegal), you are dealing with the biggest bookies in the world (they are far bigger than any in the UK).

And they are happy to do business with winning players because they aren't like UK books. UK books make markets on ML, that means they don't have a balanced book, and therefore need to take risk. Your only edge as a UK bookie is, therefore, marketing and finding enough mugs.

Asian books mainly make AH markets, this means a balanced book, and their only aim is to make the overlay as a commission. This means that they need sharp bettors to come in and move the line. They lose money on bets with sharps but their lines are now efficient so they make it all back and then some. All the biggest books (Pinny, SBOBet, etc.) do this. And some of them actually open lines privately for sharps to bet on before they go public (this is how StarLizard gets so much down, Tony Bloom used to work at an Asian book).

Btw, most of the large UK books trade in Asia too. It is the epicentre of betting in the world. They don't shut down accounts. It isn't money laundering.

Also, you appear to know nothing about Betfair too. Betfair white-labels through bet brokers to offer lower commissions to big bettors (I don't use Betfair but I know these deals START at 2%, no premium charge). No professional goes through Betfair directly.

Your maths for the ROI is also wildly inaccurate. Basic. I'll leave it to you to work out why.

Less conspiracy theories pls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It never really explained why they couldn't collect the Triple Trio. Why was it unsporting to cash that in, but not other bets that they placed?

<comment><USER34> They kind of did explain it. If they cashed it in then there would be coverage about who won it and the fact that they were American and were placing bets with a system would have surfaced. So basically they could make more money by continuing to slowly siphon money off then they could with a big win like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anyone dumb enough that would like to take on a project like this? Email me : rmena123 at gmail

</comment><comment><USER36> Gambling is another destructive practice that should be outlawed completely.

</comment><comment><USER37> > Hong Kong racing uses a parimutuel system.

I was surprised to see this word.

It's from French pari mutuel that can be translated « mutual bet »

The official horse racing agency in France is called PMU (for Pari Mutuel Urbain, or urban mutual bet)

It's fun how words move from a language to another.

<comment><USER38> The term is used in the United States and elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another untapped market is political betting. I go with a low-risk low-profit strategy that involves a rolling strategy of buying 98 and 99 cent markets (the status quo) on PredictIt. Not very hard to make a 50% annualized return with this kind of stuff. You gotta use multiple accounts though, since you can only put $500 on a single market.

<comment><USER9> Not untapped at all. There are guys who run their own polls to get an edge on political bets. One guy actually runs his own polling company now (Survation).

There is a big edge...if you have info about what polls will say before they come out, etc.

<comment><USER39> More info about Survation, some of Nigel Farage's pals made quite a tidy profit off the fall in the pound after the Brexit referendum:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-21/for- farag...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-21/for-farage-and- brexit-pollster-a-world-of-gamblers-and-gambling)</comment></comment></comment>


Give Them a Hand: Puppet Artists Are Having a Moment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/theater/puppet-artists-chicago-international-puppet-theater-festival.html <comment><USER2> Jeez, and the only mentioned Malkovich in passing and without a reference to the movie?</comment>


Json-crate: a minimalistic promise-based json database - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nettofarah/json-crate <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


How Far to AI Utopia? - <AUTHOR> http://www.milesbrundage.com/blog-posts/how-far-to-ai-topia <comment><USER2> There are two different types of discussions that happen about AI. They are very different but often confused for each other.

The first is the very near future, 10-20 years or so. Machine learning is rapidly advancing and we are getting all kinds of cool toys. Automating things that previously weren't automatable. 90% of jobs probably could be automated soon, and there will be huge societal consequences. That's what this article is about, mostly.

The second is far more interesting. Strong AI. The distant future of 30 years, and maybe sooner. I think it's very likely this will happen in our lifetime, though obviously it's impossible to know for sure.

This isn't just replacing a few jobs with machines. This is replacing _all_ humans with machines. When we get AIs that are just as smart as humans. And eventually _far_ smarter than humans. AIs which are so far beyond us that we look like chimps.

We would not be able to compete with the AIs. They would be able to get whatever they want. Humans would no longer be in control. It's very, very important that we make sure the AIs we build want what we want. Then we can get a utopia so advanced we can't even imagine it. But if we get it wrong we will just be replaced or destroyed.

And we haven't the slightest idea how to do this, or even if it's possible. Creating an AI which wants to do what it's human creator wants it to do is a remarkably hard problem. Especially if that AI is much more intelligent than it's human creator. This is the so called "control problem".

<comment><USER3> > The second is far more interesting. Strong AI. The distant future of 30 > years, and maybe sooner. I think it's very likely this will happen in our > lifetime

Why? I'd genuinely like to know. I've yet to read anything to convince me this is true.

<comment><USER4> The progress in machine learning/deep learning for last 5 years has been literally staggering. Read about new state of art results. There is already superhuman visual object recognition, voice recognition, good machine translation, description of scenes in natural language, question answering (facebook babi dataset), visual question answering, algorithm learning (neural turing machines, neural GPUs), and finally really strong reinforcement learning (deepmind's DQN, A3C algorithms).

The last one, reinforcement learning, is really important because it's a basis for general intelligence. By rewarding/punishing a reinforcement learning agent you can train it to execute very complex tasks, for example navigating a maze with pixel input or controlling a robot body to do some tasks. DeepMind is on the cutting edge of this kind of research, you can read about their latest agent here [http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.01783](http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.01783)

With such rate of progress it's not inconceivable if a sub-human but general intelligence could be developed in 10-20 years, or even sooner.

<comment><USER5> Do you not recognize how weak this inference is?

"We are going faster and faster so we will get there" is not the way you calculate the likelihood of reaching a destination within a certain time.

<comment><USER6> >"We are going faster and faster so we will get there" is not the way you calculate the likelihood of reaching a destination within a certain time.

Why not? With incomplete information, you can not say the inverse is true either.

At the end of the day, most of us have no direct control over the AI situation.

<comment><USER5> I think a better approach would be to start with a more opinionated model of cognition, and then look at how the space defined by the model is getting coverage in research.

"The brain is a Von Neumann machine and our ability to model it tracks with Moore's law" is demonstrably false. There are better models than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just curious, do we have ANY examples of AI actually improving our lives today that we couldn't write off as examples of privacy invasion (like Facebook's face detection)? I'm getting the impression that it's not the AI that we should expect the utopia to appear from - instead, I put a lot of hope in microeconomies created by services like Uber or Airbnb that drive prices down. If only those were free and decentralised...

<comment><USER8> You'd be hard pressed to find a definition of AI that people can agree on that existing systems fit.

I'd count the stuff Google does to bring me relevant search results AI. That improves my life a lot. Automatic sorting of letters by destination is also pretty useful, as are automatic quality checks in factories. If you count optimization as AI, there are many applications, for example in chip design, that improve your day-to-day life a lot.

<comment><USER6> Your first sentence nails it; from AI is nothing short of the Borg to AI being smart factories that are XX% automated or Google searches... agreeing on the definition is problematic.

Some thoughts:

I think we have automated a great deal of our lives and automation is growing exponentially at present. Once we have achieved some critical breakover in automation, I believe we will start to see unification systems. These unification systems will bind the various forms of automation relegating human input to a bygone era. That is, the unification system will learn, optimize, and execute the "complete stack" of various industries... Think product distribution from factory to dock to end user.

I don't think this type of automation is that far off. Is that "AI"? To me it is and I suspect most people outside of HN will call it something along those lines. When some kind of AI like Varuna in the novel _Influx_ by Daniel Suarez hits the streets people will not give one shit if you call it AI or God... they will be very, very afraid of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "It's not my view that AI is sufficient to realize utopia, though it may be necessary." Necessary when 93 out of 100 people on the planet currently lack a college education? I feel like the technical elite, in their submission to capitalism, are giving up on the prospects of humanity.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a college degree (that doesn't mean I don't have lots of technical experience though, including some machine learning at amateur level) and I'm not from the 1st world, but I disagree with you on that matter. I don't see how education will help us reach a truly utopian future. It looks like the developed world has pretty much hit the ceiling of what's possible for society controlled by (educated) humans. While I find 1st world an overall nice place, it is in no way an utopia: the day-to-day experience for average person isn't that good neither long- nor short- term. If that's the best we can do with education, we should probably take another path instead of repeating the same mistakes done by the developed world

It looks like the main problem of modern world is complexity. The infrastructure (physical, social, IT) has become too complex for mere humans to control. Humans are slow, learn slowly, have limited attention spans, limited capability of understanding complex nonlinear systems (e.g. markets, social dynamics). IMHO the world is currently in the state of severe deficit of attention. There is too much problems on all levels, yet humanity as a whole has only so much attention to apply to these problems, so only the absolutely critical issues are solved (e.g. 2008 financial crisis or flint water scandal) while everything else is neglected until it becomes critical.

Machine Intelligence (both Machine Learning and more general AIs, e.g. agents based on unsupervised+reinforcement learning) could give intelligent attention to every big and tiny problem there is: in politics, society, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. on Instead of having to deal with a constant stream of crises AI systems could prevent them from occurring before the catastrophical event took place, just like with preventive medicine. That and automated manufacturing & distribution could give way to a really pleasant life experience.

Of course it sounds too easy to be true. Looks like the biggest obstacle to realizing this variant of utopian future is politics. Human primate is naturally hierarchical, and these instincts influence our society & way of life profoundly. Modern society looks like a pyramid with wealthy & powerful on the top, a docile (but shrinking) middle class in the middle and controlled poor at the base. The people on top and in the middle are quite well off, and they are afraid of losing power (even to machines, even if there will be a mathematical proof that everyone will be better off after we delegate decision making to AI agents).

It looks to me that from the perspective of the rich & powerful there really is no need in automation/AI: why do they need robots when they are used to hiring poor people to serve them? Why do they need automation when with the power of money they can order thousands of people to manufacture any product/experience for them? That's the status quo that will have to be disrupted to have AI/robot-based automated utopia for everyone, IMHO.

<comment><USER10> > why do they need robots when they are used to hiring poor people to serve > them?

It's not going to matter what they need. The technology advances with a rhythm of its own. It has done so for hundreds of years, predictably. Not even big wars were able to put a dent in its pace. Just like Google replaced libraries as our source of information, Napster affected the music industry and social networks affected news, there's going to be an AI transition and it will happen no matter what. It's important to keep access to AI open and not place its power just in the hands of a few.

It will be the continuation of the mobile phone era. Mobile phones with search engines and social networks empowered billions of people, they are their main communication device, some don't even have a TV or laptop, but they still have a phone. All people got to have phones, and all our modern phones are amazing compared to the best phones from a decade ago. What technology has given to everyone not even money could buy a mere 10 years ago. But on the other hand, the phone empowered surveillance and the big brother.

The AIs will amplify this effect even more. They will empower people to a higher degree than phones did, but they will make people easy targets for manipulation. They will allow an extremely intimate knowledge about a person and direct access to influence him/her, to the technologists who control the AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> |---|* About this far.

But seriously, we've had predictions of "strong AI in 5/10/20 years" for decades now. The best we'll be able to do in such a short timeframe is what we do now: study a problem, create a [complex] solution, code the solution in a programming language. "AI Utopia" will arrive some decades after we've figured out how to make a system that can learn and retain over the long-term. Much like a biological brain.

Jeph Jacques' cartoon take on AI and sentient companions seems plausible: a big central AI grows and evolves and often spins off smaller AIs to be placed in androids. I don't know where the idea originated (it might be his?) but it's a very reasonable fiction for where we'd originate individuals in a high quantity.

(*not to scale)

<comment><USER12> It's not like things advance linearly, though. Even the big minds in AI said it would take decades before an AI would beat a human at Go, for instance. Image recognition is another example that was "stuck" with relatively high error rates for many, many years, and suddenly got "solved".

Our brains are just awful at predicting major breakthroughs...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find that many discussions of AI suffer from a basic confusion of intelligence with the more general notion of computation, which results in a severe overestimation of the power of intelligence and underestimation of the power of non-intelligent computation. General intelligence -- at least as we currently understand it to be -- is no more than a particular algorithm or a class of algorithms, and therefore:

1\. Overestimation of intelligence: Computational complexity theory -- in particular the time/space hierarchy theorems, which, IMO, are the most important theorems in all of computer science (and are basically generalizations of the halting theorem) -- tells us that problems form an infinite hierarchy of difficulty, and that some problems require a certain amount of computational resources regardless of the algorithm used. In particular, we know of plenty of very important problems (e.g. NP-complete, or PSPACE-complete) for which intelligence does not seem to help at all, and those problems are faced in many real-world scenarios. Worse, we know that for many of these problems, there can be no efficient approximate solution employing _any_ algorithm. Artificial intelligence, therefore, cannot possibly form an effective way to solve these very real problems.

2\. Underestimation of non-intelligent computation: It is unclear that the "general intelligence algorithms" are the best use of computational resources. Humans (and mammals) are far from being the most successful species on Earth by almost any measure of success (we are neither the most plentiful numerically, in biomass, or even in the most capable of shaping the planet). It is therefore a mistake to believe that the "intelligence algorithms" pose either the most severe threat or the most powerful "problem solving" approach.

Artificial intelligence seems to be particularly useful when interacting with other intelligent beings (i.e. humans). For example, there has recently been some success in employing an "intelligent" algorithm for winning the game of Go. However, it is known that the "Go problem" is EXPTIME-complete, and therefore the intelligent algorithm can only be successful when playing against other players who employ a similar algorithm (namely, humans). It is by no means a general solution to the "Go problem". As "disease" is not a human problem, and pathogens employ computation in a very different way than intelligent beings, it is hard to believe that AI would be able to eradicate disease etc., etc..</comment>


Frequent texters tend to be shallow, research suggests - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/04/11/mb-texting-shallow-morality-research-university-winnipeg.html <comment><USER2> I mistakenly submitted the betabeat.com regurgitation of this story. The closest I've found to an "original" source is:

[http://news-centre.uwinnipeg.ca/all-posts/study-supports-the...](http://news- centre.uwinnipeg.ca/all-posts/study-supports-theory-on-teen-texting-and- shallow-thought/)

The site for the "Society for Personality and Social Psychology" is here: <http://www.spsp.org/>

But unfortunately, it doesn't have any videos of the talks, or links to any of the presented research papers.</comment>


Five Science Fiction Technology Predictions That Came True - <AUTHOR> http://itechtalks.blogspot.com/2011/09/five-science-fiction-technology.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure how many of these would have been called predictions at the time the books were written. And for every (weak) example given, there are tens if not hundreds of science fiction devices we're still waiting for ... Where's my flying car?</comment>


The Terrafugia Flying Car - <AUTHOR> https://wefunder.com/terrafugia

<comment><USER2> > The anticipated base purchase price for the Transition® is $279,000. You can > reserve a place in production with a $10,000 refundable deposit here.

Just for anyone who was wondering. Seems pretty reasonable for a light aircraft, that is also a car. This is really cool, I must admit, but I wonder who the target market is? The two people I know that have private planes seem to have no problem renting cars at the airport.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the cool things about your car and plane being the same is when weather gets shady you can always land and drive. This makes it easier to make the safe choice - not flying through bad weather.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love these guys to get into production, the notion of a roadable plane is pretty awesome, especially in more remote places.</comment>


Far-UVC Lights Deactive Majority of Airborne Pathogens - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21058-w/ <comment><USER2> UVC Germicidal Fixtures today are placed inside of the HVAC system to protect people from the the UV light. They use Mercury lamps (λ = 253.7 nm). This can only clean the air that passes through the HVAC and so only works while the HVAC is running.

Looks like this paper is saying we could put up filtered Kr-Cl excimer lamps like standard light fixtures and get more benefits.

</comment><comment><USER3> My understanding is that UV light can create ozone, which is toxic. So that's a problem. Not saying it is insurmountable.

<comment><USER3> Correction. Just looked it up and this website claims particular UV-C wavelengths can reduce ozone.

[http://www.uvresources.com/blog/the-ultraviolet- germicidal-i...](http://www.uvresources.com/blog/the-ultraviolet-germicidal- irradiation-uv-c-wavelength/)</comment></comment>


A simple bot to simulate Rolling-Under in Etheroll using Martingale. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jarvis57/etheroll-bot <comment><AUTHOR> A simple bot to simulate Rolling-Under in Etheroll, using Martingale strategy. Some using this strategy and won a few thousand (not me, I lost). Good luck & have fun to all gamblers.</comment>


Ask HN: Should we hire a designer or try ourselves? - <AUTHOR>

Hi fellows. We're on the early stages of our startup, right now with a limited amount of resources that should be spent wisely. We think that the the look and feel of a website (or everything else, for that matter) has a great impact on the user's experience and designing it is one of the most important tasks we currently have. One of us has some experience in HTML and CSS and can get more proficient in it if needed, but he is a software developer and not a designer... So we ask ourselves, if any of you ever been in that situation before, what did you do? did you try designing yourself with some templates/from scratch or hired a pro to do the work?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> I once made the mistake of asking a developer with some design skills to produce a website design. Result: the design showed 'some design skills', but it wasn't good enough. Hire a designer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes you should. See sites like airbnb.com and theverge.com one of their USP is their design/usability

What are you guys building?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our startup is about a game construction platform built entirely on the web. users will be able to create a certain type of game using an editor we supply on our website and download it to a 'game player' on their mobile device, so the site isn't just a HTML with some CSS, it's a serious application. We've got most of the logic behind the scenes already figured out , but we don't have the touch for doing design .. ;-)

<comment><USER4> "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." so yeah as dennisvdvliet pointed out design is very important to your product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want your website, app, whatever to look like it was made by someone who dedicates their time and energy to design, you'd better find someone who meets that description.</comment>


We are the freak show - <AUTHOR> http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=23079 <comment><USER2> This is cute - although I suspect every single country could list off a range of crazy laws and social norms which evolved over the years.

In the UK you can... * Drive, pay taxes, join the army, and have children - but can't be trusted with the vote.

* Become an MP even if you lose the popular vote.

* Have sex when you're 16, but you can't look at pictures of people like you doing it.

* Go shopping on a Sunday - although the shop won't sell you anything until an hour after opening.

* Have to apply for university before you know your exam results.

* Cannot copy your CD onto your MP3 player legally.

* Send soldiers off to war, but have a charity pay for their care when they get home.

I'd love to know what bizarre things happen in other countries.

<comment><USER3> > Go shopping on a Sunday - although the shop won't sell you anything until an > hour after opening.

Does that apply to any specific shops? I don't shop that early on Sundays, but I don't think I've ever seen this applied.

<comment><USER4> There are limited sunday trading hours. Some shops choose to get around this by opening an hour earlier but not opening the tills.

It's a loophole really, and it isn't true that all shops must wait, just those that choose to use this loophole.

Also it's based on size of shop, so not all shops have limits on trading hours.

<comment><USER5> I don't think any of these Sunday trading hours rules apply in Scotland.

The "apply for university before you know your exam results" doesn't apply here either.

However, one of our legal oddities is that we have an extra verdict available in criminal trials, as well as "guilty" and "non guilty" we also have "not proven":

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

[Corrected - I said "innocent" rather than "not guilty"]

<comment><USER6> Just for clarification, in England we have "Guilty" and "Not Guilty", there is no "innocent" here. The closest to an "innocent" verdict is probably the dismissal of charges by a judge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The personality of the United States changes periodically. Sometimes we're generous and inspiring. Other times we're total dicks. It's a complicated country. But no one thing defines the personality of the United States more than our willingness to spend ten trillion dollars - and kill anyone who gets in the way - just to put a bullet in one asshole's skull. That gives me neither pride nor embarrassment; it's just a statement of fact." \- Scott Adams: [http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/our_moon_shot/](http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/our_moon_shot/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's another:

* Our government freely collects intelligence on us while it is treasonous for us to collect intelligence on it. Yet we call ourselves a democracy with a government by and for the people.

<comment><USER9> I like the bit in US elections where you don't vote for a president, but instead vote for people who promise to vote for the candidate you like, but do not actually have to. I have never been able to understand that.

<comment><USER10> Nobody find it strange when most countries elect prime ministers that way.

<comment><USER9> Is slightly different, you have a party vote/appointment for the candidate for prime minister, from elected party ranks, which is similar to the US presidency, apart from the president not having to be elected to government already.

But then the presidential vote doesn't vote directly for the president, but elects electors, who then elect the president, which seems an unneccessary step given you already have the vote results from each state and only has any effect at all if an elector does not vote the way the have been campaining.

I am not saying it is any more or less democratic than my government, I am just saying that this detail seems weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > A couple of 20 year olds can't legally drink a glass of champaign at their > wedding

In most states this is not true, I believe. They cannot PURCHASE alcoholic beverages, but only 14 states ban general underage consumption of alcohol. The rest either do not restrict it, or have exceptions for family events and/or non-public consumption.

<comment><USER12> That's interesting. I found this very comprehensive chart of state laws:

[http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...](http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I thought the strange relationship with guns and the total mayhem that occurs when a woman accidentaly shows a nipple rather than the whole rest of her body would be in the list. BTW I love the US, maybe a little because of its contradictions (we french have a bunch of them either).

<comment><USER14> Its not that long ago that the UK law explicitly allowed for the ownership of guns for personal protection it was only post WW1 when the government of the day was paranoid about red revolution that this started to change.

The "peaky blinders" series recently on the BBC made this a major plot point - Churchill freaking out over the loss of 50 BAR's

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >>>despite the fact that inflation is running at the lowest level in decades.

Here is someone who does not do his own food shopping. Food prices have exploded since 2008, when the house of cards first collapsed. I used to be able to buy 5 cans of store-brand chunk tuna for $3.00. Now the store brand is gone, replaced by a national brand, and it's $1.29 _per can_ (up from $1.00 per can at the _start_ of this year). And that's just the most egregious example from my own experience. Food packaging has also shrunk dramatically, another way prices actually rise while the "store price" remains almost the same.

<comment><USER16> Way to use an anecdote of a single commodity to claim the entire economy is experiencing extreme inflation.

Moreover, you know tuna is extremely overfished right? This helps explain the price of that can you bought going up. [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/09/overfishi...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/09/overfishing- pacific-bluefin-tuna)

<comment><USER17> Minor point. That's bluefin tuna. The stuff that comes in cans in the United States is albacore tuna. Albacore is less overfished than bluefin, the latter of which is more highly prized in Japan. I believe bluefin is the one that is widely illegally fished in Japan.

<comment><USER16> "About two-thirds of the world's tuna comes from the Pacific, but bluefin tuna accounts for only about 1% of this."

Yes I know, but the above is the more important point, sorry I should have quoted it. The amount of tuna fished from the Pacific (67%)! is way too much to be sustainable.

For more sources on Albacore and Yellowtail see here: [http://www.scidev.net/global/policy/news/pacific- fisheries-m...](http://www.scidev.net/global/policy/news/pacific-fisheries- meet-fails-to-end-tuna-overfishing-.html)

"The International Union for Conservation of Nature has put yellowfin and albacore tuna in the "near threatened" category..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No one anywhere can legally or illegally drink "champaign" as there is no such thing. The word is _champagne_.

<comment><USER19> Well there's another funny one, pedant. _Champagne_ is produced in a specific region of France, and in most parts of the world, when you buy it, it comes from there.

Except the US... where they've decided they can make their own _Champagne_ despite none of the product having touched the ground in that region of France.

<comment><USER18> That's interesting; I wonder how they pulled that off?

Producers from other regions of France produce wines that are almost identical to true _champagne_ , but they cannot call it that.

They used to print on their bottles that their wines were made according to the "champagne process" ( _méthode champenoise_ ) but were eventually barred from saying even that (which is crazy, since it's all but true).

They now say they use the "traditional process" ( _méthode traditionnelle_ ) and I think everyone knows what it means.

It could be fun to import US-made champagne in France and continue to call it champagne. But as a rule, foreign-grown wines are hard to find in France.

<comment><AUTHOR> "This is an interesting question, and unfortunately it comes with a confusing answer. Let me start by addressing the use of the term "Champagne" as it refers to wine. The French wanted to protect the use of the term "Champagne" to only refer to bubbly made using traditional methods from grapes grown and vinified in the Champagne region of France, so when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 to end WWI, they included limits on the use of the word. History buffs may recall that the United States never actually ratified the Treaty of Versailles, and that in 1919 the U.S. was in the midst of Prohibition, so alcohol-labeling laws hardly seemed important at the time. This created the loophole that allowed producers here to legally slap the word "Champagne" on their bottles of bubbly—much to the irritation of the winegrowers in Champagne. Out of respect and to avoid confusion, many producers in the United States called their bubbly "sparkling wine," even when it's made in the traditional method.

Then, in early 2006, the United States and the European Union signed a wine trade agreement, and the issue was brought up again. This time, the United States agreed to not allow new uses of certain terms that were previously considered to be "semi-generic," such as Champagne (as well as Burgundy, Chablis, Port and Chianti). But anyone who already had an approved label was grandfathered in and may continue to use the term."

[http://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/5011](http://www.winespectator.com/drvinny/show/id/5011)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amsterdam teams up with tech companies to attract international talent - <AUTHOR> https://project.amsterdam <comment><USER2> This is great news for Dutch as attracting international talent will only help the country in the long run. this is for first

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool, imagine going on a trip to Amsterdam, full expenses paid and also getting a job out of it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow would be awesome to visit and staying would be even better!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has two cool video's too

Amsterdam-based tech talent invite their peers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5euKEUvU4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ5euKEUvU4)

Come to Amsterdam to define what's next [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPRh9JJXFo0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPRh9JJXFo0)</comment>


Ask HN: Clean standard library implementation with great comments for learning? - <AUTHOR> I am a junior dev and want to up my understanding of various things that go into the typical standard library for a programming language. Basically I want to learn by reading the entire standard library of a programming language  and getting a deep understanding of how to use it.
In your opinion, which programming language implementation includes a nicely commented stdlib with clean code? (i.e. so that I can actually read it?)
From my own little research, the Go standard library seems to be a good contender, any others? <comment><USER2> The /mod/ directory for the blitzmax programming language contain the source for all its modules and will be a good read

[https://github.com/blitz- research/blitzmax/tree/master/mod](https://github.com/blitz- research/blitzmax/tree/master/mod)</comment>


Twist in the election hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2017/02/suspicious-death-and-three-cyber-arrests-points-new-twist-us-election-hack/135048/ <comment><USER2> Mysterious deaths surrounding the Hillary/Podesta leaks: a conspiracy theory.

Mysterious deaths surrounding Russia and the DNC email leaks that showed us that they have been colluding with the media to destroy all political opinions: news.</comment>


Attraction Inequality and the Dating Economy - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-dating-economy/ <comment><USER2> Couple of points:

1\. Not clear how likes proxy to "success" in terms of dating. Some people are just looking for one night stands, while another might be looking for something more long term. If women are consistently looking for something long term, and have to get to at least the third/fourth/x-th date to have a "success", then it makes sense for them to be pickier than men who only are looking for the first date.

2\. Not clear how this extends out into the general "Dating Economy", it's quite possible that there is a certain pathological case of people who get stuck in the dating sphere for an extended period of time who end up distorting the statistics. Compare this to the fact that 50% of marriages end in divorce, but that's mostly driven by people who get divorced multiple times, and first marriages have a much higher success rate. Among people who actually do settle, it may be that women have more inequality in their dating market then men do.

3\. We're not mentioning that women aren't swiping as much because for them there is a serious fear of being assaulted when going on a date, while for a man that is greatly diminished.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am glad that gender dynamics is finally being explored by mainstream readers. Men seem to have the onus on them to try and understand courting women-- What women look for, how to please them. The reverse does not seem to be true, at least in my experience.

Women don't seem interested in figuring out how to court men's commitment (probably because they assume they don't have to). Unfortunately for women though, it seems men are less and less interested in marriage these days. Probably due to the unbalanced legally binding financial consequences for men, despite supposed "equality".

Perhaps we'll see a redistribution of interest on the part of women, in trying to develop themselves into desirable partners, the way men are forced to. For example, men have to obtain resources and use the resources to purchase status signals. In the future, if the trend continues, women may have to demonstrate wifely & motherly skills in order to attract the top echelon men they want.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel like this is more related to how Tinder's algorithm works than people in general.</comment>


Show HN: Flashlike Web Based Animation Editor - 100-xyz https://toonclip.com/editor <comment> 100-xyz Features: Import / Drop and drop images No Programming needed. Animation scripting using everyday sentences such as: Cowboy say "Hi" Cowboy run to Point P1 in 4 seconds.

Ability to fork others creations and create your own.</comment>


I'm Getting E-Mails From Epsilon's Clients. Are You? - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2011/04/05/im-getting-e-mails-from-epsilons-clients-are-you/

<comment><USER2> Yep, they have quite a few clients [http://www.securityweek.com/massive- breach-epsilon-compromis...](http://www.securityweek.com/massive-breach- epsilon-compromises-customer-lists-major-brands)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have gotten probably about 10 emails like this so far.</comment>


Why I dropped out of college to work on a startup  - <AUTHOR> http://leostartsup.com/2012/12/why-i-dropped-out-of-college-to-work-on-a-startup/ <comment><USER2> Meh. I dropped out for awhile, learned a lot, went back to college, learned some more. Dropping out should be a non-issue, something that just happens because you ran out of time. Making arguments for it just always struck me as apologetics.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN is filled with this kind of crap these days

<comment><USER4> It's not crap. It's someone's life. It just makes you (us) feel bad because they appear happier than we are.

<comment><USER5> I would agree with you if there wasnt a dozen posts on HN each week along the lines of "[How/Why] I [verb]'d [occupation] to [verb] [activity]"

<comment><USER3> Agree

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I had discovered HN and the lean startup methodology earlier in college I might have done the same. But he's very fortunate to have created such a popular service to be able to change his life direction like this so early.

In university, the faculty is very open with the fact that they are shoehorning us into software jobs at big oil and gas companies, which is why they don't provide resources and awards for students with innovative ideas. So it often does feel like my university experience isn't helping me achieve the goals that I want in life.

<comment><USER7> _In university, the faculty is very open with the fact that they are shoehorning us into software jobs at big oil and gas companies_

I don't know where you went to school, but I don't think this is common at most schools (it's the first time I've heard it suggested).

<comment><USER6> The oil province of Canada :|

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have mixed feelings about this. I got terrible grades in college, and dropped out three times. The idea of ever going back makes me feel queasy. I hated it, and I wouldn't wish it upon anybody that feels like me.

Then again, nobody took me seriously before I graduated. I always had lots to offer, but no opportunities to offer it. Graduating gave me opportunities to meet people who could look past my grades and still see me as an intelligent, capable person. Those people ended up helping me to get my first "real" job...a job I got fired from for being "too technical", but nonetheless, a job which put an immense amount of experience on my resume in a short amount of time. In other words, college sucked ass, but it opened so many doors that I can't be too bitter about it.

I guess my true feelings on the matter are as follows: drop out, but make sure you are dropping out because you have an amazing opportunity...not because you don't like it.

Oh, and if you do drop out, never say to yourself "I don't care what anybody thinks of my decision". You do, and you are lying to yourself. You can't succeed anywhere without a decent subset of people trusting you. If you can earn their trust without a degree, awesome. If you can't, you either need to find a different subset of people, or you need to earn it the way that they expect.

</comment><comment><USER9> He made a good point here in eliminating unnecessary risks (for him, dropping out of college) by retaining as much optionality for as long as he can, and at the same time working hard at his startup. As an entrepreneur there are lots of risks in running a startup, a lot of which are not within the founders' control (traction, market direction, etc). Managing risk is an important part of managing one's psychology as a founder.

Leo's story is one of humility and gratitude - I have always found them(the Buffer team) as an inspiration not just because of their startup's traction (which can be unpredictable) but more because of their character, endless seeking of improvement professionally and personally, and passion in giving back to the startup community.

</comment><comment><USER4> (most ignoring the post and going off on a rant)

When I read the title, I see "Why I left a culture of strict rules and judgement to be happy and do whatever the heck I want."

It's kinda simple really. Why go to college when you can work for yourself, get hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars to play with, and not have to study, try, and stress out about getting The Right Answers all the time? Going your own way removes an entire level of judgement from your life. You get to cut ties with the voice constantly whispering "I may not be good enough." But -- then you may never know how good you can be. It'll take you longer to figure out you don't know what you don't know.

It almost feels like "Why I stopped training 8 hours a day to qualify for the Olympics and instead decided to become a fisherman in Hawaii." (Sorry, my analogy machine is on the fritz.)

Be happy, do good work, but not everything in the world can be a my-first- crud-app (though, we haven't found a limit to my-first-crud-app success yet -- there are still tens of thousands more that can be made and generate significant income for the owners). The most impressive things to come will take comprehension obtained through learning, pain, failure, growth, then finally, one day, understanding. If too many clever people abandon the pain of learning for the joy of quickish superficial success we won't be advancing the world very quickly.

Life is pain, highness.

<comment><USER10> You _did_ say your analogy was on the fritz, but still... the "training for the olympics" analogy has a huge flaw: When he gets his degree, it probably wouldn't change anything, the coolest thing he could possibly do would probably STILL be that same startup, or something equivalent.

So why go through college? He can probably learn just as much, if not more, doing what he is doing now. The only thing I see him missing out on is "the college experience", which is a lot of different things for different people.

<comment><USER4> Part of me thinks going through the whole process of one level of education can make you better. If you are doing the same thing after four years of school that you would do when you started, either you weren't paying attention, are unteachable, or were brilliant to start out. Part of me sees 16 year olds changing the world with only skin-deep knowledge (APIs, but not knowing the underlying processes), but ambition enough to float over mountains.

I can't seem to reconcile our broken world of code with things that require real education. You don't see an architecture student dropping out after two years to start his own architecture firm. We don't see premed students dropping out to start hospitals. We don't see kids in the air force academy dropping out and declaring themselves three star generals. But they'll certainly drop out to start a design firm or an online medical records system.

<comment><USER11> If collegiate computer science education weren't so utterly worthless, there might be fewer dropouts - why would a motivated and intelligent person spend four years of the most productive part of their life and approximately a hundred thousand dollars to learn things that are both largely useless and easily self-taught? If one's goal is to build a useful product and run a company (or do anything at all outside of academia), college is a very poor choice - the debt accumulated alone would sink any entrepreneurial dreams.

My only experience is with computer science, but I would suspect we would see a lot of rapid innovation in military fields were it possible for highly motivated and intelligent 20-somethings to drop out of the air force academy and become local warlords. The fact that the tech sector has so few consequences for failing and so few insurmountable bureaucratic standards is only for the best.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to start Antivirus business - <AUTHOR>

from scratch?
I mean, software/tech aside, how does one get virus signatures?
Is there some repository, paid or free?
Your anecdotal experiences would be very interesting as well, in case anyone here runs some AV business. <comment><USER2> The old Vx Heavens website had a lot of stuff in it:

<http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7066921/>

Also, avoid Sophos' grave mistakes: read Tavis Ormandy on Sophos code:

<http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/sophail.pdf> <https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/sophailv2.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> There are three distinct parts to this:

* Getting access to samples - should be simple via your favourite torrent site. * Writing a decent engine. Tricky, but not impossible if you've got access to the low-level APIs and the technical skills. * Getting reviewed/taken seriously.

The sad truth is few people will pay for a new antivirus tool, especially one with no proven provenance, support team, and real world accuracy. (i.e. You can block all known samples easily, but fail on new viruses/trojans.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, besides aqcuiring existing virus database, I'm as well interested how updating of this database happens. Discovering new viruses, malware, etc.. creating signatures from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> clamav is GPL and has a virus database. I used it at a previous job to scan email and a samba file share.

I couldn't find a download link but if you install freshclam it will download the signatures for you.</comment>