How to Train and Build a Conversational News Chatbot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tzano/wren/blob/master/docs/news_assistant.md <comment><USER2> Future parents will teach their children to never talk to computers.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool, I bookmarked it to check out later.

I've always been curious about chatbots. I feel like in the right situations they can provide a good customer experience, but I've never seen them as being able to stand-alone as their own product.

<comment><USER4> I feel like when chatbot technology can be used with voice, it could be a gamechanger. Sort of like when you watch sci-fi like Star Trek, The Expanse, Iron Man, and how they interact with the AI. They're able to ask complex questions to a computer that is able to interpret it- like audio SQL calls in conversational form.

Or the most popular application would be AI to help people feel less lonely or make their lives easier like in the movie Her or the book Ready Player One.

<comment><USER5> A better Eliza?

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is neat but there's a big gap between natural language search and conversation.

</comment><comment><USER7> So this is an interesting topic for me, because I once tried to write a "conversational" Hubot plugin for a hackathon[1]

To me, "conversational" means the bot must inform its responses from the context of previous messages. When we decided to write this bot in 24 hours, we had no idea just how much Hubot does not want to be conversational! There is a plugin that you can use called Redis Brain that hardly makes things any easier, at the time we wrote this bot at least there were zero "conversational" plugins for hubot, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are still none.

An example of a simple conversation that Hubot is absolutely not designed to be able to have (and neither is this news bot, although it's very neat... edit: well, I've looked again and I could be wrong, it looks like the news-bot actually does maintain some state per-user...):

"Hey tebot, I have an idea"

"> OK, tell me your idea"

"Let's eat a whole wheel of cheese"

"> OK, I've recorded your hackathon idea"

So that's a basic conversation. In order to have a conversation (or, as a slack bot, potentially having multiple concurrent conversations with several different users) the bot needs to have a template for at least one or several possible conversation types, probably some trigger condition to begin the conversational context, and a path to progress the context towards an end (like joining or leaving the Hackathon team, or advertising that your team has a free spot for another member, or)

... did you get the idea yet that this bot is meant to be used at hackathons to help organize any independents into teams without that awkward socializing? To be a platform for solving problems like "I have experience in these three languages and I don't know anyone here, but I would like to work with a team that uses one of these languages."

Not to get too far off-topic but we were solving a problem that we actually had; this was actually the first any real Coffeescript experience that any of us had, as we formed a team not realizing that none of us were expert in any of the same languages!

Anyway I'm not trying to crap on what you've done but the headline grabbed me, because I remember how just getting the bot to have the most basic of conversations was so hard that it took easily the first 12 of 24 hours just to get a basic PoC, as it seems that was something the bot framework was just not designed to do!

[1]: [https://github.com/kingdonb/hubot- malta](https://github.com/kingdonb/hubot-malta)

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you install/run it from scratch?

<comment><USER9> [https://github.com/tzano/wren#getting- started](https://github.com/tzano/wren#getting-started)</comment></comment>


Influence of a West Antarctic mantle plume on ice sheet basal conditions - <AUTHOR> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017JB014423/full <comment><AUTHOR> Here are some links to press coverage of this discovery:

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/hot-news-from-the- antarctic...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/hot-news-from-the-antarctic- underground)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2017/11/08/hot-s...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2017/11/08/hot- stuff-coldest-place-earth-mantle-plume-almost-hot-yellowstone-supervolcano- thats-melting-antarct/844748001/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/antarctic-ice-melt-sea- level-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/antarctic-ice-melt-sea-level-rise- mantle-rock-2017-11)</comment>


"If they're knowingly buying something illegal, they can't get their money back" - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-bitcoin-seizure/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> Not everything sold on SR was illegal, and certainly not illegal in all jurisdictions. Some of these BTC belong to non US citizens anyway, so why should the US govt. even _think_ they have any particular claim to them?

Oh, right, because the US government thinks it rules the entire world. Never mind, what was I thinking...</comment>


The Windows Phone story: From hope to dusty abandonware - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/27/windows_phone_history_special_report/ <comment><USER2> I am far from a fanboy of any OEM but really thought that Windows Phones were some of the best things Microsoft ever got right... They just can not possibly compete against iOS and Android</comment>


Tesla gave workers permission to stay home, then sent termination notices - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Tesla-gave-workers-permission-to-stay-home-rather-15365312.php <comment><USER2> This, to me, is the key sentence:

> They believe they received the notifications for speaking up about their > concerns with working conditions at the plant.

The conversation so far here seems focused on them not showing up after being told they didn't have to. But did everybody who did not show up get these notices? Was it just folks who were vocal about working conditions?

Is this retribution? Why do the workers say so? It's always a danger to take a company's stated reasons for termination at face value. It could be true, but it might not. I'd love to hear more details.

<comment><USER3> Even though we might not like the idea, Californians can be fired simply for complaining though—correct?

<comment><USER2> NLRA covers protected concerted activity at the national level. Whether this speech falls into that, or whether these employees are covered under the NLRA, I don't think we have the specifics for.

But there are more worker protections than people realize. The biggest problem with them is enforcement and lack of penalties.

<comment><USER4> If there's hardly any consequences then you're not protected at all.

<comment><USER2> I agree with the general point, but I'd add that there's additional power in collective action, but that's of course harder to organize than a legal challenge. And also that people (both management and not) are also just unaware of the laws.

But yes, to just name one example, I believe there should be punitive damages when a company is found to be in violation of these labor laws.

<comment><USER4> An individual can't take part in a collective action unless they have some kind of personal safety net in place.

Get fired for speaking up about something illegal? Better hope you have a new job lined up or you have plenty of savings. Because it's gonna be a long time before you either get your job back or see any kind of settlement.

<comment><USER2> I work in labor. I've seen incredible things happen when workers bravely take risks in collective action. These are some of the most underpaid workers in America.

<comment><USER4> Can you share an example of some of the most underpaid workers in America bravely taking risks in collective action that you've personally seen?

<comment><USER2> Nursing home workers organizing during the coronavirus to get the PPE they needed.

<comment><USER4> Do you think they would've taken the same actions if not for the safety net of the most generous unemployment benefits in a generation (if not longer)?

<comment><USER2> Yes

<comment><USER4> Thanks wasn't sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> Employees, like the broader public, are left to learn of Musk's mind-set through his sporadic 280-character posts on Twitter.

That's the real crux of the problem. That is not evidence of a mature corporate environment. Broad policy statements and occasional emergency directives can come directly from the top, but day-to-day HR policy should come in writing after being signed off by appropriate directors/managers.

I've seen this at small-but-getting-bigger tech companies. The "founders" still act like they are running a business out of a garage. Once you have hundreds of employees you need to stop barking orders over a phone and comit all important policy decisions to paper.

<comment><USER6> > That's the real crux of the problem. That is not evidence of a mature > corporate environment. Broad policy statements and occasional emergency > directives can come directly from the top, but day-to-day HR policy should > come in writing after being signed off by appropriate directors/managers.

Funny that we give local govs way more power with way less accountability.

<comment><USER7> Right. Let me know when Tesla employees can vote for a new CEO.

<comment><USER8> Let me know when a vote of employees of any publicly traded company can overrule a vote of shareholders on anything half as consequential as the appointment of a CEO.

<comment><USER9> I mean... they don't exactly have a vote unless they own shares of the company. They could unionize, etc. deride the culture of the company, or quit though,

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure if this is a surprise to anyone when the CEO of Tesla has made it very clear that he doesn't believe the threat of COVID-19 is real and that a mandated quarantine is fascism. Couple that with the factory conditions that have been reported by workers previously and the result is this.

<comment><USER11> No, he has said that he believes the threat of COVID does not warrant the extreme response of mandated lockdowns. That's a lot different than saying there is no threat.

Every day, people make decisions around risk and people can have wildly different opinions on how much risk to accept in order to live.

<comment><USER12> And he has made that decision on behalf of his employees, too, not just himself. He is deciding how much risk that they need to be willing to take.

<comment><USER11> Well, without employees showing up there is no more Tesla.

So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job.

The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired.

I guess by your logic, CEOs of banks, supermarkets, food processing, farmers, truckers, utility workers, insurance companies, hardware stores, airlines, hotels, hospital workers, etc. are all evil because they are 'forcing' their employees to work too.

But I'm sure that your response (in spirit) will be "The only essential businesses that should be allowed to force people to work are the ones THAT I NEED. I don't need a Tesla so it's not an essential business and we can just let it go out of business and layoff 50K people."

<comment><USER13> > The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were > afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired.

You call it a "mistake". I call it lying. It wasn't an accident or a run of the mill bad phrasing, it was trying to placate the government and the press with one message while punishing everyone who didn't read between the lines of it.

And you're right about there not being a Tesla without employees showing up. That's why Elon fires anyone who he suspects recognizes the power of a strike.

<comment><USER11> You say potato, I say politics.

What startup company could survive unionization and striking workers?

<comment><USER12> Tesla was formed nearly 20 years ago and has a market cap of $190B.

It is not in any way, shape or form, a "startup".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Literally, if every single person starting today, wears a mask when they are within 15 feet of another person, and all the time indoors, this virus would be gone from the entire United States in 2 months. No additional shutdown needed.

<comment><USER15> A mask is no substitute for distance. It does help, but in hospitals, where people know how to use masks properly, a lot of people still got infected. Many people do not know how to use masks properly.

What you want is masks + distance. The mask is really a stop-gap measure when keeping distance fails.

Also: gloves.

<comment><USER16> There's early evidence to suggest that masks do more to prevent the spread of the virus than physical distancing.

Of course, yes, it would be easy to say, "just never get in range and the mask doesn't matter," but we live in urban environments and need to do the best we can in light of that.

<comment><USER17> What is your source for that information?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Charitably, this is a mistake in communication. Tesla should fix this immediately though, because it doubles down on the poor impressions formed by breaking county (IIRC) law when restarting their factories.

<comment><USER19> I suspect it's not entirely a mistake. When Tesla offered to let workers take unpaid leave, they probably didn't mean for it to last until "when covid-19 is over" as these workers wanted.

<comment><USER20> > I suspect it's not entirely a mistake.

Like Tesla calling their driving assistance "auto-pilot".

<comment><USER21> You mean full self driving?

<comment><USER20> " All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future..."

[https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot)

You're right Tesla is guilty of marketing features that don't exist today but will "in the future".

But hey they disclose the truth in the fine print (Autopilot is not autonomous), so nothing to see and god forbid we accurately call it what it is "driver assist" instead of autopilot or even the as of yet non-existent "full self driving":

"Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how many people are reconsidering Tesla purchases now, and how that compares to the cost of having these workers on unpaid leave. Seems to be the wrong decision from both the ethical and the business perspective.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious, do you think that early information-limited reporting of alleged unethical treatment of two employees is enough to decide to shift your purchase over to Ford, Toyota or Volkswagen? Have you confirmed that the company who wins your vehicle purchase have, statistically speaking, done unethical things to proportionally fewer employees?

<comment><USER23> Not to get meta, but both you and the parent are asking leading questions. I do it too, but I don't think we shoudl I think it's because we're trying to be polite but make a point. Maybe it's just an online thing.

<comment><USER8> I do understand your concern. Even so, I prefer leading questions over unverified assertions, or opinions masquerading as facts. You know, the online thing.

<comment><USER23> Hm, yeah. I do shudder when I think about how many times i've said "I read online that... [HN comment]".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > citing their apparent failure to show up and the company's inability to > reach them. The workers provided evidence of their continuing correspondence > with managers.

This sounds like a communication failure between the managers and the HR department. Absolutely a problem, and people are right to be angered. But it also sounds like one that could be quickly resolved, and their job status restored.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm sure someone will bring up "but the Shanghai factory", the truth is that factory is operating under China COVID protocol.

If Tesla isn't going to be held accountable or penalized for not enforcing strict COVID safety protocol they won't.

I guarantee they wouldn't get away with this in Shanghai.

<comment><USER26> Seems like a fairly accurate speculation, but like your dismissal of a derisive comment about Shanghai in another post, I think you're omitting the next logical topic to address: that of China's authority and governance.

I say omit because your posts seem to strongly imply that their compliance in Shanghai is the more desirable outcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can't help but to think Elon Musk is a huge dick and possibly psychotic.

<comment><USER28> This should really be the top comment on here, but it's getting downvoted. Possibly because the diagnosis of mental illnesses at a distance is frowned upon by the psychiatric community. The bit about him being a huge dick is indisputable fact though.

<comment><USER29> I bet that if you two would have a conversation, and you would discuss all the nuances of the situation, and you would actually get through the whole reasonig, you would write a different comment.

<comment><USER28> Me and the poster I was replying to? Or me and Elon Musk? The former I'd love to have a conversation with, over a pint in a nice sunny pub garden. The latter is a huge dick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I will continue my personal boycott of Tesla.

<comment><USER20> Maybe the protestors that riot and loot will burn Tesla down using Musk's "not a flame thrower" the ultimate of ironies.

<comment><USER31> Such blood-thirst...

<comment><USER20> I didn't know property bleeds.

And either way I'm not advocating rioting/looting and certainly not arson, just saying maybe it will happen and it would be ironic if Musk's "not a flamethrower" was used.

I'd be the first person to advocate for the people who got fired for refusing to break the law at the direction of their CEO, but not violence or blood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Considering their past, I'm not that surprised to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER33> Unpopular opinion: articles like this are just designed to shame people who don't buy into the popular opinion. Not even all medical experts agree on the best course of action regarding herd immunity, sip, etc. For the other 5% of the article, there could be other dynamics at play that got those employees fired, though Tesla has a less than stellar reputation for work life balance.

<comment><USER34> I disagree. While this could still be an honest mistake, if done intentionally it definitely goes beyond civil disobedience. Given the decision to reopen the factory and terminate employees that do not show up, there's no justification for misleading them about their options.

<comment><USER33> Agreed. But the main content of the article was more about Covid 19 than the employees, and it seems more like a piece to shape thoughts by reinforcing ideas about public health policy than to discuss the employees' welfare. More shame than substance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I am long term Apple and Tesla shareholder. I have in the past freaked out over stories in the media... remember antenna gate? What about when all Teslas caught on fire?

My advice to anyone with any money, or any ambition to have any money. Is to ignore these stories in the short term and take a long term view. They are mostly bullshit. And for the fools that don't have any money... and want to stay poor. Go ahead. Spread the bullshit. It increases wealth inequality...

<comment><USER36> Take your own advice then: This is just one of many stories about Tesla not treating its employees well. That should be your long term view by now.

If all you care about is money on the other hand don't pretend not to be.

<comment><USER35> there are many stories... but they were debunked and you remember the headline. You never see the retractions or the debunking.

Whatever happened to Martin Tripp?

<comment><USER36> There's the USA Today report that workers at Tesla factories have suffered more injuries than average. I haven't seen it being debunked. Have you?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-safety- pro...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-safety-problems- detailed-by-usa-today.html)

[https://www.usatoday.com/in- depth/news/investigations/2019/1...](https://www.usatoday.com/in- depth/news/investigations/2019/11/12/tesla-gigafactory-brings-nevada-jobs-and- housing-woes-worker-injuries-strained-ems/2452396001/)

(the second link doesn't work in the EU)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  How does readwrite.com make money?  - <AUTHOR>

This is a faily well known site, but I don't see any advertising on the site anywhere.  How do they make money? <comment><USER2> I feel they must be doing this by.

1\. By paid content. 2\. featured Articles. 3\. Doing reviews on products. (Highly paid way for bloggers)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: [http://www.readwrite.com](http://www.readwrite.com)

Also, thenextweb.com is the same way, I hardly see ads on that site.</comment>


Big Oil Doesn't Like EV Subsidies, Just Its Own Giant Subsidy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-19/big-oil-vs-electric-cars-carbon-tax-would-level-playing-field <comment><USER2> Here's how I think about it: you may feel free to criticize, this is meant to get people thinking, not as an implementable policy.

Draw a control volume around your business or product. If, during the creation, use, or disposal of your product or business, mass or energy crosses this boundary, you should be required to provide for any negative externalities caused by this material or energy.

Of course, as usual with this approach, the magic is all in the drawing of the boundary, but hear me out.

Under this framework, it may be a bit easier to see clearly what externalities we might wish to price. I sincerely believe that if we now shrink from this present task of properly pricing and managing these costs, human society will perish from this earth.

<comment> semi-extrinsic To paraphrase Johnny Depp: "... but that's called 'communism' and is frowned upon in most societies."

Seriously, we have all the tech to radically reduce emissions starting now. But it costs businesses money to do it, and the future benefit is distributed across all humanity, so nobody does it voluntarily. We need governments to agree to force everyone to do something that benefits society, which stands in stark contrast to market capitalism.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, one understanding of the role of government in market capitalist societies would be contract enforcement and _ensuring the pricing of externalities_

<comment> semi-extrinsic Carbon taxes, as well as pricing of externalities, are both means by which a government would force corporations to pay. We have knowledge that it should be done, but yet we are not doing it, as this knowledge is drawn into question by charletans and pharisees who twist and turn scientific cautiousness into doubts and buts and ifs in servitude of the almighty dollar. This is the nature of market capitalist societies: those who own capital seek to protect their income, and won't let minor inconveniences like future environmental crisis stand in their way.

Just look at the European carbon tax (ETS); it would have been effective if reasonably priced (50-100 EUR/tonne range), but industry successfully worked to keep the price per tonne at between 1/5th and 1/20th of what would have spurred actual emissions reduction measures, thus it has been toothless. Greenwashing is most all what remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I totally understand the point of view here, and likely agree to an extent, however calling the _lack_ of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more than just a stretch, it's an outright distortion.

I also am not sure that carbon taxes would hit the wealthy in a manner as disproportionate as would seem to make the author happy - everyone drives, and low income earners tend to have older, less fuel efficient cars. In the same way that has taxes are regressive, so would carbon taxes be. The wealthy can simply avoid them by buying EVs and solar panels, while low income earners would be stuck with the tab.

<comment><USER5> > calling the lack of a tax that has never existed before a subsidy is more > than just a stretch, it's an outright distortion.

This is not correct, this is simply finally accounting for the negative carbon externality. Industries pay extra for all kinds of negative externalities, and without these regulations, markets are inefficient.

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

<comment><USER6> I really dislike this argument because it implies that as soon as something is deemed "bad", a tax should placed on it.

<comment><USER7> If you put scare quotes around bad then yes it's a bad argument, but the argument is actually "causes harm to others."

If you think we should discourage causing harm to others then your choices are roughly:

1\. regulation 2\. taxation 3\. torts (i.e. anyone who is harmed can sue those who did the harm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assuming half your taxes goes to the DoD and half the DoD budget goes towards protecting the oil trade, gas costs about about $30 per gallon if you make $150k: (40% to fed govt x .5 x .5 ) / 1000 gallons gas per year.

<comment><USER9> The first assumption is way off [1].

The second assumption also is suspect. It is probably more correct to say that half the DoD budget goes towards protecting _all_ trade, not just the oil trade.

Another (unstated) assumption is that oil fuels a lot more than just personal vehicle gas consumption. I don't know where that 1000 gallons of gas per year statistic comes from though.

40% in taxes to the federal government is also very high. The top marginal tax rate is 35%, and 150k isn't close to getting you into the top bracket, let alone by a significant enough factor to consider that an effective tax rate.

Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe there should be larger subsidies to alternative energy sources to counteract the externalities of fossil fuels. I just think this particular estimate is wildly misleading.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Federal_Spending.png)

<comment><USER8> You're right. Trump cut my taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A better argument than imputed carbon offset is the oil depletion allowance, which is a pretty explicit subsidy for extraction industries.

<comment><USER11> Being able to amortize an investment over the productive life of an asset is a _subsidy_? Under what definition of the word?

<comment><USER12> Time value of money, if you can deduct something in 2020 vs 2021 you get 1 year of interest on that deduction. Even if you don't directly invest it, inflation make paying 2020 debts in 2021 dollars a net win.

However, a larger issue is percentage depletion makes it possible to write off more than the cost of the asset. If I buy something for X, then the sum of all of my depression should be X or less.

<comment><USER3> You are deducting that investment today against the revenue it is producing today, and when you deduct in 2021 you are deducting against 2021 revenue.

We could argue about the shape of the curve we want, but it would not make any sense to deduct at retirement of the asset.

<comment><USER12> Accelerated Depreciation is a net win for companies. So, the shape of the curve is very much an issue worth considering.

Consider, a company buys and new car and the car's resale value may tank the day they buy it. Further, companies regularly use things they which have a book value of zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Getting away with carbon pollution, if it's a subsidy, is just part of the subsidies the fossil fuel industries get in the U.S.

The 20 billion the United States provide each year in national fossil fuel subsidies is a real issue. (per 2015 see [https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty- promises-g20-su...](https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty- promises-g20-subsidies-oil-gas-and-coal-production)).

I see other numbers that are lower then 20 for different years (This says 8+ billion for 2016 [https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green- report-2018...](https://newclimate.org/2018/11/14/brown-to-green- report-2018/)).

I'd guess there are different ways of measuring subsidies, but all of the measures for fossil fuel subsidies I could find were multi billion per year while EV subsidies were only 2 billion over the entire lifetime of the program.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Using Yale economist and recent Nobel-prize winner William Nordhaus's > $31-per-tonne estimate of the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year > to $107 billion for energy-related emissions from oil and natural gas in the > U.S. Within that, emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the > U.S. and the only one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion.

But what is the net tax/subsidy in plain monetary terms? I just did a cursory bit of Wikipedia research so I may have gotten something wrong, but the article neglected this aspect completely:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#United_States)

> On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional > Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee > on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that > federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, > broken down as follows:

> Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent) > Energy efficiency: $4.8 > billion (29 percent) > Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent) > Nuclear > energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)

$3.2 billion in fossil fuel subsidies (including categories besides motor fuel), versus...

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

> Federal fuel taxes raised $35.2 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, with $25.0 > billion raised from gasoline taxes and $10.2 billion raised from taxes on > diesel and special motor fuels.

That's not counting state taxes, which are even higher:

> The United States federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon > and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel... On average, as of January 2017, > state and local taxes and fees add 31.04 cents to gasoline and 31.01 cents > to diesel, for a total US average fuel tax of 49.44 cents per gallon for gas > and 55.41 cents per gallon for diesel.

So about $80 billion in net taxes, which exceeds the estimated social cost of carbon from US auto emissions. Of course, fuel taxes go toward the maintenance of infrastructure for motor transportation, circling back and resubsidizing it, but electric vehicles enjoy the same benefits from that maintenance (as well as other subsidies for the generation of the electricity that powers them).

<comment><USER13> You have to also look at the department of energy spending on wikipedia since they do fossil fuel development, which adds an additional half billion. So 3.7 billion per year, at least. But oil companies are also some of the main beneficiaries of things like the foreign tax credit, so you have to consider that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> All consumers will very shortly be paying the price for the fuel that is wasted using inefficient internal combustion engines as a disincentive compared to EVs. Also, consumers could capture the CO2 upon combustion themselves or may not ever transform the fuel they purchase into CO2 (gas leaking, etc.). Getting rid of the oil subsidies and enhancing those for non- carbon energy sources would be so much simpler and more effective than bickering over what would be the marginally least unaccountable tax for reducing the use of carbon based fuels. The day the government gets rid of subsidies for oil will be the first day I actually consider solar along with any tax rebates. This article is a written by a yuppie. Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California's many climate change programs can save in 12 months.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great use of NewSpeak, but the absence of a tax is not a subsidy.

There is a pretty big subsidy for the non-Saudi companies that are part of ARAMCO, though.

The Saudis wanted a bigger slice of the pie when the company was formed, but instead of just splitting the revenue along those lines, they worked out a deal where the Saudi government would tax the non-Saudi companies to an amount that would split the pie the way they wanted it. The American companies can write off that foreign tax. So American taxpayers are subsidizing the arrangement.

<comment><USER17> There's a reasonable argument to be made that letting you get away with something with negative externalities, which then have to be dealt with by spending public money, is effectively the same as giving you that money directly.

<comment><USER16> Only if those "negative externalities" are illegal for everyone. In this case, they're perfectly legal activities. It's not a "break" or "subsidy" just because someone's allowed to carry on a perfectly legal activity.

Look, if it is bad to use oil for fuel, then just tax it. But playing these word games is lame.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, what a weak argument. If you're using this method why aren't you including carbon emissions from EVs entire manufacturing process to mining of its materials to get the true subsidy cost to society? Economists already know about negative externalities but calculating their cost is incredibly difficult. Comparing a direct subsidy to a negative externality is just laughable.

<comment><USER19> This but unironically. Yes, let's absolutely compare the total lifecycle cost of electric and IC vehicles, and price them accordingly. If you have a politically feasible proposal for this, by god, share it share it, the planet depends on it.

If not: who cares what "economists already know" about accurate pricing of externalities? The existing zero price for CO2 emissions is wildly off. Say we radically lurch in the opposite direction, setting the price of CO2 much too high (a hilariously sci-fi premise). We foolishly over-develop technologies that mitigate CO2 emissions. What a catastrophe, we learned how to suck CO2 out of the air instead of further refining fracking. We built a better world for nothing!

<comment><USER18> You assume there are no negative externalities to pricing CO2 too high? There would be a lot, including pushing more people into poverty.

I don't deny that CO2 has a cost, but the entire premise of the article is that oil is "subsidized" because of CO2 emissions, but that is just bunk. You could argue that about literally every item, ever. From manufacturing to food production, to child bearing, to breathing. If you argue that oil is subsidized because of CO2 emissions, you also have to say so ever -everything- including EV and every point of the supply chain. You might accidentally be causing people to release less CO2 and replace it with something even worse.

How you treat CO2 in a cap and trade method is up for debate, but again to claim oil is subsidized though CO2 emissions but EV isn't is nonsense. Lithium mining is -incredibly- dirty, batteries in landfills are -incredibly- toxic/flammable. If you think those too are a form of indirect subsidy then the EV subsidy is already high without the direct subsidy. And if you break it down to which has the biggest subsidy per kilowatt/hour, you might find they are not as far apart as you suspect...but the article doesn't measure that, so how would they know or even have the capability to write such an article?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > the social cost of carbon, it amounted last year to $107 billion for energy- > related emissions from oil and natural gas in the U.S. Within that, > emissions from transportation — the biggest source in the U.S. and the only > one still growing — enjoyed a free ride worth $59 billion.

> The cost of the federal tax subsidy for EVs is $2 billion

OK, except the latter is an actual subsidy given directly, while the former is some made up pie-in-the-sky napkin calculation towards something we don't like.

Let's talk about the "social cost of tobacco" then. Or alcohol.

Or how about the "social cost of fast food" leading to obesity?

What about the "social cost of single motherhood?" No other social factor predicts crime and prison time nearly as well, not to mention lack of future educational achievement and lack of future economic output.

If anyone wants to play the theoretical existential threats game, I'll trade an acknowledgement of "global warming" for an acknowledgement of single motherhood.

Anyways I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to _real_ costs paid by taxpayers right now.

<comment><USER19> Global warming mitigation is not diverting resources from tobacco cessation.

> I don't think it's sensible to compare theoretical future economic costs to > real costs paid by taxpayers right now.

"We should permit environmental destruction for economic gain benefitting today's taxpayers."

<comment><USER20> Keyword: _theoretical_.

We are coming out of an ice age from over 10K years ago, and the rate of temperature increase has been slowing on that scale.

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

(Hint: don't worry so much about zooming into the 1970s to today, which is less than 0.01% of the time span of a larger trend.)

Pollution is a problem, yes. Go to China and talk to them before you lecture me about paying carbon taxes in Any City, USA.

But when it comes to this theoretical warming, we are likely to be a spec of noise in the overall trend of the planet doing its thing.

<comment><USER21> The temperature has increased more rapidly in the last one hundred years than we can find it has at any period we have good data for (there is some evidence that at times in the distant past it rose _fairly_ rapidly, though we can't tell exactly how fast, but that usually coincided with massive extinction events). This has been largely caused by the release of large amounts of CO2 in accordance with very well-understood warming processes. The idea that some nebulous "natural processes" of the earth just automatically overwhelm anything we can do is totally bizarre; we are a sizable portion of the active energy production on the planet's surface at this point (obviously, we have nowhere near the effect of the _sun_ , but the sun's radiance does not and has not changed rapidly enough to explain the changes in temperature).

<comment><USER20> Alright. Let's say I'd be willing to concede that our CO2 emissions play some part in changing the environment.

But I've also done some research, and I've found that the Earth has wonderful negative feedback mechanisms to ensure that each additional molecule of CO2 released has less overall affect then previous ones - so there's a limited and saturating nature to this phenomenon (hence why we haven't exploded or flooded terribly, etc).

Nobody is willing to discuss the nuance of saturated effects, and limited changes that we should be willing to endure so that hundreds of millions (billions) of Africans, Indians, and Chinese can get out of poverty.

And while we're at it - why are we subsidizing the paper industry, cutting down all those trees? Or the hydroelectric industry ruining aquatic life and other actual environmental concerns.

The fact is that nobody is willing to look at the trade-offs of FOSSIL FUELS and just wants to write them off as evil, "unfairly subsidized", etc. But if you took a true holistic look at the costs and benefits, you'd find that few other industries have been as positively impactful to our lives as those born from hydrocarbons. So people should think _really hard_ before ignorantly demonizing them.

If people are wondering how I could hold a viewpoint so contrary to the Hacker News/Liberal dogma, I strongly recommend checking out the following, which can explain much more elaborately than myself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaNPBZ6BZZ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaNPBZ6BZZ8)

<comment><USER22> The Earth unfortunately also has wonderful positive feedback mechanisms like releasing Methane from permafrost and lowering albedo due to reduced ice cover that can lead to runaway hothouse climates that last tens of thousands of years until geological processes sequester enough carbon to reduce the greenhouse effect sufficiently. So perhaps you should trust the conclusions of the scientists who have studied the topic for their entire careers and have been sounding the alarm since the seventies at least.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk Responds to Sarah Palin's Claim that Tesla is a "Loser" - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2013/04/08/elon-musk-sarah-palin/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)

<comment><USER2> Good for both, free publicity!</comment>


Should Public Transit Be Free? More Cities Say, Why Not? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.html <comment><AUTHOR> I see no argument why, for example, the NYC subway/bus shouldn't be free for all.

Literally everybody needs to get around the city. But a one-size-fits-all fare hits the poor _far_ harder than the rich.

Just fund it with city taxes that can be made progressive, so each billionaire can subsidize the cost of 1,000 others, who are probably their employees anyways.

And for those who ask "what about visitors/foreigners?!", the answer is easy -- just build it into the hotel tax. Raise it by $10/day, which will cover close to 2 round-trips.

</comment><comment><USER2> This made me think, are bus drivers legally allowed to kick off someone who is sleeping indefinitely on the bus or otherwise just being loud, obnoxious, offensive smelling, etc?

I wonder if public transit were free, if I would get to see more homeless people on the bus as a result. For reference, the bus I typically take is the Dash which only costs 50 cents at most. Not that big of a deal, and right now there are rarely any homeless who take it. Some people who do stay too long get reprimanded by the bus driver, but I have never seen the bus driver do anything beyond that (since I'm gone before then). I have nothing against homeless persons, but seeing (and smelling) them regularly on my commute to work would quickly inspire me (and likely others) to find alternatives like Uber, working hard to get a car, walking, cycling, etc.</comment>


Former Bush NSA Director calls for "digital Blackwater" - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/07/former-bush-nsa-director-calls-for-digital-blackwater/

<comment><USER2> There's already several digital Blackwater's so to speak. HBGary Federal is the obvious unsuccessful one, but you also have much more successful ones like Endgame Security.

Personally my view is that the 'physical' Blackwaters of the world haven't demonstrated an awful lot of adherence to the moral requirements associated with such work, so why would the virtual ones do the same? If you sanction a company with the ethics of Blackwater to do offensive work, do you really think they only side they're ever going to fight on is yours? Do you think that they'd represent your interests, or theirs, and do you think there'd be any hope of the kind of transparency or limitations that you'd at least expect to see in a state run equivalent?

<comment><USER3> What indication do you have that endgame is successful?

Also, General Dynamics AIS.

<comment><USER2> I think a lot is down to how you define success. They had a successful Series A round, but in itself I wouldn't consider that success in itself.

I've seen a few things where I've been told it's from Endgame and I have to say that there's no way that the information contained could've been acquired in any way that could be construed as lawful under UK law (bear in mind that our computer crime laws are garbage, but that's another discussion), although I don't have any financial information.

<comment><USER3> I see - I saw the pricing sheet from endgame that was leaked, but it was not clear to me if anyone is really buying their services, and I am in the industry (doing not shady things). So I was just curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree a "digital blackwater" can be much more effective than the government for this kind of thing.

However, unlike physical violence, there's not as much "inherent human moral knowledge" about computer crime/war/terrorism. It's pretty obvious to anyone (including Blackwater shooters) that shooting people is wrong, all things being equal; it is necessary in certain situations, but is to be avoided if possible. Some kinds of shooting are worse than others, and there are lines which most people wouldn't cross (shooting obviously unarmed people, children, etc.), even if ordered to do so.

With most computer crime, it's not so obvious who is being hurt and how much; there's also no primate/reptilian brain response to most of the activities themselves, only their consequences.

There's also much more potential to use "able to do digital violence" to influence business and politics within a stable nation state than to use physical violence. Organized crime only really can operate in marginal communities, at least through violent extortion -- in more developed places, it sticks to providing unmet (illegal) needs like drugs, gambling, prostitution, etc., or operates at a sub-organized level.

There's really nothing in "inherent morals" of people, or in cultural values, which will prevent using a "digital blackwater" for political or business ends.

If someone goes down this road (and the Chinese appear to have already, and possibly Russia), everyone else has to, but the world will become worse overall. Better for hackers, perhaps, as a subset, but I'd be fine with having a little less money and living in a less-Gibsonian world.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do agree that there comes a time when you have to look at current the current security environment and realize that you need to enable the private sector to do more to defend themselves than appears possible currently. Relating of course to industrial espionage and the so-called "APT", not this #antisec nonsense. I don't look forward to a world where private firms are employing offensive cyber-mercenaries, but let's be honest - that is what many chinese firms and some western firms are already doing. Something needs to change to let western businesses respond to these threats, and it's clear that the usual mantras of defense in depth and being increasingly vigilant just aren't leading us down a winning path. We may never have infosec world where it's possible to adequately rely on defense only, perhaps it is time to move past the missile defense shields and on to MAD - much like US defense has gone.

<comment><USER6> MAD doesn't really work if you have no idea who just hit you. It's not like the Chinese couldn't gather a few proxies first...

<comment><USER5> There is a considerable amount of intelligence that continues to be gathered in the private sector about exploit authors, chinese hacking groups, and the actors involved in ongoing intrusions. Many of these groups conduct a fair amount of discussion and training pretty out in the open, confident of their status as out of the reach of western justice. Specific techniques and code present in a pair of Adobe 0-days used this spring point very loudly back to one collective and probably one or two specific actors that talk about these techniques in public in person. There are strong rumors that the night dragon intrusions track back to a specific actor. I've seen private investigator reports tailing specific intruders who verify that monitored intrusions happen reliably just minutes after people they have full dossiers on show up at their office. With many intrusions it's clear that the long term hosts are complicit in the bahvior. The wall of proxies defense tends to or at least can fall down against determined back hacking of the client.

All of these circumstances may not be the norm, but they exist. More would exist if there were more incentives to develop this kind of intelligence. The basic problem now is OK - what do you do with that info? NSA offensive security practices are not built for or available to the private sector. However, it seems very possible that these individual actors could be dissuaded, harassed, redirected or worse given the right program.

I'm not speaking of a state vs. state MAD. Perhaps I used the wrong term. But, even though I'm not a gun fan, there must be something to the idea that your neighbors may be less likely to break into your house if everyone knows you own a gun and you live somewhere you can shoot an intruder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So like lulzsec, anonymous, or all of the other groups, but operating for money instead of humor and ideology. Sounds like a brilliant idea (that's sarcasm, by the by).

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprised no one mentioned HBGary yet. They sure have the lack of ethics that job calls for...

<comment><USER9> Why would he mention HBGary when the fine folks at the Chertoff Group would be happy to help you with that.

([http://chertoffgroup.com/cgroup/2010/03/general-michael-v- ha...](http://chertoffgroup.com/cgroup/2010/03/general-michael-v-hayden/))</comment></comment>


Distributed computation platforms - <AUTHOR>

What are your thoughts about distributed computation platforms, and how would you use it?<p>http://beta.graphcpu.com/ <comment><USER2> There are some interesting platforms that popped up over the last few years:

[http://zillabyte.com/](http://zillabyte.com/) [http://databricks.com/](http://databricks.com/) [https://yhathq.com/products/scienceops](https://yhathq.com/products/scienceops)

The thing I'm most excited about with these platforms is seeing distributed computing become accessible to more developers. Lowering the barrier to entry (not needing to know the Hadoop ecosystem or have a PhD to do data science) can help developers answer questions their companies have and be more productive. Just my two cents.</comment>


Open-Source Graphics Processor - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/725991125/open-source-graphics-processor-gpu <comment><USER2> As someone with a chip design background:

\- prices seem reasonable for doing this as a commercial project

\- badly written intro that assumes far too much

\- seems to be based on 2000-era technology

\- not actually delivering hardware, so very limited practical use

\- the community that demands open hardware on principle is a lot smaller than they think, so this probably won't get funded

But we're not used to kickstarting software projects at normal rates, we're more used to founders working for free to prototype something and using kickstarter to push it into production. This misses that last (even more expensive) stage.

<comment><USER3> >\- seems to be based on 2000-era technology

Could you elaborate?

<comment><USER4> The goal is to produce a re-implementation of the #9 Ticket to Ride IV card ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Nine_Visual_Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Nine_Visual_Technology)) which is a fixed-function graphics card released in 1998. As they say in the first paragraph, "The reason behind this was to provide a binary compatible graphics core for vertical markets: Medical Imaging, Military, Industrial, and Server products."

This is not something that will be remotely competitive with modern GPUs. Their $1,000,000 stretch goal would be to implement a modern shader engine, but given that they aren't offering any actual hardware, I'm not sure how they hope to get to that point.

<comment><USER2> You've got it. The $200k level gives you a 2D graphics card from 1998. It looks like their original target market was people who want an embedded emulation of this sort of ancient system so they can run DOS, Windows 95, or ancient Linux/X11 on it. Markets in which changing the software is horribly expensive due to compliance costs.

The $400k goal targets Direct3D 8. That appears to date to about 2000: [http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/directx- an...](http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/directx-and- xna/directx-8-graphics-and-video-a-fresh-start-r1247)

(I'm impressed that article is still up from 2000!)

$1m is not totally unreasonable for the shader-based design _at commercial rates_. Last time I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for a shader- capable fully open graphics card delivering working silicon, I came up with two years, $2.5m, and a hiring shortlist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might be wrong, but it looks like this card (at the 300,000 level) has already been designed and used in production. On the one hand, that's a lot more confidence in the fact that they can deliver. On the other hand, what's the initial 300k for if the project is already done?

The higher tiers look more interesting, but I don't know how commercially interesting they are. The Kickstarter is so dry, I'm assuming they're targeting researchers, enthusiasts or people who would otherwise spend a lot of time making their own GPU. There's no reason given on the page why I should be interested in helping them, as someone who is only vaguely knowledgable in the area. It seems really specific, and I can't tell if those people are out there, or they're just asking for money from whoever wanders by.

Finally, there's the licensing. If there is a commercial application for this, they might make a ton of money off a 10K tier for a non-GPL license.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand the criticism. I've done a lot of work in real time image processing with FPGA's. This work, as I like to put it, takes "cubic hours". It is complex, expensive, requires real expertise and non-trivial development time. To have someone with twenty years in the field launch a project that will result in open sourcing the relevant technologies is nothing less than fantastic. Yes, it takes as long as the project originator requires, even longer.

This isn't web development. Sorry.

I really don't get the criticism about the lack of a board as part of the KS rewards. If you are doing FPGA development at this level, the cost of fabricating a board is a rounding error when compared to R&D costs.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think they are approaching the marketing from a wrong direction. Instead of targeting PC/opensource enthusiasts, they should be targeting the growing "maker" segment. Have a FPGA board as a backer reward, and demo it using a microcontroller. That way all the limitations spawning from a 15 year old GPU core do not matter that much when there aren't really many competitors.

<comment><USER8> There are existing projects to squirt out a VGA and talk to a microcontroller. Most have an "interesting" reputation for bugs.

At the really low end a sufficiently hacked up PIC (even the older ones) can bit bang out NTSC composite B/W video, crazy as that probably sounds. You can compute during the retrace intervals. So thats the $2 market.

One of the most successful / popular / bug free uses of the Propeller chip is as a graphics coprocessor outputting analog VGA, it does quite a good job of that. The electronics for the prop-vga connection are some peculiar value resistors, and a VGA jack, little else. So thats the $10 market.

If you want something more advanced than a prop as a graphics copro, you use a $25 rasp-pi.

Much above $25 and you're looking at little embedded PCs/home theater PCs. Look at what the mythtv guys are using for frontends, which over the last decade or so has gone from pretty exotic to boring COTS, for a couple hundred $.

So its a market that's fuller than you know and has had historical issues.

To some extent you run into problems with "maker" class processors such as memory limitations. If you want monochrome full VGA and your arduino only has 2 K of ram or whatever it is (its probably 2 ords magnitude too low whatever the exact spec is) you're not going to be doing a simple frame buffer. And if you hack a rasp-pi into being your graphic copro, then other than I/O limitations there seems to be no point in making an arduino the "main" processor if the rasp-pi is doing all the work.

<comment><USER2> The Raspberry Pi _is_ basically a GPU with an ARM in a tiny corner of the die. However, the GPU side of its behaviour is mostly Broadcom trade secrets. This produces outrage from some people who demand a completely open platform. However, I don't think there's enough demand money to produce one; and you may run into IP licensing issues, e.g. if you want to include an MPEG accelerator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think most people will go, great where can i buy the card... oh. The rewards are just the source code. I don't see how this can reach the first goal.

<comment><USER10> I agree that endusers won't be too happy with this projects, but companies might be, if they need a (not too powerful) video core.

<comment><USER11> If you're a company you can already license plenty of GPU IPs for use in your SoC (in RTL form or otherwise).

If you look at the various tiers of this kickstarter you can see you'll have to go up to 600k$ to fund a proper ARM SoC 3D IP with AXI support. And since it's a kickstarter you have absolutely no way of knowing what the end product will look like.

I can't imagine any company betting that much money for RTL code with absolutely no warranty about what the end result will look like and if it's going to even fit in your SoC.

And the code being open source is actually not an advantage since it means all other constructors can then integrate the same GPU in their designs for free.

If it gets funded and it ends up working correctly I'm sure many companies will be interested to try and use it in their designs but I really doubt they'd fund it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wish people wouldn't use the LGPL for "hardware" without a legal opinion from the FSF. I mean what is "linking" for verilog code? - it does not fit the model. The intentions are fine but the mechanisms need work.

<comment><USER11> I don't know that the FSF has to say but I can easily imagine what the LGPL would mean in the context of hardware IPs: if you modify the core of the IP in any way you have to share the code. However the rest of the hardware that interacts through the documented interface or ports of the IP (that would be the "linked" part) is not subject to the license.

Modern ASICs are built around blocks connected by a system bus so it's actually quite a clear cut.

<comment><USER12> As I said, the intentions are clear but the license is inappropriate. Licenses, especially GPL style ones need to get the details right. What if you change the interfaces, how does that affect it, or if you change the process. can you draw the line where you like. And thats an LGPL style license. I have come across people using the GPL, what is the boundary of that system. The LGPL has all sorts of provisions specific to basically C libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Based on what little I do know about GPUs, it seems to me that they are aiming for a hardware-fixed pipeline as a first step, and want to move towards general shader based architecture only as a very-very stretched goal. Am I right? If I see it right what is the reason for that? Couldn't they just jump to a modern architecture, instead of following the evolution of the industry? Excuse me for my ignorance, it's possible that even my assumptions are wrong.

<comment><USER14> Because they are sitting on an already mostly-complete version covering most of the first two goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How will this be different than [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project) which had some promise and then faded into the sunset?

<comment><USER16> The Open Graphics Project only did 3D and VGA, this one also does 2D which is probably more useful for embedded applications.

It was also a more complicated architecture than it needed to be IMHO due to splitting functions between two FPGAs, one for the graphics bit and the other for the bus interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone who has done a fair amount of OpenGL programming, I can honestly say that it's becoming a convoluted spec. It's no longer elegant or something that should be aspired to IMHO, YMMV. The principles are generally sound, just not the implementation or API.

I would rather see an FPGA being used as a general purpose DSP with the ability to run shader code in software, perhaps inside a runtime written with Go or Erlang. I've thought about doing a kickstarter to emulate, say, a 256 core processor with an FPGA. The main problem is that the last time I wrote VHDL was in 1999 and I've become too accustomed to writing mainstream code which mostly involves putting out fires.

I think a highly parallel multiprocessor like this to make a break with the past and explore more scalable approaches like ray tracing would be good for the world. And by ray tracing I mean "not rasterization". I realize that RT has its faults and that there are many other approaches that do things like soft lighting/shadows and depth of field but they are difficult to explore now because processors are still effectively single threaded.

<comment><USER2> Or you could buy a 72 core processor: [http://www.tilera.com/products/processors/TILE- Gx_Family](http://www.tilera.com/products/processors/TILE-Gx_Family)

(it's not as powerful as it sounds; memory bandwidth ends up being a major constraint, and programming all those cores effectively is hard in itself)

<comment><USER17> Ya I was excited about the Xeon Phi too:

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon- phi-detail.html)

I just don't know if anything from Intel will be cost-effective because it's going to be over-engineered to not compete with existing products.

For example caching is largely useless with something like Go that is sending copies of data around. I don't know if it's possible to use copy-on-write with so many cores.

It's just a hunch but I think multiprocessing in the future is going to use something like content addressable storage and not worry so much about a complex router or interconnect. Only the most naive algorithms will probably win out, so basically chop the screen up into a bunch of 16x16 squares and send them to each processor.

Also I think it will be really awesome to be free of middleware and be able to run physics or AI directly. I've even thought about trying to write something to emulate a bunch of cores on my computer so I can at least play with the algorithms until affordable hardware arrives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting idea - rather than supporting OpenGL and Direct3D, I'd like to see a card that abandons them in favor of a better thought-out API (i.e. general purpose calculation on arbitrarily-sized buffers with arbitrary dimensions and an arbitrary amount of "channels" (or vector/matrix components)). Regardless, I backed it.

<comment><USER2> But then it doesn't run any of your existing software and has a tiny market, competing with the various vector processors and FPGAs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very nice, and much needed part for a truly free and open source devices such as laptops and media centers.

As a side note however, I have one large complaint about the kickstarter video. It lacks enthusiasm, and it almost look like the speaker dreads the camera.

</comment><comment><USER20> Isn't it the case that, for GPUs, the two biggest limitations are process improvement, and driver development? One I have a GPU shader core, I can copy and paste until I run out of power transistors, interconnects, and bus bandwidth. But without the process to drive that equation forward, I'm stuck in the '90s, and without GL (and ideally D3D) drivers, I can run no software.

This seems to have no answer to either that matters to normal people.

If a Linux desktop, phone, or tablet, with at least "integrated graphics" level performance, could be produced as open source, that might actually be interesting. But nothing here looks like that's going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> Am I misunderstanding, or are the lower goals basically just a bounty? $200k to "polish" the code they already have? Sounds to me more like they are asking $200k to open-source code they already have.

<comment><USER22> That seems to be exactly correct, is that a problem?

<comment><USER21> I don't know, is it? I thought Kickstarter was supposed to be for funding a project either currently in or soon to be in development, not making a group buy.

<comment><USER23> I see this as a "get enough money together and we'll OSS it" effort. AFAIR this has happened for some game engine years ago, but I can't recall anything specific about that one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If they are designing something on an fpga that conforms to openGl they are never going to get the same performance that IC's get implementing the same specification. What's the point?

</comment><comment><USER25> Late am i, thinking, do i want to see them sinking? Eternal reinvention of wheels, how dumb it feels? The Milky Mists are already there, have DDR2-Interfaces too, what more could one want for an open core?

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

Case closed.

</comment><comment><USER26> OK I'm missing this completely. What problem is this solving ?

I can't believe they have never seen a smartphone recently, so they know what cheapo hardware is capable of pushing nowadays. Yet this exists.

So what is it that is exiting here but fly high over my head ?

<comment><USER8> Acquire any number of FPGA dev boards with a video output. They're not expensive. Then go to opencores.org and browse freely available cores for seemingly everything ... except 3d graphics cores. Theres quite a few implementations of crude VGA framebuffer out, this is a stereotypical Uni- level FPGA class lab exercise (its not terribly hard). There are some opencore projects trying to accelerate graphics but not as much as you'd think. And there's nothing like the thing in the kickstarter.

I hope the kickstarter project is Wishbone compatible so it can talk to any CPU core I'd like to synth and they're not just making a computer card or whatever, and I hope it ends up license compatible with opencores.

The lack of accelerated graphics is a kind of a weird hole in free FPGA tech, everything else you can imagine seems available.

So for example if I wanted to make an ethernet connected stepper motor controlling FPGA based CNC machine controller, which is not so far fetched, every major software component is off the shelf at opencores except for the software I'd write for the synthesized CPU and ... accelerated graphics if I want a 3-d pix of what the machine is doing / done / plan to do. All the rest, CPU cores, ethernet, stepper drivers, PS/2 drivers for keyboard mouse, all thats off the shelf. It would of course be cheaper to use a COTS desktop PC or a rasp-pi but the point is if I wanted to use a FPGA I almost could except for no 3-d graphics.

<comment><USER16> There is a project [1] on opencores.org that probably should be in the "Video Controller" category, I haven't tried using it yet though.

[1] [http://opencores.org/project,orsoc_graphics_accelerator](http://opencores.org/project,orsoc_graphics_accelerator)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Rather see a ray-tracing GPU.

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks like a really cool idea!

I'm curious how the framerate could be improved?

Would the reason it's kind of laggy at the higher resolutions be due to the max clock speed of the FPGA or other factors like the number of logic units?

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice move. But some more details are missing. No where they mentioned about the GLSL compiler for shaders. Are they providing it or we need to develop our own?

<comment> ah- Only the $1M strech goal would even support shaders, the basic 3D option is just a fixed pipeline.

And way down at the bottom it says: >Software drivers are a challenge, and we will work on providing some level of drivers, with the hopes that the community takes them up and pushes them to new levels and provides problem reports to us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If they plan to release it as LGPL, do they mean to dual-license it too? Do they see a future revenue stream in its adoption?

<comment><USER31> It looks like they already have a commercial version, which they've already sold to various customers.

If I had to guess, it'd be that these guys really want to open source it, but don't have the revenue stream to do so. So the kickstarter is to see if the idealists will put their money where their mouth is (so that these guys can buy food and have a roof over their heads while working on opening up the hardware).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there a reason why the demo video looks like the cutting edge in 1993? Maybe I'm missing something...

<comment><USER7> Because they are demoing it with a benchmark suite from 1999/2000 (you see WinBench 99 and WinBench 2000 in some segments). Presumably because the hardware can't handle more modern stuff. Heck, it seems to be struggling with demos they are showing.

<comment><USER32> Thank you. That's the answer I was looking for. I had figured they had written their own demo software to show off the capabilities, but a benchmark makes a lot more sense.

Though now that I know they're using benchmarks from last century (and struggling), I'm even more confused about why this is exciting.

<comment><USER33> > Though now that I know they're using benchmarks from last century (and > struggling), I'm even more confused about why this is exciting.

It's exciting because it's open hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What's up with people about open source X everything?

<comment><USER35> It's nice to be able to fix or contribute to every element of anything you use for one.

<comment><USER34> I guess my question is how does that fit into our current insurance policy and liability laws? For example, with so many things claim to be going to open source, if someone uses a 3d printer to make a screw to fix a car, and an accident occurs, what does it mean to the victim, insurance company, auto company and you?

Does open source actually innovate in areas like making cars? Does closed- source, private industry competition generate better innovation. Are there correlation and/or causation in either approach with new innovation? In other words, maybe it's nice to open discuss ideas but does actual implementation matters if it weren't open source? With software, we certainly have really terrible open source projects that people will use just because it's handy (I am looking at you pycrypto), but in the end we have to build another one. Whereas proprietary software may include custom "pycrypto" library that has private cryptanalysis done on it. It is still safe and useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> this looks bad ass!

</comment><comment><USER37> its cool</comment>


Is It Time to Start Shutting Down Law Schools? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-01/is-it-time-to-start-shutting-down-law-schools-

<comment><USER2> Yes.

As a result of actual experience with attorneys, I know very well that when I need legal advice, I am far, far better off to just pull it out of my own ass.

Accountants as well.

<comment><USER3> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

<comment><USER2> In what way is my comment unsubstantive?

<comment><USER3> There was no relevant information in it, just a generic complaint.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPad Gripe Session - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtraction.com/2010/08/18/ipad-gripe-session <comment><USER2> >Whether we'll ever type as much on the iPad as on a PC, it seems obvious to me that some refinement is needed in managing how 'touchable' the iPad's screen is while entering text.

Odd. I don't find this at all. I type a great deal in the Notes application and I find I'm nearly as fast on the screen as a real keyboard. Of course this is only possible because the iPad manages to correct most of my "fingers walking all over the screen" mistakes. I really didn't expect it to be as good as it has been and figured the lack of typing feedback would be a huge problem.

<comment><USER3> I hate to just say "me too", but, me too.

I've found I can really crank along on my iPads keyboard (in landscape mode) and can touch-type almost as efficiently as on a real keyboard. Overall I'd probably say I have no realistic complaints or suggestions in regards to the iPad soft keyboard.

The portrait mode is a touch cramped, IMO, but still very usable.

<comment><USER2> Yea, I should have mentioned that this is only the case in landscape. I don't bother trying with portrait, it's definitely too cramped as you say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This passage really puzzles me:

 _As a gesture to invoke the Undo command, shaking a handheld device the size of an iPhone is clever and workable. Shaking a much larger device like the iPad is awkward at best_

My iPad has an undo button on the keyboard (and even a redo one) and shaking it produces no result. Either our two iPads are different, which I don't think, or that's just a statement that the author did not bother to verify.

<comment><USER5> Shaking my iPad side to side quite vigorously does bring up an "Undo Typing" dialog box.

I would never do this though - you seem to have to do it pretty quickly, much easier to just hit the "undo" button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _What's not great is mobile Safari's penchant for refreshing a browser window nearly every time I return to it, regardless of how long the window has been idle._

This is my biggest and perhaps only gripe about the iPad. It doesn't have enough memory. My old iPhone 3g did the same thing, especially right before I got the iPhone 4 because the system software had gotten bloated in the last couple of years. Screen size doesn't help with this issue.

Apple either needs to spend some storage space on swap, or implement some kind of caching mechanism within mobile safari itself. The limited memory makes tabbed browsing incredibly frustrating, so much so that I use my iPhone 4 instead of the iPad most of the time now. I don't want to wait for a page load every time I switch tabs, especially over 3g.

The next gen iPad should ship with at least 1GB of ram, there is plenty of space in the case and ram is dirt cheap.

Edit: Looks like some people have already enabled paging by jailbreaking (<http://www.ipodtouchfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=288228>). Apparently, iOS4 is going to enable paging across the board.

<comment><USER7> _The next gen iPad should ship with at least 1GB of ram, there is plenty of space in the case and ram is dirt cheap._

Keep in mind that space and price are not the only constraints when it comes to RAM. Quadrupling the RAM amounts will also quadruple the power requirements for RAM and will directly impact battery life, which is one of the iPad's greatest features.

<comment><USER8> Does RAM actually take that much power? I'm curious because when battery life for mobile devices is discussed, usually back-lighting and CPU are the only thing anyone talks about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm thoroughly annoyed by Safari refreshing tabs randomly, too. But I always assume its because of memory restrictions, and that this content has been evicted from memory to make room for web pages that I open in new tabs.

<comment><USER10> Memory is the root cause but it's more like they didn't implement a paging virtual memory system in the original iPhone os until iOS4 which allows for the persistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use the ipad primarily for browsing, but i miss the aggressive word wrap features on the Droid. text doesn't wrap as well on the safari, forcing me to scroll left and right. they should definitely fix that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree with his first point in the article - it's hard not to have iOS4 loaded up.

When they launch the iTV are they going to have three different devices with three different system cycles to support?

<comment><USER13> If history is any indication, by the next OS update (4.2 or 5) they will be merged. Apple seems to prefer to keep its horses decoupled: technologies percolate more slowly through its stack, but it allows them not to get stuck (so much).

For example with Longhorn MS tried to change the underlying kernel, the user interface, and to add some of those changes in its main programs too. Apple instead can take up to 2-3 iterations for a technology to become entrenched: first its developed in some niche application (e.g. Core Animation in iOS), then it gets generalised and turned into a general framework, and finally later its application groups (iLife, iWorks, etc...) start making use of it.

(note: I am not saying either system is the best. They both have pros and cons)</comment></comment>


Create a font from your own handwriting - <AUTHOR> http://www.fontcapture.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm getting all nostalgic. Just such software was all the rage in the late nineties.

But really, the results of such automated font generation are always less than optimal. To produce something really nice you would have to put much manual work in. And you should have some training in how to make fonts. And it would still look tacky. It was gimmicky in the nineties and, unfortunately, it still is.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's the FBI compiling dossiers on everyone :)

<comment><USER4> Just needs a little Facebook integration..

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would be really sweet if there was any practical way to use new fonts on the web, IM, or email.

I like it because it involves printing and scanning. Web apps that involve physical stuff are fun.

<comment><USER6> [http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/font-face-typekit- an...](http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/07/font-face-typekit-and-font- licensing-the-state-of-web-type.ars)

Its coming, slowly.

<comment><USER7> That article is a bit out of date.

There are two new formats - one is a new format called WebOTF, which is a new binary format consisting of a raw font plus compressed XML metadata. The other is EOT Lite (which is likely to be renamed to something without "EOT" in the name), which is a subset of the old EOT functionality that IE has offered for several years, dropping the more controversial aspects such as rootstring (essentially browser copy protection) and font compression (which is patented).

Both parties are happy with both formats, and I believe Mozilla are planning to support both in the next version of Firefox, so the end result is likely that both become part of any standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Better use this while you can -- this appears to be a re-packaging of <http://www.yourfonts.com/> , which was free and then became a commercial service. (The template file especially is very similar.)

Yourfonts.com might take exception to this.

(Edit: I had the URL wrong.)

<comment><USER9> > this appears to be a re-packaging of <http://www.yourfonts.com/>

Unlikely, there's a dev blog: <http://www.fontcapture.com/blog/>

<comment><USER8> Well, the blog only has two posts to it -- one announcing the debut, the other discussing a change to their template that didn't work out.

That said, I took a closer look at their template compared to yourfonts.com, and although they're similar (by necessity), they're different enough that it's likely that fontcapture created their own.

I'm really glad fontcapture came along; I just hope they can stick around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great, now I have a font as unreadable as my own monkey-scrawl! Fabulous.

<comment><USER11> Yep. This is cool, but effectively the opposite of useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It may be no good for documents, but I'd like to use this for code listings.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you truly get behind an idea that's not your own? - <AUTHOR>

. <comment><USER2> Of course, and I emphatically reject the premise of the question. It'd be impossible for any great company to exist without this possibility. Besides that, the best businesses are usually actually many ideas from many people that result in a great series of products. Read _Built to Last_. The whole point of a company, rather than a sole proprietorship, is for many people to work together for common goals.

<comment><USER3> I agree, I also reject the premise of the question.

Ideas don't belong to anyone, anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally tried to do this very thing and could not. I had a great opportunity to work with a friend on a startup. I did it for a while, but the fire was just not there. I eventually parted ways (on good terms) and pursued my own idea. I am much more on fire for my own idea. Selfish? Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with what's been said. You need a "..."

Can you truly get behind an idea that's not your own... if you have another reason for being there?

Yes.

I want to start my own company (based on my own idea) some day, but I'm learning hell of a lot (and saving up cash) working at another company, on someone else's idea. Getting behind that idea, even if I'm not necessarily passionate about it, is important, because that's the only way I'll do a good job and actually learn what it's like.

So yeah. I think it's important to gain some experience before setting out on your own. It's a safer route if you don't have people to fall back on if your first (or second or third) attempt fails

</comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely. I was sold on the tech behind my old startup and was given the opportunity to contribute my own ideas to improving it, giving me a sense of ownership. This was key to my devotion to the company.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think you can. The task of the entrepreneur is getting everyone else passionate about the idea. Give them ownership in the idea, let them help you create something great and not just build it. America and the constitution were founded because a lot of people were passionate about the idea of freedom. The leaders got people behind the vision of what they could have. And that was a lot harder than getting people to get behind a start up, because people gave their lives for that idea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, you can get behind an idea that's not your own as long as you have a consistent vision or intent with the person who generated the idea.

As an extreme example, if I were passionately committed to solving world hunger and the guy running the start-up I worked for found a solution, commitment to that idea would be possible.

Ideas are about Strategy - and Vision / Personal Intent are more powerful than Strategy.

</comment><comment><USER9> As long is the idea is something you believe in and you can make meaningful contributions and help shape the product/service, then yes, I think anyone can get behind something they believe in.

Look at how many religious people they are - they all emphatically support an idea that was not their own.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes.

As long as you enjoy working on it why not? Besides, once you start working, the idea changes anyway. Very few ideas stay true to form the whole way through. I think the problems arrive when the people "behind" the idea are completely unwilling to change it at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good ideas can inspire you even if they are not your own, in any case, you probably end wishing you had thought about it before :) Although it probably also depends on the person who explains you the idea (their ability to let you see the point, their enthusiasm...).

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the answer to this is obviously yes. Do you use email? Sorting algorithms? Automobiles? Can you not get behind the Internet?

Would anyone really say no? Maybe you meant to ask a more specific question?

</comment><comment><USER13> You think Gates invented OSes or interpreters, or that Brin/Page invented search,.or Jobs invented the Walkman, or that Ford invented Automobiles, etc etc etc etc ad nauseum. Get real.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've found that true love for the idea comes _after_ you jump in and start owning/developing it. Fake or surface enthusiasm happens when you're just speculating or supposing. In a lot of ways, this is like the difference between seeing a pretty girl in a magazine or something and actually meeting and getting to know a pretty girl. In one case, you're just falling in love with your self-delusion about how something might turn out. In the other case, you're actually experiencing reality and developing a deep relationship.

I love cool ideas. But I really love the cool ideas I'm executing. So execution counts more than initial infatuation, even though it doesn't always seem so before you get started.

<comment><USER15> this can be true, but i was sold so completely on my startup (flowmingle) when i first heard about it that i was anxious to start. one of the things that really got me going, and brought me in fully was the person who'd had the idea was open to suggestions and refinement. little changes i was suggesting were adopted, even before i'd written any code, and that granted me a sense of ownership right off the bat. it was a great idea, and more importantly, it was an idea that was mutable, and one i could contribute to making better. that's a strong selling point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you believe in it, the idea belongs to you too.

</comment><comment><USER17> yes provided the person has an actual interest in the niche that you are trying to get into.

</comment><comment><USER18> Is that what a PhD thesis is? Someone internalizing the advisor's/funding provider's ideas (and building them up)?

</comment><comment><USER19> If people couldn't support an idea that wasn't their own, we'd never see any startups funded...</comment>