SpaceX tests black satellite to reduce 'megaconstellation' threat to astronomy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00041-4 <comment><USER2> The satellites can be seen with the naked eye. There's a visible pass over San Francisco tonight around 6:15 PM: [https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink- lat...](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-latest)

The viewing window is actually pretty small. For most of the night the satellites are not visible because they are in Earth's shadow. There is an impact on astronomy but it is being overstated by journalists hungry for yet another "Big Tech bad" story.

<comment><USER3> No, it's not. This hurts survey telescopes and it's an orders of magnitude issue.

A rule of astronomy is that if you can see it with your eyes near a city than it's really really fucking bright, if you can see it with your eyes in the wilderness after your eyes have adjusted for 10 minutes, than it's still extremely bright.

Bright, fast-moving things are pretty terrible.

Even if Starlink doesn't kill astronomy, the next 4 companies with similar deployment will definitely exclude types of sciences and ruin billions of dollars of investments in new observatories.

<comment><USER4> Saying it will "Kill astronomy" is pretty hyperbolic.

It will likely affect some earthbound astronomy significantly, but much (most?) of the most important work in modern astronomy is satellite based.

I'm on the fence on this whole issue. It's not exactly clear what impact it will have on astronomy. Nor what impact it will have on making the internet pricing and availability. Where I used to live, the only options for internet access were expensive and really bad, the positive impact this might have is potentially quite big.

It's hard with a story like this to suss out what the long term effects will be so it's a big grey area.

<comment><USER5> >It will likely affect some earthbound astronomy significantly, but much (most?) of the most important work in modern astronomy is satellite based.

I'm not an astronomer but I'm not convinced that that's the case. The number of space telescopes pales in comparison to the number of terrestrial observatories. Moreover, advances like adaptive optics have done a lot to close the gap between ground and space capabilities (for optical telescopes). Even once you've invested in expensive tech like adaptove optics, a telescope in space still costs an order of magnitude more than one on the ground (thats being really conservative. JWST has already cost ~10x more than the most expensive ground telescope ever, and the thing hasn't even launched yet)

There were a few space based radio telescopes in the past, but I don't think there are any now. Imagine building something like the Arecibo Observatory[1] or VLA[2] in space. And speaking of the VLA, some of the techniques for getting high quality results (e.g. interferometry without physically conjoining the receivers) are difficult if not impossible to do in space.

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

[2]: 27 of these guys, which are able to move around precisely on rails to generate constructive interference with the different waves they're receiving: [https://public.nrao.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/vla_panor...](https://public.nrao.edu/wp- content/uploads/2016/04/vla_panorama_med-1.jpg)

<comment><USER4> > I'm not an astronomer but I'm not convinced that that's the case.

I'm not entirely certain what the balance is here. I don't think my post made it clear that I'm not certain how big the effect would be, only that there is a tradeoff here which is hard to quantify.

I do know there is a _lot_ of significant astronomy done by space telescope and that the importance of space astronomy is only growing.

Seems to me the answer is that those who benefit from the new satellite constellations (SpaceX, etc) should finance additional investment in astronomy to mitigate the effects.

<comment><USER6> What about amateur astronomy? Are we now saying that only those with the means to afford space telescopes or expensive software can participate?

<comment><USER4> Are you an amateur astronomer or just trying to be the devil's advocate?

I'd be curious to know what the impact is on impactful amateur astronomy (as opposed to backyard hobbyists who are just engaged for personal pleasure). I know some amateurs use images created by public telescopes, I'm _not sure_ how much meaningful work is done by amateurs using backyard equipment anymore.

Not being dismissive, genuinely curious.

<comment><USER7> Variable star observing is actually a place where amateurs really help, since it's about observation time, and not necessarily some hugely powerful telescope. And the more powerful a telescope is, the more people want to use it to point at all sorts of things, which makes it kind of expensive to use those telescopes for variable star observations which take a lot of time.

"Since professional astronomers do not have the time or the resources to monitor every variable star, astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can make genuine contributions to scientific research." [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Association_of_Variab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Association_of_Variable_Star_Observers)

<comment><USER8> And the Betelgeuse deathwatch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Astronomers are already criticizing such ideas, and have already created an international appeal by professional astronomers open for subscription to ask for an intervention from institutions and governments. See: [https://astronomersappeal.wordpress.com/](https://astronomersappeal.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Astronomers will have to get used to this. If we ban these for such nonsense reasons, it will be Chinese satellites blocking their view.

<comment><USER11> Isn't this exactly the same view as "if we regulate the use of fossil fuels, China will use way more than us and outcompete us economically" and "if we limit the number of nuclear weapons we create, there's going to be a gap between our nuclear firepower and Russia's"?

Creating a livable planet is not easy, but nationalistic thinking makes it a hundred times harder.

<comment><USER12> Which do you think has more capability to improve and save lives? 1\. Cheaper internet available everywhere for anybody willing to pay 2\. Better data on the cosmos

I'd go with #1.

<comment><USER13> Then we get blasted by a gamma ray burst from Betelgeuse and we're all dead. Studying the cosmos is extremely important, and studying threats (asteroids, supernovae, etc.) are just one part of that.

<comment><USER14> What is the point of studying the cosmos if we never leave our planet? Space is coming. Admittedly much slower than we expected. However SpaceX's satellites are just the beginning. Astronomy will continue, just much more so. Imagine a telescope array the size of the earth scanning the stars from orbit. Why look at an asteroid when you can GO there and do something with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SpaceX could provide a handful of at-cost launches for astronomy projects per year. It wouldn't fix anything for the ground telescopes but could be a bit of an olive branch for the community.

<comment><USER16> Even if they were _free launches_ that wouldn't rank above a taunt: most of the satellite cost is in the development and construction anyway.

<comment> grey-area Starlink satellites cost < 500k each, compared to hundreds of millions for traditional sats.

If you mass produced space telescopes they wouldn't cost the ridiculous sums spent on JWST, which is a terrible example of the wasteful cost plus contracts of nasa. They've been planning it since 1996, and costs have risen from 1 billion to 10 billion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonder if they're using VantaBlack, Black 3.0, or some other variant of "super black" for this experiment?

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

[https://culturehustle.com/collections/black/products/black-3...](https://culturehustle.com/collections/black/products/black-3-0-the- worlds-blackest-black-acrylic-paint-150ml)

<comment><USER7> It's possible, although it's kind of tricky to use in practice.

From the Vantablack wikipedia article:

When light strikes Vantablack, instead of bouncing off, it becomes trapped and is continually deflected amongst the tubes, eventually becoming absorbed and dissipating into heat.[7]

Dealing with heat in space isn't easy, since you have no air to dissipate heat into.

<comment><USER18> Black satellites are nothing new. Just ask any Surveillance Agency how they handle the heating problem due to black paint.

Oops that's classified. But probably such satellites need a dedicated cooling system.

It's never as easy as, just paint it black and hope for the best.

<comment><USER7> Right, but that means that stealth costs mass (weight) and means less satellites per launch. So that means making them less visible costs more money.

For non spy satellites where stealth isn't one of the top goals, that might mean people don't do it.

Also, typically one does not simply ask a surveillance agency how they do things. They would probably respond with something like, "NO SUCH PERSON AT THIS ADDRESS, RETURN TO SENDER."

<comment><USER18> From what i read they are going with "partially painted black" Makes sense to only have the underside facing earth black. Also the satellites underside is only exposed to the sun with an steep angle because most of the time when it would be exposed to sunlight it's going to be in earths shadow. Reducing the extra heating even more..

Could work without extra cooling...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Question: If SpaceX is successful in developing the Starship, couldn't they launch huge space telescopes for a very low cost? I'd imagine that SpaceXs efforts will be a net positive for astronomers in the end. If the satellite problems becomes too big, maybe they should offer discounts for launching space telescopes.

Another question.. if you are building a radio telescope in space, could you just use a thin foil that folds out like origami for the reflector?

<comment><USER20> > If SpaceX is successful in developing the Starship, couldn't they launch > huge space telescopes for a very low cost?

If the BFR (the rocket behind the starship) is successful then yes it could mean the ability to launch very large telescopes in to space. The scientific community would be very exited about this possibility. However, this doesn't necessarily make it very low cost. One launch of the BFR would still likely be much more than an a Falcon Heavy launch.

> if you are building a radio telescope in space, could you just use a thin > foil that folds out like origami for the reflector?

Yes! This technology already exists and it is really pretty amazing to see in action. Right now most of them are used on communications satellites or for synthetic aperture radar satellites. See the videos below:

Animation of the radar antenna on SMAP:

[https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/83/smap-antenna- deployme...](https://smap.jpl.nasa.gov/resources/83/smap-antenna-deployment- animation/)

Actual video of a large communcations antenna (12m diameter) being deployed. Skip ahead to ~2:15 for the actual unfurling.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mFnNDzxKFk&feature=emb_titl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mFnNDzxKFk&feature=emb_title)

<comment><USER21> Couple quick clarifications:

BFR isn't a name that's still in use. Poster you're responding to was correct in calling it Starship: "SpaceX's Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket (collectively referred to as Starship)" (from [https://www.spacex.com/starship](https://www.spacex.com/starship)).

Starship projects to be significantly less expensive than Falcon Heavy _or_ Falcon 9. With total reusability of both stages and a construction built toward little to no refurbish or rehab, the cost per launch is nearly completely dictated (order of magnitude) by fuel costs, and project to be ~$2 million. This is an order of magnitude reduction in $/kg over the Falcon 9.

[https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-passenger- cost-...](https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-flight-passenger-cost-elon- musk.html)

[https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3740/1](https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3740/1)

<comment><USER20> The article you pointed to said that is would be $2 million that SpaceX would have to spend on each launch. That would not be the amount for someone to purchase a launch with that rocket. Considering Elon estimated that development would cost $5 billion to $10 billion [1], the cost of launch would likely be much higher based on recouping the intial development and manufacturing costs.

As a side note, I don't really believe the $2 million price tag either based on my own experiences. Mission specific planning/services/verification tend to push prices of launches 10s of millions of dollars above the "sticker prices" that SpaceX puts on their website.

Nothing against SpaceX, I am a fan of everything they have done to decrease launch costs. They have significantly changed the game in terms of lowering launch costs. But it is really hard to take Elon's wild numbers that he gives the press at face value.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/17873332/spacex-elon- musk...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/18/17873332/spacex-elon-musk-yusaku- maezawa-space-tourism-bfr-crew-dragon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there a specific reason we're still doing ground based astronomy? With satellites becoming ever cheaper, sure we at some point should be able to get a significant telescope up there right? Are we waiting for the bigger rockets to accomplish that?

<comment><USER23> It's very expensive to build (especially large) space telescopes (JWST is already costing more than 8 billion at this point), and astronomy is not very well funded.

<comment><USER24> It's fascinating to me that the telescope costs so much more than the launch.

A high-quality 24" or 1-meter university-grade observatory telescope can be had for well under $1 million. If you multiply that by a factor of 100 to mount it on a satellite, you're still at 'just' $0.1 billion and can buy a whole Ariane-5 launch just like the JWST to put it at your desired orbit for $0.15B, for a total of $0.25B (a Falcon Heavy runs about half the cost for a launch). You could launch 30 of those (hopefully improving your factor-of-100 cost increase to something more manageable) for less than what the JWST will cost.

I get that JWST is a 6.5 meter telescope, not a piddly backyard 24" device, but why do we have to launch the best single scope possible?

There are only 7 visible-light space telescopes listed at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes#Visib...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes#Visible_light). I wish there were 70 or 700, with live Internet feeds.

<comment><USER25> JWST is being built to do things that are truly impossible on Earth. It is an infrared telescope that will image things that cannot be seen through Earth's atmosphere.

JWST is not the first IR telescope (Spitzer Space telescope, retiring this month comes to mind, 0.85 m diameter primary), but its size will allow both improved resolution (diffraction limit falls like 1/diameter) and improved collection efficiency (grows like diameter^2). Without constellation-flying and interferometric telescopes (see Keck Observatory), one cannot get either one from an array of small telescopes.

There are a lot of scientists grumpy about JWST because of its huge budget, but as long as JWST works, the view it gives of our universe will be spectacular. At this point, I think everyone _really_ wants JWST to work, as so much has been sacrificed to make it possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-wu I have no experience in astronomy or satellites, but here's my naive idea. The article suggested erasing trails from the images using software. If SpaceX made an open API that detailed the precise location of every satellite at every point in time, could the imaging software use this to know that at this location in the image there is definitively a satellite that can be erased? I'm not sure what kind of sensors these telescopes use, and it probably wouldn't solve the issue of the bright spot messing up the exposure, but at least you could get rid of the trails?

<comment><USER2> SpaceX is publishing the precise location of each satellite continuously. It's really cool actually; most satellite operators don't do this. The raw data is available at Celestrak here: [https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/supplemental/](https://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/supplemental/)

I'm using this data to power my site that shows when you can see Starlink yourself: [https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink- lat...](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-latest)

<comment><USER26> This site is awesome! Have you thought about extending it to check for the position of the ISS? I would assume that information is probably readily available, as well.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Yes, it can track most of the other bright satellites in the sky as well, try the base page link: [https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/)

<comment><USER26> Wow, this is great. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A couple years ago I moved near Lowell Observatory and our city, Flagstaff, has a number of Dark Sky ordinances, which are great. I've seen so many more stars than ever in my life. We just bought our kids a Newtonian reflector telescope.

Most things have trade-offs. Hopefully, the reduced cost of access to space will allow launching of more space-based telescopes, which don't have problems with atmosphere. Any astronomers here that care to explain what only ground- based observatories can do?

<comment><USER28> You can make really really really big mirrors,. Space telescopes mirrors are limited by Fairing size, so barr folding mirrors ala James Webb, there is a fairly hard limit.

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

<comment><USER29> Do you know anything about development work that's been made regarding manufacturing mirrors in space? I'm not thinking assembling them from pieces, I'm thinking more about melting some raw material and using some physical process to create in space something larger.

<comment><USER30> Gravity is an issue for mirror production. But it is far less of an issue than tension and deformation during the months- to years-long cooling of the substrate. The temperature and environment control to do that is challenging on earth, fairly impossible in space. Except with maybe a really really huge spacestation as a thermal sink, which we won't get for the next few hundred years I'd guess...

<comment><USER31> Aren't the terrestrial mirrors so thick due to the need to survive all the tilting under the strong terrestrial gravity ?

I would assume a micro gravity only mirror could be much thinner & thus easier to cool down. Or possible alternative techniques could be used to get the needed reflective surface geometry if it does not need to take gravity and atmosphere into account.

<comment><USER30> Yes, but stability against vibration and thermally induced warping is also important. So you could make the mirror thinner than on the ground, but not really thin.

<comment><USER32> You also need a minimum thickness and stability if you ever want to turn the mirror to point elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If only there was a company that could launch telescopes into space and get above all these satellites and atmospheric interference.

</comment><comment><USER34> If they could put relatively cheap cameras on the "back" of these satellites (without them being destroyed when facing the sun) and publish the data they collect, that might be enough to stem the flow of negative publicity.

Maybe even become a net positive for astronomy? Since the volume and density of the data collected would increase as the fleet grows, the value presumably increases as well, hopefully faster than the problems that they create.

<comment><USER35> That's not really how things work. Even with a billion little cheap cameras, you can't do anything because they still can't see nearly enough as one proper telescope, which they blinded. As someone other in this discussion said, if you can see it with your eye, it is way too bright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Let's think about this rationally...is there a cost-benefit analysis for global internet access vs higher fidelity astronomy? Can astronomers use software and API's to minimize the downsides? Are the upsides for human inter- connectivity as great as claimed?

<comment><USER37> My initial reaction was NO, but then saner minds prevailed and you might have a point - to be able to get unrestricted internet in China or Iran or India (didn't realize how bad censorship was even here. And satellite internet is a criminal offense) would be amazing. We might still not get it though, since it's not just receiving but also transmitting, so surreptitiously using SpaceX internet might not be possible in those places.

If you can't solve that problem, then I don't think it's worth it just so some first world folks can YouTube when camping.

<comment><USER38> Accessing those satellites from China or Iran or North Korea and many other countries (though, why did you mention India?) will probably still be illegal.

But there are many poor countries with rural areas that have almost no Internet access and would greatly profit from it. Starlink seems to be especially useful for people in those areas.

<comment><USER16> _Are_ there that many poor rural areas that could use and pay for internet? It seems necessary that they have both electricity _and_ digital devices, which isn't really something you see in what I would consider _poor_ rural area on a global scale. You might be thinking of a poor _urban_ area instead, the poor rural areas in sub-sahara africa rarely have built up _stoves_ , so requiring electricity is pretty far fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> NRO already does this. "Stealth" satellites are a big area of interest right now.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_(satellite)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_\(satellite\))

<comment><USER40> NRO is willing to spend much more than SpaceX is on these and they're (probably) much larger giving them more volume to deal with the additional heat accumulation that comes with a darker satellite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How much of the leading edge of astronomy is ground based, vs space based? Are they complementary or is space based going to eventually assume any and all roles ground based could?

<comment><USER32> That depends on the wave length regime.

Radio is firmly ground based, because you need huge dishes and potentially many (thousands) of them, at very precisely known distances.

IR is mostly space based (with SOFIA and ALMA the notable exception) because of atmospheric absorption.

Optical is firmly ground based, due to much lower cost for large telescopes. (See [https://doi.org/10.1117/1.2031216](https://doi.org/10.1117/1.2031216) for the factors that affect cost). The notable exceptions are Hubble and satellites monitoring the sun such as Stereo and SDO.

X-Ray is space based again due to atmosphere.

Gamma-ray telescopes are an interesting mix between ground based air cherenkov telescopes (IACTs such as Hess, Magic and Veritas) and water cherenkov detektors such as HAWK and space based Fermi (with relatively poor sensitivity and low upper energy cut off, but very wide field of view).

Neutrino detectors are firmly ground based because the need huge detectors (the cubic kilometer of icecube is basically the lower limit).

So they are very much complementary. And some things will probably never moved to space, even if launch was free.

<comment><USER31> For radio telescopes, some Very Long Baseline Interferometry experiments have a space based component:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long- baseline_interferome...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-long- baseline_interferometry#Space_VLBI)

<comment><USER16> RIP Radio Astron :(

[http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/news/newsl/en/newsl_36_en...](http://www.asc.rssi.ru/radioastron/news/newsl/en/newsl_36_en.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see a cube sat and I want it painted black

No sparkles any more I want them to turn black.

</comment><comment><USER43> I find this interesting considering that when the threat to astronomy from these swarms of thousands of satellites from dozens, maybe eventually hundreds, of different companies was first brought up on HN, there was a massive outcry from the technosphere saying it was a non-issue and saying that satellite internet is far more important than being able to see a natural sky.

At least SpaceX seems to be taking these concerns a little seriously.

Also, wasn't there a sci-fi TV show not that long ago that was popular on HN that had a theme song along the lines of "They can't take the sky from me?" I guess the lyricist was wrong.

<comment><USER32> Yeah it is interesting that people are more willing to sacrifice the night sky then exert political pressure to get the horrible internet situation in the US fixed.

Also interesting how people who could not find the big dipper think that removing the streaks is "just basic image processing" without knowing anything how modern astronomy is done. Never mind that professional astronomers are complaining. Oh and of course you get suggestions like "you can just fill a 30 km bubble with gas in space and use that". As another commenter put it nicely "everything is trivial when it is somebody else problem".

<comment><USER43> A lot of arguments in this HN discussion boil down to "It's not that bad and it doesn't matter because this will earn Saint Elon enough money will fix it!"

That's like saying "Sure, let the giant industrial conglomerate dump toxins in the drinking water. That way it can earn enough money to build a machine to clean the water up and sell it back to us and everyone will be happy!"

Why not just not pollute the water in the first place?

<comment><USER11> > A lot of arguments in this HN discussion boil down to "It's not that bad and > it doesn't matter because this will earn Saint Elon enough money will fix > it!"

This is a forum for engineers (for a broad sense of engineer). We like to talk about technology. We like to speculate about the future and about politics. Starlink is a _cool_ idea, so it's not surprising there's enthusiasm for it.

We should not be put in control of anything, ever. If that weren't already common sense, you'd just need to put half a dozen policy threads from Hacker News in front of a congressional committee to have them warning of the dire effects of engineer influence. Stuff we create should be heavily regulated when it attempts to "disrupt" society, like Uber or a lot of Silicon Valley startups.

Uncharitably, you might say HN has a ton of Dunning-Kruger about anything not directly technology related. I wouldn't put it that way: it's everyone's right to speculate about politics, the future, and values, but most people here don't actually think they should be put in charge of anything.

<comment><USER32> > Uncharitably, you might say HN has a ton of Dunning-Kruger about anything > not directly technology related.

It's even worse. It is people thinking that because they are brilliant in some technical field (JS frameworks, or compilers, or machine learning or whatever) they are also brilliant in every other technical field (be it astronomy, high performance computing or medicine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How did we ever get here? Why is someone allowed to put this many satellites in the sky, and in the name of money and not science.

These lunatic leaders are taking it too far. I will have to put on my superhero coat soon, and create some balance

</comment><comment><USER45> If SpaceX doesn't roll out a constellation like what SpaceX is proposing, someone else will, and that other entity (China, Russia, India, some up-and- coming African nation) will likely not be as receptive to the complaints of astronomers when they think their economic future rests on a quick, cheap Internet roll-out.

<comment><USER46> What's stopping other entities from doing it...especially being able to say "Well SpaceX did it...".

<comment><USER31> Mainly electromagnetic spectrum allocations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why can't they just use modern AI tech to remove the satellites like we do with people? [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18715676/camera-app- bye-a...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18715676/camera-app-bye-ai-ios- erase-people-price)

<comment><USER48> I imagine that the bright objects also make it difficult to see less bright objects so it's not just a matter of removing the brighter objects.

<comment><USER47> I see that, but we'll know exactly where the satellites are in the part of the sky we're watching. It should be possible to remove them automatically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> You have to give credit to SpaceX for tackling this thing head on. If someone else was in question, I don't think they would be as responsive.

We are also coming to a point where we have to acknowledge that sky is changing and astronomy or where we place telescopes should change. Depending on what is being observed.</comment>


YouTuber Sued Over Stanley Kubrick Movies Analysis - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/youtuber-sued-stanley-kubrick-movies-analysis-160606/# <comment><USER2> I have seen his work and he is amazing. I'm almost sure that this is a fair use case and this is just bullying.

Too bad for him, I hope the best.</comment>


Ladder theory - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_theory <comment><USER2> "Pseudoscientific theory?" "Unevaluated claims?" Give me a break.

The formal scientific study of certain subjects is not permitted in our society, so whenever anyone attempts to study them anyway without official sanction, or simply compiles honest observations, they will be smeared like this.

<comment><USER3> And what subjects would those be?

<comment><USER4> Eugenics, heavier-than-air flying machines, and the luminiferous aether.

Edit: I was trying to be snarky, but I just realized that each of those has been thoroughly studied at one point or another. Just goes to prove your point, I guess, heh.</comment></comment></comment>


TensorFlow 1.9 Officially Supports the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tensorflow/tensorflow-1-9-officially-supports-the-raspberry-pi-b91669b0aa0 <comment><USER2> For the eagle-eyed who noticed the tensorflow Arm wheel is not found on PyPI, it's actually on piwheels.org - a project I run which automates building all the Python packages on PyPI. In this case, the wheels were submitted to us from the TF team at Google. Raspbian is configured to use piwheels.org as an additional index so Raspberry Pi users get pre-built platform wheels just by typing "pip install".</comment>


Ask HN: Any good housing sites? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking around for a new place in San Francisco and all of these mainstream search sites just suck. Craigslist is full of spam, Apartments.com is a joke, Zillow is slow as hell.<p>Any Ycombinator companies in this space that have a good product? <comment><USER2> <http://www.housingmaps.com/> is a good mashup

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://sfbay.cribq.com/></comment>


Law school applications collapse: Get ready for schools to start closing - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/12/01/law_school_applications_collapse_get_ready_for_schools_to_start_closing.html?wpsrc=fol_fb <comment><USER2> I run an LSAT prep business. You'd be surprised how determined some undergrads are to go to law school, despite the objectively terrible math.

They'll have a mediocre LSAT score, but say "School X will let me in!". School X is terrible. They have lousy employment prospects, and charge $50,000 a year.

When you add miscellaneous fees and opportunity cost of not working, the law degree costs at least $250,000. And your school might close.

But (some) students still want to do it, despite the stark reality. As best I can tell, they don't see alternative options.

This group is shrinking however, which is why law school enrolments are in free fall. This chart from the LSAC shows a massive drop in LSATs administered.

[http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/lsats- administered](http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/lsats-administered)

2008-2009 was the high water mark: 171,514 LSATs. 2014-15 likely will be less than 100,000.

Which is good. The industry's been in a bubble, and it needs to pop. But that means this is a VERY bad time to be going to law school unless you're extremely careful (and ideally have a guaranteed scholarship to a good school that won't close).

<comment><USER3> > As best I can tell, they don't see alternative options.

Soon this will trickle down to college. In many cases, you pay $250K for that too. In many, many fields, you can learn everything you need to know on the internet, and get the job you want by just hustling (often by impressing only a single person with influence in the field you want).

I'm in biomedical sciences, have a Ph.D. and will be a professor at a very good school soon, but I don't give a crap about somebody's degrees. If this line of thinking is invading my world, then you better believe the rest of the economy is getting there too. (I also only got into MIT because I managed to impress one influential person).

Getting ahead in life by going to college is a dying notion.

<comment><USER4> > Getting ahead in life by going to college is a dying notion

People with college degrees earn significantly more over their lifetimes. Also, they usually understand the world and critical thinking much better, have better communication skills, etc. These things are valuable in themselves and valuable for their roles as citizens, parents, community members, etc.

To read that claim from someone with a Ph.D., a degree from MIT, and will soon be on the faculty of "a very good school" is a bit rich. It reminds me of wealthy people who says money doesn't matter to them.

HN is a unique environment of generally highly-educated, high-achieving people. Most of the world cannot program computers; many cannot operate them. It would be interesting to hear from members of the large majority who lack college degrees.

<comment><USER5> People with college degrees, in the past, earned significantly more over their lifetimes than those without. But this may or may not continue, particularly for certain degrees where the person may have been better off learning marketable skill and applying it early.

I have a college degree and have never really used it. The jobs I have landed, the things I have done, none of them in any way shape or form are attributable to that degree. And, I graduated college nearly 20 years ago. College was a good place to drink beer and get laid, but really, I think I would have been better off going straight to work. The sad part is, I knew it at the time but my parents were insistant that without a degree I'd be mopping floors for a living. So I listened to them when I should have trusted my gut instincts. I'd trade the degree back in a heartbeat for tuition and interest and book costs alone...to say nothing of the 4 years (ok.. almost 5, I was having a good time but who is counting?) of opportunity cost.

Have to agree with OP. I believe college to be generally overpriced and over rated. Particularly in certain disciplines. I'm about as sad to see law schools going out of business as I would be to see mosquito breeding pools being drained. Maybe some of the potential attendees can do something socially useful with their lives now. (yes, I know...we need lawyers. we probably need mosquitos too. just not so many of them.)

<comment><USER4> You can make the subjective assertion that college was worthless to you personally, and who can challenge it? But a subjective assertion by one person is not data nor is it representative of any population (I learned that in college).

Also, education has many benefits beyond earning money. It's seems absurdly narrow-minded to evaluate college solely by the marginal income gain. Life is so much more and education benefits much of it. I could not write nearly as well, use mathematics, understand science, understand art, understand humanity, be as creative, etc. etc. without the years I spent studying those things.

I can't imagine doing what I do with my high school education. Can someone waste their time in college? Of course and I'm sorry for those that did, but don't impose it on everyone else. I remember most of my peers' intellectual curiosity and how much they learned. Someone could own a computer or raise kids and gain nothing from those things either, but that doesn't devalue my computer or family, or argue that they don't provide great benefits to humanity.

<comment><USER6> > Life is so much more and education benefits much of it. I could not write > nearly as well, use mathematics, understand science, understand art, > understand humanity, be as creative, etc. etc. without the years I spent > studying those things.

You could study and understand all of those without going to college, given the right resources (like books and time). In my opinion, it is a person's intelligence and curiosity that matter, not four years in an institution or a degree (I say this from a the inside of the educational system, currently pursuing a PhD myself).

<comment><USER7> However, what's missing is access to a teacher who can guide you through the subject material, answer questions, show you the pitfalls, extrapolate on topics and give you a thorough understanding of what you are studying. A good teacher is an invaluable resource that you will not receive through independent study alone.

<comment><USER4> > what's missing is access to a teacher

And peers, and resources such as organization (clubs, teams, classes, etc.); labs, tools and machines, including IT; and the very many information resources that are not yet online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two comments: an op-ed piece I saw in the _Wall Street Journal_ the other day[1] made the point that the Department of Education's new regulations on for-profit institutions of higher education define levels of risk of student debt that would also give many "nonprofit" higher education institutions bad ratings. "We know this is true because if you applied the regulation to a law degree from George Washington University, a bachelor's degree in hospitality administration from Stephen F. Austin State University or a bachelor's in social work from University of Texas, the programs would all fail to meet the standard." Seeing the George Washington University Law School mentioned in that context made me go ouch, as that is not a completely slouchy law school, and I actually stayed there for a summer for one of my law school internships (I attended a state university law school) and later attended a student conference there. Even reasonably decent law schools are not a good financial risk these days for many students.

My other comment is that the article kindly submitted here, which I've already submitted to my Facebook friends, makes the interesting point that dental school enrollments have fallen sharply since more and more public water supplies in the United States have fluoridation. People today have much healthier teeth than they had when I was growing up. Dentists, by this view, are true professionals, as they are even willing to advocate public health measures that help work dentists out of a job. I admire that.

[1] "Making 'Profit' a Dirty Word in Higher Education" By Steve Gunderson Nov. 12, 2014

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/steve-gunderson-making- profit...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/steve-gunderson-making-profit-a- dirty-word-in-higher-education-1415837070)

<comment><USER9> "Profit" should be a dirty word in higher education. Primary and secondary too.

<comment><USER10> Why?

<comment><USER11> Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out well- prepared grads" to "making a quick buck". If the profit motive is present, making a slow buck will always lose to making a quick buck as soon as people who only wear management hats show up.

<comment><USER12> > Because then the goal changes from "raising your ranking by churning out > well-prepared grads" to "making a quick buck"

1\. Why is it about making a _quick_ buck? Why can't it be a long term investment?

2\. Why can't an institution have both these goals at the same time (make money, churn out well-prepared grads)? They aren't mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER13> Because thats not how the world operates. The financial system is structured such that it rewards year-over-year profits and punishes anything less. A for- profit institution is going to be beholden to investors. Incentives are a strong predictor of outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I attended law school in NY starting in 2007. By the time I was looking for an internship at the end of my first year, the economy collapsed. As a result, it felt like the whole premise of law school (at least for most students), namely that you could get decent grades and would have a high paying job at some firm upon graduation, was completely shattered. This turned out to be completely true for the majority of people who attended at that time. Everyone was trying to find internships at the end of their first year, but there just weren't any to go around and people who had received offers in their third year were seeing them slip away.

I remember thinking at the time that given the economy and the massive layoffs that were occurring that applications to my school would be going down, but what I saw was quite the contrary. Every semester, droves of new students packed the hallways. People seemed to be using the economic downturn and poor job market as an opportunity to "invest in the future" and go back to school. But I just couldn't understand how tuitions could stay propped up and I felt there had to be some correlation between the salaries/availability of jobs post law school and the high tuitions. Again, to my shock these facts just didn't seem to matter and it seemed to me that the whole law school thing was just a big ponzi scheme waiting to collapse.

I know this is all anecdotal and my own experience, but maybe I was right and the big correction has finally come.

<comment><USER2> There was only a temporary surge after the crisis. People flooded into school thinking "school is a safe place to hide during a recession". This led to large crunches every subsequent year.

Word has been spreading for the past four years. Applications have been down each year. We're hearing more now because it's finally reached a crunch point for schools. They've been trying to hold off closing by getting enough students and forcing other schools to close.

It's musical chairs, and the music is now stopping.

<comment><USER15> >People flooded into school thinking "school is a safe place to hide during a recession". This led to large crunches every subsequent year.

Another data point is NYC Business Schools. Lots of people in finance applied to, say, Columbia business school during the crisis, and thus around 2012 there was a huge plummet in applications there as the industry (a) started to recover a bit, and (b) it became clear that the rewards from a career on Wall Street would be much smaller than in previous decades.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The law school naysayers paint with too broad a brush. Going to a top 15 or so school is still a golden ticket. I got a six figure job virtually handed to me for showing up and being good at school. Solidly 90% of my classmates did too.

There are also massive opportunities for anyone with a bar card to earn a substantial living representing consumers, employees and the little guy in general (due to absurdly favorable fee-shifting rules) even if you can't get a job with a big firm. People who can't find these opportunities aren't looking very hard.

<comment><USER17> " I got a six figure job virtually handed to me for showing up and being good at school. Solidly 90% of my classmates did too."

These jobs won't last. The legal market as a whole is contracting. Lots of stuff currently given to new associates, like doc review, is seriously disappearing, etc.

I went to a top 15 law school, and when I went (2005), there were plenty of 3rd year students who had no jobs. Just an administration willing to BS about it.

"People who can't find these opportunities aren't looking very hard."

This is also just BS. The idea that there are "enough jobs to go around" is ridiculously naive. Heck, you can find people with 10+ years of experience having to try to find legal work on craigslist en masse.

There are areas of law that have contracted significantly and what appears to be permanently.

<comment><USER18> The big distinction here is "Top 15 Law School". Almost any law school that isn't up there is basically a scam. As the law market contracts, I'd imagine that the employment prospects of top-15 schools will shielded the longest - law firms that previously couldn't hire great lawyers will realize they can hire better new lawyers once it's harder for those lawyers to get a job.

My brother is at NYU Law and has a starting job next year with a starting salary around 170k. From my understanding, kids at NYU are still not struggling (at all) to get decent jobs after law school.

<comment><USER19> And just to follow up, I'm VERY surprised that your brother hasn't seen anyone struggling. NYU Law's shtick is being the most prestigious public interest feeder, where graduates go on to impact work in underserved communities.

Ever since 2008, public interest and government employment has all but vanished. I don't think I've heard of ANYONE getting a permanent position in PI since the recession, with the exception of temporary fellowships or contract positions. I'm sure there are plenty of NYU grads who go on to Biglaw (like your brother), but it's not something the school is notable for.

If there isn't anyone obviously struggling at NYU, that's wonderful news for the public interest community... but it's also completely contrary to what I've heard for the past six years.

<comment><USER20> NYU's schtick isn't exclusive of feeding to BigLaw, clerkships, or highly selective government positions like Justice. Law School Numbers reports type of employment for 2013 with 64% law firms and 15% public interest. That is a lot of public interest, but it is still (traditionally) the highest-ranked school in the nation's largest market for private legal services. Michigan's numbers, to give another data point in the 14, are 56%/13% for the same period.

People are still hired for public interest work out of law school. My impression is that the number, overall, is very low, and that it always has been.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Simply googling "Should I go to law school?" yields a ridiculous amount of horror stories about people who are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with a JD and working retail and/or making less than $20/hour. I would really like to see a ROI for every law school in the nation. I would suspect that most below the top 30 or so have a negative ROI.

Slate is blocked on my work internet for whatever reason.

<comment><USER22> The article reports that some schools are having to give large tuition discounts to attract a decent class, and the writer predicts closures similar to dental schools in the 80s. The most interesting tidbit was that "the biggest application declines have occurred among students who scored in the middle-to-high range on the LSAT." Confirms my general feeling about people who borrow heavily and go despite the overwhelming evidence that it's a bad idea outside of the top schools.

<comment><USER23> Dental schools are back on the upswing, at least over the last decade (and for the foreseeable future).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This makes me feel marginally better about dropping out from law school (correspondence version - the bottom of the barrel) after attending a large conference and realizing just how awful the odds were. It didn't cost me too much financially but I still feel depressed about it.

<comment><USER25> It's a sunk cost, ignore it.

<comment><USER24> It's not the expense I regret, but not being in the legal academic environment. I really _like_ law and I think I have a good grasp of it, but growing up abroad and not having an undergraduate degree means >95% of law schools are closed to me, to say nothing of the expense of a fulltime program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could the Idaho State Supreme Court be doing Concordia University third-year law students a favor by not allowing them to take the bar exam? "Maybe it's better if you pick another profession", is that the message?

(From [http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202677723753/Law- Schoo...](http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202677723753/Law-Schools-3Ls- Ineligible-To-Take-July-Bar-Exam?slreturn=20141102223803) — lede "The inaugural class of students at the Concordia University School of Law likely won't be able to sit for the July 2015 bar exam because the new school has not yet been accredited by the American Bar Association.")

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been reading about this for a while. In the eighties at least, among people I knew, law school seemed to be a pretty natural progression for those with liberal arts degrees looking for a relatively structured, well-paid, and fairly stable occupation. As a JD has become a far less reliable meal ticket (while also becoming a more expensive one), I can't say I'm surprised that the same demographic are no longer jumping into law school as the path of least resistance.

</comment><comment><USER28> I suspect this is not going to be isolated to Law School. The math is that tuitions have risen so far for so long that at 'premier' schools you don't get nearly the value you should.

That said, it opens up the opportunity for new schools with a different model in mind. And one thing we've seen in Tech has been that when the going gets desperate, it also gets creative. I don't think the answer is going to be MOOCs but I also don't think the ivory tower model of old will survive. Something in the middle, perhaps 2 years of general education requirements online and 2 years of training in your major on campus. Half the cost and the education is just as useful.

Time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER25> The same will be said for Pharmacy in the near future.

<comment><USER19> When your position could have been automated thirty years ago by vending machines... yeah, pharmacists are in trouble.

Some chains are moving to a call-in model, where your medicine is provided through cheap labor (and eventually machines) -- then if you have any questions, which is the ostensible purpose of a pharmacist, you can Skype with a pharmacist at a call center.

Such a model is probably fairly miserable for the pharmacist, but it seems like the obvious solution for automating the work while still complying with (what I can only assume was intended as) protectionist regulation.

<comment><USER29> You're conflating pharmacy technicians with pharmacists. There are soft skills involved; it's remarkably hard to automate the person who has to know the weird interactions with drugs that different physicians prescribe--and how they interact with the over-the-counter, off-label, or just plain illegal stuff that their customers are taking.

Pharmacists keep people alive when their physicians try (with the best of intentions, mind) to kill them.

<comment><USER19> That doesn't sound right to me. Humans are better than machines at the memorization and computation of a database that lists every drug in existence and the consequences of all possible combinations thereof?

Pharmacists may be able to give a soft personal touch when interacting with patients, but the same could be said about travel agents, retail clerks, or taxi drivers. Or lawyers, for that matter. Still, I can't see why six-figure salary pharmacists are essential to vend pills.

<comment><USER30> In the US; legal requirements to have a pharmacists dispense controlled substances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Makes me smile. Keep the small wins against the bullshit jobs coming. A more productive society, may our future be! Hopefully next up to bat is hedge fund jobs and hedge funds themselves.

</comment><comment><USER32> The referenced nytimes article ([http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/law- school-becomes-bu...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/law-school- becomes-buyers-market-as-competition-for-best-students-increases/)) is more informative. (Also the submission title is a bit link-baity and doesn't even match the Slate headline).

Edit: ahh the submission matches the title tag but not the in-body headline. My mistake.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is a good thing. I would make a rough estimate that 5-8% of the programmers that I know have their law degree. Most didn't even bother taking the bar because it didn't make sense. The "non-partner" track for attorneys is kind of a non-starter for anyone who wants to make more than minimum wage when you factor in the 70 hour work weeks.

<comment><USER34> 0% of the programmers I know have one. Where do you live?

<comment><USER35> Total guess and not the original poster but I'm guessing NY

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Coding bootcamps are full to brim with newly minted JDs.

<comment><USER37> Indeed--people with rigorous analytical skills, weak math backgrounds, and limited job prospects seem the ideal market for code camps.

<comment><USER38> And as Lessig is fond of pointing out, code _is_ law.

<comment><USER39> I mean, historically they're synonyms. Code of Hammurabi and such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> So legal code gets replaced by program code.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is really good news for society. Law is important but it is not productive. Also, hopefully this means fewer divorce attorneys.

<comment><USER42> > Also, hopefully this means fewer divorce attorneys.

Because divorce is bad? Divorce can be a good thing, good marriages don't usually end in divorce, more than likely the bad marriages do. So then maybe because you think people going through a divorce shouldn't have good legal representation? What is your argument?

<comment><USER43> Yes, most people shouldn't. Unless you've never seen two people piss away tens of thousands of dollars having legal tantrums, fully supported by their lawyers.

Most people, particularly in CA, a community property state, should be able to get divorced for $500 or so. Of course, that requires that they be adult, and that no lawyers get paid (or encourage their clients to fight, all while paying them $x00/hour).

<comment><USER42> How nice it must be to know what's best for people you know nothing about. I'm sure they love it when complete strangers with judgmental attitudes feel the need to interfere with their private lives.

<comment><USER43> Community property means person1 and person2 are going to get 1/2 of the assets earned during the marriage. You can get there cheaply or expensively. Lawyers get paid when you get there expensively -- and thus have an obvious incentive to inflame a negotiation between two aggrieved parties. I'm not sure why that makes me judgmental about their private lives.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's new website speed badge - <AUTHOR> https://www.granulate.io/google-speed-badging?id=36 <comment><USER2> >Google is citing its investment in the quality of user experience as the main driver of this initiative (...)

This move is such an obvious attempt to push businesses/users to their other properties - such as Cloud Platform or AMP - it's not even funny.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a good move by google.

Link to their original announcement: [https://blog.chromium.org/2019/11/moving-towards-faster- web....](https://blog.chromium.org/2019/11/moving-towards-faster-web.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Slow unless you're using our AMP".</comment>


Ask HN: Using Cognito with Stripe subscription - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm new to AWS + Stripe and trying to figure out how I'm going to make this work for the monthly subscription system with using AWS Cognito and Stripe on a serverless web app.
I set up Cognito User Pools for my app to have users sign up. My thoughts on the monthly subscription system.
1. Create User Pools groups ( paid_member and member ) 2. Assign user to member User Pools group on signup 3. Move user to paid_member group when user enter credit card information 4. Implement Strip subscription to paid_member Cognito User Pools 5. Cancel subscription, move the user back to member User Pools group
Does it make sense and will actually work? I would love to hear other solutions on this too. <comment><USER2> Sounds like it will work. Keep it simple.

User signs up for your website, becomes a member.

User likes your app and pays a monthly subscription: they click on button, pay with their credit card, and you change them to a paid user.

User unsubscribes, you move them back.

I'm currently using Stripe and PHP.

So here are some technicalities that I came across when building my saas:

Credit cards have an expiration date so you need to either capture this and store it into the database and do a check for it.

Upon credit card expiration -- like 5 days before, email the user, or pop up a form alerting the user their credit card is about to expire.

You should also be checking the actual card to make sure it is valid.

You will probably need to build an area for the user to have the ability to update their credit card.

There are two ways you can use Stripe and I spoke with a Stripe representative to confirm both were okay.

1) Stripe Webhooks will tell you what is going on with a user.

Upon receiving these webhooks, you will need make your program do something.

[https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks](https://stripe.com/docs/webhooks)

[https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/stripe-webhook- event...](https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com/stripe-webhook-event- cheatsheet)

Those 2 links will pretty much give you everything you need.

2) Store all your data in a database and use that information instead of relying completely on Stripe.

Before I knew about web hooks.. I actually use(d) #2. And I'm still using it for my web apps.

I use webhooks to capture the moment the third attempt of a credit card charge fails just so I know this user is not actively engaged anymore.

Other than that, I offer a set amount of X a month and I set a monthly renew date.

When the user subscribes, this becomes their new renew date. I grab this info:

$period_end = $subscription->current_period_end;

I add a day to the period end since the actual renew day is 12:00:00 AM the next day.

So on the day of their renew day, you need to check for that credit card expiration and to see if they are still active (Stripe will do all the work of making sure it is an active valid credit card and let you know if the user status is "active" or not. If the checks fail, you have it switch the user back to an unpaid account and you should probably have it send an email that their account has been reverted back to free "due to issues".

Implementing these checks and balances will protect you and save you a lot of time and work, especially from fraud.

IF you choose #2 route, Stripe support will do very minimal in helping you with anything that goes wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the reply. This will help me a lot to work on Stripe!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's your "setup?" - <AUTHOR>

Everyone has different needs out of their computers.  Recently, my old Ubuntu laptop's hard drive died, and I've been doing 100% of my gaming, developing and Photoshopping on the shiny Windows XP desktop that I built a little over a year ago.  (I SSH into my Linux VPSes for development, using Windows as nothing more than a dumb terminal into my screen sessions.)  For code & contact emergencies on the go, I've been using my new smartphone for IM and SSH.
Unfortunately, this leaves me without a clean, organized, subversion-managed home directory, and without a crontab to schedule backups to an external or remote hard drive.  I saw the laptop's HD death coming, so I had everything backed up; if I lost the HD in my Windows box, I'd be royally hosed.  I'm also wondering if I really need a laptop at all.  As I consider the evolution of my computer ecosystem, I would love to hear how everyone else does it.  What's your computer/server "setup?"  What are your needs? <comment><USER2> My only computer's the laptop, a 17" Macbook Pro. It's probably a bit too big—next computer I get I'll drop down to 15"—but it's not a computer I anticipate getting rid of any time soon. It's a bit grungy, but it works beautifully.

OS X for the main operating system. Nothing on the menubar but battery life, Dropbox, FuzzyClock, and Alarm Clock.app. Dock's hidden by default and has nothing on it but the programs I open myself. No stacks.

I constantly run SterCleanDesk, which moves anything I put on the desktop to a storage folder, Google Quick Search Box, which is my launcher, and Fresh, which has two compartments, one for recently modified applications and one for storage. In storage I also keep my most-used folders, so when I need to navigate I just open up Fresh. I use the basic Apple programs for most things (iTunes, Safari, TextEdit, Mail), iWork for making pretty documents, Scrivener for screenplays, Coda for programming, Transmission for torrents, Skype for chatting, and iSquint and Max for file conversion.)

It's a pretty dream set-up. It stays completely out of my way and it does everything I want with minimal interference. I've tried adding to-do lists to my routine—I have a hard-on for Things—but I find that I really don't have a reason to prod myself into productivity. Now I go by my own routine and it works perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having recently got this job I have a Mac Mini with 4Gb and a 24 inch monitor. Editing with Textmate and the rest is just the usual command line tools (I'm a rails developer)

The machine is probably overpowered CPU wise (2Ghz, Intel Core 2 Duo) but the ram is a godsend when running the database and the applications together. I could probably work from a laptop but I would be unhappy if I lost the monitors.

The guy working with me has a Mac laptop with the same monitor setup.

</comment><comment><USER4> At home I have a 15" MacBook Pro.

At work I have a Dell Precision workstation. Core2Quad, 8GB ram, 2x500GB RAID 1, Windows 7. I spend the majority of my time in Eclipse, but I also have VMWare Workstation running 32- and 64-bit Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER5> I do everything from a single core 4GB Win7 laptop and a 23" monitor. All my development work takes places by vim'ing on the production server running multiple webservers (one for dev and the other for live/staging).</comment>


ReMarkdown — Display HTML as Markdown text - <AUTHOR> http://covertprestige.info/css/remarkdown/

<comment><USER2> Related: <http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/html2text/>

<comment><USER3> Way before 2002: lynx -dump example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very, very cool! I want to use this for my blog... It does has limitations though.

As far as I can tell, copy-pasting the 'generated' markdown results in plain text.

And I guess it's also to much to expect setContentEditable to do something useful.

I'm still looking for my visual MD editor...

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, what would a "visual MD editor" look like to you, and how would it be different from a plain text field or a split screen like <http://attacklab.net/showdown/> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting licensing terms!

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone want to tackle a bookmarklet version to inject ReMarkdown into any page? Even better, a Chrome extension that Mardownifies thebwhole Internet for you...

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool project. Why not call it 'UnMarkdown' or 'Markdownr'?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there anything like this for Textile?</comment>


DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment - <AUTHOR> https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-release-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment/ <comment><USER3> This is pretty interesting.

DeepMind's last triumph (beating the best human Go players with AlphaGo) is impressive, but Go is a great fit for neural networks as they stand today; it's stateless, so you can fully evaluate your position based on the state of the board at a given turn.

That's not a good fit for most real-world problems, where you have to remember something that happened in the past. E.g. the 'fog of war' in a strategy game.

This is a big open problem in AI research right now. I saw a post around the time of AlphaGo challenging DeepMind to tackle StarCraft next, so it is very cool that they have gone in this direction.

When Google's AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it's time to be very afraid.

<comment><USER4> > When Google's AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it's time to be very afraid.

I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage.

Strategy is more difficult for an AI, but not the only deciding factor in StarCraft.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on.

Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.

<comment><USER6> > Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with > micro, which is not remotely interesting.

If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?

<comment><USER7> There's almost certainly a bunch of timing-based micro with animations/game ticks/etc that a machine would find. For example, if a machine does a sequence of actions with sub-millisecond precision they can pop a unit into range, fire, and then pop back out again without being fired upon over and over.

A lot of units would be rendered useless because it's balanced for humans. That means the units they counter would be a lot stronger. I'm afraid it would probably just be a race to get the fastest rush.

<comment><USER8> What you're describing is called "kiting", and is already being done by regular players (not to mention the pros). It is only possible for some combinations of units, for example Marines with stimpack vs regular zerglings ("slowlings"), or Viking vs Void Ray because one unit needs to be fast enough to be able to shoot + move out of range before being shot.

Here's the type of micro pro players can do: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE±](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrAlhk98WxE±)

They do say that they will limit the number of actions taken by the AI to focus on building a smart and strategic AI instead of learning gimmicky micro moves, but if one thing is sure, it's that even the best micro cannot win a StarCraft game if the macro is not on point, and bad choices are made (good luck micro-ing siege tanks against a swarm host!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences.

Im curious if a startup can be built from this.

<comment><USER10> Is it harder to make an AI that is mediocre at playing the game vs one that is good? That is the main issue with making good AIs for games now. We want AIs (if you can call them that) that play kinda like humans but worse then the player as the player wants to win.

Making an AI for game isn't about making a good AI. It is about making an AI that loses in a convincing manner. This is especially try for games like Starcraft (RTS and strategy games in general. For FPS games it really isn't so important as you can just increase or decrease the accuracy and hp of the enemies)

<comment><USER11> I think it's really important to realize is that a game AI isn't really there to try to win, or maybe even to "convincingly" beat you the same way a human is. Perhaps you could train an AI to make the game more "fun", but that's pretty hard to measure and people are so different. It's a really hard optimization process.

One commonality, it seems, is that players want to get better at the game. Perhaps, an AI that TEACHES the user to improve their play, and reduce errors would be an easier problem. So far we mostly do this using heuristics of gradually increasing difficulty, but it should really depend on what the player is weakest at... and what the user can improve at fastest! That is something nicely measurable, which you might use to train an AI.

Then, if/when people play against other human players they are as strong as they can be... often an FPS goal.

<comment><USER12> > So far we mostly do this using heuristics of gradually increasing > difficulty, but it should really depend on what the player is weakest at.

That's how MOOCs should function, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very interesting stuff.

Allowing researchers to build AIs that operate on either game state or visual data is a great step, IMO. Being able to limit actions-per-minute is also very wise. The excellent BWAPI library for Starcraft Broodwar that is referenced ([https://github.com/bwapi/bwapi](https://github.com/bwapi/bwapi)) provides game state - and was presumably used by Facebook to do their research earlier this year ([http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02993](http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02993)). For mine, the significant new challenges here not present in Go are the partial observability of the game and the limited time window in which decisions need to be made. Even at 24 frames per second, the AI would only have 40 milliseconds to decide what to do in response to that frame. This is more relevant to online learning architectures.

The open questions here are how freely this will be available - and in what form. Will I need to buy a special version of the game? Clearly there will be some protection or AI detection - to ensure that competitive human play is not ruined either by human-level bots, if they can truly be developed, or by sub- par bots. Starcraft 2 (presumably the latest expansion, Legacy of the Void, will be used here) does not run on Linux, whereas most GPU-based deep learning toolkits are, so having a bridge between the game and AI server may be necessary for some researchers.

Besides being great for AI researchers, this is probably good for Blizzard too, since it will bring more interest to the Starcraft series.

2017 can't come soon enough.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if this would have ever been built or released if bwapi wasn't a thing.

<comment><USER15> BWAPI asked in the past, I think, and got pointed to the game's EULA, which forbids it. It may be a different thing if Google asks. Especially with a somewhat more remarkable result (AlphaGo) than "just" a bunch of student AI experiments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If DeepMind is planning on building an AI that can beat the best human SCII player, they have their work cut out for them.

I'm not sure how familiar people are with StarCraft II, but at the highest levels of the game, where player have mastered the mechanics, it's a mind game fueled by deceit, sophisticated and malleable planning, detecting subtle patterns (having a good gut feeling on what's going on) and on the pro scene knowledge of your opponent's style.

<comment><USER17> > I'm not sure how familiar people are with StarCraft II, but at the highest > levels of the game, where player have mastered the mechanics, it's a mind > game fueled by deceit, sophisticated and malleable planning, detecting > subtle patterns (having a good gut feeling on what's going on) and on the > pro scene knowledge of your opponent's style.

I wouldn't be surprised if an AI comes along that shows this human perception of what it takes to win isn't required at all. I'm sure similar things were said about Go and Chess.

<comment><USER18> Similar things weren't really said about Go or Chess. Both are perfect information games so, by definition, they can't involve deceit There's no need to try to detect subtle patterns in your opponents behavior because you have the entire game in front of you. That's not to say it's impossible but they do very much have their work cut out for them. It's an entirely different type of game that is much more difficult than Go and Chess.

<comment><USER17> > Similar things weren't really said about Go or Chess. Both are perfect > information games so, by definition, they can't involve deceit

I took deceit to mean tricking your opponent into thinking you were doing one thing when you were actually going to do another. You can't do that in Go or Chess?

What I generally meant was maybe there's some really boring numerical number crunching or some simple mechanical algorithm that solves games like StarCraft but when humans talk about it, they talk about mind games, deceit, intimidation etc. when maybe these things are irrelevant.

<comment><USER19> >I took deceit to mean tricking your opponent into thinking you were doing one thing when you were actually going to do another. You can't do that in Go or Chess?

Well you can technically but it's horrible. No above amateur player tries to play 'trick moves'. Skilled players try to find the objectively best moves in the given position because tricks are just way to easily spotted.

The "betcha didn't see that coming!" thing is only something they do in dramatised films. Stracraft and other RTS games on the other hand abuse lack of information quite heavily. 'Cheese strategies' or unorthodox openings are very frequently used at the highest level.

<comment><USER20> Caveat for picking openings to get out of your opponent's book

Karpov playing black, throws opponent off with 1 ..a6 [http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157](http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157)

Also, good players seek to not lose lost games [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindle_(chess)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindle_\(chess\))

<comment><USER19> Yes, people play silly moves once in two decades, but again, in 99.9% of games nobody swindles or plays a6. In starcraft a good third of pro games or something involves cheesy openings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd love to see a e-sport league where the teams are AI human hybrids (Centaur teams). We know that AI human hybrid teams are great at chess [1], and I'd love to see rts games played by 'Centaur' teams. In the same way the innovations made in F1 often trickle down to consumer cars, can you imagine the advances that could be made in human-machine interactions in the crucible of a real-time Centaur gaming league?

[1] [http://bloomreach.com/2014/12/centaur-chess-brings-best- huma...](http://bloomreach.com/2014/12/centaur-chess-brings-best-humans- machines/)

<comment><USER22> If they allowed you to script micro unit behavior in some way that'd be first step in a hybrid game.

<comment><USER23> It would also be cool if it was an upgrade you unlock. So, instead of just stat upgrades, you could also purchase AI upgrades.

<comment><USER22> I'd rather that the coding was something that was left to the player or to the third party market. Right now programming games are kind of boring, more like a way of prettying up homework than anything else. A really fun game where programming could give you a competitive edge would be something to see.

The closest thing I can think of is add-ons for MMOs, but there the game developers specifically try to prevent add-ons that are too performance enhancing instead of making the coding an integral part of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rkuykendall-com This would be so much more fun with a turn-based game where speed isn't a variable, like Civilization. I'd love to play against several AIs that were better than me because of code, not because they get a bunch of extra in-game bonuses. With a nice AI API, you could have online competitions where AIs battled every month.

</comment><comment><USER24> This paper is a few years old, but it gives a good overview of the problems faced when building an AI for starcraft and the methods used.

Ontanón, Santiago, et al. "A survey of real-time strategy game ai research and competition in starcraft." IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in games 5.4 (2013): 293-311.

[http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/pdf/starcraft_survey.p...](http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~cdavid/pdf/starcraft_survey.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.

<comment><USER26> Back when I played SC2, you really didn't need a high APM to succeed, unlike SC1. SC2 offered some helpful mechanics that SC1 did not, such as the ability to select infinite units at once, or give commands to multiple structures at one. I think Sheth, a high level Zerg player, was famous for having under 100 APM.

<comment><USER27> I'll consider APM "not high" when it gets down to 12. Two actions per second is comfortably "high".

<comment><USER28> That may be an ok definition for you, but it most certainly isn't for SC2. I wasn't anywhere near the pro level and I would peak at 300 apm and would spend most of the game around 200. 12 APM is borderline not playing.

<comment><USER27> Consider it a statement about what I'm looking for in a game. I'm not really interested in competing over who can work their mouse button harder, or in driving myself to excel in giving myself repetitive motion injuries. Those are things that take away from starcraft; they don't enhance it.

<comment><USER8> I would strongly encourage you to go against your preconceived idea of what StarCraft is (a game where people compete on who's the fastest to bash their keys) and see a professional game and all the strategy it entails, such as in the semi-finals and grand final that will be on today. Pro players do have valid reasons for having such a high APM (even if a portion of it, maybe 30%, is just "spamming" to keep theirselves active and ready), but you can be an excellent player with rather low APM (~120 maybe?). Why would you need to do 2 action per second? A lot of it is simply building units periodically (e.g pressing 1 then "S" every 10 seconds) but then APM really gets high when there is a battle and you need to give actions to multiple sets of units to get a good engagement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be cool to see a project like this for an open source game, such as OpenTransportTycoonDeluxe ([http://www.openttd.org/](http://www.openttd.org/)). The AI developed by interacting with the OpenTTD economy might even prove useful for urban planning of real geographic regions.

</comment><comment><USER30> Training data? After all, AlphaGo trained on a database of over 30M expert human moves. I suspect one championship round from Team EnVy is worth billions of iterations of random exploration ;)

Kudos to both Blizzard and DeepMind. Anticipating a lot of fun with this. StarCraft 2 could indeed become the AI pedagogy standard.

</comment><comment><USER31> That's so cool! I wish they could start doing AI for team based competitive games like League of Legends where meta-play and team decision making is important. Is that too complicated to tackle yet?

<comment><USER32> Are you imagining a single AI playing all 5 heroes on a team, or 5 independent AIs each playing a single hero with limited communication between them, or a single AI controlling a single hero on a team with 4 humans? I would say the first scenario (1 AI controlling entire team) is roughly equivalent to the the RTS case. It's just fewer units with more abilities, and character progression instead of base building. The other two cases are probably a lot more complicated.

<comment><USER31> Either one could work. If the single AI that controls 5 heroes is easier to program, let's imagine that. I have the feeling that it's more complicated than a 1vs1 RTS game, but I don't know why...

<comment><USER33> Controlling five units is a lot easier than playing an RTS. In an RTS you don't just control five units, you control potentially hundreds of units, and you have base-building and an economy to manage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> By the ways, if anyone's interested, there was a deluge of deep learning papers today and one of them basically used deep learning to make deep learning models and it did better than humans.

<comment><USER35> Source?

<comment><USER34> "Neural architecture search with reinforcement learning"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> That's great. AIs on SC1 relied on many hacks. Initially I thought that DeepMind was going to create a bot for the original SC.

I hope some of the advances in SC2 AI can be integrated into the in-game AI. e.g: a trained neural network that plays better than the "hard" AI, but can run on a consumer box and not on a massive cluster.

</comment><comment><USER37> I would love to keep a 24/7 stream open where the AI is continuously playing against the game's own bots in order to improve its playstyle.

<comment><USER38> Typically they train the AI against itself. That gives it a continuous skill gradient. Otherwise it would lose all of the games without learning anything. Since there are no successes to learn from. Or it would win all the games after it figures out how to exploit the built-in bot. With strategies that probably won't apply to humans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This will be good for games moving forward due to the meta changing for players as the AI adapts to their tactics and vice versa. Lessons learned from this can then be applied to other areas. And as an added bonus it creates more interest in AI research.

</comment><comment><USER40> I applaud the idea, but I'm worried about how open the results of the research will be in the end.

I think the worst possible outcome for society would be if we ended up with capable AI but with the algorithms only accessible for a handful "AI-as-a- service" companies.

The second concern is understandability of the algorithms: from what I've read, it's already hard to deduce "why" an ANN in a traditional problem behaved like it did. An AI that is capable of coping with dynamic, unpredictable situations like an SC game (with only pixels as input) is impressive but it seems less useful to me if it's not understood _how_ that is done.

<comment><USER8> DeepMind always published papers about their research (the AlphaGo paper goes into a lot of details on how everything works). Not sure why you're doubting the openness of this initiative when they are pushing an open API for everybody to do research on, not just DeepMind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > We're particularly pleased that the environment we've worked with Blizzard > to construct will be open and available to all researchers next year.

This is awesome. I've only ever reached the Platinum league in Starcraft II (1v1), but I'd almost feel more driven to create bots to (hopefully) surpass that skill level, than actually playing the game.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can a simulation of a complete Starcraft game be done quickly and assuming it can't doesn't that present problems to training an AI? For example, I'm guessing complete games of Go are order of magnitudes faster to simulate which makes it more practical to do things like getting AlphaGo to play against itself to train.

<comment><USER42> No, the fastest they can do right now is 8x. And yes, that will become a substantial bottleneck for AI training. I imagine they're going to have to have a large sim-farm for just running the games at 8x for training.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Comparing AI and humans in games is not useful unless all limitations are controlled for both parties. The artificial intelligence only gets the video output of the game and output to simple controls with a human reflex - <USER2> lag on how long it takes for the controls to take effect. It just comes down to the scientific method.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is a wasted opportunity for other strategy games to become the most played game on the planet.

I sometimes play strategy games and I always find the AI disappointing. Any game with a great AI would be my favorite for years. Heck, I would even pay a few dozen cents/hour to be able to compete against a proper AI.

</comment><comment><USER45> For anyone looking for more information about Starcraft 2, the world championship is on this weekend and the broadcast for today has just started (16:30EST)

[https://www.twitch.tv/starcraft](https://www.twitch.tv/starcraft)

</comment><comment><USER46> This is so exciting. I've always wanted to program bots to play online games -- mainly for learning purposes. (Can I make a bot that plays better than me?)

But I've never done it because of the risk of bans. I'm glad that Blizzard has opened it up for people to experiment with this. I wonder how it will interact with any sort of anti-cheat systems in place, etc.

<comment><USER45> This has been around for awhile [1]. They give you an API to use and then you upload your JAR. They have a Twitch channel [2] that is constantly streaming AIs playing against each other in their tournament.

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

[2] [https://www.twitch.tv/certicky](https://www.twitch.tv/certicky)

<comment><USER47> This has to be the most interesting link in this whole thread. Thank you so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> luka-birsa Anybody else sees a problem with training the AI to move troops around a battlefield, with the purpose to exterminate the opponent?

<comment><USER48> No?

Starcraft isn't troops on the battlefield, in the same way that Risk, the boardgame isn't troops on the battlefield.

Just because the 1s and 0s or game pieces represent "troops" to humans, doesn't mean that the underlying game mechanics have anything at all to do with a real war.

For all we know, the problems solved by a monopoly AI, are more applicable to a real war than those solved by a Risk or starcraft AI.

<comment><USER49> You must admit that there is an underlying aggressive theme in games like StarCraft. The visuals show clear resemblance of people being killed by projectiles and by other war technology. The AI will be rewarded for skillfully decimating the enemy, for protecting the units it has control over and for coming up with strategies like ambush, raids, patrolling etc. I am more convinced by the idea that an AI will be able generalize to the real world from playing StarCraft than from playing Monopoly. However, I think it will be quite a leap to the real world either way.

<comment><USER50> > You must admit that there is an underlying aggressive theme in these games. > The visuals show clear resemblance of people being killed by projectiles and > by other war technology.

An AI doesn't know or care about any of this. Literally its applying statistics to optimize a cost function or assign labels to input states. These numbers could represent number of kills or number of dollars; the computer doesn't care.

<comment><USER51> And that's what makes it ~spooooooky~.

It's just absentmindedly optimizing a cold value function! No more humanity! More more external input! Just cold machine logic!

We've doomed ourselves!!!!

But seriously. No, there is nothing inherent about an AI maximizing wins in StarCraft than one maximizing profits on the stock exchange. Although I feel like there's a bunch of Sci-Fi where this obviously goes awry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I hope the AI will have a handicap on the speed of mouse movement. IRL you can't just teleport the mouse around the screen.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is really good news! Lets hope DeepMind can improve even further on their Differentiable neural computers (DNC) which seems like an requirement for this kind of AI to work (exploiting long-term dependencies). I also hope that other research/industry teams will join on the competition to create competing AIs. Very exciting!

</comment><comment><USER54> This is awesome. I know there is a happy AI community on SC1 front so glad to see Blizzard anything on SC2 front.

</comment><comment><USER55> I understand the challenge, and the importance of the proof-of-principle. But again? Having done Atari games, then Go, at what point exactly does google deepmind start attacking some real world problems of consequence?

Or maybe the answer is never, other companies are supposed to do the hard work? We only play games?

<comment><USER56> They are publicly working on medicine and energy problems. Games just happen to be a convenient place to do research.

[https://deepmind.com/blog/putting-patients-heart-deepmind- he...](https://deepmind.com/blog/putting-patients-heart-deepmind-health/) [https://deepmind.com/blog/applying-machine-learning- radiothe...](https://deepmind.com/blog/applying-machine-learning-radiotherapy- planning-head-neck-cancer/) [https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces- google-data-ce...](https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data- centre-cooling-bill-40/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Does anyone know of any resources for someone looking to learn more about Game AI for real time strategy games?

<comment><USER58> The Berkeley Overmind was designed for a 2010 Brood War competition. The website ([http://overmind.cs.berkeley.edu/](http://overmind.cs.berkeley.edu/)), although no longer updated, still contains many videos and links to articles that describe the internals of the AI and the design process. The Ars Technica article in particular goes quite in depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I can't wait to see how far DeepMind can go in this area. I was initially skeptical that AlphaGo could defeat top human players, but then it happened. Who knows, perhaps one day AI can compete against progamers in GSL!

<comment><USER60> Competitive AI in broodwar already can destroy the best humans. AI can use strategies and tactics that human can't effectively do. Most notable is perfect splitting which changes the game quite a bit.

<comment><USER61> Do you have a reference on this? Last I looked into it broodwar AI bots were easily beaten by competent humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I wonder when we'll be at a point that a small, portable AI (such as the one included with games) is actually competitive with decent humans.

</comment><comment><USER63> First we teach it Atari games, and now strategy and war?

Why not give it lots of data to solve real problems? Training it on useless games will have no benefit.

</comment><comment><USER64> Nice! I cracked a joke about how SC2 was nothing more than an AI testbed just last week, lol. Very glad to see it's becoming a real thing!

</comment><comment><USER65> Makes me wonder if any game companies have seeded empty servers with bots, acting as humans, to give their games a sense of popularity.

<comment><USER47> I don't see why not, unless the game eventually becomess a boss-infested cesspool where players can't have any fun of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I wonder if AI will take over eSports (Twitch, competitions, etc.), as well. It could be a variant of the Turing test.

</comment><comment><USER67> Hopefully there's a JS/Spidermonkey interface. I'd be happy to port Hannibal from 0AD.

<comment><USER68> What does Hannibal do that makes it portable? My impression is most game AI is essentially completely game specific, outside of, eg, pathfinding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> My mostly-uneducated o/u on the time to beat the best human players is 8 years.

</comment><comment><USER70> plug: [https://medium.com/new-game/comp- stomp-b8fe687fbeb6](https://medium.com/new-game/comp-stomp-b8fe687fbeb6)

</comment><comment><USER71> OpenAI vs DeepMind?

</comment><comment><USER72> I'm pretty excited about this. I think some kids out there will really enjoy an environment like this to mess with, and maybe learn a thing or two about machine learning along the way.

Starcraft is a really fun game, and I think it's enough to engage kids a little more than something like Minecraft where there's plenty of room for some cool ML hacking, but not enough stimulation from it. Instead of just seeing blocks here or there or whatever, starcraft has hard goals that will force them to use critical thinking skills, their knowledge of the game, their own personal strategic insights, and the ML skills they accrue.

So exciting! Love the feature layer idea also, well done!

<comment><USER47> I agree. SC2 is a _very_ strategic game and has tons of potential for scouting, fake attacks, distractions, diversions and all sorts of deceitful play. And that's coming _after_ having a good micro-management of units, using perfect timing for expanding your economy, upgrading your units, proxy offense, and a ton of other mechanics.

DeepMind really chose well. SC2 has to be the most demanding game nowadays in terms of strategy and execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is dangerous. Overmind will come to life.

<comment><USER58> The UC Berkeley AI for Brood War (designed for the 2010 AIIDE StarCraft competition) was literally named the Berkeley Overmind.

[http://overmind.cs.berkeley.edu/](http://overmind.cs.berkeley.edu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I will consider AI to human level.. When it can fully play gta san-andreas</comment>


New Mineral Converts Movement, Sunlight and Heat into Electricity at the Same Time - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenewsjournal.com/newly-discoverd-mineral-can-convert-movement-sunlight-heat-electricity-time/ <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://publishing.aip.org/publishing/journal- highlights/mat...](https://publishing.aip.org/publishing/journal- highlights/material-can-turn-sunlight-heat-and-movement-electricity-all-once)</comment>


Linux Distro 3D Benchmarks (TLDR: Chakra fastest, Ubuntu slowest) - <AUTHOR> http://jeffhoogland.blogspot.com/2010/09/best-linux-distro-for-3d-performance.html

<comment><USER2> The graphs don't start at zero, so the differences are exaggerated, at least visually.</comment>