Most of us would be better off without lawns - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/04/lawns-are-a-soul-crushing-timesuck-and-most-of-us-would-be-better-off-without-them/ <comment><USER2> Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class [0] explains this best as a leftover modern desire by the gentry to emulate the nobility by engaging in conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. (A massively inadequate summary of the argument, to be sure.) [1]

Veblen specifically talks in detail about the practice of maintaining manicured lawns. I read it thirty years ago, but remember it as being hilarious. He's one of my favorite Norwegians (admittedly a short list).

[0] [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833)

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

<comment><USER3> +1 from me because he's one of the few cases where his work is not only smart/educating in RL, but, as a bonus, he almost sounds like a fictional character, too good to be true.

When I first encountered him I thought to myself, "He sounds like somebody improvised up by Douglas Adams in HHGG. 'An apple fell from a tree. This was widely regarded as a bad move. In fact the most popular selling series of books on economics, by one Thorstein Veblen, in his The Theory of the Leisure Class, has pretty much confirmed this, though it has taken nearly a millenia for his proof to fully saturate and be accepted to date within the furthest reaches of the Galactic Empire, despite many incentives for readers such as scratch-and-sniff insta-win prizes.'"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The sillier and more wasteful thing in my view is the front yard. The back yard is a luxury and definitely an instance of conspicuous consumption in denser suburbs and cities, but it's easy to see why people like it -- it provides an open yet semi-private space where you, your kids, or your dog can play, and also a convenient place to host a gathering with your friends. When weather permits, you see people in their back yard all the time.

The front yard, however, sees much less use in most neighborhoods, at least until you're so far out in the country that you practically live on a farm -- it's rare that you'll see anybody on the front lawn unless they're mowing or landscaping it or on their way elsewhere, precisely due to its lack of privacy. The suburbs in general can, with some debate, be accused of being a result of the lack in imagination in adapting the estates of the British landed gentry to smaller lot sizes; the front yard is much less defensible against this accusation. The only practical functions of the front yard in relatively dense suburbs, such as those making up most of California, are these:

\- Provide an appealing botanical decoration for the front of the house.

\- Decrease noise from passing traffic.

\- Prevent passersby from looking into your windows as easily.

But the puny size of front yards in these suburbs limits their effectiveness in satisfying these objectives, which would be much better served by a hedge or ivy-covered wall. These shouldn't be much more expensive than the front lawn, especially considering that you could either eliminate the front yard and expand the back yard or gain increased privacy in the front yard would make people more likely to use it.

<comment><USER5> My childhood was a lot happier and more social because our neighbors had a big front lawn we could run around and play on. It was effectively a meeting space for all the kids on our street.

Instead of a front lawn our property had a dense growth of evergreen shrubs and all these excuses were used by my parents - easier to maintain, less water used etc.

Our backyard was nice enough but fenced in and not social at all. If I could have had one or the other as a kid it definitely would have been a front lawn.

To me this front lawn hate is all about changing demographics (families are getting rarer) and the tragic paranoia and hostility that now is so prevalent in American society--even though it is safer than ever.

<comment><USER6> This.

\- People don't have as many kids as in decades past

\- The "stranger danger" mentality -- which the parent post aptly described as "tragic paranoia [1] and hostility even though it is safer than ever" \-- means kids aren't as free to roam the neighborhood.

\- Increased amounts of homework, organized activities and indoor entertainment means kids spend less time outside and have other ways to socialize

[1] Children's services can take kids away from parents with minimal due process. Whether this is, on the whole, good or bad is a debate I'm not going to get into here. But I will note that sometimes the system screws up and targets well-meaning parents who give their kids too much freedom. Which leads to a chilling effect where even parents who recognize that giving the children more freedom is the rational thing for us to do as a society, it's irrational for individual parents because some idiots think otherwise, and the system sometimes listens to them, and it's just not worth the risk of having the authorities break up your family.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I plan on saving this article. Then I will write an agent that will search the text for any phrase that contains the concept of "landscaping." It will then replace those selections with new phrase sentiments generated from a random list of similar acts of drudgery. Laundry, driving, bathing, child-rearing, grocery shopping, sight-seeing, reading, speaking, attending weddings, barmitvahs, dentistry, cosmology, climate change, signing autographs, game of thrones, breakfast, etc. I plan on calling it the Deep Whine program. I expect it to be the first AI with a regular column in the Op-Ed section of a major national news publication.

"Instead of calling it Work, realize it is Play" -Alan Watts

<comment><USER8> [https://twitter.com/thinkpiecebot](https://twitter.com/thinkpiecebot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a large backyard lawn in Northern California. The water bill in summer months crosses $200 (and that doesn't count the gardeners), but it's worth every penny. The lawn is the centerpiece of the house. People play on it, camp on it, picnic on it, and lounge on it all the time. As far as I'm concerned, it's a gorgeous backyard with an afterthought of a house attached. Sometimes my wife and I sleep in a tent overnight just for fun.

I find articles like this somewhat offensive. Different people are motivated by different things; who is the author to make such far-reaching claims? I'm sympathetic to people who want to replace their lawns, but I also respect people who prefer to enjoy theirs. Why does this need to become a moral crusade?

<comment><USER10> > I find articles like this somewhat offensive. Different people are motivated > by different things; who is the author to make such far-reaching claims? I'm > sympathetic to people who want to replace their lawns, but I also respect > people who prefer to enjoy theirs. Why does this need to become a moral > crusade?

For the same reason you would be offended if someone threw perfectly good food out while people go hungry. It's conspicuous consumption. Because you can do something does not mean others won't judge. If you don't care, don't care! But don't be shocked when people rally against such waste of resources (in California, of all places!), and pass laws to rectify the problem.

<comment><USER11> Is it a waste if he or she enjoys it? With a few exceptions, California's water problems are not due to residential use, but rather over-use by agriculture, which uses almost all the water yet represents only 2% of California's GDP. If having a big lawn will increase your quality of life, have a big lawn.

<comment><USER10> The law regulates many a thing that people might enjoy, but for one reason or another, we don't permit it.

<comment><USER11> Your whole argument revolved around large lawns being a waste of resources ("in California, of all places!"), not that "excess" water use is unlawful

<comment><USER10> [http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/06/04/the-problem-of- lawns...](http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/06/04/the-problem-of-lawns/)

"Today, American lawns occupy some 30-40 million acres of land. Lawnmowers to maintain them account for some 5 percent of the nation's air pollution – probably more in urban areas. Each year more than 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled during the refilling of lawn and garden equipment—more than the oil that the Exxon Valdez spilled.

Homeowners spend billions of dollars and typically use 10 times the amount of pesticide and fertilizers per acre on their lawns as farmers do on crops; the majority of these chemicals are wasted due to inappropriate timing and application. These chemicals then runoff and become a major source of water pollution.Last but not least, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used on lawns. Most of this water is also wasted due to poor timing and application."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article speaks to me.

My neighbor is retired and his only purpose in life seems to be keeping a fairway quality lawn which means he's cranking the social contract to 11.

I don't know how much he spends in weed killer and fertilizer. Maybe he doesn't want to lay on his deathbed and regret, "If only I'd mowed more..."

<comment><USER13> Jesus Christ! Someone is getting enjoyment out of something you see no purpose to? You need to get him to stop!! And right now!

What's next? Putting up bird feeders? Ugh!!

<comment><USER14> My father had one of those miniature farms, he worked very hard to maintain it (and conscripted me into assisting). Every week he would ritually harvest a useless crop which went directly into the garbage. He was a very proud man, and used the condition of his lawn to signal his moral superiority.

Often in the evenings around the dinner table he would single out malingerers in the neighbourhood and proclaim them to be substandard human beings.

These proclamations weren't typically backed up by action until he was appointed an administrator on the condominium board. Newly backed with institutional authority, he took to logging lawn care infractions, and hand delivering customized warning notices to scofflaws with great zeal.

<comment><USER13> So he was kind of doing the opposite of what the author of this blog post is doing.

Guy who hates lawn looks down on guy who likes lawn, guy who likes lawn looks down on guy who hates lawn. It's all circular!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> After unfortunate experiences in Real Estate, I began a new life as the Renting Scum in decent, fiber-optic-Internet-having neighborhoods. As you may imagine, this Floridian enclave of happiness has an HOA which utterly lacks enthusiasm for Renting Scum. Indeed, my webcams show them photographing my front lawn several times weekly. If one of their dogs happens to pee on my lawn and create a dead spot more than a couple inches across? My landlord hears about it from them. My expensive lawn service comes a couple days late after a heavy rain and the grass gets a bit long? Landlord. It barely rains at all during a summer month and things get a bit sparse and brown? Landlord (unless I illegally water on multiple days, which I do, just like the police who live around me do).

TL;DR many of us maintain the Reaganian-perfect front lawn out of the first scene of a David Lynch movie under duress, even if it's the dumbest, most wasteful thing we ever heard of. Hey man, fiber's fiber.

</comment><comment><USER16> What about the theory that they're a good place for children to play outside?

<comment><USER17> Depending on the climate where you live (and the tolerance of your neighbors), you can scale way back on maintenance, and still have a lawn that's good enough for kids and pets. My family lives in central Wisconsin, and our neighbors are OK with us having a crappy lawn. We don't fertilize or water it. (Fertilizer increases the water demand, water increases the need for mowing).

It's full of weeds. Kids can run around on weeds. It only requires a handful of mowings every year, then it goes dormant unless there are unusual amounts of rain (like this year). By late July, the grass has stopped growing, and it's only weeds, which I can control with a manual "weed whip." For better or worse, the weeds are drought resistant.

So I doubt the contention that my lawn requires water, fertilizer, or even weekly mowing. As the kids have gotten older, the need for an extensive backyard has diminished, and I'm gradually turning more of it over to the vegetable garden every year.

<comment><USER18> This whole thread I thought this is what people meant by "lawn" because I live in a rural place where this is very normal. I thought everyone was really whiny because it really doesn't take /that/ much work to maintain a yard like this. I honestly don't understand why it's so uncommon.

<comment><USER19> Where I grew up in the US you'd literally get fined if your lawn wasn't neatly trimmed grass. It's absurd.

Here's where you can report my parents if they slip up on their lawn game for a few weeks:

[http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_...](http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_report- long-grass-weeds)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Lawn care is a religion in North Carolina. In the city, in the country. What's amazing is that when driving in any rural area, you'll see frequently small houses on five or ten acres of perfectly cultivated and mowed grass with no agricultural purpose ... just for show.

<comment><USER21> No sheep? What bothers me is that a lawn was meant for food for sheep. Without sheep or other ruminants, there is no purpose. Man was never meant to mow.

<comment><USER22> "Man was never meant" to do the vast majority of what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I enjoy taking care of my lawn. It is a chance to "turn off" and just do physical labor.

<comment><USER24> While enjoying a beer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am inspired by the front yard landscaping of Western Portland, OR. Hardly any property has grass lawn. Grass is replaced by lush ground cover, ferns, wild grasses, flowering bushes, etc.

<comment><USER26> My parents place (in New Zealand) is similar, the only lawn they have is the mandated patch between the road and the footpath, and a 5x5 m patch out front, which is more ornamental than functional. Most of the back yard is decked.

It's great when you don't have any kids that need space to run around, and it's very low maintenance, but I suspect that they're going to run into issues when selling the place, there's not a whole lot of demand for a 4 bedroom house with no lawn, and the place isn't really laid out such that you could just replace the deck with a lawn.

<comment><USER27> >the only lawn they have is the mandated patch

There's a law that says they have to have a patch of grass?

<comment><USER26> It's a local council thing, you have to have grass between the footpath and the road. Not allowed to just have flowers or vegetables. Sort of makes sense, it's semi-public land.

In some cities, it's actually the council's job to mow them as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I hate dancing. I'm not good at it, and there are much more efficient ways to exercise or socialize.

I think it's a soul-crushing timesuck, and you obviously should think so too.

</s>

Tone it down. Anecdotes about pastime preferences aren't news.

<comment><USER29> Dancing doesn't exacerbate droughts.

<comment><USER28> "Lawns make droughts worse" would be a more reasonable headline.

Although fewer clicks I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They're also a tremendous waste of water and many are a significant source of herbicide exposure and fertilizer runoff.

Most states need a heavy tax on excess water consumption, especially California and the southwest.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://extension.psu.edu/natural- resources/wildlife/landscap...](http://extension.psu.edu/natural- resources/wildlife/landscaping-for-wildlife/pa-wildlife-10) Replace lawns with plants and trees found in your local ecosystem. Gives them a home. In the central valley.of California, that means oak trees, and drought tolerant plants.

</comment><comment><USER32> There can be beauty in simplicity --whether a green grass lawn or a sand/rock garden --they're only soul crushing if you're doing them while you would otherwise not.

That said, I prefer maintaining shrubs and other decorative plants in the tiny garden I have --yes, it's a time suck _but_ that's the whole point of it. You get to connect and care and semi meditate, or in the least take your mind away from preoccupation (it's a kind of therapy through futility). So, really whether you enjoy them or not depends on how you use them in your life.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if there is like some kind of natural force that would help people find the right-sized lawn to live on?

9 billion gallons per day sure sounds like a lot though!

<comment><USER13> I hate when article do that. Let me pick a unit of measure that makes the number sound REALLY big. Did you know I weigh 75 THOUSAND grams? I'm huge!!!

I'm not sure where he got the 9 billion gallons per day from, but it's suspect. Total public utility water use is 42 billion gallons per day. So lawns take up 25% of all public water use?[1]

I could see that being true in some areas, but when I used to live in Michigan it rained often enough that rarely ever watered. Maybe once or twice a summer?

[1][http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wuto.html](http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/wuto.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is sad that even in India, which is chronically short of water, people maintain lawns in 45+ degree Celsius (113 F) temperatures in the summer.

<comment> Ar-Curunir I have never seen a American-style lawn in India. Where are you seeing these lawns? Most people just keep a garden with potted plants (commonly known as a veranda).

<comment><USER34> Which part of India did you see? There are big-ass lawns in my hometown, Thrissur, Kerala. Also, lawns covering homefronts where I currently reside in North India. I am not going to be specific, but somewhere in UP.

<comment> Ar-Curunir To be fair, I've lived mostly in cities, but I doubt the case is going to be different in rural India. I have grandparents in Dehradun, grew up in Bombay, have cousins in Delhi and relatives in Jharkhand, and no where have I seen lawns in the American manner; only concrete verandas with potted plants.

<comment><USER34> Yeah.. you should go down to Kerala sometime. Or to central government employee quarters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'd prefer to have a lawn with native meadow grasses in it, but the blackberry bushes and other invasive plants ruin everything. The only way to keep those at bay is to mow them down regularly.

(The blackberries kill everything.)

</comment><comment><USER36> John Green made this amazing video a while back: [https://youtu.be/-enGOMQgdvg](https://youtu.be/-enGOMQgdvg)

Note that this was before he became a famous author (not that that really matters).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm replacing my front yard with stone this fall. Mowing sucks.

<comment><USER38> There are other low-mowing solutions available...

<comment><USER37> I'm not looking for low I'm looking for no.

<comment><USER39> I converted my front lawn to all native perennial plants and flowers, with aggressive ground cover plants around them. It looks great and is essentially zero maintenance - I only water it once or twice depending on the weather.

I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER37> I have a small fenced in part of my backyard (sort of English garden style) that I'm going to do that with. Recommend any plants?

<comment><USER39> It's all about LOCAL native plants - what grows in your area naturally, so it thrives in your environment without effort on your part.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solicit YC - <AUTHOR>

I hope you are not put off by the title.  But I want you to offer me for a few weeks.
Do you know of a place where I can work as an intern this summer?  Preferably your own startup.
I can start as soon as July 14 and would like to end in mid October as the latest.
I study math at Magdeburg University, Germany.  Currently I live in Ankara, Turkey, for a semester abroad.  I would not mind travelling around the world for the internship.
I have strong background in mathematical optimization and computational aspects of math. I have also picked up stochastic and did recently formalize my interest in economics and finance.  The Germany study system is a bit strange - basically you can regard my as a graduate student.
My university requires me to write a seminar paper ('Studienarbeit') about my internship.  So my field of work has to be related to math - or even better to optimization.
Do you think you can offer me the opportunity to research in a way that matters to your company and can be related to my study of mathematics?
Compensation would be nice.  I'd especially appreciate an interesting field of work and a place to sleep.
Any other hints would be welcome as well.  If you need more details - just ask.  Thank you. <comment><USER2> Disqus is looking for interns. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=158091>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> P.S. I hope I got all the connotations right.

P.P.S. I can program and prefer functional languages. I like Python as well. I can adapt nonetheless. Internship does in no way have to consist of programming.

P.P.P.S. If someone is interested in learning what I will hopefully find out - please drop me a line.

<comment><USER3> Could you add an e-mail address to your profile?

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought I just did it a few minutes ago. I'll check again.

Edit: It's in my page when I'm logged in - but one can not see it (yet) from the outside. I wonder if I do something wrong or hacker news uses some kind of caching.

Anyway: It is matthias dot goergens at gmail etc

<comment><USER4> The 'email' field in the profile is not visible to others (only seen by yc admin). 'About' is visible though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not figure this out, yet. Thank you.

<comment><USER4> Not your fault at all. Confusing UI.

<comment><USER5> I have seen confusion with this aspect of account configuration numerous times. Perhaps simply adding a note next to the email field indicating that the email address is only visible to the administrators would help solve this problem.

edit: perhaps you could vote up and/or comment on rms' suggestion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46100>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I even searched for a check box like: "Make my email visible to the public".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Radicale - CalDAV and CardDAV Server - A Simple Calendar and Contact Server - <AUTHOR> http://radicale.org/ <comment><USER2> I've run a Radicale server for almost 2.5years now. It's definitely progressed greatly in the time I've used it. In conjunction with syncEvolution[1], I keep my work gCalendars, my family Radicale and gCal's and a device-portable task list all synced.

_____

1: [https://syncevolution.org/](https://syncevolution.org/)</comment>


Go master Cho wins best-of-three series against Japan-made AI - happy-go-lucky http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/11/24/national/go-master-cho-wins-best-three-series-japan-made-ai/#.WDdQUUnhXqA <comment><AUTHOR> This news has flewn way under the radar in comparison to the previous Match.

Cho Chikun is a legendary player ,and was top of the world in the 70's. From that era, along with Takemiya Masaki, he was one of the only ones that kept playing and kept winning titles even in his old age.

The style of 70's players was artistic and not as sports-like as koreans were when they rose in the 90's. They always showed a higher level of philosophy and art in game, but it was ultimately crushed by the "machine-like" tactical capacity of korean players. Cho chikun has very little chance to beat Lee sedol. But he was confident on beating Zen, and he did something unspeakable in the LeeSedol Matches: he came back from a losing game, from a machine that looked that would never relent its edges.

As a retired semi-professional Go player that learnt by replaying games from Cho Chikun, it is exciting to see the Japenese artistic and humane vision dominate the computer over the Korean Tactical sports-minded way.

<comment><USER2> The news flies under the radar because for most people Go is now solved (compare to what happened after Deep Blue's win). There's a small blemish in that Ke Jie is still rated higher than AlphaGo. Perhaps they will rectify that, perhaps not.

Cho Chikun had the large advantage over Lee Sedol that his opponent (Zen) and similar programs (Crazy Stone, Leela) are simply available for him to practice against and probe for weaknesses.

Then of course there's also a significant reduction in the speed of the hardware.

Both of those matter a lot. I won't make a firm statement how relevant the style argument is you mention, but really, don't underestimate those two.

<comment><USER3> > The news flies under the radar because for most people Go is now solved > (compare to what happened after Deep Blue's win).

"Machines reaching a level of play that is consistently better than humans" and "the game is solved" are two completely different statements and it isn't particularly useful to conflate them.

We will likely _never_ be able to solve Go in the formal sense.

<comment><USER4> The key though is "for most people". We live in a post-fact society, remember? ;)

<comment><USER5> I don't think there is a factual disagreement here, just a terminology issue. Mathematical jargon is not quite the same language as plain English. In the former, 'solved' by default means you have found the mathematically perfect solution. In the latter, 'solved' by default just means you have found a solution good enough for practical purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What bothered me about AlphaGo was the sheer amount of power that was dedicated to training and running it vs. the relatively puny power budget a human has.

i.e. "Lee Sedol used about 20 Watts of power to operate. By contrast, AlphaGo runs on a whopping 1920 CPUs and another 280 GPUs for an estimated power consumption of approximately 1 MW (200 W per CPU and 200 W per GPU). That's 50,000 times as much power as the amount of power that Lee Sedol's brain uses and the two are not quite evenly matched but it is close enough to use for comparison."[0]

I mean, sure, it's apples to oranges, but it feels like a pyrrhic victory to have to use 1MW of computing power to beat a 20w brain.

I want there to be a series of AI vs. AI games where everyone has an equal power budget for their AI. Everyone has to bring their own equipment and they receive exactly X kwh from a calibrated power supply to train their model. Training data could possibly also be standardized.

Each team would received a standardized power supply for the actual competition (e.g 20w). There could be bonuses for using less energy for training or during gameplay, or for faster response times between moves.

I believe this would drive innovation in building special purpose hardware, more efficient training models, and so on.

[0] [http://jacquesmattheij.com/another-way-of-looking-at-lee- sed...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/another-way-of-looking-at-lee-sedol-vs- alphago)

<comment><USER7> > Everyone has to bring their own equipment and they receive exactly X kwh > from a calibrated power supply to train their model

What's the advantage of this over simply providing every team with identical hardware and equal computing time? It seems like providing a fixed power supply would favor whoever can afford to buy more efficient computing equipment.

<comment><USER6> Developing special purpose machine learning hardware is part of the goal. I think of it like Formula 1, where the R&D eventually trickles down to consumer hardware.

Also, there's no reason why you couldn't have different competition categories where you're limited to using X dollars worth of time on a specific cloud provider, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Meh" news because we had a higher profile match just recently: AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol (both much stronger than DeepZen or Cho).

I mean, it's mildly interesting that DeepZen uses fewer resources (just ~40 CPUs and 4 GPU, compared to AlphaGo's ~2k CPU and ~200 GPUs, IIRC). But that's relevant only to hardcore Go enthusiasts who would want to run such AIs on their own hardware.

In contrast, the next interesting milestones in Go AI are:

* AI beating a team of cooperating top pros, say top-10 humans vs AI (easy)

* solving Go (hard)

* finding ways to translate insights gained from observing strong Go AI into real-life situations relevant outside of Go (my personal favourite; Go has that fascinating simple-meets-complex abstracting property [1])

[1] [https://rare-technologies.com/go_games_life/](https://rare- technologies.com/go_games_life/)

<comment><USER9> I think the next interesting milestone would be beating top rated humans using commodity hardware. In chess for example, programs running on cell phone processors have Elo rating around 2800. Using weaker hardware means that the algorithms need to have more insight into the game and can't rely as much on exploring the game tree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It depends on many things... such as the game data used to train it and the hardware in which it ran, the time settings of the game, the implementation of the algorithm, etc.

But so far commentators such as Ke Jie (higher rating than Lee Sedol), said that Deep Zen Go's yose (end-game) is very weak compared to Alpha Go.

Another factor is that Cho Chikun had the advantage of studying more MCTS/DL bot games. Today you can find MCTS/DL bots in servers such as KGS that you can play against.

Cho Chikun had more clear expectations of the bot playing level. e.g: Lee Sedol greatly underestimated Alpha Go initially, then he was in shock and did not know what to expect. Your playing strategy can vary depending of strengths and weaknesses of your opponent.

</comment><comment><USER11> What happened to chess enthusiasts when chess was "solved"?

<comment><USER12> The best computers now consistently beat the best humans but "solved" has a precise definition in game theory and it isn't completely solved under that definition[0]. With regards to your question, I can't say for sure but my impression is that interest in chess has declined a lot.

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

<comment><USER13> > _my impression is that interest in chess has declined a lot._

I don't think it has. Much like horseback riding has not made olympic races obsolete, human competition remained fascinating. I for one very much followed the rise of Magnus Carlsen.

<comment><USER12> That was a poorly chosen example since interest in horseback riding has declined a lot, at least in relative terms, compared to the pre car days. Today, auto racing as a competitive sport is probably more popular too.

Personally, the fact that computers are better at chess than humans makes me less interested in the game so I'm a bit biased.

<comment><USER14> The argument is that the presence of horseback riding (and now race car driving) doesn't necessarily diminish the popularity of foot races. Not that horse racing is less popular now (though that my be, simply because it's no longer anyone's preferred method of transportation...)

<comment><USER12> Ah, I missed that. It's hard to say with certainty whether horseback riding diminished the popularity of foot races since it happened such a long time ago and at a time where probably neither was considered a sport or entertainment.

I do think that technological advances in general affect the appeal of certain games and sports by rendering them less mysterious or by bringing them further from a real world activity/situation.

Of course, I'm talking about relative, not absolute, popularity. Chess and horseback riding will remain popular for a long, long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Cho won a close game 1,[28] lost game 2 when his invasion into enemy > territory was killed,[29] and won game 3. Zen uses neural network techniques > similar to AlphaGo,[30] however ran on more modest hardware during the > match.

not sure if suggests any comparison between AlphaGo and Zen. I'd like to see Cho play against AlphaGo.

<comment><USER16> Cho Chikun would not stand a chance against AlphaGo. AlphaGo has shown itself to be stronger than Lee Sedol, who is much stronger than Cho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> OK, can't we just have Zen and AlphaGo play each other?

<comment><USER2> What would the upsides of such a match be for AlphaGo?

How many matches with other computers did Deep Blue play after its victory over Kasparov? (zero)

How many world championships did Deep Blue win? (zero, it played one in 1995 and lost to Fritz)

How many people tought Deep Blue was the strongest computer in the world in 1996? (All of them, because IBM said so and conveniently forgot about the lost world championship)

Google has already said AlphaGo is much stronger than other programs. There's no point in playing a match then, is there?

<comment><USER17> Errrrrr.... It would shut up Zen go or prove them right? That seems like a reason.</comment></comment></comment>


Stereotypes Are Poisoning American Politics - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-16/stereotypes-are-poisoning-american-politics <comment><USER2> Fallacies of composition are a norm on online forums, while all problems are treated as scale invariant - in online discussions, if someone find a negative counter-example, it will typically be employed to invalidate the whole thesis regardless of its actual significance.

I partly blame the popularity of the Action News format for dumbing people down, but the epistemological roots of this social trend run much deeper. Alas, demonstrating this to people seems to require a week of prior reading.

</comment><comment><USER3> > blaming an entire ill-defined group for the failings of its individuals

The failings of individuals bring down whole groups, and vice versa. I mean in the end if you belong to a disadvantaged group, due to network effects, it makes everything harder to do. Want to make money? You can't because your group does not have money. These problems compound. Want to raise capital for your startup? Love money? Everyone is broke. There is none. Success of the individual depends on the community and vice versa. The relationship is complicated and interwoven. In any group there are a small number of people that affect any group positively or negatively in disproportionate ways. Companies worry about these problems, of the weakest links in the organization.

Don't get me wrong, as a maxim you should judge people individually, but reality does not work that way. It's much more complicated than that. Even if individuals judge individuals fairly, it does not mean that individuals will get treated fairly no matter what they do.

<comment><USER4> _Want to make money? You can 't because your group does not have money._

So join a different group. Or just trade something of value to an individual from a different group in return for money.

This idea that people are tied to their group, and that group interests exist, is simply nonsense. I have no interest in increasing the wealth, population or influence of my own group, I only have interest in increasing _my wealth,_ the number of _my descendents_ and _my influence_. And if the best way to do that is to abandon my group and work with another group (or none at all), so be it.

<comment><USER5> I think devoply overstated their case in saying you _can 't_ make money if your group doesn't have it, but it does make it harder, and occasionally impossible. In the worst case, you face an effective catch-22 because your group doesn't provide the resources you need but joining groups that have them takes those same resources.

Also, in practice, people tend to identify with the groups they belong to, so rationally or not, they are more reluctant to leave groups than you are.

<comment><USER4> What group with resources do you think it actually takes equivalent resources to join?

In any case I'm disagreeing with devoply's use of "can't". If he wrote this I wouldn't have disagreed: _" Want to make money? You choose not to because your group does not have money and you prefer not to join or associate with a group that does."_

I agree that many people have feelings tying them to a particular group and are unwilling to leave their group. That's a matter of willingness, not ability.

<comment><USER5> I agree that there are many situations where joining a group gives you access to more resources than it costs. My point is that, in some cases, you might not have the resources to pay the costs, even if you could recoup them later.

For example, it might cost only a small amount of gas money to attend a group that provides mentorship. If you don't have that money, you can't attend, even if that mentorship would lead to a job that gives you a huge return on your time and gas money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's ironic that a piece essentially advocating pedantry would then go on to make subjective judgements about outliers versus national averages.

 _Poverty is higher among Appalachians than the national average, but not by much -- Kentucky has a poverty rate of 18.5% and West Virginia 17.9%, compared to a national average of 14.7%. The typical Appalachian isn 't poor..._

I don't know dude, define "typical." Kentucky and West Virginia have the 5th and 7th highest poverty rates.

<comment><USER7> I think the more important point is that Appalachian is kinda short hand for rural people from that region, who are poor in considerably higher numbers. Pittsburgh and Birmingham are Appalachian, but politicians aren't referring to the Pittsburgh Google office when talking about Appalachia...

(I agree w you, but If we're being pedantic, it's possible to be "the worst" and still not that much different from average...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The headline implies that somehow stereotypes weren't important in American politics until recently.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yep. There is a difference between a stereotype and a generalization. Stereotypes are often bound to a kernel of truth, but the problem is that the scale is exaggerated so greatly, taken seriously, and held for so long that it begins to distort the worldview of the person who holds a stereotype. What's the old saying: "In the province of the mind ideas are either true or become true".

The article has a valid point, and yes, it is sensible to talk about stereotypes in the wake of an election and how it can unhelpfully distort the way you think about people.

However, it is always relevant, it isn't destroying US politics (whatever that means); stereotypes are cartoonist approximations and are sort of an easy trap to fall into, and their scope is as broad as civilization.

</comment><comment><USER10> > One insight was that "the countries now at the bottom are distinctive not > just in being the poorest but also in having failed to grow." That's true, > but it yields no more information than the initial misleading aggregation: > It's like saying, "Those at the bottom are distinctive not just in being at > the bottom but also in being at the bottom."

"Poorest" relates to wealth, while "failing to grow" relates to wealth's derivative, and there's no logical relation between a quantity and its derivative.

<comment><USER2> Put things in _italics_ to quote them on HN. Almost nobody uses a > delimiter here and you're being downvoted because people are mistaking the pull quote for your own argument.

<comment><USER11> Why would you ever italicize something to quote it? Italics are for emphasis. Either use real quote marks or the > block quoting convention, which, as pmarreck notes, lots of people do use here.

My two cents, which is a vast over-estimate of their value, in a discussion of internet pedantry.

<comment><USER2> When you only have one typographic differentiator as we do on HN, you use it for contrast. This is the most effective presentation for blocks of text on HN. Quote marks are frequently overlooked, or I would still be using them.

<comment><USER12> Frequently overlooked?

How can you miss those? Perhaps I read slowly...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vim is a great text editor - try it - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelhughes.co.uk/blog/2009/10/vim-is-a-great-text-editor/ <comment><USER2> You may want to check these resources I published, too:

* Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi? <http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html>

* Graphical vi/vim cheatsheet & tutorial [http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial...](http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html)

<comment><USER3> I have put together some suggestions/hints for vi users using vim a while back that might be helpful as well.

<http://geocar.sdf1.org/vim-hints.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pet peeve:

        There may be a steep learning curve ...

Can someone explain the axes of the graph in which "steep learning curve" equates to "takes a long time" ??

I can.

It requires that you put knowledge on the X-axis, and time on the Y-axis, which is completely at odds with the usual way of doing things.

Like many idioms you have to read this as meaning one thing even though it says another. You have to read this as "it takes a long time," even though that's not what it says.

Language - I don't know how it works.

And sometimes it doesn't.

</rant>

<comment><USER5> Look, it's really not that tough. Here's what you need to treat vim as a text editor with syntax highlighting:

      esc (escape) = go to the default mode
      i (insert) = when you want to make changes to the document

      esc + : (escape, colon) = think of this as control + whatever
      :w = (w)rite - save your file
      :q = (q)uit - quit vim
      :wq = (w)rite, then (q)uit
      :q! = (q)uit!, discarding any changes

Just those few things will let you use vim well enough while you're figuring out all the really cool stuff it can do.

Emacs can be treated similiarly: C = control M = "meta", usually the alt or option key. You can use escape if you want.

      C-x C-f = control x (do something) + control f (find file) - open a file
      C-x C-s = save a file
      C-x C-c = quit
      C-k = (k)ill - this is similar to cut
      C-y = yank - this is similar to paste

For emacs, it may be easier to start with cua mode -

      M-x cua-mode
      (btw, m-x means "run this function")

Cua mode gives you a copy, cut and paste that works the same as your operating system.

<comment><USER4> You're replying to the wrong person - vim is my primary editor. I'm ranting about the stupidity of the phrase "Steep learning curve."

<comment><USER5> heh, I guess I misread what it was you were ranting about; I took it to mean that you hate any sort of learning curve when it comes to editors. Thanks for clarifying!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good lord!

The main reason to learn _vi_ is that it is installed by default on so many systems, including most ancient Unixes.

When your task is to edit a config file and you don't have time/permissions to install your editor of preference.... _vi_ is the only choice.

Emacs and others may not be present on a system when you really need it.

A basic competence in _vi_ is essential if you're going to deal with Unix. Even if you prefer Emacs (like me) or other myriad tools.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes, if you're _really_ screwed, you may not be able to mount the partition with vi. ed is almost always on Unix, though. (Knowing how to open a file, find and change a few lines, and resave is probably good enough for emergency situations.)

Also, it's worth learning ed because the ex prompt in vim shares most of its functionality, and because sooner or later you'll realize how lucky you are that you don't have to work on a teletype. :)

<comment><USER8> Ed is fun to use, and learning it makes you better at vi.

<comment><USER9> Your comment made me smile. I had a thought of a fictional programmer so editor-centric, they decide on their programming language based on which one will help them improve their skills at vi. (Which is a misinterpretation of your comment. vi has roots in ed, so some of the cool esoteric stuff is invoked in the same way.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From what I've seen of vi (mainly as a result of editing files directly on a server via ssh), it seems like an efficient text editor, undoubtedly. But what about if you're constantly bouncing between different files in a project? Like a Rails project, for example, with its many different files for models, views and controllers?

I.e. how good is it at handling projects, as opposed to just files?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of ways to use Vim on multiple-files/projects, and the documentation is probably the best place to start.

You can also plug it into Eclipse via eclim <http://eclim.sourceforge.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the top story on hacker news?

<comment><USER12> I am sick to death of the editor wars and editor advocacy, I wish people would just stop. I bet most hackers have made their editing decisions long ago and are content with their choices.

Having said that, I would like to add something positive to the discussion. I think whichever editor you choose, you should learn to move the cursor around without using the arrow keys. There is considerable value in keeping your hands on home row. Every time you reach for the arrow keys you add latency to your workflow. It adds up.

<comment><USER13> > I bet most hackers have made their editing decisions long ago and are > content with their choices.

I think you're completely ignoring the next generation of hackers, which is unfortunate. I've been working on getting past vim's learning curve for over a year, on and off. True, this submission sucks, but it lead me to find this: <http://www.viemu.com/a-why-vi-vim.html>, which is pretty informative for a beginner.

<comment><USER14> I like reading things about various editors now and then, and it certainly serves an educational purpose.

However, this does _not_ require the spamming of "editor" advocacy posts (where "editor" has meant "vim") recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Today I learned that Vim began on the Amiga.

[http://cd.textfiles.com/fredfish/v1.6/FF_Disks/571-600/FF_59...](http://cd.textfiles.com/fredfish/v1.6/FF_Disks/571-600/FF_591/Contents)

<comment><USER16> The Amiga was the source of many great things. It also had CygnusEd which gets cited up to this day as inspiration for TextMate and others.

<http://texteditors.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CygnusEd>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Short article, but voted up simply to voice my love for Vim.

It took me a long time to finally get comfortable with Vim. I would load it up every few weeks, learn a couple of commands or things like using split windows and then get frustrated/held up enough that I would go back to Textmate. After going through the process for a good few months, I then somehow managed to make it through a day without getting frustrated once. Then on the second day I literally felt like I was flying through my code. TBH I have never felt this productive in an editor before.

I would constantly read people saying that watching someone in Vim is like a work of art and never quite understood what they meant. But now I do. The speed at which I can navigate through a file, move text around, move around my project. Even simply never having to move my hands away from the home row makes me feel more focused on what I'm currently working on.

<comment><USER7> > voted up simply to voice my love for Vim.

Please do not do this. It leads to really banal "vote up if you like _ too" posts on the front page.

I think a lot of people find vi unpleasant because it so unapologetically makes the trade-off of having dozens of (composable) single-character commands you have to memorize _upfront_ , rather than a more conventional interface whose advanced features you can gradually learn. You can't really get an accurate impression of vi's strengths until you've already committed to memorizing a lot of commands - _the terseness itself_ is a major feature in the long run. (Emacs is similar in this regard, but with very different trade- offs.)

For most programs, this trade-off is probably hard to justify, but for something that one spends a lot of time working with directly (such as a structurally-aware text editor, photoshop, autocad, etc.) it's probably reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'll sadly admit that for most quick file editing I still use pico/nano (which is installed on most every system that I've touched in the past 3-5 years). I used emacs around 1998, but at the time it was too big I felt and had too much power. vi was just damn confusing. When I saw people using it, it looked amazing, but I could just never get the handle on it.

When I'm editing big files/coding I use Cyberduck to SSH/SCP files over to TextMate, which works well most of the time. The only time it doesn't work is when I need to sudo edit that file, because Cyberduck can't sudo.

</comment><comment><USER19> For those of you who use Netbeans there is jVi ( <http://jvi.sourceforge.net/> ) a fairly faithful Vi emulator.

Also, Komodo Edit ( <http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/> ) is a modern free, multi-platform editor which has nice Vi support.

</comment><comment><USER20> What I'm trying to figure out is whether vi/emacs, and the Unix command line, is actually still a relevant way to do development.

You see, cults that are divorced from empiricism _do_ exist in CS; I'm sure of this. But I'm not sure of whether people who feel such strong love for the command line belong to one or not.

As a pure text editor, Vim seems really nice. However, once I start wanting to do what I take for granted as fairly basic things, I want the mouse and graphics more and more. For example, say I just want to have program output, a couple of code listings, and a visual debugger all on the screen at once across multiple monitors with integration between them. People swear that the Unix prompt is better anyway. However, they all seem to be programmers whose careers peaked in the 70s or 80s too! I'm a Unix neophyte but my first impression in trying to do C programming in vi is that without all the comforts that something like Visual Studio gives me, _it just sucks_. I'd love to be proven wrong actually, but the people on the other side of the argument also seem to be dinosaurs (albeit genius dinosaurs) who don't even think that trace-through debugging is a good thing. Heck, even Linus lost that fight.

Vi-style editing inside a modern IDE like Eclipse or Visual Studio does seem interesting though.

<comment><USER21> > all the comforts that something like Visual Studio gives

What are these, anyhow? Whenever I've used Visual Studio or Eclipse it's felt like a burden.

<comment><USER20> > What are these, anyhow?

Integrated debugging. (I know gdb is incredibly powerful, but it seems too much to have to reprogram my brain for yet another editor within an editor.) Errors and warnings appearing _while I type_. Ctrl+click to go to source for any function I'm viewing. Variable and function auto-complete. Integrated documentation for functions that appears as I am typing. Quick and easy navigation of a file hierarchy. (I know vi and emacs allow this but it requires a level of mastery and key memorization for benefits that seem far from clear to me.) Managing project settings. Refactoring.

For someone that has achieved mastery over Unix over many many years, these things either seem unnecessary or they have a substitute (that's perhaps even better). However, I guess I'm wondering if there is a group of people who aren't old programmers from the 80s who started with something like Visual Studio or Eclipse, used it enough to achieve a level of mastery over programming that way (with a brain trained to use the mouse), and then after that found a gain switching to command-line type tools, that was worth the many many additional hours of brain re-training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Also, emacs.

<comment><USER7> Could you flesh that out a little?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I tried it. I tried vi, vim, gvim.

I now use a number of editors and IDEs. Vim is not not of them. I launch it once in a while, just so I would not forget how it feels (and would not forget how to :wq). That's all.

As far as the holy flame war on editors, I do not have much to say about it, and will avoid reading much about it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it worth learning how to use vim (well) if I already feel fairly comfortable in another text editor? The author only touched on speed and how you're more "involved" with the code, which were vague enough that I was left unconvinced.

<comment><USER25> It's definitely worth learning enough to use, just in case your preferred editor isn't available. I tried it, but couldn't get used to switching modes, I kept messing up my file and having to backout and fix things; so I memorized a subset of vi that would let me get any editing done that I absolutely had to and went back to using emacs for regular use. Note that the default version of vi is not always vim, some systems use elvis or other vi clone, some of which have different advanced features and keybindings; for use when nothing else is available, concentrate on the basic vi commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sure I dont mind reading an article on Vim (or even Emacs), but please, try to add something instead of linking to other resources.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh please, here we go again. Stop advocating your love for that 30 year-old piece of software. Please. Stop it. You don't hear ME expressing my love for Eclipse on a daily basis, now do you? Seems like you have some convincing to do?

Plus, I'm not buying it. If it's so great, why do you even have to market it? Wouldn't it just sell itself? But no. Instead we get these "VI is great" vs "Emacs is better" discussions every-f*cking-time. And I've had it. Just use your old, old, old piece of software, be happy about, and stop trying to convince me.

<comment><USER28> _If it's so great, why do you even have to market it?_

That's kinda silly. That's like saying "why does Apple spend jillions of dollars marketing the iPhone if it's so great?" Some people genuinely don't know about [pick your editor], and some people like their tools so much, they like to tell you about them. Isn't that the whole point of blogs, anyway?

<comment><USER20> > "why does Apple spend jillions of dollars marketing the iPhone if it's so > great?"

Because it leads to massive profit. I don't think it's pure altruism motivated by a desire to give better user experiences.

<comment><USER28> It's not just about the money, though. How is free/open source supposed to gain traction, if not by people saying "hey, this is good!" If no one "markets" a piece of software, how you know about? How did _you_ find out about the tools you use?

<comment><USER20> Agreed, but I was just pointing out a clear non-sequitur in the parent post. People should use logic when making a point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fifth Circuit holds that First Amendment protects the right to record the police [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/16/16-10312-CV0.pdf <comment><USER4> ...it's hard to imagine a more obvious and plain application of "freedom of the press" in the information age than the right to record what one's eyes and ears can see and hear and then publish the same, even if (especially if!) it contains evidence of state misconduct.

I mean come on.

<comment><USER5> Will this deter police from retaliating against someone recording them with a cell phone? I can't imagine it will. Police have a lot of options for retaliation, after all.

Sure, it won't hold up in court if they take you to jail, but it could possibly make your life hell for 24 hours at the very least.

You could lose your job being detained, for example. IIRC they can hold you that long with no justification or reason required, but I'm not a laywer so take that with a grain of salt.

Or weeks, if they really wanted to fuck with you. Just leaving a patrol car around your house for awhile is pretty unsettling.

Maybe I'm overthinking this. I certainly don't want to get on the wrong side of my local PD. I don't even want them to know my name, much less stop me every time they see me or otherwise retaliate against me because I whipped out a cell phone.

It's almost like a chilling effect, if I have that concept right. I might be mixing that up with another term. Thinking of police retaliation makes me not want to record the police at all, out of fear of retaliation.

<comment><USER6> 100% agree. They can and do make up shit all the time. A co-worker of mine was arrested last weekend when a crime was committed at his house and they told him to _leave the premises_. So, he crawled into the back seat of his car and went to sleep (it was 1am Saturday morning and he had nowhere to go). A hour or two later they arrested him _because they told him to leave_. He was in a parked car on the street. They charged him with obstruction. They dropped the charges 24 hours later.

<comment><USER7> >"Edward Anthony Anderson, January 15, 1996, shot while handcuffed and on the ground. Frankie Arzuega, fifteen years old, January 12, 1996, shot in the back of the head; the following Mother's Day, his family received taunting phone calls from anonymous sources: they dialed *69 (call back) and the police answered. Anthony Baez, December 22, 1994, chocked to death for playing football on the streets of New Your City. Rene Campos, whom police said committed suicide in custody by stuffing more than half his T-shirt down his own throat, reaching three-quarters of the way down to his lungs. Garland Carter, seventeen years old, January 8, 1996, shot in the back by police who earlier that day had driven by his home, making their fingers into the shape of a gun and "firing." Angel Castro, fifteen years old, October 23, 1996. Having already moved out of a neighborhood because of death threats from the police, Castro rode his bike back to the neighborhood to a friend's birthday party: He accidentally ran into a police cruiser, breaking his teeth, and as he rose from the ground a cop shot him. Sherly Colon, April 25, 1997, pushed off the roof of a housing project, after which police removed the cuffs which had held her hands behind her back….The list is as long as you want to make it..." –The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen

The Culture of Make Believe is a very difficult book to get through. The author talks about hate crimes and power, and how we've developed these very odd cultural norms around violence. It's pretty depressing.

<comment><USER8> While those are horrifying examples, I dislike this approach of cherry picking and focusing on the worst cases. It can make a problem seem much worse than it really is and make it difficult to tell what is the result of systemic problems and what are individual bad actors.

It's akin to someone mentioning flying and then going into gruesome detail about all of the terrible airline accidents over the years to suggest that flying is unsafe.

<comment><USER9> You're considerably more likely to be abused by police than be involved in an aviation accident.

<comment><USER10> Aviation is by far the safest mode of transportation in the world, so that is not surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is frustrating is that the LEOs in the case had no clear standing for detaining Turner. TX is not a Stop and Identify state [1] (neither is CA).

Amazing that the police can essentially ignore the laws they're sworn to uphold when it conveniences them. That and "the left him [in the back of a police car] to sweat for a while with the windows rolled up" method of coercion boils my blood.

It's like the definition of prejudice - if they think you're a criminal they'll treat you like shit.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes#States_with_.E2.80.9Cstop- and-identify.E2.80.9D_statutes)

<comment><USER12> That is why the judge reversed the determination of qualified immunity for the two officers. :)

<comment><USER13> Seems like a high bar to pass to have law abiding citizens treated with respect for the law.

Same with getting cops to not be so quick to pull the trigger and default to respecting people's life.

This attitude of absolute power that some American police hold is as much a cultural issue than one of legal semantics. It has to be confronted without being blown off as an attack on police.

The best approach is probably taking a reasoned, most cops are good, approach and focus in on the minority who flaunt the law.

The solution might be via policy (making it easier to fire cops) or training. But thanks to the all powerful unions I'm sure this will be a big uphill battle.

<comment><USER12> It is far too high a bar. The police have always been very resistant to actually allowing the freedom the Constitution promises. This is only the latest example.

One could wish for the police to just be decent people, and one could wish for a billion dollars. If wishes were horses ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 4th amendment is a farce anyway. Asset forfeiture is a direct violation of the 4th and yet has passed judicial constitutionality tests. Asset forfeiture was never supposed to be used on US citizens since citizens can be prosecuted under federal criminal/civil laws. It was put in-place to seize the assets of non-US citizens who could not be persecuted under such laws, such as foreign ships/etc. Bennis v. Michigan was one of the worst SCOTUS decisions.

<comment><USER7> I have not heard that about Asset forfeiture.

Asset forfeiture is pretty fucked up. At least with eminent domain, there may sometimes be a good cause (building a rail/train/infrastructure that benefits all), but usually not (building an on-ramp for a shopping centre).

If the people who got away with the 2008 financial crisis were actually arrested, changed and convicted, it'd be interesting to see the government auction off the rewards of their crime (their mansions, expensive cars, etc.) As it stands now, ssset forfeiture seems to hurt the poorest and funnels money into the increasing militaristic police force.

<comment><USER15> I believe you are confusing eminent domain (forced sale of real estate) with asset forfeiture (cops pull you over, find something to arrest you for, then take all your stuff and never give it back to you regardless of whether you're found guilty or not).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Quote from the ruling:

"We conclude that First Amendment principles, controlling authority, and persuasive precedent demonstrate that a First Amendment right to record the police does exist, subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions."

However, note that they actually affirmed the lower court ruling that the police were not liable for violating the first amendment in this case. This is because it was not clear from the courts (before this ruling) that this right existed. They did find that the police violated the fourth amendment by arresting someone for recording a police station (and at the time there was no presumption of a 1st amendment right).

<comment><USER17> They did not affirm that the First Amendment was not violated; they _explicitly_ ruled it had. What they affirmed was that it was not so obviously violated that _every_ officer should have known it, and therefore the officers were entitled to qualified immunity, i.e. immunity from being sued because they did their jobs in a way that a reasonable officer _could_ think was lawful.

<comment><USER18> Huh. I guess ignorance of the law _is_ an excuse.

<comment><USER17> In the US, the law is a combination of the written letter of the law and the interpretation courts have given to that letter via precedent. This extends to the Constitution. If there aren't rulings about an issue close enough to the one at hand, then the law is, in fact, unknowable.

In addition, qualified immunity applies to _civil suits_ , not criminal cases. If a prosecutor had deemed the officers' behavior worth prosecuting as a crime, qualified immunity would not help them (though I don't know if something equivalent exists for criminal offenses).

To recap, qualified immunity gives government officials cover from _civil_ actions when the law is unknowable.

(Erm…disclaimer: IANAL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Relevant question: if you decide to record the police as a result of this ruling, they tell you to stop, you refuse and continue recording them, and they arrest you as a result... could you get into any legal trouble? Is it safe to act upon this ruling, or should you just do what the police tell you to do regardless?

<comment><USER20>
      Is it safe to act upon this ruling, or should you just do what the police tell you to do regardless?

Do what they tell you. "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

However, once you're out of immediate danger, talk to a lawyer. You would probably have standing for a §1983 lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> I think this is awful advice. The second you turn your camera off, you lose your side of the story.

If you're seriously nervous and unsure about what to do, ask for a supervisor. In my experience, they'll typically tell other offices to cool it with the cameraphobia crap.

But never turn your camera off if you think you're a suspect. What good can it possibly do?

<comment><USER21> There's a concept in law enforcement called a "lawful order", which is when a police officer orders you to do something and if you don't comply, he can arrest you for obstruction. The thing is, the order must truly be lawful; he can't order you to do something illegal, and he can't order you to (for example) take off your clothes or give him your money.

Typically a lawful order will be something like during a domestic dispute, ordering one of the parties to find somewhere else to stay for the night and not to return home for a certain number of hours (a "cooling off" period). This avoids an arrest for domestic violence, which carries harsh repercussions even if the aggressor is found not guilty, and gives both parties a chance to work on their issues (as well as gives the victim time to leave safely if necessary). Another example might be in a civil dispute, where one party claims ownership of a 50 year old vehicle and the other party disputes this, and there isn't enough documentation to support either party's claim. The police are called, and the officer issues lawful orders to both parties to not touch the vehicle until they've sorted it out in court. If one of the parties tries to take possession of the vehicle later that day, they can be arrested by that officer.

The problem with the camera issue and lawful orders is that some jurisdictions have statutes prohibiting video and/or audio recording of the police or other government workers, and this empowers the police to issue locally lawful orders to stop recording. However, if this ruling carries any weight, the Constitutional right to record will theoretically trump the local restriction, rendering the order no longer lawful.

All of that said, even if the order is supposedly lawful, I agree that you should keep recording and ask for a supervisor. In some jurisdictions you may end up arrested for obstruction, but chances are the supervisor will realize the implications of continued harassment of a lawfully recording citizen and drop the issue.

<comment><USER22> > However, if this ruling carries any weight, the Constitutional right to > record will theoretically trump the local restriction, rendering the order > no longer lawful.

It certainly carries weight in the fifth district. If Grinalds/Dyess petition SCOTUS they'll likely hear the case in order to make sure their decision makes a consistent precedent wrt 1st amendment right to "videotape" the police.

<comment><USER23> Note 5th circuit, not district. (In the Federal court system, a circuit is vastly larger than a district.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> FYI, I found the ruling is surprisingly readable and interesting.

If you have a few minutes, I suggest taking a look.

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the recommendation! I agree it was surprisingly readable. Most important part starts on page 9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Qualified immunity is one of these baby-boomer neighborhood patrol vestiges with a subtle undertone of racism and xenophobia that will hopefully be limited in due time as the vast abuses it enables today become more apparent.

The legal burden on the victim is just absurd, not least given how the qualified immunity boomerangs further into the 4th amendment claims.

<comment><USER27> Is it a baby-boomer thing? I always thought it was Sovereign Immunity combined with the police acting as agents of the state.

Sovereign Immunity always seemed overall a good idea to me, but its negatives should be mitigated by making the government as small as possible in the first place.

It doesn't seem like there'd be a need for a "right to petition the government" if you removed Sovereign Immunity, since you could otherwise go through the courts. So I don't think it's recent.

<comment><USER28> Baby boomers ruined everything else, might as well blame them for this too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The part you're looking for: "We conclude that First Amendment principles, controlling authority, and persuasive precedent demonstrate that a First Amendment right to record the police does exist, subject only to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions."

Starts at the middle of page 9.

</comment><comment><USER30> Unfortunately, rights may exist but police can still violate those rights with immunity unless those rights are "clearly established". In this case, the court ruled that sure, there is a First Amendment right to film police, but that in this case "there was no clearly established First Amendment right to record the police at the time of Turner's activities." So, it was OK for the officers to detain Turner.

They also said the police should have quickly investigated whatever crime they suspected. Instead they cuffed Turner for "not providing ID" (which BTW is not a crime in Texas) and placed him in a hot patrol car for "a while" without actually investigating any crime, which the court found to be an unreasonable arrest.

The court also has a section named "Whether the Right Is Clearly Established Henceforth" which is the interesting part. Sadly, in that section they only affirm that the right to film exists, heavily quoting other court rulings that _already_ ruled the right exists. There doesn't seem to be anything new in this ruling that would cause another court to say the right to film is now "clearly established". The threshold is not whether some court says the the right is "clearly established starting right now!". The actual threshold is that " _every_ reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates [the law]." I suspect it's still going to take a Supreme Court ruling and years of police training before plantiffs can really prove their rights are "clearly established" using that criteria.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't think this case was at all about the legality of recording the police, as the headline proclaims. The defendant was never charged with illegally recording the police, or with anything at all.

The conclusion, in fact, gives the police officers qualified immunity from the plaintiff's claim of First and Fourth Amendment violations. The "further proceedings" on the Fourth Amendment claim is what was found for the plaintiff, but I didn't read the whole opinion to know what that means.

It's scary that some of the comments in this thread are from people who would read an opinion like this -- or read the HN headline -- and take it to heart in terms of their own actions. That's just dumb. Look at all the precedents that are cited in the opinion -- it's not a simple case, and, indeed, there were dissents from the majority opinion.

Be careful out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the headline because that is the most significant part of the opinion due to the precedent it sets. It establishes, for the Fifth Circuit, the right to record the police. Previously, as stated in the opinion, this right was not clearly established.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I see a lot of good argument for being able to record an officer on duty. But I am not familiar with the against arguments. One i hear is "privacy of the officer" but it does not make a lot of sense in this context. What are they doing on duty that needs to be a secret?

So my question is, what made them think that it was not okay to be recorded or what are strong arguments that are still valid? What situation would you say is an exception where people should not record the cops? would it get in the way of investigation sometimes maybe?

Tangentially, what do you think about drones that record stuff? I saw a few videos on you tube where drones were following cops around. Should there be a distinction between cell phone recording and drone recording? Could the officer claim they are being harassed? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is anybody capable of putting this into plain English, or ideally, link an authoritative source which does that? For us with no time on our hands.

Particular queries: 1 - Does this apply nationally? Where and where doesn't it apply (user @aerovistae & others asked and remains unsettled, debated in comments here) 2 - Does this apply to both video and audio recording? 3 - <USER2> there limits where and when I can record? (public vs private spaces?) 4 - <USER3> should one do if police forcibly interfere with your right to record and retain information?

</comment><comment><USER34> Good news. Curious what you all think about the concept of mandated self- recording _by_ the police. IMHO the (all-too-often realized) potential for abuse of power might reasonably be balanced by such impositions on the privacy or autonomy of those we entrust to enforce and uphold the rule of law. Good cops would have a measure of extra protection from false accusations, and bad cops would have a harder time abusing the power they've been granted.

</comment><comment><USER35> This seems like an empty decision with no real consequences for any of the parties. The court looks good because they came to the correct conclusion. The local police can laugh and continue to violate our constitutional rights with impunity. The plaintiff gets the satisfaction of a favorable ruling, but receives no compensation or even an apology. Our justice system remains corrupt and contented. Move along, there's nothing to see here.

</comment><comment><USER14> Huh? This is still an issue? Well, glad that we finally have a decision after 129 years since George Eastman.

<comment><USER36> It's an issue ( _still_ , even after this ruling) because different courts have held different things. Eventually we're going to see a SCOTUS ruling, and hopefully it goes the same way.

<comment><USER7> Has another Federal court offered a different ruling?

<comment><USER36> _Fields v. City of Philadelphia_ :

"We have not found, and the experienced counsel have not cited, any case in the Supreme Court or this Circuit finding citizens have a First Amendment right to record police conduct without any stated purpose of being critical of the government. Absent any authority from the Supreme Court or our Court of Appeals, we decline to create a new First Amendment right for citizens to photograph officers when they have no expressive purpose such as challenging police actions."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> New law being written right before our eyes. But the title of the post isn't actually what was found in this case...

This PDF is worth reading over a couple times for full understanding. The topic is extremely relevant to each of our lives and thus quite tangible and easy to reason about.

The person in this case had to have a federal judgement made _against_ him (the officers were granted qualified immunity [typical]) and THEN he had to appeal the case to obtain this judgement. A lot of work! (And I'm glad he saw it through!)

"The officers' handcuffing Turner and placing him in the patrol car, as alleged in the amended complaint, were not reasonable under the circumstances. We conclude that a reasonable person in Turner's position would have understood the officers' actions 'to constitute a restraint on [Turner's] freedom of movement of the degree which the law associates with formal arrest.'" Kudos to the judges for their sound judgement.

"Grinalds and Dyess are therefore not entitled to qualified immunity at this stage of the litigation on Turner's Fourth Amendment claim that the officers violated his right to be free from warrantless arrest absent probable cause." Epic.

"Even if Turner had sufficiently alleged a constitutional violation, Driver acted objectively reasonably in light of the circumstances—namely, by apprising himself of the situation and acting accordingly. Driver is therefore entitled to qualified immunity on Turner's Fourth Amendment claims." Fair and reasonable judgement.

The dissent is interesting and worth-reading. I agree regarding the First Ammendment findings, but I disagree with the arguments against the majority's Fourth Ammendment judgement.

For some understanding of how the Federal Judicial System works, it's worth watching this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mbk0YhLa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mbk0YhLa0).

The law that protects citizens from oppression from officers (as in this case) is United States Code: 42 U.S. Code § 1983 - Civil action for deprivation of rights. It's a short text and you can read it here: [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983) (Read it a few times over again to get a good idea of what is stated)

In this case, the Court of Appeals for the 5th District ruled on this. You can see a map of the federal districts here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeals)

<comment><USER23> Note 5th Circuit, not district.

<comment><USER29> Good point out, too late for me to edit the typo. Thank you!

It should read:

>> In this case, the Court of Appeals for the 5th _Circuit_ ruled on this. You can see a map of the federal _circuits_ here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeals)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Here's a web story on the subject. The videographer, Turner, is a correspondent for an org called "Photography is not a Crime."

For what it's worth, in the bodycam video shown in this story, Mr. Turner appears to be African-American, and the officers appear to be Euro-American. That fact of race is, unfortunately, relevant in 21st century Texas.

[http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/09/02/texas- officers-...](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/09/02/texas-officers- arrest-man-for-recording-outside-police-department-ban-him-from-setting-foot- on-police-public-property/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm all for recording. Have a front facing and rear facing dash cam in my car. I want something like Google glass, not as a computer, but as a full time recording device.

</comment><comment><USER39> So when can we start recording at the border? Or will we have to wait until we all have eye implants for that nonsense to stop?

</comment><comment><USER40> Never argue with Police; Call a Lawyer;

</comment><comment><USER41> So does this apply nationally?

<comment><USER7> Fifth Circuit is a Federal District Court. IANAL, but I think the only thing higher would be the Supreme Court, right?

<comment><USER42> The text of the ruling seems to imply that the Fifth is not the first circuit to reach this conclusion.

"We agree with every circuit that has ruled on this question: Each has concluded that the First Amendment protects the right to record the police."

This has a footnote to it:

"See Alvarez, 679 F.3d at 595–96; Glik, 655 F.3d at 82, 85; Smith, 212 F.3d at 1333; see also Fordyce v. City of Seattle, 55 F.3d 436, 439 (9th Cir. 1995)."

Are there any lawyers here willing to decipher this for us?

<comment><USER23> Not a lawyer, but I work with some.

Each of these (except the last) is an abbreviated citation to a published court opinion cited earlier in the decision.

Am. Civil Liberties Union v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583, 595–602 (7th Cir. 2012)

Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78, 82 (1st Cir. 2011)

Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332, 1333 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 978 (2000)

F.3d is an abbreviation for Federal Reporter, 3rd series (the current series of the Federal Reporter, which publishes Federal appeals court decisions ).

When you see a citation like x F.3d y, it means "Federal Reporter, 3rd series, volume x, page y". The form "x F.3d at z" means "volume x, page z, but that's the middle of a decision, not its start" (called a "pin cite"). The form "x. F.3d y, z" is another way of saying "the decision starts at page y of volume x, but here we are specifically referring to page z".

The part in parentheses indicates which particular court wrote the decision (a particular numbered circuit court of appeals) and in what year.

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

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

You can often look up the texts of these decisions online in various places, although I don't see a convenient up-to-date free F.3d online anywhere. Originally the concept was going to a library, which would have huge long series of reporters (books that publish court decisions), and you could tell the librarian "I'd like volume 655 of the Federal Reporter 3rd series, please", and then turn to page 85 to see what the First Circuit said on the page in question of its Glik decision.

District court decisions (from the trial level) are cited in the same way but with "F.Supp." (a different reporter); Supreme Court decisions are also cited in the same way but the reporter is "U.S." and the court doesn't have to be mentioned in parentheses, because the Supreme Court is the only court whose decisions are published by United States Reports.

So you might see

Foo v. Bar, x F.Supp. y (D.Somewhere yyyy) ← district court

Foo v. Bar, x F.3d y (nth Cir. yyyy) ← circuit court of appeal

Foo v. Bar, x U.S. y (yyyy) ← Supreme Court

and each one could also cite to a specific page or range of pages within the opinion by using "at z" or "y, z".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What a shame that I'm excited that my country still supports my rights as a citizen to some degree.

I'm disappointingly satisfied. Our rights are inalienable and self-evidently truthful. How can someone or some court thereafter determine what rights I have?

<comment><USER27> > Our rights are inalienable and self-evidently truthful. How can someone or > some court thereafter determine what rights I have?

I would probably define a right as "A persuasion technique for convincing others to decide disputes in your favor". Then, your rights can be weakened simply by having people not be persuaded by them; and removed legally by having the highest court not be persuaded by them.

If somebody asks something like, "Do monkeys have rights?", keep in mind that nothing about the universe changes depending on that answer. No computers will blink their lights on in response to a sensor picking up a right when it scans you. So rights don't exist.

Why do people pretend that rights exist, even though they don't? Game- theoretically, collectively pretending that we have a natural-born right to free speech independent from the government reduces the risk that a King will rise up and cause trouble while suppressing the press. Anyone questioning his policies can appeal to the right in their arguments.

So we choose to allow ourselves to admit an "appeal to a right" in arguments, because we want others to be convinced as well. So "Why do people not respect my rights?" seems ill-framed, but "Why do people not understand the consequences of allowing a right to be asserted?" is. And there would be no such thing as a "self-evidently truthful" right, only a right where the consequences of allowing it to be asserted in an argument are clearly beneficial.

<comment><USER18> This reminds me of a great (and prescient) bit by George Carlin - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9-R8T1SuG4)

<comment><USER44> Not prescient. Better informed, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Again</comment>


Ask HN: Are there companies based outside US among YC alumni? - <AUTHOR>

and: Is it a problem that I am applying to the next cycle being based in Brazil (and intending to continue to be after YC, if accepted)?<p>I couldn't find out there many comments or tips regarding internationl applications. At the FAQ page there some answers regarding this, as there is no problem in not being a US citizen. But there are any company totally based outside US (not just with foreign founders)? <comment><USER2> Some of the better known ones are Songkick, A Thinking Ape, Vidyard, Lanyrd, Upverter, GoCardless, and Directed Edge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm... all of them from Canada or England, and some are based on US. Well, I guess we will have to be the first latin team there! ;)

<comment><USER2> Actually I think Authy is in Colombia.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, they are. Based on US too, though. Trying to find more about their story, sounds interesting. Thanks for the answers, but there is any downside of an offical YC company list and info?

<comment><USER2> It would require a good deal of work to keep up to date, and it wouldn't benefit the startups in any way. If we're going to spend our time on something, I'd rather spend it on something that will help the companies we fund.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. Thank you very much for the kindness of providing the examples I asked!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Implementing Poincaré Embeddings (2017) - bra-ket https://rare-technologies.com/implementing-poincare-embeddings/ <comment><AUTHOR> we had a similar adventure implementing the next thing which was lorentz embeddings. Some equations were wrong in the paper which AFAIK have not been fixed in subsequent revisions.

@dchatterjee172 found a lot of the inconsistencies in the work.

[https://github.com/theSage21/lorentz- embeddings](https://github.com/theSage21/lorentz-embeddings)

<comment><USER2> Equations wrong in the original Poincare embeddings paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.08039](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.08039) ? Do you recall which?

And thanks for sharing your Lorentz implementation!

<comment><AUTHOR> we never implemented the poincare paper since by then Facebook had published it's own code, but for the lorentz paper there were a few which were wrong. I'll update the repo to point to those in a bit

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is an actual application of this on the frontpage right now:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20574182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20574182)

Coincidence?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why isn't this being used heavily in other NLP frameworks? All the newest Language Models seem to be throwing more compute at transformer models instead of moving away from Euclidean Space.

</comment><comment><USER5> So its been ~2 years. Have the problems been sorted out? Have original authors published their implementation? Would enjoy an update on these efforts.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really like how they describe the adventure of replicating results, rather than just taking the paper at face value.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bummer that they could not replicate the results</comment>


Homeless,assaulted,broke: drivers left behind as Uber promises change at the top - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/17/uber-drivers-homeless-assault-travis-kalanick <comment><USER2> >'I'm an Uber and Lyft driver, I make less than minimum wage. My option is to sleep in my backseat, or to sleep on the street. Which would you prefer?"'

I'm not a fan of Uber but these people are doing it to themselves, no-ones holding a gun to their head. They need to stop blaming Uber, take responsibility for their own lives and do something else!

If you're working a job and you know it's going to make you homeless why would you continue? I really have a hard time understanding why people would intentionally do that to themselves.

<comment><USER3> _These people are doing it to themselves, no-ones holding a gun to their head_

Wow. What an attitude to have toward the suffering of others.

 _I really have a hard time understanding why people would intentionally do that to themselves._

Because they don't have any other attractive -- or really, _any_ viable prospects on the job market? Something like that, perhaps?

<comment><USER4> But why is that Ubers problem. If it was a job, I would understand, but being an Uber driver has no barrier to entry for most people, and no penalties if you leave, so clearly they are providing a net benefit to the drivers life otherwise they just wouldn't do it.

<comment><USER3> _Clearly they are providing a net benefit to the drivers life otherwise they just wouldn 't do it._

The logic in this statement is inherently flawed. The whole point of the article is that Uber _appears_ , at first, to be providing a net benefit to people who sign up to become drivers -- only to leave them holding the bag when problems (inevitably) arise, and which "real" companies normally take care of for their employees. Like what happened to Casmir Patterson, for example:

 _Casmir Patterson, 32, found early on in her Uber-driving career that she preferred to work late nights, when the LA traffic was more tolerable and when she could provide rides to women looking for a safe way to get home. But on 13 June 2016, during her last ride of the night, three intoxicated men entered her vehicle in West Hollywood and she quickly sensed trouble._

 _One of her passengers sounded like he was going to vomit in her car. She pulled over and asked the trio to leave. They refused, and then dragged her into her backseat where they started punching her. "I thought I was going to die," she told the Guardian._

 _The men eventually fled, but not before kicking the outside of her car and running off with her keys._

 _Patterson called police and reported the incident to Uber in the hope that the company could track down her attackers and help her with medical bills. But the criminal investigation went nowhere, and Uber, she said, did little to support her. LA police did not respond to repeated inquiries._

It's not like we need to ask, "is this Uber's problem?" In situations like these, Uber _is_ the problem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Running an eBPF program may require lifting the kernel lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://gehrcke.de/2019/09/running-an-ebpf-program-may-require-lifting-the-kernel-lockdown/ <comment><USER2> One of the issues that came to mind is how limited and overloaded the Linux error codes are, and EPERM might be one of the worst offenders. While obviously not expecting Linux to change that due compatibility concerns, it'd be wonderful if we'd have unique identifier for any code path (or nearly so) that causes error to be returned. Of course it'd be useful to have some grouping, so that applications that do not care do not need to know every possible error code, but for investigations it'd be useful to know exactly why something failed. For EPERM especially (but also others) there might some security concerns about leaking more information about why the request was denied, so in some cases some discretion is needed. But I'd be surprised if that is frequent true concern.

I do wonder how much stuff would break if you patched Linux to return error numbers with high bits set to autogenerated values. Obviously libc (and go if used) would need patching, but how many places call syscalls directly _and_ are checking error codes carefully. Probably surprisingly long tail, but still could be fun experiment.

<comment><USER3> If error codes were instead some kind of exception packaged with ancillary data, you could easily stick a kernel stack in the event payload and get the localization you're discussing that way. The ability to add context is what makes error codes lose so badly to exceptions.

<comment><USER4> Generating a kernel stacktrace for every syscall error return seems like it would be needlessly wasteful on the return path (not to mention that it would change between kernel releases, and wouldn't be useful to most developers).

A richer error system could be as simple as giving some more information about why a syscall returned -EINVAL (because checking all possible flag bits to see which one is not supported is really not a fun exercise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was super surprised about ability to lift kernel lockdown programmatically, using sysrq_trigger file. I think it completely defeats entire point of the lockdown - it is like a safe with spare key duct-taped to the side, annoying but useless against any advisory.

The original kernel patch had a facility to disable programming lockdown lifting, but this apparently did not make it into the kernel he is using. Hopefully this was intentional, to make this less annoying for users during the testing period.

<comment><USER6> The sysrq subsystem supports permissions - the distro maker could have prevented it if they had wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not the first time that security patches have caused eBPF to behave oddly: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/ebpf-cant- count/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/ebpf-cant-count/) is an _amazing_ anecdote about how side-channel mitigations + a bug in the BPF verifier caused arithmetic bugs to appear.

I hope that by the time things begin to hit mainline, Cloudflare's engineers will chime in with ideas that allow (e)BPF to continue to run, as they seem to use it widely internally.</comment>


High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs - <AUTHOR> https://tcwang0509.github.io/pix2pixHD/ <comment><USER2> The ability to edit a face was wild. It is around 30 seconds or so into the video where they show that. Pretty remarkable.</comment>


Remind HN: KC Meetup, January 26th 5:30pm, McCoys (Westport) - <AUTHOR>

This is just a reminder (and a notice to those that don't have a public email in your profile) that on January 26 2011, there will be a HN meet up at McCoys at 5:30.
I'm building an email list, and if you could send me an RSVP to my email (in my profile), then it would be make coordinating things a whole lot easier.
Thank You, and I look forward to meeting some of you fine folk. <comment><USER2> Thanks for organizing, mathgladiator. I'll see you all there!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to be out of town for work so I won't be able to make it. Hopefully we can get some more meetups going, maybe once every other month? every month?

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I just found out about this tonight and already made plans. If you are meeting again, let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking forward to meeting everyone! See you there.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1207546805>

<comment><USER6> Be seeing you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome, see you there

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds interesting, I'll try and show up!</comment>


Google now indexes SVG - <AUTHOR> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/08/google-now-indexes-svg.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FamDG+%28Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> With all this new drawing capability being supported in the majority of browsers (thanks to ie9), I wonder whether websites will break out of the current constrained way of thinking in n-column-layouts, dropdown-navigations, etc and focus more on presenting their content in whatever manner fits the most naturally e.g. using animated vector-graphics, visualization libraries, video, etc.</comment>


RetroPie - <AUTHOR> https://retropie.org.uk/ <comment><AUTHOR> My son bundled this, an Rpi, and a bluetooth nintendo-like controller for me for Christmas. I'd used MAME and similar in the past, but the polish on this setup is really nice. Out of the box, I could just drag/drop ROMS to folders for nes, mame, etc. Lots of fun, and minimal fiddling with config and options.</comment>


Data driven Understanding of Playstore search rankings - <AUTHOR> https://www.simform.com/blog/google-play-app-store-optimization <comment><USER2> Finally! But you should consider analyzing more thesis.</comment>