The Paradox of Self-Consciousness, a Conversation with Markus Gabriel - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/conversation/markus_gabriel-the-paradox-of-self-consciousness <comment><USER2> There is no paradox. All questions of consciousness have been answered. Kaliyuga is too strong for the masses therefore ignorance is rampant.</comment>


Eric Schmidt Predicts Internet Will Split into Chinese Web and American One - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/21/former-google-chief-predicts-internet-will-split-by-chinese-web-an-american-one/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.56bfc19dd89d <comment><USER2> maybe I'm missing something but the only reason they want google in there is to steal as much tech as they can.</comment>


Is Linux For Losers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html <comment><USER2> Joey Naylor: ...so what happens when you're wrong?

Nick Naylor: Whoa, Joey I'm never wrong.

Joey Naylor: But you can't always be right...

Nick Naylor: Well, if it's your job to be right, then you're never wrong.

Joey Naylor: But what if you are wrong?

Nick Naylor: OK, let's say that you're defending chocolate, and I'm defending vanilla. Now if I were to say to you: 'Vanilla is the best flavour ice-cream', you'd say...

Joey Naylor: No, chocolate is.

Nick Naylor: Exactly, but you can't win that argument... so, I'll ask you: so you think chocolate is the end all and the all of ice-cream, do you?

Joey Naylor: It's the best ice-cream, I wouldn't order any other.

Nick Naylor: Oh! So it's all chocolate for you is it?

Joey Naylor: Yes, chocolate is all I need.

Nick Naylor: Well, I need more than chocolate, and for that matter I need more than vanilla. I believe that we need freedom. And choice when it comes to our ice-cream, and that Joey Naylor, that is the defintion of liberty.

Joey Naylor: But that's not what we're talking about

Nick Naylor: Ah! But that's what I'm talking about.

Joey Naylor: ...but you didn't prove that vanilla was the best...

Nick Naylor: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong I'm right.

Joey Naylor: But you still didn't convince me

Nick Naylor: It's that I'm not after you. I'm after them.

 _\- Thank You For Smoking_

<comment><USER3> I didn't get the last line.

<comment><USER4> 'them' = the customers/general public: lowest common denominator vs highest common factor. This is the basis of all propaganda, and why you should be happy that trial by jury is a right rather than an obligation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, I think it says a lot that the MS publicity people have stopped even trying to make Microsoft look better in comparison to Linux but are trying to split the camp between Linux and BSD.

As far as the comparison between BSD, it is clear why most people prefer Linux, it works with more things than BSD.

I think that at least one of Theo's complaints is completely meritless -- that Linux developers are being exploited in some way. First Linux developers do their work on their own free will, nobody tricks them or forces them to do the work. Also, Linux developers are getting treated better than BSD ones, because Linux has the GPL. So IBM can use the work of Linux developers, but if IBM has to have something done in house, they cannot keep it closed, they have to submit their own code to the community just as any Linux developer would.

This of course is very different than BSD where companies like Microsoft and Apple and Sun routinely take code and use it for their own close sourced projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also, Linux developers are getting treated better than BSD ones, because > Linux has the GPL.

Please prove:

1\. that Linux developers "are getting treated better"

2\. that it's because of the GPL

I'm afraid I don't believe you.

> This of course is very different than BSD where companies like Microsoft and > Apple and Sun routinely take code and use it for their own close sourced > projects.

. . . and how Linux developers sometimes do the same thing to BSD code -- except that it's a different kind of "closed", and closed to a different set of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further._

</comment><comment><USER7> Is it very ignorant to say that I don't even care? I am not very deep into OS internals. I want an open source UNIX on my computer. Currently Ubuntu does it nicely. If there was a BSD distro with a nice GUI and everything, I might use that instead. I don't really care if it is Linux or BSD under the hood.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.pcbsd.org/>

<comment><USER7> Thing is, I haven't heard much about it. Will it

\- support all my hardware including printers and external monitors?

\- support all file and media formats?

\- have equivalents for all the important software?

I am not much of a pioneer in such things. I prefer others to do the testing. If I see a significant amount of people using PCBSD without problems, I might give it a shot. Also I don't have much of an incentive to switch, as Ubuntu does OK for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Will it

> \- support all my hardware including printers and external monitors?

That depends on what hardware you're using -- just as it does with Ubuntu, MS Windows, and MacOS X.

> support all file and media formats?

Applications do that -- not operating systems. Installing the win32-codecs port on FreeBSD (the basis for PC-BSD) works great for me, though.

> have equivalents for all the important software?

You _are_ aware that Linux software generally runs on FreeBSD, right?

. . . and that FreeBSD has a built-in Linux emulation layer you can enable during installation?

. . . and that the FreeBSD ports system (which PC-BSD can use) has more software in it than any Linux distribution's software archives other than Debian?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Written by Dan Lyons, AKA The Fake Steve Jobs www.fakesteve.net

Not that it validates/invalidates the article, but just to keep in mind.

<comment><USER9> All validation aside, it does explain why that was one of most factually sparse articles I've ever read.

I can't imagine that Theo is going to take kindly to OS X and Solaris being cited as "two of the best operating systems in the world" in an article in which he was extensively quoted.

Theo's personality and opinions aside, I've been a fan of OpenBSD for a long time, and it really is a solid operating system.

<comment><USER10> OpenBSD has done a lot of interesting work with networking software over the past few years, too:

OpenSSH - No explanation required

pf(4) - A fantastic stateful firewall.

CARP/pfsync - Zero downtime automatic router/firewall fail-over.

sasyncd - Zero-downtime failover of IPSec tunnels.

relayd - layer 3/7 pf-integrated load balancer

OpenBGPd, OpenOSPFd - Free BGP/OSPF implementations.

<comment><USER9> I have a passionate and sordid love affair with pf. :-)

OpenSSH has had some issues in the past, but _everyone_ uses it.

Also, don't forget their recent work with guard pages (I think?) that exposed heap problems in a bunch of userland software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who hasn't editorialized on whether certain code belongs in its current location? It's just a note to say that we need to revisit this later and decide if it should be refactored.

<comment><USER10> In applications? Sometimes.

The kernel is a different matter. Speaking generally, the BSDs endeavor to not commit "revisit this later" code to the kernel at all. In the idealized development approach of the BSDs, it's either done right, fully analyzed for performance impacts across the usage spectrum, long-term API maintainability, security, et al, or it's not done.

<comment><USER12> Or at least if they do it, they don't admit it in their comments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _BSD guys make fun of Linux on message boards and Web sites, the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls._

</comment><comment><USER13> This is from 2005, and also not very interesting.

<comment><USER14> I haven't noticed it at first but that's right, it's really outdated. But still interesting as it depicts the inner workings of OS OS'es in a lively manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Troll troll troll.

</comment><comment><USER16> They almost got the title right:

"Is Linux For Lusers?"

(not that I agree with the content). Pretty much a meaningless rant. Seems like MS propaganda.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article says, "a Red Hat coder published an essay criticizing IBM's Linux programmers". Where is this essay published? Is it online somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER18> Made me remember that old slogan: "NetBSD: because Theo is an asshole!"

</comment><comment><USER19> This is why I use Linux 2.6: <http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/>

To summarise: Linux 2.6 scaled O(n) on almost every benchmark, and OpenBSD was called a "real stinker".

<comment><USER10> 6 year old benchmarks? Here's more complete/balanced/nuanced information: <http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/smp.html>

This sort of thing is complicated, depending on OS, workload, application design, etc, and your mileage may always vary.

<comment><USER15> Somehow I don't think that information could be " _balanced_ " coming from the _freebsd.org_ domain.

<comment><USER10> I think that's an unfair judgement of what I've found to be a very high level of professionalism FreeBSD in general, and Kris Kennaway specifically. Kris is the author of most of the work there (done as part of his work on performance improvements in FreeBSD).

<comment><USER15> You still can't ask how is BSD from a BSD guy and ever expect negative results...

<comment><USER10> Why not?

<comment><USER15> Well, I mean, it's like asking a coffee drinker what they think of coffee.

<comment><USER10> No, it's like asking a coffee producer what he thinks of his competitor's coffee. If he's a professional, he'll give you an honest opinion.

You don't think the FreeBSD kernel engineers are capable and willing to objectively evaluate other software implementations?

<comment><USER15> But he's being biased when he inevitably says "Mine's better".

<comment><AUTHOR> So . . . the only way someone can be "unbaised" in your view is to say "What I use sucks."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Unlike Linux, which is a clone of Unix,"

False.

<comment><USER21> Please elucidate.

<comment><USER22> At one point Red Hat paid to get one of their releases "officially" tested as conforming to the POSIX standard, and passed, and was thus able to officially call that version of Linux "Unix(TM)". I may be mistaken, but I haven't heard them pushing that any time recently, and the market doesn't seem to care, so I doubt they've continued jumping through that hoop.

Now, if you want to take a deeper interpretation of the analogy of "clone", as in duplicate DNA, then Linux is less of a clone of "Unix" than BSD, since it was independently written, and a judge has pretty much declared that it contains no copyrighted content that originated with "Unix". Read the SCO travesty timeline at groklaw.com. Meanwhile, the Berkeley (Berkeley Standard Distribution - BSD) folks actually worked from a copy of the original Bell Labs Unix - but worked so hard on it that in a much earlier court case, a judge made a (sealed) declaration that BSD had only a handful of lines left from the original code, and that Berkeley could distribute their work, with the exception of that handful, on their own terms. Berkeley quickly replaced/removed any infringing content, and that became the basis for the *BSDs.

For the glorious history of Unix, read Peter Salus's "A Quarter Century of Unix".

<comment><AUTHOR> > was thus able to officially call that version of Linux "UNIX(TM)"

FTFY

Being "UNIX" is about passing tests and paying money. Being "Unix" is about the ancestry of the code and the design philosophy. Being "a Unix clone" happens where the ancestry of the code diverges.

That's the way most of us who know something about the subject use the terms. If it is actually an exact duplicate of the original code, we tend to call that a "copy" -- not a "clone". For instance, "I have a copy of AT&T Unix at home."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Linux is not an OS, it is a gold rush, while OpenBSD is just an OS.

btw, there are very important contributions from OpenBSD's team - openssh and pf (primary IP packet filter imported into FreeBSD).

FreeBSD itself is an example of very successful "niched" UNIX-like system - think about network interface's performance, removal of GKL from most used device drivers, SMP-aware scheduler and memory manager, kqueue, netgraph subsystems and so on.

OpenBSD is a great toy for hobbyist to resurrect some ancient SUN's 1U Netra server as firewall and proxy for home or very small business. I have several of them for pleasure and enjoyment. And of course it is a very good choice for some low-power single-core single-CPU system without heavy pthreads.

My opinion it cannot be compared to the "open source business ecosystem" that Linux[based systems] became.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow . . . Linux must be ready for the Enterprise, because the Enterprise buzzwords are being used to tout Linux superiority now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> openBSD Slogan: NO REMOTE ROOT EXPLOITS IN THE DEFAULT INSTALL IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS AS FAR AS WE KNOW</comment>


The Send to Kindle Button - <AUTHOR> http://www.kindlepost.com/2013/03/send-to-kindle-button.html <comment><USER2> I've been using Readability for over a year and am very happy with it. It eliminates all the clutter and send me a very nice and readable document. If you do not want to send but make the article "readable" that is also possible with the plug-in. No need for a button either, I use shortcuts.

<comment><USER3> I've got a readability button on my firefox toolbar that sends the current article to my Kindle :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kindle has had official (and third party) Chrome and Firefox extensions for this for a while: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/chrome>

<comment><USER5> That's what I was thinking, I've been using that in Chrome for a long, long time. But this is talking about a 'share' button directly on the web site, as in it's in the list of 'share' buttons like fb, g+, email and all the rest.

I'm not really following why anyone would want to do it that way, if you have a kindle and read web sites like that you likely already have the sendtokindle extension. This seems to just be adding clutter to something I already consider clutter. Guess I'm not the target market, as usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All I ever wanted was a service that allows me to email a URL to an email address and have the text ripped and forwarded to my Kindle... Someday...

<comment><USER7> You can email in links to Instapaper and then have them delivered to your Kindle. You can even have Instapaper batch them together for you and deliver them at certain times.

<comment><USER6> Does Instapaper still refuse to stitch articles? I remember that being a dealbreaker the 18th time I went to check if that was really how a piece ended :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hm, this could entirely replace Instapaper for me.

Except I don't like their Chrome extension. The Instapaper bookmarklet seems much more secure.

</comment><comment><USER9> On the blog post announcing this and the actual landing page (<http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle>) I was surprised not to see an actual example of the button (or implementation on their own blog).

I found one a few clicks in:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/developers/button>

</comment><comment><USER10> So... Could we see this in newsreaders for tablets like Feedly or Flipboard, or is it an HTML embedded gizmo only?

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the easiest way to enable/create something like this for Nook Simple Touch?</comment>


Strangeloop finds IE10 to be 8% faster than Chrome 20 - <AUTHOR> http://microsoft-news.com/strangeloop-finds-ie10-to-be-8-faster-than-chrome-20/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Chrome is already on version 22. By the time IE10 comes out, Chrome and Firefox will be already several versions ahead.

2\. I wouldn't call microsoft-news.com a reliable source for browser comparisons.</comment>


Ask HN: Insurance against file-sharing lawsuits? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
I pirate a bit here and there to save me a few bucks. I was wondering, if any form of insurance exists for file-sharers like myself if we get sued for sharing copyrighted material?
A quick google search reveals one such insurance exists in Sweden, but I live in the US. Does anyone know of any such litigation protection service in the US?
Incidentally, this sounds like a good startup to form, if something like this doesn't exist. I'm considering forming a non-profit/co-op insurance for file-sharers in the US if one doesn't exist. I don't how hard that would be though. (I've never formed a company myself before.)
Also, would this be legal? (IANAL) <comment><USER2> Could a copyright holder subpoena the insurance company for its customer list, on the grounds that its customers were likely to be infringing copyrights?

(IANAL even in my jurisdiction.)</comment>


Become a Super Founder? - <AUTHOR> http://www.superfounder.me <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the upvote</comment>


How much bandwidth is required for programming (remotely)? - <AUTHOR>

Note that this isn't about latency - assume that it is good enough.
I work remotely (mostly from home) and have been doing it for approximately 3 years now. I started with a 2Mbps highly-reliable connection with a backup connectivity dongle. Then moved to a 12 Mbps connection with little less reliability (since I always had a backup). For some time I also tested a 20Mbps connection - but that did not feel anything different to my usage. Now I have a 4Mbps connection
While the higher-bandwidth paysoff when I watch youtube-HD video tutorials, download SDKs.
But if we consider more frequent  tasks like reading online documentation, looking up stackoverflow, reading HN, or testing websites online - the bandwidth of 4Mbps feels "too much to have". I usually need to deploy to cloud environments, download code from these environments and test stuff online
* The speeds I mentioned above are downstream speeds, upstream speeds are lower- between 1Mbps and 2Mbps
How much bandwidth do you require to effectively work remotely? <comment><USER2> I have a 50Mbps/5Mpbs connection that I upgraded to recently. I do have to download large code bases and upload large .war files, but I've noticed that it's not really my connection speed that's limiting. Often I'm on my work VPN or if I'm doing work on a customer site I'll be on their VPN. Most of the time, at least for me, the VPN severely limits my upload/download speeds.

Since that's the case, I'm considering downgrading my plan. YMMV, but my take home message is do what works for you and make sure that you are able to utilize all of your bandwidth if you go with a more expensive plan.

Also, what would be nice (for me) is if the upload speeds would match the download speeds. I would settle for a 5Mbps/5Mbps connection because more often than not upload speed is my bottleneck.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are coding remotely (e.g. ssh/nx into a linux box somewhere), then latency matters more than bandwidth. All of your BW numbers mentioned should work fine.

</comment><comment><USER4> In my work, I tend to upload big jars (~55 MB) to servers/S3 frequently - without a good upload rate, that'd be basically out of the question (I know because I experience it when working from cafes with sucky connection) and I'd need to structure my project in a less convenient way.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you can do your work remotely through a terminal, then you can get away with speeds slower than 1Mbps, even dial-up. If you need to do video chat via Skype of Google Hangouts, then you probably wouldn't want to go much slower than 1Mbps.

<comment><USER6> Pretty much this. Although when it comes to internet speeds I tend to get the the fastest i'm willing to pay for. There is nothing like fast internet.</comment></comment>


Chinese 'gait recognition' tech IDs people by how they walk - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a <comment><USER2> So does this mean we will see people doing "silly walks" a la john Cleese, to avoid detection?</comment>


The Triboro: Transit plan for the NYC Boroughs - <AUTHOR> http://library.rpa.org/interactive/the-triboro/ <comment><USER2> >Providing a reliable connection between the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn by rail will provide more direct trips within and between these boroughs than either the subway or bus networks can do today. Buses make up 43% of transit ridership in these three boroughs, but buses operate at an average speed of 8 mph as they fight the city's heavy traffic.

It's amazing to see New York City suffer almost half a century after Robert Moses's decline.

One of the worst consequences of Moses's 600 (or was it 700?) miles of highway is how residential areas outside of Manhattan developed: Because he built the city around highways and hence commuting by car, residential areas outside of Manhattan developed into thinly spread suburbs, making it near impossible to create an efficient network of trains. To New York City's credit, they've made a laudable comeback with subways: After all, it's _the_ city you can live without owning cars in the United States. Yet, our generation continues to pay the price of Moses's ego and lack of foresight.

RM is a humbling reminder that getting wrong stuff done so effectively has grave and lasting consequences.

<comment><USER3> The story of Robert Moses is a fascinating one and hugely relevant to the shape of NYC, but I'm not sure he really had much to do with the specific issue under discussion. With some relatively small exceptions the city was highly developed and dense before Moses and the car came along, and while he did ram highways through it, he didn't have the effect of making it less dense.

This proposal discusses connecting well populated inner city areas laterally, where are these thinly spread suburbs you mention?

The issue described here is that the rail transit system is highly Manhattan centric, which well predates Moses.

<comment><USER4> While the issue started and was establish before Moses, it was his control over nearly all the transportation budget that prevented any new growth. If he had been friendly to mass transit, nyc would have far more subways options.

<comment><USER5> You can argue that both ways.

As public sector unions appears and pay & conditions improved, the _only_ way that NYC mass transit has been remotely sustainable has been by consolidating the Moses empire into the MTA. The tolls provide the cash flow to sustain the system.

It's impossible to self-sustain the current subways, and the perpetual near- bankruptcy of NYC throughout most of the 20th century wouldn't have allowed for subway construction at all.

Moses's genius was getting the state government to give a shit about NYC and create the authorities to bond his projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll believe it when I see it. The original IRT network was built in 2 years (!). They've been working on the 2nd avenue line since 1972 and it still isn't open.

<comment><USER7> Modern public transit projects in the US are an embarrassment. It takes 20 years now to do something that used to be 1 year. :(

<comment><USER8> I suspect it has a lot to do with building in urbanized areas and using construction and siting methods that care about things like public input and how the environment is affected. (Note: I do not deny that the process can be twisted to suit a particular goal of a small minority--see also Sound Transit's East Link planning through Bellevue, WA.)

Instead of the days of the "city fathers" coming in and declaring that a thing will be built in a place and that which exists can either get out of the way or get flattened--and the thing being built in a way that benefits those who greased the right palms with the public coming in a distant second or third-- we study, plan, and consider a lot more.

As a secondary bit, we also don't have the financial capacity, either by accident or intent of the legislature and voters. Many projects are built with bonding authority backed by voter-approved taxes. The legislature of an area restricts what authority and taxes can be used and in what quantities. Dallas Area Rapid Transit's light rail system was built with a 1% sales tax in member cities...and it still doesn't extend to every city that was a charter member. Sound Transit's light rail and express bus system was built with a combination of taxes, mostly on vehicle registrations and sales, that are under periodic assault from statewide initiatives. Many countries have a "land bank" where the national or provincial/state government "front" the money for the local bonds. (Like Canada and British Columbia did in Vancouver.) Most U.S. states do not.

We "did this" to ourselves. It's not the construction, it's the mechanics of getting there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was so well written that it makes me want to hop on a plane to New York and give it a ride.

</comment><comment><USER10> Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. -Mike Tyson

As a New Yorker, I'll be stunned if anything comes of this "plan" except hundreds of billions of dollars wasted and endless hours of sitting in traffic while I pass construction areas filled with equipment and completely devoid of workers or activity.

<comment><USER11> An amusing thing about this proposal is that it comes only a few weeks after De Blasio's plan to put a light rail along the Brooklyn/Queens waterfront.

Though it would personally benefit me greatly, I must confess that it would mostly be a convenience for yuppies who can afford to live along the water. This Triboro would benefit people who _need_ better transportation.

<comment><USER12> > An amusing thing about this proposal is that it comes only a few weeks after > De Blasio's plan to put a light rail along the Brooklyn/Queens waterfront.

The Triboro RX proposal has been around for a much longer time than De Blasio's light rail thing. Here's an article about it from 2013: [http://www.citylab.com/commute/2013/07/transit-project- new-y...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2013/07/transit-project-new-york- mayoral-candidates-should-be-talking-about/6271/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it seem odd to anyone else that this plan seems to pretend northern NJ doesn't exist? It would make much more sense to me to make the "triboro" a full-circle rather than a half-circle. If you look at underground map of London you don't see any half-circles.

<comment><USER14> This and the rest of the subway system. It kind of hilarious looking at that map and seeing a dense web of subway lines with none of them going to New Jersey.

I'm guessing this is because the administrative boundary means there's no incentive for New York governance to do anything to benefit New Jersey?

<comment><USER15> There are subway lines going to New Jersey— they are just operated by the Port Authority as the PATH.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good luck convincing CSX to share rails. It took Amtrak decades to get a deal in place for the Hudson River line.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why not just extend the G? It already is Queens<->Brooklyn.

<comment><USER17> That would require a whole bunch of grade-separated right-of-way & track that doesn't currently exist. The brilliance of the Triboro is that it's all already pretty much there.

Note also that there's a long history of truncating the G train [1].

I personally would love to see the Franklin Ave Shuttle extended to make a loop out of Brooklyn portion of the current G train route along Church Ave, connecting north-central Brooklyn to Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and Long Island City. That's probably a pipe dream.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_(New_York_City_Subway_servic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_\(New_York_City_Subway_service\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why call it the Triboro? Even leaving behind the negative associations (one assumes advocates of rail would not want to call to mind thoughts of Robert Moses), there are, err, _four_ boroughs it proposes to connect.

<comment><USER19> The Staten Island connection is shown as a possible future extension, not part of this plan.

<comment><USER20> As a Staten Island resident, this sucks as usual. I lived here for 10 years, moved to Manhattan and recently moved back because I just can't get the same amount of space for the price in the other boroughs. The work on the Verrazano and SI Expressway has slowed down traffic to worse delays than before, and this island really needs some better transportation options.

Currently, I take the express bus every day to my office in the Flatiron district - this takes me on average an hour and 10 minutes door to door, but can easily hit 2 hours due to something happening on either the Verrazano or the FDR. Alternatively, I live close enough to the (there is only one) train on Staten Island that can take me to the Ferry - from there I would get off with everyone else and fight with the crowds taking the various subways up town. This commute is about an hour and 20 minutes, and is broken up in 3 parts that are mildly frustrating during each leg of the commute.

Obviously a direct subway connection to the island would be amazing, either to Brooklyn or Manhattan directly, but that plan was scrapped in the 20's and isn't likely to come back any time soon. Some transportation proposals include commuter connections to the NJ light rail via Bayonne; and there is a 20 year project ahead to improve and widen the Verrazano - I don't know how much of that time will cause more delays than there already are.

As the North Shore gets gentrified with the new luxury residential buildings like URL (Urban Ready Life - _sigh_ \- though it looks like it has now been renamed URBY...), the Wheel (the future world's tallest ferris wheel), Empire Outlets, etc - the area will become a hot new destination for those looking to escape the ever rising prices of the coveted Brooklyn and New Jersey areas like Williamsburg, Crown Heights, Jersey City, etc. Hopefully they have a lot more in store for transportation options when it comes to the island when these projects open to the public over the course of 2017.

Sorry for the rant...

<comment><USER21> It isn't a coincidence that commuting time and price of a sq-ft of space are negatively correlated. I guarantee you if someone built a 5 min connection from downtown to Staten Island, the real-estate on SI would very quickly be developed to the exact same state as all the other places that are 5 min from downtown. The thing you want (affordable, spacious, fast transit) simply can't exist.

<comment><USER22> They can if the supply greatly increases. That's among the reasons why a project longer the Triboro brings so much opportunity. Decentralizing New York real estate would drastically improve affordability.

<comment><USER21> Then more people will see that New York provides better bang for the buck (economic opportunities per rent dollar), which will cause population to increase by migration, which will increase demand, which will eventually get us back to where we started.

I'm not saying this proposal is bad. I quite like it. But let's not get the causation backwards. Urban poor aren't poor because of bad access to transit. Urban poor have bad access to transit because they are poor. Building transit ultimately changes the real estate value along the line, temporarily makes everyone's rent cheaper, and permanently increases the population of the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The top image is the new splash screen. Why not lead with a map of the proposed line above the fold, instead of a pretty but non-informative title page that leads into a page full of text?

</comment><comment><USER24> This proposal sounds great, but seems to wave its hands furiously about right- of-way and eminent domain. I used to live in Astoria on Ditmars Blvd, and the proposed line would most certainly be going on/over thousands of private residences. I presume their placement is to try and connect this to the end stop of the N subway line, but It's not like Astoria is a junkyard or railyard, it's a dense residential neighborhood with single family and multi- family housing.

<comment><USER25> The plan here is to use the existing above-ground rail line that runs parallel to Ditmars from the park, then along the BQE and into Brooklyn. It is the line that literally has a bridge over the Astoria-Ditmars stop with all the Greek murals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> WITHIN BOROUGH, just try to get from LGA to the Ronkonkoma LIRR line. Not an unreasonable request. The line shows sort of helps. But at the least, it should have a station at LGA.

</comment><comment><USER27> In a dream world this would go underground at Jackson Heights and connect LGA to the subway system.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a Bronx resident this sounds very exciting.

As a jaded consumer of modern media this sounds suspiciously one-sided. What are the downsides? It doesn't seem to generate revenue or lower costs for the city. Why would a politician back this plan?</comment>


Someone is distributing fake versions of my app with malware - <AUTHOR> I have a Firefox plug-in, "Ad Limiter"[1].  Recently, the number of users as logged by Mozilla's AMO site began to climb rapidly. When Firefox checks for updates daily, it reports the installed plug-ins to Mozilla, and Mozilla publishes those statistics.
The rate of increase in users exceeds the number of downloads. At first I thought Mozilla's statistics system was broken.  But that's not the problem.[2] Someone is apparently distributing some form of malware which seems to be impersonating Ad Limiter.  They're using Ad Limiter's Mozilla AMO ID number, but a random version number.  (Real version numbers are 1.3 to 2.0. Fake version numbers range from 2.17.71 to 1009.99.992.  All bogus versions have three-number versions, while all legitimate versions have two-number versions.
All this is inferred from Firefox statistics logging. We haven't seen the actual malware yet.  If anyone has a copy of Firefox with Ad Limiter installed, and the version isn't between 1.3 and 2.0, we'd really like to see it. Please save a copy of the Firefox add-ons directory before deleting the bogus add-on, and send a copy of the bogus add-on to "firstname.lastname@example.com".  We want to see what this malware is doing in our name.  Thanks.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ad-limiter/ [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966 <comment><AUTHOR> It's not just our addon. They got Flashblock, too. There are about 5000 bogus Flashblock installs, with the same sort of random 1000.xx.xx version numbers. Here's the raw JSON of usage by version:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/flashblock/st...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/flashblock/statistics/versions-day-20150409-20150411.json)

(The human-readable statistics just say "Invalid"; you have to look at the raw JSON to see the bogus versions.)

I started writing a program in Go to find other examples, used Flashblock as the first test case, and got a hit. Not looking good.

</comment><comment><USER2> I feel like the the odds of you finding a HN user with a malicious addon is pretty low compared to other places. Have you tried the firefox addons forums? Users often describe issues there and you may have a thread dedicated to your addon (or you can start one).

Another place you might be able to reach out to are AV vendors like Kaspersky. From what I understand they index and hash nearly every file on a users computer to compare to a master database. Maybe you can ask them to search for a file name and where it occurs geographically.

I wonder if someone is trading warez in exchange for installing a "free ad blocker!" (your addon converted to malware). I've seen things like that before.

<comment><USER2> Now that I read more about your app I can see why criminals would want to subvert it. You are replacing the top (ad) search result on every search engine with one that has been verified by sitetruth.com. If I were a criminal I would love to slightly modify your code to point to my own ad server, thus letting me earn affiliate bucks. Then install the addon via drive-by download. The users wouldn't remember installing it, but they might not remove it either, due to the pleasant-sounding name.

<comment><USER3> Is this not the same vector used for the GitHub DDOS, just in a slightly different form?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966) > The real solution to this problem is extension signing, which we will deploy later this year.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The malware is probably using our add-on ID

        firstname.lastname@example.com

and may have a filename such as that, but may not be called Ad Limiter. Google searches for that ID are not turning up anything other than our own stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you push a plugin update that breaks whatever they're doing, or at least makes some sort of notification to the user show up?

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you sure there is malware? Maybe someone copy-pasted your id not knowing what they were doing, and they have a completely legitimate app otherwise.

<comment><USER7> They know how to make their version number vary at runtime, but they don't know not to copy/paste someone else ID?

They don't know not to copy/paste someone else's ID, yet their add-on has become more popular than OP's overnight?

Malware is not "a bridge too far". If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

OP: ask Mozilla staff to comb their incoming stats logs for IPs suspected of infection then search Spamhaus, RBL type databases for matches. If the malware is spread via email, you might find a copy of it that way.

This comment is insightful: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966#c4](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966#c4) . A similar strategy would be to select the list of other addons that same machines have installed.

<comment><USER8> "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck" \- ferguson missouri PD operations manual (2012)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you contacted Mozilla to see what they recommend in this type of scenario?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. See

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1152966)

I put this on HN because somewhere there's probably somebody who's detected a security problem related to this and is trying to track it down.

A likely possibility is that it's some malware that's already on the Firefox blacklist[1], and they're trying to get past the blacklist by stealing the identity of a valid add-on.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/blocked/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >app

Really...

</comment><comment><USER11> _The rate of increase in users exceeds the number of downloads._

Looking at the other facts here makes this unlikely, but don't forget that users may be sharing the files somewhere else, so the actual number of users could far outnumber the number of downloads from the official site. Quite frankly I consider that a _good_ thing, since I think users should be allowed to do that - and look on the bright side, your add-on would not be shared in such a fashion if users didn't like it.

Also, I wouldn't be hasty in calling this "malware"... perhaps it's a benevolent mod that someone did, and was shared it on a forum somewhere. I know that you likely don't approve of such a thing, but it's basically what the Android community does (share modded apps) and I don't think it's fundamentally bad; it's one of the reasons why I prefer it to a more walled- garden ecosystem. I say this from the perspective of both an author and user.

</comment><comment><USER12> Along those same lines. It's been Grand Central in my house around 4 a.m. I can't trust my computer and am going to print the code. Scan the printed code. Have the code retyped on a new computer. Copy the code to a disk. Compare it against the original code on the original computer. Rinse, wash, repeat until the code matches. I live in an area I un-affectionately call "Spookville". Does anyone know of a service that does this? (I realize I can hire a temp.)

<comment><USER12> Sorry. S. Feibish.</comment></comment>


AI Chips: Past, Present and Future - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/artificial-intelligence-chips-past-present-and-future/ <comment><USER2> There are something like three dozen startups working on different chips that can speed up this whole process. The big question for all of these companies and their architectures is how flexible they will be for anything beyond a very specific implementation of an algorithm. This is particularly important in the AI/ML world because the algorithms are changing so rapidly. The challenge here goes well beyond the chip architecture. So if you think about the benchmarks for CPUs today, those can be blazing fast, but when you try them out on real applications they run a lot slower. Those differences may be magnified with parallel approaches. Different applications utilize different levels of parallelism with uneven performance improvements. It's not just how the processing is parsed, but also how effectively the results can be recombined after processing.

<comment><USER3> Well, that's why Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon are collaborating together to create ONNX, an open source graph model. It's currently looking like ONNX will be the "LLVM IR" of the deep learning world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disappointing article. The history and future of neural network chips is much much larger than GPUs and TPUs. There was a post a few months ago from IEEE about neural chip architectures, which was pretty good for the scope, but there is actually a lot more once you add in the materials research.

<comment><USER5> It may be a long time before special purpose parallel processing unit become more useful than general purpose parallel processing units.

The advantage of general purpose parallel chips is both economies of scale (GPUs serve purposes from games to cryptomining to AI) and the tendency of AI to switch from algorithm to algorithm. There's been a long history of "AI Chips" that prematurely choose the particular AI algorithm that would be optimized.</comment></comment>


Using multi-arch Docker images to support apps on any architecture - <AUTHOR> https://mirailabs.io/blog/multiarch-docker-with-buildx/ <comment><USER2> As an aside, is this the new pipe curl to sudo bash?

        docker run --rm --privileged docker/binfmt:66f9012c56a8316f9244ffd7622d7c21c1f6f28d

<comment><USER3> Except you cannot even look at the contents of the file being piped beforehand and hope that the same file is downloaded when you actually pipe it. It's more like running setup.exe using the administrator account.

<comment><USER4> Sure you can - first pull, then there's many tools to help you. For example [https://github.com/larsks/undocker/](https://github.com/larsks/undocker/)

<comment><USER5> Indeed.

You can also pull via the sha rather than the tag, which gives you significant extra assurance.

docker pull docker/binfmt@sha256:5a9ad88945dff7dc1af2ef7c351fe3dd9f7c874eb2c912c202ced088d21c178a

Once you've confirmed you're happy with the script, I don't believe there is any issue with automating this.

docker run --rm --privileged docker/binfmt:@sha256:5a9ad88945dff7dc1af2ef7c351fe3dd9f7c874eb2c912c202ced088d21c178a

In theory, the underlying container cannot be changed, which is what most of the issues with piping curl into bash is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been leveraging docker buildx to create multi architecture images for a few months. It's quite nice and simple, and I've been able to even automate the multiarch builds with GitHub Actions. See an example repo of mine here: [https://github.com/jmb12686/docker- cadvisor](https://github.com/jmb12686/docker-cadvisor)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! I'd like to get some automated multi-arch image builds going too. I'll give GitHub Actions a go using your repo as reference.

<comment><USER6> Here's another repo of mine doing (essentially) the same thing, multi arch image build using GitHub Actions. There is a bit more documentation in this repo regarding local builds though: [https://github.com/jmb12686/node- exporter](https://github.com/jmb12686/node-exporter)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish there was something like Bazel, Buck, Pants, or Please built on top of docker/crio.

The docker build cache, and dockerizarion of tools, has made building, testing, and deploying software so much simpler. Unfortunately the next step in build systems (in my opinion) still has the mentality that people want to have mutable state on their host systems.

I hope someone extends BuildKit into a system like Bazel. All rules can be executed in containers, all software and deps can be managed in build contexts, you automatically get distributed test runners/builds/cache by talking to multiple docker daemons, etc.

<comment><USER8> The docker build cache alone feels like magic for long (from scratch) builds. It feels tedious breaking out individual steps but I've yet to regret the extra effort.

<comment><USER9> In other contexts, Cow snapshots such as those provided by LVM or ZFS etc can provide similar effect by naming the snapshot after the hash of the code to execute to build it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The original purpose of most computer programmers was to write a program that would solve an immediate technical problem or a business requirement. The programmer was not concerned with the "technical" (though still important) question: What architecture is this CPU going to use? The first time a programmer encountered the question, his reaction was to try to compile a program that would run on the CPU.

I used to think of this process as a sort of reverse engineering exercise. To figure out what a CPU was doing, you needed to understand the architecture of the CPUs used by the people who were designing it. It was as though you were trying to reverse engineer a car engine using a hand-held computer; to understand how the engine worked you needed to understand how the car engine.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article but I can't understand why cross compilation is dismissed.

It could have been improved by some performance benchmarks showing cross compilation performance in comparison with this emulation based solution. I find it hard to believe it makes sense to emulate when native performance is available.

<comment><USER12> Cross compiling is a lot more difficult to set up. Emulation let's you use much of the target system's tools as is. Cross compiling means you have to build all of those tools for the host system.

For example, with the RaspberryPi I can grab a Raspbain image, add binfmt and qemu on my host and with a few small changes to the image chroot in to a ready made build environment for the Pi that's faster and more convenient than compiling on the Pi. Setting up a cross compile environment for the Pi is much harder.

Docker is totally unnecessary BTW.

<comment><USER13> I've honestly never had a problem cross-compiling for the Raspberry Pi. I learned my lesson back when it first came out; I needed a new ntpd and it took 24 hours to build on the Pi. I then realized the settings were wrong and spent about 20 minutes setting up the cross-compilation machinery on my x86 Linux box instead of waiting another day. "apt-get install crossbuild-essential- armhf" and some configuration and your build is done in seconds. Well worth it.

Modern languages are even easier. I can build a Go binary for the Raspberry Pi by setting one or two environment variables; "GOARCH=arm GOOS=linux go build ./whatever". Wonderful.

The Raspberry Pi has improved since the original. I recently needed llvm compiled from source and it only took on the order of hours on a Pi 4. (GCC was unusable, though; uses too much memory. Had to use clang from the package manager to build a new LLVM. The efficiency was impressive.)

<comment><USER12> Finding the right parameters to cross compile each dependency you need is tedious. Sure some packages are easy to cross compile but it's much easier to set up an emulated build environment and then compile everything normally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I helped support the similar thing for Borg inside Google. It's quite simple to support in a cluster manager, and highly powerful.

</comment><comment><USER15> This looks interesting. I've been looking into getting Keybase running on a Raspberry Pi 4. This might help.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone know how to get smaller docker images? I thought if I had all the previous layers in the docker registry that an upload would just be the size of the diff of the new layer, but this seems to _never_ work.

<comment><USER7> Some docker registries isolate the layer cache per account to prevent cache poisoning attacks and data leaks. This means you might only take advantage of the registry caching if you have already pushed the first version of a tagged image.

If you want to get extremely small docker images you might also want to take a look at Google's distroless images and using mutlistage builds.

<comment><USER16> > Some docker registries isolate the layer cache per account to prevent cache > poisoning attacks and data leaks.

Are there ones that _don 't_ that you know of? This will be for an intranet registry, so the isolation doesn't buy much.

Thanks! re:the other suggestions, I will look into those.

<comment><USER7> GCR boasts it has a global layer cache. Also, this is a thing that should only ever effect your very first push. You should only be seeing it twice if:

1\. None of your image layers are the same between builds (ADD as one of the first instructions for instance)

2\. You are distributing your code to many people and they are building them into entirely separate accounts. (you send me your code and I build, tag, and push it to my dockerhub account).

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately, choice 2 sounds like us. I was looking for some way to short- circuit that (by maybe shipping the repo already loaded) as the product runs in the customer's cloud, and the images are built on their machines.

<comment><USER7> If that's the case you could give them a pre-built copy of your containers (assuming your builds take a very long time this might be worth it).

There's two commands: `docker save` and `docker load`. It tars the history, layers, etc into a single file. You can further compress it for distribution. I've had a lot of luck with it.

Your client would then download your source, `docker load` your prebuilt copies to warm their cache, make their modifications, and further builds would be much faster.

They'd still pay that first penalty for pushing to their internal registry but that shouldn't take too long since that's essentially just a file copy.

<comment><USER16> I'll look into it. Thanks a bunch!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-santa-monica-airbnb-20150512-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> This is going to happen in most cities; it has to, because the pendulum has swung too far from "abusive regulation" to "abusive lack of regulation".

People like to invoke the evil "hotel lobby", which I'm sure does exist!, but it is not even a little bit hard to find loud, angry citizens complaining. Those complaints are entirely predictable: people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents, then some part of the building gets converted to a hotel. People aren't OK with that.

There are also places where vibrant short-term rental markets may exacerbate tight housing markets.

I've had nothing but good Airbnb experiences, in SFBA, NYC, and London. I hope Airbnb works this out. But they don't really hold all the cards here.

<comment><USER3> _people buy or rent residences in buildings expecting those buildings to be inhabited by long-term residents_

"expecting" is little slippery - do they have actual contracts spelling that out?

<comment><USER4> Without delving into the specifics of any particular legislative district, this is effectively the domain of zoning codes and other legislative tools of urban planning.

While not a literal contract, certainly a layer of legally encoded social contracts with a long history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Santa Monica resident, I think this is great.

Santa Monica has, by some indices, the most expensive hotel rooms in the state. This has driven a huge demand for short rentals near the beach. I have no access to numbers but my personal anecdata is interesting for the number of people I know involved in grey-market short term rentals and the number of people unable to find available apartments, let alone available apartments anywhere near the rents 2-3 years ago pre-AirBnB.

I did protracted apartment searches in the same area of Santa Monica in November 2012 and 2014 and the difference in price and availability was immense. At the same time I had one friend who was making a full time job out of "hosting" for AirBnB-ed condos and apartments either bought or rented in the past year by deep-pocketed "investors" in Malibu and Santa Monica with the sole purpose of short term rentals. I know another young lady who rents three apartments and lives in whichever one is earning the least on AirBnb. She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single residential units off the market in the process.

There's a lot of people doing variations on this business model and it is absolutely pushing out the longer term residents. I've seen many of my beach friends (mostly involved in entertainment, good living wages but not anything like tech wages) progressively pushed further and further afield as random housing events (unit selling, massive renovation, roommate disputes) mean they cannot afford to relocate anywhere near the place that they are leaving. That is also despite their earnings increasing through normal career progression.

My parents came to visit last Christmas and they used AirBnB to rent a back house for a week a few blocks from my apartment. It was great. Do I think that shouldn't be allowed? No, but considering their host was running a year-round business out of their home I don't think it is unreasonable to treat them like a business.

<comment><USER6> > _She nets about $1000 a month doing this and manages to take 3 single > residential units off the market in the process._

That doesn't make any sense. $333 from an apartment per month in Santa Monica.

You've been lied to.

<comment><USER5> I said nets, not grosses. She has two places rented out 10-20 days a month and the total revenue pays for all three rents plus about a grand left over. She lives in whichever apartment seems to get the least interest on AirBnB and occasionally switches it up.

<comment><USER7> Still, netting $1,000 for managing 3 apartments (it takes a lot of work, my wife used to do this for others), is not really worth the trouble?

<comment><USER8> If this also covers the place she's living, it might not be such a bad deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm really torn here. On one hand, as a homeowner, I would be pretty upset if my neighbors turned their houses into "hotels". There would be a lot of noise and a lot of people who don't care much about the neighbors since they are only here for a few days.

On the other hand, I just got back from traveling to Europe, where all of the bookings we made were AirBnB. My wife and I were traveling with our 4 month old baby, and there weren't any hotels that could really meet our needs as well as the apartments that we rented. The trip would have been much harder without AirBnB.

I think Santa Monica went too far here -- they should have left some wiggle room for folks who want to rent out their place on weekends and such, like the folks we rented from in Vienna.

<comment><USER10> When your family was travelling, did you make extra noise at the houses and apartments you rented? Why do you expect most people to disrespect the people around them if they are only there temporarily?

<comment><USER9> No, because I'm respectful of others. But I definitely know people who have the attitude of "well I'll never see these people again!".

Also, when I stay in a real hotel, there have been many times when folks were noisy and disrespectful.

<comment><USER11> And when you are at a hotel and people are acting up.. You can go to the manager.

What happens when your neighbor decides to rent their place via Air BNB, And folks are noisy and disrespectful.. Who do you complain to?? The home owner?? Do you think he's going to kick the people out? They are a revenue stream, and you are not.

Well.. you may say. I'll call the cops. Ok. Your neighbor gets a warning.. then eventually a 300 dollar fine.. Your neighbor can afford a few fines a month from a few random loud nights as long as the air bnb money keeps coming in. In fact your neighbor will need to make sure their place is full more nights if you start calling the cops.

<comment><USER12> > you can go to the manager

That's an ugly workaround. I want a solution.

Party Hotels and Shut the Fuck Up Hotels, where walls are not paper thin.

AirBnB can throw a few checkboxes there to manage this, and figure out if a place is in a residental condominum with a lot of non bnb neighbors, or it's in the middle of downtown next to all the bars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article explains some of the problems caused by short-term rentals such as Airbnb: [http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb- hous...](http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-airbnb-housing- market-20150311-story.html)

Also, it seems reasonable that hotels and Airbnb comppete on a level playing field in terms of tax and regulation.

All that said, I think they need to find solutions that accomodate all parties: Hotels, short-term rentals, and the housing market for renters.

<comment><USER14> Is it reasonable that hotels and my friend with a couple of spare bedrooms in his house should have to compete on a level playing field in terms of regulation, inspection, taxation, and the like? Because as far as I can tell Airbnb does not operate anything; they are just a booking service for people who rent out spare bedrooms. It doesn't seem reasonable that my friend with the big house should have to jump through all the same hoops as the professionals running the Marriott or whatever.

<comment><USER15> Well, as the guy staying there, I'd like to have SOME guarantee that the place isn't unsafe, unsanitary, cheating me or spying on me. So as a consumer, then yes I do want them to jump through all the hoops.

<comment><USER16> Then don't go to AirBnB places. Go to hotels.

It really is that simple. Don't deprive other people of choice because you don't want to choose.

<comment><USER13> > Then don't go to AirBnB places. Go to hotels.

That doesn't address safety and taxation issues.

<comment><USER16> It does. If you are concerned with safety issues, then don't go there.

<comment><USER13> > It does. If you are concerned with safety issues, then don't go there.

The 'free market' doesn't address safety well; that's why we have regulations. For example, it's not sufficient to say, 'if you are concerned about the safety of this restaurant's food, don't eat there'. No consumer has enough information to make that judgment reliably, and many consumers have additional challenges (consider the elderly, travelers from other countries who lack English or culture literacy, etc.). Also, the remedy (the Airbnb host gets bad reviews) is too late if someone is injured or loses their property; the system has failed at that point.

<comment><USER17> > The 'free market' doesn't address safety well; that's why we have > regulations.

We also have bonding, insurance and civil liability, which serve the same purpose in a more flexible way.

<comment><USER13> > We also have bonding, insurance and civil liability, which serve the same > purpose in a more flexible way.

Those solutions are useful, but only sometimes work and when they do they only provide money after the fact. In many cases, such as injury, death, or crippling fraud (e.g., an elderly retiree loses their home and savings), that's not sufficient.

<comment><USER17> The way insurance works is that risky behavior leads to higher premiums. Insuring a sports car is more expensive because studies show risky driving is associated with sports cars.

Hosts that don't treat neighbors respectfully or guests safely will quickly see bonds confiscated and premiums raised until they are out of the business.

Likewise, insurers often provide discounts for good behavior like taking safety courses, a history without incidents, installing anti theft devices, etc.

And requiring insurance also gives neighbors a recourse (payouts from the policy) if the block is set on for or something (though there are already laws and regulations about that sort of thing).

<comment><USER18> > And requiring insurance also gives neighbors a recourse (payouts from the > policy) if the block is set on for or something

No, legal liability rules give the neighbors _recourse_. What insurance and/accountability bond requirements do is reduce the risk that insolvency will prevent a liability judgment from being satisfied (though one which exceeds the required coverage may still not be _fully_ satisfied if the liable party is insolvent.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While I love Airbnb, it can truely be destructive to housing markets, at least to an extent. Here in Portland, OR it's beginning to become a larger problem as housing is getting bought purely to rent out.

I just hope we can come to a point where perhaps there is a way to allow airbnb to exist, while making it illegal to rent out property purely to rent it. This could allow it to be more like the bed and breakfast logging that it tends to feel like. I'm thinking restrictions to aid this are artificial limits to how many people/how many days per year you can rent out rooms in your home, which airbnb would be required to record.

I still have no idea how things like sanitation will be handled. Right now an airbnb host has very little obligation be sanitary like a hotel, except that it might make their reviews worse.

<comment><USER20> I used to love Airbnb. I've been on their basically since inception and have stayed in dozens of cities. Everything has been positive. Lately, though, it's been degrading in a few ways:

1\. Pricing in major markets is no longer competitive with hotels. Since most Airbnb properties lack anything close to the amenities offered by hotels, it's just not economically compelling anymore.

2\. The last several times I've stayed, I've felt the effects of the new scrutiny. I've been to clandestine meetings with hosts, purportedly on premises, only later to find out that the listed address is false. "Enter through the alley door," and, "Say you're my cousin, if anyone asks" are typically elements of the conversations. That's not what I pay for.

Now, my first choice is hotels, and it's only the rare case that I opt for Airbnb.

<comment><USER21> Very interesting, thanks. I have been deliberately going to hotels to avoid these problems - you know what you're getting with a hotel (usually).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Used Airbnb recently for a trip to LA for a friend's wedding. Myself and a few friends were able to rent a house in the hills which was way nicer, less expensive, and significantly easier than organizing a block of hotel rooms. Aside from moments where some would have to wait due to both showers being used, the trip was much more enjoyable.

While I agree that some rules need to be adjusted for Airbnb type of rentals, I really can't think of a reason why anyone would want to straight up ban it.

> The rules legalize "home-sharing" – in which the occupant rents a couch, > spare bedroom or backyard unit – but require hosts to obtain a business > license and pay Santa Monica's 14% hotel tax.

Is this going to be the new loophole?

<comment><USER23> The owner must be present during home-sharing, so each property owner should be limited to sharing one property at a time. Since the properties must be licensed, it should be easy to shut down the multiple-property Airbnb landlords.

What this might enable is "sharing" a huge property, say an apartment complex, essentially opening up a new class of low- or no-amenity hotels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have a _friend_ in Santa Monica who rents 2 apartments. One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance program. He then proceeds to rent the rooms out on AirBnB. He gets enough business to pay for the apartment he lives in and live frugally without having full-time employment.

It's hard to blame cities when this (and other) kind of abuse is going on.

<comment><USER25> > One he rents very cheap via some sort of rent control/housing assistance > program

He is probably not untitled to housing assistance if he has another apartment. He should make as much money as possible and stop that scheme because if he get caught doing that he may go to prison for fraud.

<comment><USER26> it's probably a discounted sub-let from someone who has a lease from 10+ years ago.

it's very common in santa monica.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think I get all points of the debate but the key question for me is...why are there so many airbnb rentals. Clearly there's some sort of demand, clearly the hotel econsystem doesn't handle it well enough. That's the root issue that needs investigation. Tighter regulations of airbnb are more of a hotfix than a long term solution imo

My uninformed gut instinct without doing any research is that the hotel market is probably over regulated and the prices are artificially high or there are simply not enough available rooms (lobby mini-monopolies or whatever you want to call it) and that's the reason why people flock to lower priced/other available options.

I guess a study on residential to short term rent demand would be helpful.

<comment><USER28> Yes: this is precisely the issue that most people seem to be ignoring.

I traveled in Europe a bit last year and was amazed at the affordable options for travelers. Between nicer hostels and hotels that offered small single rooms with a communal bathroom, I was able to get a clean place to sleep for $25-70/night. I haven't seen that in the US outside of AirBnB.

Most US hotels give you a huge room with a huge bed for a high price, and they're either located right in the middle of downtown or all the way on the edge of the city so you'd need to rent a car.

When I'm traveling, I much prefer to ditch the bullshit standard amenities like room service, a pool, continental breakfast, etc. and get a simple room in a part of town where people actually live. Even more so if I'm visiting friends.

Not sure what in our regulations makes this unpopular, but it's the real problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just moved out of downtown Santa Monica, from an apartment building that was swamped with Airbnb renters that caused all kinds of problems.

Airbnb is doing good _and_ evil in the world. They deserve to be forced to reduce the evil to reasonable levels. Maybe apartment buildings shouldn't be generally permitted, for example.

<comment><USER21> This would be an interesting rule to enforce in places like Barcelona, where every house is an apartment (as far as I remember after visiting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> There seems to be a general sense that short-term rentals make housing unaffordable. I disagree. We came up with the technology to scale a given piece of land to hundreds of residents at a low marginal cost a long time ago. Unfortunately, we've outlawed that technology in the vast majority of the American urbanized area. As a result, the demand to live on a particular piece of land far outstrips the supply of homes, and this competition makes prices skyrocket.

Build more homes. Build a lot of them. It's the only way to keep our cities affordable.

</comment><comment><USER31> I just don't think city councils are going to be able to put a billion dollar genie back in the bottle.

Airbnb is a p2p market. When regulation attacks p2p markets, they don't die, they adapt.

Airbnb itself might die like Napster, but someone else will find a way to take their place. Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records.

<comment><USER32> _Maybe the company that replaces it will be based outside US borders, safe from any subpoena for rental records._

That only works when activity is online-only and difficult to trace. If you're renting your apartment out it's pretty easy to detect.

<comment><USER33> Exactly. This is the same thing as rubber-hose cryptanalysis--if somebody can get hold of that meat carrier for your brilliant brain, they can figure out what you're doing. And so AirBNB will lose. (They've knuckled under wherever confronted.) So will the next one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm a supporter of airbnb.

However, government has a right to close loopholes in existing regulations (e.g. hotel tax) that are opened by the changes in the environment (e.g. availability of new technology such as airbnb). It's unfortunate that they chose to do this by an outright ban. It's especially unfortunate for homeowners who can't as easily leave the community if they disagree with the councils decision.

As I read through the comments in this and previous posts about airbnb, I noticed that a majority of issues cited by angry neighbors are related to renting of units in apartment buildings, as opposed to single family homes. I'm not suggesting that there are more abuses of the service in apartment buildings (though here may well be for a number of reasons), merely that the abuses are more troublesome in these cases because of the resources shared by neighbors (staircases, walls, etc.). It seems to me that the owners or managers of apartment buildings, and the homeowners associations of condos, should be able to enact reasonable limits to short-term rentals of their own properties in their rental agreements. To me this is a much more desirable way to attack the problem, rather than a hasty ban, as it may give people more choice in the matter. I say may because it's probably equally likely that apartment buildings would blindly start banning it as well. Nonetheless if I am someone who cares about using the service, I would try to find apartment that allows it.

</comment><comment><USER35> The article seems to highlight a legitimate use case that the regulation is screwing up, which also happens to be Airbnb's original purpose - to sublet while you are out of town or otherwise not using the space.

Sure, Airbnb has grown way past that, but in my mind there is a very big difference between running a business on Airbnb and subletting while you are away to help pay for a trip. A provision with a cap of how many nights a year one could sublet without being considered a hotel would be a lot more sensible.

While I'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators. I'm sure residents would help as well.

Taxing is sensible though.

<comment><USER36> _While I 'm sure it would be difficult to enforce, services like Airbnb and HomeAway would probably cooperate in disclosing booked stays per address. It wouldn't be that hard to link the data together and spot violators._

I can say with first hand knowledge, that HomeAway at least engages with cities politically to build cases for short-term rental advocacy from economic development to enabling and increasing the attractiveness of tourism in cities where they operate. They setup sessions with city and community leaders and work on actionable regulation and legislation with cities to introduce fair laws for rentals.

I'm no shill for HomeAway, but I do have a close personal friend who works on the Government Affairs team and have witnessed their efforts with my own eyes. At least in their case, HomeAway works with cities, instead of against them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe AirBnB needs a standards enforcement division. A 24-hour service where you call them up, make your complaint, and they send over some big scary people to knock on the offender's door and ask them to "turn it down" or "pick up their garbage." Local government offices and the landlords themselves can't respond quickly enough (the former can't/won't send someone there at 2AM and it'd be pretty tough to get the latter to run over to your apartment for this sort of thing.) Basically AirBnB police.

</comment><comment><USER38> >>Estimates that more than 7,000 houses and apartments have been taken off the rental market in metro Los Angeles for use as short-term rentals.

As I am searching for a good apartment in LA, this makes me bit upset.

<comment><USER39> Why is "build more" not a solution for this problem?

<comment><USER40> Because the very same Santa Monican NIMBYs that just passed that law have made it impossible to build more housing: [http://www.santamonicanext.org/2015/05/santa-monica-city- cou...](http://www.santamonicanext.org/2015/05/santa-monica-city-council-says- no-to-5-story-housing-on-boulevards/)

As an aside, if anyone is looking to locate a startup in Los Angeles, do your future employees a favor and avoid Santa Monica. Downtown LA and Culver City are far more sensible options and allow for a reasonable commute and/or nearby housing at lower prices than Santa Monica.

<comment><USER39> Phase 2 of Expo line is scheduled to open early next year [http://www.metro.net/projects/expo-santa- monica/](http://www.metro.net/projects/expo-santa-monica/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We just rented a place for a month on AirBnb only to find out that the owner kept two cats there (undisclosed); my wife has severe cat allergies. Now we're having to fight tooth and nail to get our money back, and the property owner is saying that her policy is no refunds, period. So yeah, I kinda get why people can cozy up to the idea of regulation.

<comment><USER42> That seems like a very good reason to cozy up to the idea that you should be able to get your money back from a host who misrepresents the property being rented, but not a particularly good reason to cozy up to the idea of arbitrary short-term rental regulation.

<comment><USER41> Sure. But who's going to enforce that "should"? This is why regulation is popular; it's about recourse.

<comment><USER42> Regardless of who enforces the rules, my point is that the rule prohibiting the misrepresentation of a business transaction is much more reasonable than the rule prohibiting (or significantly limiting) short-term rentals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I recently saw an airbnb advertising in my city in france.

The more I hear about uber and airbnb and those websites who try to replace existing services that doesn't use internet, the more it looks like some libertarian business model.

I'm not against it, but once insurances and the law adapt to it, I wonder if it will really be attractive anymore.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sadly that's what happens when you challenge an existing business model and industry who are afraid and will spare no expense to get legislation passed preventing competition from battering your profits.

I understand that services like Airbnb and Uber are unregulated, but instead of working with these companies to draft legislation that addresses the concerns, you're seeing draconian bills just outright banning them. It doesn't matter what the people want, when there is money involved, you can bet the side who doesn't necessarily make the most noise, but has the most money will win.

Whether or not politicians, corporations and residents afraid of change like it or not, the sharing economy is here to stay and will always find a way around any opposition. Look at Uber, opposed not only in multiple states in the USA, but also in other states in other countries.

<comment><USER45> Competition from hotels is just one side of the issue.

The other side is safety and security. I lived in a building next to a hostel for a year and a half. It was well maintained and the guests were regulated. Never had any complaints about the guests. On the other hand, my next door neighbor rented out his condo AirBnB style for a few months. It was obnoxious, the owner was remote and the guests were never regulated. The common areas were trashed, the guests were loud, and none of it mattered because they only had to deal with the consequences for a short term.

The fact of the matter is: there needs to be a distinction in regulation between short term and long term housing. As much as I am a fan of startups that make life convenient, the unregulated nature of AirBnB makes life difficult for anyone else not in the exchange. That's what hotels are for, to abstract that difficulty so that it only involves those within the boundaries of the exchange: the guests, the owners, and the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> VRBO has been around for longer than AirBnB, and specializes in full-unit or whole-house short-term rentals. But I never see them mentioned in these sorts of articles, either as a company that is affected by these types of regulations, or as a company that has taken a public position for or against these types of regulations.

Why is that? On previous stories the issue has been bedroom rentals, or listing rented apartments (i.e. short-term subleasing). But this seems to target whole-unit short-term rentals, even if they're owned. That seems to be right in the VRBO wheelhouse. For example: 158 listings:

[http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los- ange...](http://www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/usa/california/los-angeles- county/santa-monica?amenities=bookable)

<comment><USER33> I can't speak to VRBO, but I know that HomeAway is very particular about chucking out bad renters and works very closely with local governments to build fair legislation around short-term rentals.

(Disclaimer, such as it is: former TripAdvisor employee, incidentally touched their Vacation Rentals stuff a few years ago, don't really care about it and I use HomeAway.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think this is predictable in many more cities across the world. There is already people buying properties with the sole goal of converting them into airbnb units. And this on areas which are supposed to be residential, which is a big problem for people who happen to actually live there.

</comment><comment><USER48> In my apartment building there's an apartment that is rented out through Airbnb. There's also an apartment rented out to two students...

We have a lot more issues with those two students and their friends than with all of the Airbnb short term renters. It's anecdotical but I don't believe that short term renters are more likely to cause issues.

Airbnb's concept is also not new. Before Airbnb people rented apartments on Homelidays. It's interesting that thanks to the critical mass of Airbnb and their marketing people become more aware of it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Any new innovation has social impact and a part of the society, including the ruling bodies, react by trying to reverse the change. Any innovation will have some negative impact on the society because of lack of laws regulating the change. AirBnB is facing it, so is Tesla, and Uber. But, it is apparent, at least for the previously listed examples, that these are ideas whose time has come. I do not get worried by such decisions of ruling bodies. They are only temporary.

</comment><comment><USER50> I wish the article explored the penalties associated with continued rentals in violation of the new regulations. Obviously there could be tax penalties but I'm curious if there are additional civil fines, potential criminal violations, or hell maybe civil forfeiture laws might apply (I saw that tounge and cheek but after another front page post that may be a reality?). Would airbnb pay costs and lawyers fees like Uber has done?

<comment><USER51> AirBnb most of the time brush off their hands. The quality is terrible in some places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So renting entire apartment is banned, but renting parts of it are OK? Apply the "Singapore solution": lock up one bedroom, so the owner can claim they live there, and rent out the rest. (Under Singapore public housing rules, subleasing entire apartments is forbidden, but renting out parts is OK. Sounds familiar, no?)

</comment><comment><USER53> Our city (Raleigh) had the last B&B close, and the owners blamed it on Airbnb:

[http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake- county/...](http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake- county/article18917151.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> good, now they just need to shutdown the other regulation skirting companies like Uber as well.

It's not fair these companies skirt well known and age old laws to create an unfair advantage(and wealth) for themselves, by simply ignoring those laws. Play by the same rules as your competitors do and see how well you fair. Disruption by evading legalities isn't really all that impressive... the cartels and mobsters have done it for decades.

<comment><USER55> Libertarianism, i.e the deluded belief that unfettered capitalism is perfect and the panacea for all the world's ills, is very popular in certain SV startup circles. Uber, for example, blatantly ignoring local bylaws and regulations makes perfect sense when seen through libertarian tinted goggles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This isn't about noisy renters. It's about rental arbitragers driving the price of rental properties through the roof.

</comment><comment><USER57> god forbid that a governing body gives the low influence nuisances less attention than the powerful social nuisances. Slumlords all over the place, but of course the first thing on the governing bodies agenda is to make sure nothing disrupts the hugely homogeneous industry that is room rentals.

</comment><comment><USER58> This has to be bribery. There would be no reason to pass this if they were working for the people.

</comment><comment><USER59> And this should also happen to Uber.

<comment><USER33> I'm critical of Uber because Uber is exploitative and kinda shitty, but I see a difference in kind here. AirBNB causes negative externalities to people around the participants in the transaction. Uber, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I assume this is a story about their strict JS style guide?

[https://github.com/airbnb/javascript](https://github.com/airbnb/javascript)

</comment><comment><USER61> A win for the hotel industry lobby groups and a loss for the general public.

<comment><USER62> Unless you're part of the general public who lives in a desirable area, and your rent is increasing because limited housing is being turned into unregulated hotels.

I should say, I've used AirBnB many times and always had a great experience, but this isn't a clear cut "good" vs "evil" issue.

<comment><USER63> "limited housing" is the key point. Most North American municipalities have painful and binding limits on the number of housing units allowed: [http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up- blocke...](http://www.metafilter.com/148375/Anyone-have-a-Pop-up-blocker-For- houses#5989161)

Banning AirBnB is at best going to lower demand a little bit, it' not going to fix the much larger underlying problem.

<comment><USER62> Completely agree. I'm just saying it's not a clear cut issue of the public vs. the hotels.

There are legitimate arguments for limiting someone's ability to rent out their living space to short term tenants that have nothing to do with the hotel lobby. As someone who lives in an apartment building with fairly thin walls, I can sympathize with some one not wanting a parade of short term tenants as their neighbor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Folks, let's be honest. This is mostly about ornery landlords who are bitter that they are missing out on perceived higher rates for their properties. Add in a few nosy neighbors who have nothing else to do to make them feel important other than file complaints with their local HOA/city/whatever.

AirBNB should seriously hire a full time team of economists to publish studies defending their company. The efficiency gains are tremendous.</comment>


Show HN: See Which Friends 'Like' Their Own Pictures on Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89482969/instagram/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> As some background: I was interested in playing with the Instagram API so I built this last night.

I've heard about a trend of people 'liking' their own pictures on Instagram. Some people (mainly teenage users) say this has become more socially acceptable over time. I was curious how often this actually happens, so I built this site to find out.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is awesome. Not surprised by the results.</comment>


The backlash against big data - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/04/economist-explains-10?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_backlash_against_big_data

<comment><USER2> > Third, the problem of spurious correlations—associations that are > statistically robust but only happen by chance—increases with more data.

Can someone explain why this is the case? I don't see how spurious correlations wouldn't appear in small data just as well as big data.

<comment><USER3> Probability theory.

If I flip _one_ coin 100 times the outcome is likely to be close to the perception you would expect.

If I flip _8 million_ coins simultaneously for 100 iterations it is possible that a number of the coins will display massive outlier behaviour (98 Heads / 2 tails etc).

<comment><USER2> Now I'm confused what is meant by spurious correlation. You're talking about an event that is known to happen, and happens infrequently, and if you have enough samples it's guaranteed to happen at least once with high probability.

Spurious correlation seems to be related to the use of ratios of independent variables making correlation "out of thin air." The word "spurious" also seems to be used in relation to hidden causation.

Neither of these two uses are related to this example, nor does the problem (in the sense in the previous paragraph) "increase" with more data.

<comment><USER3> OK, my example was not perfect, I was just trying to make it accessible to show why spurious correlations in data have a greater likelihood in larger datasets, especially super massive. The sequence was analogous to the correlation.

Given enough data it will appear but it cannot be trusted as any sort of indicator.

Prob just best to read [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spurious_relationship)

<comment><USER2> Yeah I read that as well as the wikipedia article on "Spurious correlation" proper (which appears to be a different concept) [1]. Neither one seems to be related to the amount of data being processed, nor to the description the author gives of unlikely but statistically robust events.

Without an explanation I can only conclude that the author misused the term. It's a shame when he's (she's?) writing to inform.

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

<comment><USER3> If you do not personally understand something you automatically assume that an author is incorrect?

[http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of- expertise/](http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/)

That is your choice of course but it is classic Dunning Kruger. You are not required to form an opinion about concepts you are not _au fait_ with and to do so reveals more about you than it does about the author.

I would read the Tom Nichols paper above; it changed the way I approach certain topics.

In all honesty though; I am struggling to see what further explanation you require?

In larger datasets the likelihood of spurious correlation increases. This is because in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more attributable to variance (or noise) than to information (or signal).

[http://valbonneconsulting.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/traged...](http://valbonneconsulting.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/tragedy.jpg?w=640)

 _Figure 18 shows the swelling number of potential spurious relationships. The idea is as follows. If I have a set of 200 random variables, completely unrelated to each other, then it would be near impossible not to find in it a high correlation of sorts, say 30 percent, but that is entirely spurious. There are techniques to control the cherry-picking (one of which is known as the Bonferoni adjustment), but even then they don't catch the culprits—much as regulation doesn't stop insiders from gaming the system._

[http://www.wired.com/2013/02/big-data-means-big-errors- peopl...](http://www.wired.com/2013/02/big-data-means-big-errors-people/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, the linked article gives a much better explanation.

It's not about my personal understanding of something, but about the apparent contradiction with other sources I trust and the unnecessary vagueness about a subject that requires precision in terminology. "Statistically robust but unlikely" has many meanings, but "spurious correlation" has only one. I am training to be an expert in mathematics, so I do feel somewhat entitled to discuss the finer (though perhaps overly pedantic) points. It's literally my job to rigorously reason about these things. So I notice that the word "large" means something very specific here (many independent variables), while you appear to still mean "lots of data," which can happen with few variables just as well. "Big data" encompasses both (volume and variety), which is why it's confusing. So my need for a further explanation is because "in large data sets large deviations happen more often" does not appear to address my question if I'm specifically asking why volume would cause more spurious correlations (in fact, it does not). My questions are admittedly vague as well, but this should clear up my confusion.

I'm not saying the author doesn't know what spurious correlation is, just that the author used the term incorrectly, or too vaguely to be called correct, in that instance. There are many reasons to do this intentionally, I'm sure, but as a consequence I will ask questions with trivial but technical answers. I ask a hundred such questions every day, most of which I can answer myself, but I'll continue to ask them even when (if ever) I'm considered an expert in any topic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft teaches Best Buy employees how to troll Linux users - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/microsoft-teaches-best-buy-employees-how-to-troll-linux-users.ars

<comment><USER2> data is crap, but the presentation is visually nice ;)</comment>


Ask HN: review my app idea: easily get comments on wires/designs - <AUTHOR>

My idea is this: an app that lets you get comments on your documents (I'm thinking wireframes/designs). Works like this:
1. Email a PDF to us.
2. We email you back a url and a password.
3. Go to the url, enter password and your name (no signup). Then you get a page where you see all the pages in the pdf as large images (1 image per page), and you can leave comments on the images (ajaxy, like leaving notes on a Flickr image).
4. Email the url+password to your team, and get their comments too.
Thaz it. The purpose of this is to make it easier to get comments on a set of wireframes or designs. Right now, we tend to email the pdf to the team, then get emails back with comments. But there's no easy way to point to one piece of the image and say something about that (we fix that with the ajaxy commenting on the image). It's also hard to get all comments in one place, they tend to be dispersed in email threads (we fix that with having it online).
Thoughts? Should I build this? Would you use it? Is this minimum and viable enough, or should I add/remove stuff? <comment><AUTHOR> Basic version would be free, if people like it I could easily make a more company-friendly version for pay, later.</comment>


Why the multiverse is religion, not science - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dSua_PUyfM <comment><USER2> Because some random person on YouTube with half a knowledge of epistemology decided it is?

First, the video says "Scientists say that something exists if it is useful to describe observations".

Sorry, that's epistemology, and one particular epistemology, not science. Scientists work at another level than that (which is a meta level).

Second, falsifiability and "usefulness to describe observations" is not the be-all end-all of what is science. That's again a particular epistemology, and while a useful general guide, it has been found wanting and not historically matching what real scientists do and how actual scientific theories are formed and established.

Third, there's nothing that says whether the multiverse can or cannot be tested at some point (in fact there have been some theoritical and experimental attempts).

Fourth, religion also has other aspects (moral code, ritual, spiritual element, holy scripture, etc) not just "believing in something that's not useful to describe observations". So even if the multiverse merely matched religion in one aspect, doesn't make it a religion, as it doesn't match those other aspects.

Finally, from the view point of religious people themselves, religion is considered very useful to describe observations -- e.g. this or that happened because of God, or this phenomenon is a manifestation of this or that's God's wrath, etc. So even if that criterion (whether something is useful to describe observations) was enough to distinguish science from religion, it wouldn't help us do so except if we were already with the side of science (and so it's a circular argument).</comment>


AI Image Classifier – Just create a database and it will learn from it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fotisk07/Image-Classifier <comment><USER2> What are some of the shortcomings of a Neural Network?

It appears to be very good at pattern recognition, and uses a statistical analysis to rank the objects.

But can it synthesize? And create new knowledge, new science, new math, new techniques, new processes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, today no neural networks can't do things like creating new knowledge. I encourage you, however, to check out GAN's, Neural Networks that can produce new and original results, that is to say, they can generate faces and digits, which do not exist. Also, there are neural networks capable of producing music, poetry and using style transfer they are able to transfer painting styles. So, I think that the future looks promising for the area of Neural Networks, but there is still a lot of work to do

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't like the title of this. It is becoming a common theme in Machine Learning. "Let's just get a bunch of data and train a Neural Network on it, eventually it will get it right..right?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the accuracy of the network depends on a lot of different parameters so we are not always sure that the network will converge that is indeed true, however, I do not see any problem using an existing technology that works, make easy for normal people to use it and enjoy the benefits for it. Neural Networks aren't, indeed, a universal algorithm but they work pretty good so far in my opinion</comment></comment>