Unthinking Machines: Artificial intelligence needs a reboot, say experts - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37525/?p1=A2&a=f <comment><USER2> Overall, I'll say that the general sentiment of this panel is half true.

On the one hand, machine learning research has grown to such a large field that the signal to noise ratio has dropped dramatically. Lots of people try to squeak out another ICML or AAAI paper by making an incremental improvement that gets 94% accuracy instead of 92% on some set of benchmark tasks. This phenomenon is true across almost all academic disciplines, however, and is more an indictment of the "publish or perish" environment than anything else.

On the other hand, some of the things these (famous) researchers are noting is complete FUD:

>The answer is that there was a lot of progress in the 1960s and 1970s. Then something went wrong.

Yep, things got hard. People early on thought that the difficulty of picking fruit would increase linearly over time. If they could pick all this low- hanging fruit in such a short span of time then surely in X years we'd be at point Y! Unfortunately, it turned out that the landscape was much steeper and fraught with local optima.

As a machine learning researcher, I do try to focus on high-level problems that haven't be tackled before. My startup[1] is an example of that, and the extensions to it that I'm researching are as well. But does it really count as revolutionary from an academic sense? Probably not.

The fact is that at this point, everyone has thought of something closely related to whatever you want to work on. Even if you've found an institution that enables you to explore freely, big impacts are really hard to come by these days. And when they do, older academics like the ones on this panel don't want to give credit because it's just another incremental improvement in their eyes.

I suppose it's just frustrating to hear these guys sit at a panel and complain that AI researchers need to get to work-- they're AI researchers! Why aren't they doing anything? They have tenure and all the free time in the world. But they don't want to do that. They want to sit back and judge people while pointing to contributions they made forty years ago as proof that they can judge.

Being critical of others' work while not producing anything of value is just mean-spirited. Put up or shut up.

[1] <http://effectcheck.com>

<comment><USER3> > _Being critical of others' work while not producing anything of value is > just mean-spirited. Put up or shut up._

That's awfully close to "it takes one to know one", which is a fallacy at _best_. I can tell good tea from bad tea, but I've never grown it. Closer to the programming realm, any theoretical computer scientist will lament the huge delay between theory and practice - does this mean they don't have a valid complaint, simply because they aren't fixing _everything_?

Specific to the piece:

> _Chomsky derided researchers in machine learning who use purely statistical > methods to produce behavior that mimics something in the world, but who > don't try to understand the meaning of that behavior. Chomsky compared such > researchers to scientists who might study the dance made by a bee returning > to the hive, and who could produce a statistically based simulation of such > a dance without attempting to understand why the bee behaved that way._

A valid complaint from a researcher, I think, and Chomsky has hardly "not produced anything of value". The first round of AI work in the 60s and 70s was a lot of theoretical work getting, as you mentioned, the low-hanging fruit in a new field. And then it turned out to be harder than the initial extreme success implied, and took more computational power. In more recent years, there have been business reasons to use relatively simple AI models to do fairly basic tasks - predicting your tastes in movies, for example. I think they're complaining about _that_ focus, taking a known and just tweaking it until it works without doing any real foundational work, and they're not claiming that everybody in the field today is lazy.

It's a complaint you see in every field that gains attention. The original researchers see a decreased focus on research, and little progress for how many people are in the field, and lament for the good old days when people _thought_ instead of _made money_. A rose-tinted view, to be sure, but the viewers aren't wholly value-less for doing so.

<comment><USER2> >I can tell good tea from bad tea, but I've never grown it.

That's a straw man argument. If you used to grow tea, got famous for some awesome blend, started writing books about tea, stopped growing it, then joined a panel with a bunch of other former tea growers and said people need to start growing good tea again... then that'd be closer. Even better would be if in the time since you last grew tea, the plant had become endangered and complicated processes had to be undertaken by current manufacturers to extract sufficient quantities for production.

You want better tea? You're in luck! You happen to have been an expert tea- grower in the past-- welcome back! Get to work.

>Chomsky has hardly "not produced anything of value"

Quite the opposite. In fact, all of these guys are brilliant researchers who have made huge impacts on their fields. My point was that they are not actively contributing anything, and haven't been for the last 30+ years. When was the last time Chomsky did any serious investigation that wasn't about how evil governments are?

If Geoffrey Hinton, David Fogel, Jonathan Schaeffer, or any of the other "second-wave" pioneers[1] who have remained active in the last 20 years want to form a panel and complain about people not focusing on high-level research topics, then sure. Because I know when they do so, they'll point to their own research being published in the last few years as an example.

[1] The guys who got us out of the AI winter.

<comment><USER4> > When was the last time Chomsky did any serious investigation that wasn't > about how evil governments are?

Well, he is still working on generative syntactic theory in linguistics. In his 2005 paper "On phases" he (again...) overhauled his minimalist program. So, yes, he is actively working (or at least has been until recently), but perhaps not in a field you are interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Patrick Winston, director of the AI Lab, rounded up the usual suspects in this article: early attempts to make money off AI, not getting scads of defense megabucks, and 'balkanization' into well-defined subspecialties such as neural networks or genetic algorithms.

He didn't hit on the fundamental problem (to quote (allegedly) Brian Reid from his AI qualifier): "AI is bogus".

If only we could resume pouring defense dollars into the money pit of Strong AI; each strong AI researcher could be given a metric butt-ton of money for vaguely defined projects like those pushed by Winston. From the article:

"Winston said he believes researchers should instead focus on those things that make humans distinct from other primates, or even what made them distinct from Neanderthals. Once researchers think they have identified the things that make humans unique, he said, they should develop computational models of these properties, implementing them in real systems so they can discover the gaps in their models, and refine them as needed. Winston speculated that the magic ingredient that makes humans unique is our ability to create and understand stories using the faculties that support language: "Once you have stories, you have the kind of creativity that makes the species different to any other."

With clear-cut and sensible goals like this, success cannot be far away now, can it?

<comment><USER6> "Winston said he believes researchers should instead focus on those things that make humans distinct from other primates, or even what made them distinct from Neanderthals."

Seems like an arbitrary focus. There are still a lot of things that non human primates and other animals can do that computers cannot. Why not focus on those things? Many aspects of human intelligence are obviously shared with other animals. Heck, there are probably aspects of the intelligence of some animals that exceed human intelligence.

Also, why does he think computers can understand stories if they are incapable of, say, spatial reasoning, computer vision, moving around, manipulating their environment, non-verbal communication, using tools, planning, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Even if understanding and telling stories is the ultimate goal, it doesn't necessarily mean that's the best immediate goal, given where we are now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pure AI doesn't need a reboot, they just need to start solving practical problems, if you look at what Google does it's essentially AI. The problem with AI as such is that it over promises and under delivers while there is tremendous benefit possible to society with the existing research that has been conducted. The essential problem are there are few vertically integrated companies that can turn AI R&D into commercially successful products which can further fuel more AI R&D.

AI needs to move out of subsidized R&D and into productization similar to how Bell labs worked. I actually think this is a much bigger problem that extends to most sciences. There is a lot of scientific research out there that is being poorly monetized.

<comment><USER8> According to the panelists, what Google does (statistical inference) is not pure AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "AI" nowadays is a mess. I could write a book on why I feel this way, but a lot of it has to do with the prevalence of narrowly defined, domain-specific algorithms that need to be heavily tuned to fit your usage parameters. Even then, you can't always be sure they'll work well.

AI is not an easy problem, otherwise we'd have made more progress by now. And unfortunately, barring a major breakthrough, there won't ever be a "one size fits all" approach to AI (or at least a less fractured algorithm landscape).

It's all pretty disillusioning, especially if you started out as a bushy- tailed CS undergrad with visions of a grand unified theory of artificial intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, a bunch of symbolic logic vets are bitter that statistical techniques are producing better results than they were ever able to?

<comment><USER11> I don't see them as opposed to statistical techniques, at least in this interview, just a focus on methods as ends-in-themselves, rather than tools to be used.

Plenty of statistical-AI people themselves hold similar views on that subject, and almost every machine-learning or AI conference has a panel or keynote that expresses dismay at what the field looks like (balkanized, too focused on methods rather than problems, too focused on incremental algorithm tweaks).

For example, Leslie Pack Kaelbling's AAAI-2010 keynote had the thesis that we need to stop focusing on incremental algorithm improvements in tiny sub-areas of AI, tested on implausibly pure toy benchmark problems with a focus on optimality proofs, and start focusing more on putting things together into integrated systems that handle real-world problems, which will probably require more hybrid methods (like statistical-AI + logical-AI). Though she expressed it a bit more diplomatically, with the tone that we're not fulfilling the potential of the field with the current approach, and has actually done some concrete work following her own proposal. (Slides: <http://people.csail.mit.edu/lpk/AAAI10LPK.pdf>)

<comment><USER6> One thing I find disconcerting, are more and more complex models that "work" in the sense of predicting what will happen, but the model is too complex to give humans insight into what is happening. Does that mean that the universe is just inherently too complicated for humans to understand, or do we need models that better lend themselves to explaining the phenomena they predict?

<comment><USER11> That's been one disconnect between machine learning and some other applied areas as well. For example, vanilla decision trees aren't really seen as a state-of-the-art ML technique anymore, but they still get a ton of use in medicine, environmental science, and the social sciences, because they're seen as more interpretable, rather than a black-box predictor. There is a bit of work on interpretable ML aiming to bridge that gap, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Everyone on the panel is quite senior -- the comments have the flavor of "darn young researchers these days." It might be interesting to hear from AI researchers under 40 about this.

Second, on the question of statistics and language; there's an excellent Fernando Pereira essay which addresses, among other things, Chomsky's old opposition to statistical theories: <http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~pereira/papers/rsoc.pdf>

<comment><USER11> That's an excellent paper; thanks for the pointer. I think it correctly notices that a lot of both sides have been talking past each other lately, because the old 50s/60s oppositions aren't quite there anymore. In some ways, Chomsky's critique is obsolete, but that's in part precisely because Chomskyian ideas have now been taken up in the statistical community, in ideas like grammar induction. ML is now willing to study grammar models higher up the Chomsky hierarchy than the simple Markov-chain models they investigated in the 50s, which does owe something to Chomsky's studies in formal grammar (like the existence of the Chomsky hierarchy), even if Chomsky himself has been slow to notice that they have indeed taken up some of his ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Winston said he believes researchers should instead focus on those things > that make humans distinct from other primates, or even what made them > distinct from Neanderthals._

According to cognitive science, this is capacity for analogical reasoning. Compared to the other self-aware, social, tool using animals exhibiting emotion such as dolphins, elephants, and the great apes, what sets humans apart is our massive capacity for analogical reasoning that leaves dolphins in a distant second.

In other words, humans can not only think in terms of relations, but how relations relate to one another much easier than any other animal.

<comment><USER14> And for automatic analogical reasoning, we've had the Structure Mapping Engine [1] since the 80's.

I don't think focusing on what makes humans unique is necessarily the way to go, I think a better focus would be on what makes animals in general unique, compared to our computers. Being consciousness and being able to move around in the environment are two things that your average cat is still way better at than any computer.

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

<comment><USER6> My cat also has a much better mental model of me and how I will respond to her stimuli than any computer does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There was a similar theme two years ago [http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/scientists-...](http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-12/scientists- collaborate-rebuild-artificial-intelligence-ground)

I think the main problem is computers are still too slow, so it's difficult for individual researchers to experiment. Saw a paper a year ago about deep belief networks on GPUs, seems like the field is not even taking advantage of current hardware. You need several modern GPUs to run the equivalent of a bee brain in reasonable time.

<comment><USER14> > I think the main problem is computers are still too slow

I don't think this is right. Depending on your neuron model, you'd probably be able to simulate as many neurons as is in the human brain if you threw it against, say, Google's server farm. The brain is modular, so you should be able to parallelize it relatively easily. The reason no one has done that yet is that we don't yet know enough about how to connect those neurons the way they are connected in the brain. (The Blue Brain project aim to have this figured out by 2019 though.)

<comment><USER15> Oh yea Google's server farm has just about the guesstimated computational power of a human brain, 20 petaflops. Supercomputers can simulate a rat or bee brain with a few teraflops.

I was talking about regular personal computers that individual researches can use to experiment. Supercomputer time is expensive and there are lots of annoying technical problems. They also use a lot of poorly optimized software.

I figure another 5 years, a few doublings in GPU speed, new OpenCL/CUDA based neural net software and we'll fit a bee brain in one PC. Memristors are expected by 2015 [http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial- intelligence/mo...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial- intelligence/moneta-a-mind-made-from-memristors/0) they'll help run such brains in real time.

Also these old charts <http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm> comparing brains to computers need to be adjusted because glial cells also participate in signal processing. So we need a few teraflops of padding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure just how important the humans being different from other animals thing is. We've got a billion years of evolution of multicellular life, working up to the brain of the not-quite-human primates, and something like two million years in which humans developed their unique traits. Wouldn't be my first guess that all the heavy lifting happened in the last couple million years instead of the other 998 million.

<comment><USER17> Here, read this:

<http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/power>

I agree with you for the most part. But somehow, what makes us different from apes was some kind of keystone. Whatever evolved in the last two million years in our brains made a HUGE difference in our effectiveness. Perhaps if we understand it we'll understand something fundamental about intelligence.

<comment><USER16> My take on that is that mammalian intelligence was already a massively powerful thing, and just needed to stumble into some sort of trick to make it more, I don't know, recursive? to start the emerging human dominance. I'd bet money that going from a genuinely wolf-level AI we understand from first principles to a human-level AI is much easier than going from AIBO to the level of an actual wolf.

The problem with intuiting about this is that assessing animal intelligence is a lot harder for us than assessing human intelligence. It's Moravec's paradox all over again, the thing that seems so simple to us we used to think of it as an absence of skill rather than a skill, behaving like an animal, might be the hardest thing in making an AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To create anything resembling human intelligence, you'd have to create it the way human intelligence was created.

Imagine you are God and you have the tools to create a universe and it's laws. And you want humans, but you can't just make them.

The universe you create will need to have the right laws of physics such that a self-replicating molecule (essentially a program, right?) will arise. And that the molecules can mix with each other and new combinations can arise. And you need molecules that can form bubbles so that cells can happen. And you need a bunch of elements for all sorts of things.

Then the world needs to apply the right selective forces for the whole evolutionary journey to happen.

And if you do it right, you'll end up with human like intelligence, an intelligence motivated by something, survival and reproduction.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is anyone on hn working on technology that is similar to a human (or even a rat) in it's ability to learn and form hypotheses? I've only known one or two people who actually tried it, and it usually didn't last long.

Personally I feel that most of the benefits that come from "strong ai" can be duplicated with basic statistical analysis. In the spirit of Peter Norvig's "more data beats better algorithms", I think we might all be better served by making an effort to gather and structure as much data about the world as possible. It's not as sexy as creating an artificial sentient being, but over time I think the results would be similar.

<comment><USER17> Two from the last couple years:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_%28robot%29>

<http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/eureqa>

The Singularity Institute is working on making such a thing safe: <http://singinst.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Chomsky derided researchers in machine learning who use purely statistical > methods to produce behavior that mimics something in the world, but who > don't try to understand the meaning of that behavior

[He's not deriding these, but] statistical methods can be used to infer models: you have a series of models, and you measure how well each one models the data, and you include a measure of the complexity of the model (e.g. the choices (information) needed to specify that model). The model requiring the least information wins (related to Occam's Razor).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but a relevant measure of complexity is not that easy to come by. And by what measure do you judge which is more 'valid'? For example, AIC, BIC etc. may have a strong effect on which model 'wins'.

You are right of course, but I'm wary of making claims based on inferences from model comparisons without stating such limitations.

<comment><USER20> Yes, measure of model complexity is a problem.

A solution is to use a program for a Turing machine as the model. The length of the program represents the complexity (which measures the choices that form the program). There's different formulations of a turing machine (different languages for programming one), but since any turing machine can be simulated by any other turing machine with a program, the length of that program becomes the error (that represents the difference in complexity introduced by your selection of some specific Turing machine). If you are comparing models using the same turing machine, then this constant difference doesn't matter. a-b = (a+x) - (b+x)

One practical solution is that more data swamps minor differences between the specification language used to describe models. More data is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Weird, I submitted the same article yesterday and got only 5 up votes: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2525463>.

<comment><USER22> Getting an item noticed on HN is now largely pot luck. It is correlated with quality, but it's also correlated with time of day, day of the week, number of current readers, and it's _still_ got a huge component of luck. If you don't get four or five upvotes in the first 30 to 90 minutes, it sinks without trace.

In part this is because of the huge volume. In part the volume is because the focus is as wide as it always was, but the audience has increased enormously.

Many potential solutions have been discussed, but in general, no one has produced a convincing analysis accompanied by concrete solutions that will clearly work.

Currently it's a case of - live with it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2022547>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In a couple of years we will start seeing a lot of computer vision applications - and robots will be one of them. This is because the computing power has just got at the needed level. Once you have vision you can really start applying the other old AI stuff like planning, etc. Of course this is not Artificial General Intelligence, but it is a step forward and it will greatly improve the visibility of current AI.

</comment><comment><USER24> You can tell this article was written by someone who doesn't follow artificial intelligence and neural networks.

How? Because people in the field of neural networks and AI would never claim that Minsky "pioneered neural networks". To the contrary (and as Minsky's wikipedia article – i'm sure the source of this claim – obliquely notes), Minsky's pessimism about the abilities of neural network computing lead to the abandonment of artificial neural networks as a major research topic.

That alone should make one skeptical about this author's depth of knowledge about artificial intelligence.

Beyond that, this article and the quotes therein, are just flat out incorrect. There are people who are attempting to analyze behavior, model it, and build systems that mimic this behavior. They're called cognitive scientists. This approach is taken by linguists, psychologists and philosophers all.

But this stuff is incredibly difficult to analyze, let alone model correctly. It annoys me to hear the opinions of the panelists reduced to "oh gee, why isn't anyone doing more holistic research".

When i read the actual quotes by Minsky, Partee and Chomsky, i hear the three things i expected to hear, and that each academic has been saying for years.

1) Chomsky, an old school linguist, doesn't like systems that we can't introspect and verify as correctly modeling human behavior. 2) Partee, who is responsible for recognizing the power and importance of Montague Semantics and linguistic pragmatics, states that AI requires world/state modeling that is equivalent in complexity to that required for robust natural language processing (a position i agree with) 3) Minsky thinks nobody is trying hard enough, and that the constraints put on researchers from actual implementation has lead us down a blind alley.

Lastly, Sydney Brenner complains that neuroscientists can't see the forest for the trees. I guess he's not familiar with all the research in cognitive psychology, trying to model cognitive facilities like memory, language use, decision making, attention switching and more.

That we haven't "solved" AI or made thinking machines is a misleading claim that is contrary to all of the awesome stuff that humans have built in the past 10 years. Look at all of the stuff that Google has built and tell me that we don't have thinking machines that can understand (or if you'd like to be more circumspect, predict) what we want. Tell me that Watson wasn't a marvel of not just engineering but modeling intelligence.

The major editorial thrust of this article is an incorrect platitude, which isn't supported by reality or the assertions and claims made by the panelists (whom i each respect for the work they have contributed to the broader field of cognitive science), and it annoys me that this claptrap pastiche is being passed on as journalism.

We have made progress, and we will continue to make progress.

<comment><USER25> "How? Because people in the field of neural networks and AI would never claim that Minsky "pioneered neural networks". To the contrary (and as Minsky's wikipedia article – i'm sure the source of this claim – obliquely notes), Minsky's pessimism about the abilities of neural network computing lead to the abandonment of artificial neural networks as a major research topic."

That is a very confused description of what happened. Minsky is in fact a very important contributor to early neural networks theory and what you refer to as his "pessimism", is in fact his proof that a neural network can not be trained in any way to "learn" the exclusive-or logical function (among other things). This is one of the fundamental results in NN theory.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_%28book%29>

<comment><USER26> _his proof that a neural network can not be trained in any way to "learn" the exclusive-or logical function_

What you mean is a neural network without hidden layers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As an aside, is there progress in a formal definition for the English language? Have other natural languages been formalized yet?

<comment><USER4> The problem lies with the question 'What is the English language?'

Is it what we speak? write? what we find on the web? in what social context? Given some constraints, then perhaps yes, you could write a formal grammar and have a parser accepting this language.

Maybe my answer doesn't seem helpful, but my point is that language isn't a static, fixed and closed set.

<comment><USER28> _Is it what we speak? write? what we find on the web? in what social context? Given some constraints, then perhaps yes, you could write a formal grammar and have a parser_

How about defining it as what the two of us speak while having a beer in San Francisco? Is that constrained enough? If not, what constraints should be added until it becomes possble to write a parser?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> _Winston speculated that the magic ingredient that makes humans unique is our ability to create and understand stories using the faculties that support language: "Once you have stories, you have the kind of creativity that makes the species different to any other."_

Any idea to where is this coming from? Any related articles?

</comment><comment><USER30> If the status quo is a problem at all, then it's a problem with all of modern academia.

The problem will only be solved by better ways of selecting and supporting academics. Fix how stuff is funded and you fix the issue.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Read the Sequences."

<comment><USER32> so many words... this is probably a better place to start <http://singinst.org/singularityfaq>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I notice Hofstader wasn't there. Maybe we could have a whip round and send them Fluid Analogies?

<comment><USER34> >Maybe we could

No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> AI is an epistemological problem. What stalled AI is the lack of a comprehensive theory of concepts and theory of induction. All the traits cited in the article that distinguish us from the animals are derivatives of reason. Whenever these supposed intellectuals get around to realizing this fact they can all eat crow and thank Ayn Rand for solving the problem of concepts and leaving significant clues to the solution to the problem of induction.

<comment><USER36> >thank Ayn Rand for solving the problem of concepts and leaving significant clues to the solution to the problem of induction.

Please explain.

<comment><USER35> There are two fundamental epistemological issues with respect to reason. i) how do we form concepts and what (in reality) do they refer to and ii) how do we reason from specific observations to general conclusions and validate our conclusions (i.e. not deduction but induction).

Both of these problems were known (and unsolved) by the Greeks. Ayn Rand (in my judgment) solved the first problem, the problem of universals. How do we form concepts (classes) and how are they connected to the actual things subsumed by the concept. Her answer was that concepts are formed on the principle of measurement omission, which means the objects that form a class posses some trait(s) which is present but unspecified. This is what she called the "some but any" principle. She said this is the same principle behind algebra in that a variable "x" represents _some_ quantity but may have _any_ quantity but remains unspecified.

She explains all of it in her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology"

As far as induction, she never tackled that but she did say that she thought the basic principles of induction are probably buried in higher (calculus or above) mathematics. She was being tutored in mathematics at the time of her death, hunting for the principle of induction. In my view the principles of induction can be found in the work of E.T. Jaynes on (Bayesian) probabililty theory and the logic of science.

My own view is that AI is stuck because we don't yet have the basic principles of how reason works, so we can't program a computer to do it.

N.B. Most people know of Ayn Rand because of her advocacy of selfishness in ethics and capitalism in politics and economics. What they don't realize is that her views in these higher level branches follow from her deep thinking in the more fundamental levels of epistemology and metaphysics.

<comment><USER37> E.T. Jaynes' work on induction entails a subtle fallacy: logic is subordinated to math, effacing logical units and qualitative concepts as a category.

See David Harriman's book "The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics" for the latest on Objectivist induction theory. He explains how it is possible to form a valid generalization from a single instance under certain circumstances, something the frequentist Bayesian approach can't do.

<comment><USER35> I have not read Harriman's book and don't know Jaynes' work well enough to say whether he inverted the hierarchy but it wouldn't surprise me if he did since he was not an Objectivist nor was he familiar with AR's theory of concepts and other important work. However, I suspect that even if he made such an error it would not invalidate much of what he did achieved.

I'm a bit confused by your use of the term "frequentist Bayesian"... Perhaps you meant "something [both] the frequentist [and] Bayesian approach [to statistics] can't do." The Bayesians are opposed to the frequentists and Jaynes was no exception. I think a more important unsolved issue, even for the Bayesians, is how do you get out of probability (as a measure of belief) to 100% certainty (i.e. to truth, 99.9999% probability is not good enough). This is the big kahuna of induction and once we solve that we are off to the races on such things as AI.

<comment><USER37> Jaynes' work is valid within limits as a concept of method for some areas of science and engineering. However, his error was in effect trying to replace the logical law of identity with the mathematical law of equivalence, "A is A" becoming only "A = A".

In his book, Jaynes says that Aristotelian logic is a special case of probability theory, applicable in a situation where 100% certainty is achieved. This makes all of logic subordinate to a mathematical process, and as such this modeling approach is anti-conceptual.

What I meant by "frequentist Bayesian" was the property common to both the frequentist and Bayesian approaches with respect to induction, that being the idea that certainty is in general mathematically established by counting and ratios. That may be the best way to bet sometimes, but it is a fallacy to define logical certainty as such in mathematical terms.

<comment><USER35> Re P1: Jaynes presented his work as a method for science and engineering but throughout his work stated that the method was general. AR said that mathematics is an abstracted form of conceptualization and logic which is why she was studying higher math to understand induction. Jaynes was not an epistemologist (nor an Objectivist) so the failure to distinguish or explain the exact relation between "A is A" from "A = A" is understandable especially in light of his explicit goal of targeting science and engineering. I did not claim that Jaynes solved the problem of induction nor that his theories were perfect, just that I think he was on the right track and made some significant contributions.

Re P2: Jaynes' claim was that the laws of probability reduce to Aristotelian rules of deductive logic when the Pr=1. I do not agree that this makes logic subordinate to a mathematical process -- no more than AR's theory of concepts makes concept formation subordinate to algebra. In any case, the claim is mathematically true (given Jaynes' system which I admit may need revision) but it is also a fact that deduction is dependent on induction which is consistent. So to clarify the exact relations (without violating identity or inverting hierarchy, etc) requires AR's theory of concepts which Jaynes did not have. Moreover, to define the principles of when it is valid (without enumerating all cases) to go from Pr<1 to Pr=1 IS the problem of induction which Jaynes did not specifically address.

Re P3: Jaynes completely rejects the the counting and ratio arguments for induction. Unfortunately he flips over to the subjectivist and vague "degrees of belief" view of probability and is unable to define it (which is why he needed a theory of concepts). This failure is hardly surprising given that every field today is split on intrinsic versus subjectivist premises.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feeling mad? New devices can sense your mood and tell — or even text — others. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/feeling-mad-new-devices-can-sense-your-mood-and-tell--or-even-text--others/2014/01/13/8436009c-6275-11e3-91b3-f2bb96304e34_story.html

<comment><USER2> "even text"? - nothing impressive in texting the information we already have.

Detecting mood is a more interesting part. I though the vast majority has already agreed of "lie detectors" being useless.

Though, perhaps it might prove clever in some cases to monitor a user's health condition by measuring the heart rate.</comment>


Overclock bets on Kubernetes to help companies automate their infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/overclock-labs-bets-on-kubernetes-to-help-companies-automate-their-cloud-infrastructure/ <comment><USER2> Great video demo. Can't wait to use this tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! we'll be open sourcing soon!</comment></comment>


YouTomb by MIT - <AUTHOR> http://youtomb.mit.edu/

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty novel idea, only a matter of time before someone did something like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. I wonder, how long until someone sues them?

<comment><USER4> They seem to have thought of that - they don't provide the accused clips, only screen shots ("snippets") of the videos they are linking to.</comment></comment>


ShowHN: I built a piggybank to dripfeed a new MacBook  - <AUTHOR> http://www.dripfeed.co

<comment><USER2> Okay, please excuse my ignorance if there's something I'm missing here.

I understand the problem when it comes to saving, and the issue of dipping into savings when you shouldn't. But I really don't see the point in a service like this, at least not personally.

There's three main issues I have with it:

1\. Why should I let some random company I don't know or trust keep my savings for me? I would assume you're not a actual bank, so should you go bankrupt there's no government insurance that'd ensure I don't loose my money. And not saying you would, but from my point of view, what's there to stop you from taking the money and run?

2\. A charge of 3%. So to save £100 I'd loose £3. If I was saving for a Retina MBP of around £2,500 I'd lose £75.

3\. Interest. Ok, sure, banks pay pretty horrible interest, but still, I'm loosing out of money I would otherwise have gotten. I saw your response about working on providing interest somehow in the future, but I'm focusing on the now here :)

When you add it all up, the increased risk of losing all the savings, combined with the loss of money in the 3% charge and lack of interest, personally I really see no point in using your service compared to my bank's savings account.

And ok, it's easy to move money out of my savings account, but it's supposedly easy moving it out your service too. If you were to change that, there might just possibly be some point to it compared to a savings account. Except then you're treading on dangerous legal and/or moral ground if you deny people access to their money, even if they've previously agreed to the terms.

On a final note, I believe the only valuable feature you have to offer is the fact that friends can chip in. If I were you, I'd focus on that feature instead of holding people's cash. Let people set up some kinda campaign page for their new phone/laptop purchase and let family and friends chip in, wiring the money back to the user, rather than you holding on to it. Think of it like a personalized kickstarter mashed with amazon wishlists or something.

<rant>Let little Jimmy Neutron setup a campaign for his wish to get an Xbox One. He's got £200 cash already, which the campaign reflects, then he sends the campaign page to his grand parents, uncles, aunts, etc, and maybe they'll chip in enough so he can get his new console.</rant>

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you handle the legal side of things? Aren't you, in most countries, considered operating as a bank in this scenario? And therefore tied to a whole load of regulations?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're aggressively pursuing FCA regulation in the UK since we're pretty compliant with their policies already. Suffice it to say, we're doing everything we can, we really don't want to screw this up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First, sounds like you're solving a major problem that most people have - sweet!

However, this is my constructive negative feedback - I don't think it will work because of this one piece here:

 _Pause if you know you 'll have less money this week, deposit a bulk amount if you'll have more, even let friends and family deposit._

I tried doing this in a rather "manual" fashion by setting up a recurring monthly deposit into ISAs. The reality is - the freedom to turn it off is a huge anti-pattern to saving money. You need to make it very difficult to have the user turn off their dripfeed. Perhaps they have to make a call, or maybe they get penalized? Either way - I see this as your most important "anti- feature".

I would also question the commercial model of this - you're going to take a cut as well as GoCardless. It'll be interesting to see if people are willing to pay for that. However, what would be interesting (potentially) is to have a model (similar to financing) where the actual item is purchased through your platform. This will get complicated, but maybe there is a way to undercut the traditional micro-financing models that exist today?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're looking into a whole bunch of ways to stop charging fees as soon as we can - it was kind of the lazy way out for the short term. We're looking into referral fees, as you suggested, as well as earning interest. We also had an idea that, since we know what a user is saving for, and roughly how long it'll take for them to save for it, we could put the item up to tender and hunt down cheaper deals so the user can save money. Just an idea, but there are so many interesting things we can try when we have that kind of data.

Re: pause - I totally didn't consider that, and smurfy brought it up too, so I'm probably going to build out a 'protect me from myself' feature to do just that

<comment><USER5> The "protect me from myself" feature would be great on a per item basis. Say, for example, I'm setting up a dripfeed for a new phone (nice-to-have) and another for winter jacket (really need). When setting up the dripfeed for the winter jacket I would turn on "protect me from myself", since I really need the jacket, but I wouldn't turn it on for the phone because it is just a nice to have.

Just an idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I can see how this might be useful for some people. Personally, I have my savings account on line and they allow me to just make any number of "sub accounts" that I want. So I have used that before to create sub-accounts to save for specific things. I then set up automatic transfers from my checking to that savings account. The most successful one was a "new car" fund. Once my old car was paid off, I continued to make the same payment amount to the "new car" fund. It helped me maintain my habit of making a car payment while helping me save for the down payment. Worked like a charm.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a person who is not a great money saver, this seems like a great tool that I will most likely use. Just a note, the text on my PC using chrome is nearly unreadable, the font renders strangely, not sure how to describe it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I'll take a look into that, it may just be the webfont I'm using rendering strangely. Perhaps it's time I sign up for TypeKit

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The site looks nice, however I'm slightly puzzled. What do I gain from Dripfeed over the current standing order that transfers a fixed amount per month from my current account to my savings account?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good question: Banks generally don't award much interest for small, short savings, they're really geared towards saving for cars and houses, not small goals.

We, on the other hand, are designed to help you save for the small things in a much nicer way, and we're working on ways to make your money work in ways that banks really just don't care about.

Case in point - in the next few weeks, we're rolling out a feature that finds cheaper offers for the item you're already saving for (since we know what you're saving for and roughly how long it'll take to save for it), we can leverage the fact that you're saving for something to encourage a supplier to offer the product cheaper in return for the money right now. That's just one of the ideas we're working on right now.

<comment><USER8> Why would a manufacturer do that? I understand it's profitable from your end, but if the customer is already saving up for an item and has obviously decided it wants to pay the price it's reserved, why would the manufacturer want to lower the price? It would be like shooting yourself in the foot...

<comment><USER9> Things change, as do circumstances. I may be saving for a $600 phone, but after a couple of months, I opt to buy something else with that money instead. Now the original vendor has nothing. If a vendor makes a profit on the device after $300, it behooves them to offer it to me at $520 to ensure they have that $220 profit.

A bird in hand is better than two in the bush.

<comment><AUTHOR> That and the fact that we can offer the sale up to different suppliers, giving them the change to win a sale from another supplier

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think its a really good idea. It would be cool if you could have an on/off switch to make pausing more difficult. For instance, I know that for myself, as soon as I wanted to spend that money I was saving, I would just pause the service. But if I could make it harder to do that (I.E. make it so I have to do several prompts to pause it, answer some math problem or something that would take me more than 5 seconds to open an app and hit pause), I would certainly turn that on for myself.

Just bouncing an idea out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I went into building it with total ease of use in mind, maybe I should build a 'protect me from myself' feature into the settings :P

<comment><USER10> You could set up security questions for yourself. Like you have to input an answer to "Why do I want this MacBook", and, "Why is this MacBook more important than a latte this morning".

Lol

<comment> jack-r-abbit Take the old Windows approach. "Do you want to pause?" "Are you sure?" "Are you really sure?" "Are you really, really sure?" (repeat this a few dozen times)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a neat idea but the fee (3%) is disappointing (but expected). It reminds me a little bit of how Simple is doing "savings". If you haven't heard of Simple[0] it's a new-ish bank (build on Bancorp) that has awesome customer service and some really useful tools to help you save. If anyone wants an invite send me an email (In my bio) with your email address so I can send you one.

[0] [https://simple.com](https://simple.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> This sounds pretty cool. I do not see if it costs anything to do. Am I charged processing fees? Pay per month to dripfeed? EDIT: I found the FAQ link. [https://www.dripfeed.co/faq](https://www.dripfeed.co/faq). Looks like it is 3%

</comment><comment><USER13> The site looks great, and I think a lot of people would want something like this. You've mentioned in other comments that you're hoping to get some kind of interest going. That, with what you've already got, is enough for me to signup.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feedback and suggestions would be massively appreciated by the way!

<comment><USER14> Europe only, I'm assuming?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, yes I'm afraid! But never fear, we're rolling out to the US and other markets as fast as we possibly can

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this pay no interest?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now, no. I know that sucks, but we're looking into ways to leverage savings to earn more interest than a bank would typically give you for a small, short-term goal. Part of the reason I started working on Dripfeed was because my interest rate went down to about 0.08%, which is effectively nothing on say a £500 phone.</comment></comment>


Joyent takes on Google by acquiring Reasonably Smart - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/Howlett/?p=568 <comment><AUTHOR> as a Joyent customer, I'm glad they've actually been doing something for the past few months!</comment>


How to Turn Your Android Smartphone into a Super Spy - <AUTHOR> http://www.effecthacking.com/2015/08/android-smartphone-super-spy.html

<comment><USER2> My smartphone is already a super spy, with its help the NSA, GCHQ, KGB etc already know everything they need about me ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The app logger could be useful piped to my life logging google spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author uses Comic Sans as his system font?

<comment><USER5> my dad's old samsung android phone (guess it was a s3 mini) came with that font as default. Yep, that sucks.</comment></comment>


Vanilla JS, fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework - <AUTHOR> http://vanilla-js.com/ Vanilla JS is a fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework for building incredible, powerful JavaScript applications. <comment><USER2> I can't be the only one getting tired of sites like this making the front page. Really? It would be one thing to see someone write a legitimate article on why they think the move to JS frameworks is harmful and/or the benefits of using plain JS, and for that to make it to the front page. I'd be interested in that perspective. But this is just somebody being snide. It's the internet equivalent of the kid on The Simpsons that points and goes "ha-ha!" There's no content. We can't have a discussion around a smartass joke like this.

<comment><USER3> Reading the example code I learned enough to become interested in vanilla javascript. Although satirical in tone, I found it insightful. It lead me to question the necessity of using jQuery for every project.

<comment><USER4> I used to wonder the same thing, but after a while I've found that it already pays to include jQuery (or similar) as soon as your code reaches a complexity of "does more than one kind of thing" (roughly).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fast and lightweight, yes. But vanilla-js is certainly not cross platform ;) You see, that's actually one of the biggest problems with JS and one of the main reasons why people use things like jQuery (apart from the pretty API..).

That cross platform bit is the weakest link _sigh_.

<comment><USER6> jQuery API is not pretty

<comment><USER7> I'll take

      $('p').text('Hello.')

over

      for (var p in document.getElementsByTagName('p')) { p.innerHTML = 'Hello.'; }

any day!

<comment><USER8> This enumeration is done the wrong way. You enumerate over a DOM node list which looks like an array, which includes enumerable properties like "length". This means that the variable "p" at some point will be "length" and "length".innerHTML = "..." will produce an error.

The proper way is:

for( var i=0, ps=document.getElementsByTagName('p'), len=ps.length; i < len; i++) {ps[i].innerHTML = 'Hello.';}

<comment><USER9> That's ES3. You have no reason to choose that way anymore - ES5 loops work everywhere current, can be polyfilled into IE8, and don't require any boilerplate stuff.

var paragraphs = document.getElementsByTagName('p');

paragraphs.forEach(function(paragraph){paragraph.innerHTML = 'Hello.';})

<comment><USER10> Except #forEach is a method of Array, and getElementsByTagName does not return an Array but a NodeList. Which doesn't have any of Array's methods (it has a length, it can be indexed, and it has an alternative indexation method - #item — but it's not an array at all)

<comment><USER9> You're right. I wasn't sure earlier, as I was typing on a phone with no JS console.

but never mind:

Array.forEach.call(paragraphs, function(paragraph){paragraph.innerHTML = 'Hello.';})

will work fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This site could actually be made useful if the little area where you check which "features" you want to include that "generated" the download file actually caused cross-platform, native JavaScript examples of those bits of functionality to be included in a real downloadable file.

If you really think more people should be using plain vanilla JavaScript (and in a lot of places, I think this is actually true and even when a framework is needed, it's good to have the underlying skill) then the way to get them to do that is to educate them on it, not patronize.

</comment><comment><USER12> Raw Javascript is simply not an option. The API is awful, default types are not powerful enough and cross-platform consistency is a joke. For every decently sized project you start in JS you have to reinvent a thousand wheels to even get rolling, so you better just leverage a framework.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow, even jQuery is written using vanilla-js.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone else find the code examples absolutely damning?

Aside from not being cross-platform, VanillaJS is just plain ugly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Recently, I was interviewing a front-end developer candidate and I gave them a simple JavaScript problem. The sad thing was, they didn't recognize `document.getElementById()` and didn't know any of the parameters to `addEventListener()`.

We finished the exercise assuming the example used jQuery instead.

<comment><USER16> That's a fair assumption since most of front-end development is done using jQuery as far as the DOM goes.

Did you expect your interviewees to have memorized APIs? There's Google so that you can look up those when needed.

<comment><USER17> I agree. I think it's important to know Javascript as a language well, but there are very few cases when you'd be using Javascript without some abstraction from the DOM.

<comment><USER18> And in point of fact, neither of those examples are actually about JS, the language. They're about the DOM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Was anyone else surprised by the performance penalty of jQuery? Over 400x hit for getElementsByTagName! I'm curious whether this is more due to cross browser checks or determining the what type of selector was used. To the source!

<comment><USER10> > Was anyone else surprised by the performance penalty of jQuery? Over 400x > hit for getElementsByTagName!

Not really. Just replacing document.getElementsByTagName by document.querySelectorAll (the native, browser-implemented version of what jQuery does) will generate a 150-200x perf hit depending on the browser.

The reason for that is twofold: first, getElementsByTagName doesn't have to parse the selector, figure out what is asked for, and potentially fall back on explicit JS implementation (jQuery supports non-native selectors. In fact, I believe you can implement your own selectors). But the parsing overhead should be minor in this precise case.

Second, the real reason for the difference, getElementsByTagName cheats something fierce: it doesn't return an Array like everybody else, it returns a NodeList. And the nodelist is lazy, it won't do anything before it needs to. Essentially, just calling document.getElementsByTagName is the same as calling an empty function. If you serialize the nodelist to an array (using Array.prototype.slice.call), bam 150~200x perf hit.

See <http://jsperf.com/vanillajs-by-tag/2> for these two alterations added to the original "vanilla JS" perf cases.

There is a significant overhead to jQuery, but it's ~3x compared to the equivalent DOM behavior, not 400x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://vaporjs.com/> is way better, and was here first.

<comment><AUTHOR> I prefer semicolon.js, more secure and reliable :) <https://github.com/madrobby/semicolon.js>

<comment><USER20> Actually, function.js is vastly superior as readers of "JavaScript: The Good Parts" will know: <https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/function.js>

<comment><USER19> There is an error in the Readme. It begins with "Vapor.js is a much more...". Should be "Function.js is...".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Question: is the 'Speed Comparison' for real? I find it really, really hard to believe. Surely jQuery & co. revert to native implementations (if they exists, as they do in all modern browsers) for things like `document.getElementById` and don't iterate over the whole DOM.

<comment><USER10> > is the 'Speed Comparison' for real?

Depends what you mean by "for real". The document.getElementsByTagName comparison is bullshit: gEBTN is lazy, just calling it basically doesn't do any work, it just allocates a NodeList object and returns.

If you serialize the nodelist to an array or use document.querySelector instead (it returns an array) you get ~3x between the native version and the slowest libraries, not 400x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not sure why Vanilla JS doesn't require <script> tags, whereas jQuery apparently does.

<comment><USER23> Both require it. Its just a marketing ploy to improve the aesthetics of Vanilla JS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love pure JavaScript. jQuery is overrated and most libraries are only good for one thing or the other, nothing can replace the joy and performance of Vanilla JS!

<comment><USER11> jQuery is kind of a big download for mobile, so I often skip it for small tasks.

What gets me is when people include jQuery and then further bog things down by loading a lot of plug-ins to do things that could easily be accomplished by adding a few lines of code of their own. Even if you do need and include jQuery, it doesn't mean you have to use it for every piece of javascript in your app.

Many times, a plug-in will do a lot more than you need it to do. If your primary goal is to just get rid of the 300sm delay translating tap events to click events, you don't need a library for full gesture support. You need half a dozen lines to listen for touch events.

If you just need to add some client-side persistence for a few basic things in LocalStorage, you probably don't need a plug-in with a complex query syntax.

Cannibalize a library if you need to and pull out the bits you need. You don't have to include the whole kitchen sink.

<comment><USER10> > jQuery is kind of a big download for mobile, so I often skip it for small > tasks.

That's what Zepto[0] is for: jQuery's API, 20% of the size (although it drops some features, e.g. $(selector) is pretty directly proxied to document.querySelectorAll, so $('> .foo') works in jQuery but blows up in Zepto)

[0] <http://zeptojs.com/>

<comment><USER11> Ah, last I looked at Zepto, it's support for non-webkit browsers was pretty lacking. It's good to see they're making strides on the cross-platform comparability front. The supported browsers list looks pretty good now.

<comment><USER25> Been using it on mobile for about a year. It's small and snappy, and the people behind it are very responsive & opinionated in a good way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> these sites are getting really old

</comment><comment><USER27> The features generator is a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would have liked a compatibility chart between this and the other frameworks.

<comment><USER29> All the others rely on this one, so it wouldn't be a very fair chart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> $.ajax({ type: 'POST', url: "path/to/api", data: "banana=yellow", success: function (data) { alert("Success: " + data); }, });

can be written as

jQuery.post('path/to/api',{banana:yellow},function(data){alert("Success: "+data);});

much simpler and easy than

var r = new XMLHttpRequest(); r.open("POST", "path/to/api", true); r.onreadystatechange = function () { if (r.readyState != 4 || r.status != 200) return; alert("Success: " + r.responseText); }; r.send("banana=yellow");

nevermind got the joke. but i think jQuery helps write faster code sometimes

</comment><comment><USER31> wow, the list of the companies using vanilla.js is impressive. if those put their trust in this framework, it surely must be good.

</comment><comment><USER32> It confuses me if you describe a JS framework as cross platform. Isn't that the whole point of using JS?

</comment><comment><USER33> The first book listed on the "Books" link is: JavaScript & jQuery: The Missing Manual

Heh.

</comment><comment><USER34> Given how optimized jquery is, does anyone understand why something as simple as getting an element by id would be so much slower than Dom methods?

<comment><USER35> I'm surprised by the number of comments like this.

jQuery has to parse the selector and figure out that it's of the form "#id". This requires running a regular expression. A lot more is happening.

The whole jQuery call from start to finish takes 2.85 microseconds, in what is presumably a real benchmark, but microbenchmarks like this are hard to interpret and basically meaningless. But yes, if your app needs to do a burst of 350,000 jQuery calls in a tight loop and you are bummed that the whole thing takes a full second, you should then optimize using document.getElementById.

<comment><USER36> > I'm surprised by the number of comments like this.

The sentiment is borne out by the facts when you dig a little deeper. Just calling document.getElementById without using the return value does not actually dig into the DOM and find the element according to this comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436438>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Get back to me when Vanilla.js has a way to handle document ready, and then I'll believe that it's cross-platform.

</comment><comment><USER38> If nothing else, the word doc look is pretty amusing :)

</comment><comment> martin-adams I want to use vanilla.js, do you think I should minify it and serve with gzip compression? Anyone know if it will pass JSLint?

</comment><comment><USER39> nope you have to use codesmell jquery and backbone :p

</comment><comment><USER40> hkjk

</comment><comment><USER41> ANYWAY, Lol at that... made me chuckle.

<comment><USER41> Haters gonna hate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> So many JS frameworks, so little time...</comment>


Berkson's Paradox - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox <comment><USER2> Example that I remember getting pointed out on HN a while back

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/programming/co...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/44kpzk/peter_norvig_being_good_at_programming/#ampf=undefined)

<comment><USER3> A couple more examples from higher education: Within the pool of enrolled students, language skills and quantitative skills are negatively correlated; and within the pool of students accepted by any law school, LSAT and GPA are negatively correlated.

<comment><USER4> Implication is that anything within a company that gets you hired that isn't A is negatively correlated to A I guess, which is pretty interesting.

Looks, competence, workexp, interview skills, height, rich background, any positive discrimination, nepotism etc etc. All should be negatively correlated with eachother this. Although there are limits to the strength of the effect right, it depends on how much of a slice is being excluded and if the two variables have an enormous correlation that might outweigh it?

You'd also expect the effect to be stronger the more selective the environment (for each pair of variables). So if your place hires very strongly on looks and competence they'll be very negatively correlated.

Also it depends on the hiring policy, we're assuming some sort of (A+B) > C evaluation over things that they care about, but if it's (A>A0, B>B0, C>C0), pass all of those and you're in then this effect should be totally absent in those variables.

<comment><USER5> Re: your final paragraph it seems like it could be a0 > A & b0 > B & ... if you're also trying to (or forced by the market to) minimize the sum of a0 + b0 ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My first exposure to this idea was in Jordan Ellenberg's fantastic book "How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking". Here's a post from him that goes into the same example he uses in the book:

[https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/berksons-fallacy- wh...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/06/berksons-fallacy-why-are- handsome-men-such-jerks.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> An example of this I heard once is:

For a given car, there is no correlation between whether or not a car battery is dead or a fuel pump is broken.

However if you have a car that does not start, if you test the battery and it is working, you can now consider it more likely that the fuel pump is broken (because you have ruled out one cause of the car not starting, all other causes are now more likely).

This means that if you were to gather statistics about batteries and fuel pumps of all cars taken into the auto shop, you would find that there is a negative correlation between broken batteries and broken fuel pumps, despite this being clearly nonsensical for the general population.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's a fabulous numberphile video exploring this paradox: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUD8h9JpEVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUD8h9JpEVQ)

</comment><comment><USER9> Related: Simpson's Paradox

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR Berkson's paradox is a false observation of a negative correlation between two positive traits

<comment><USER4> Which occurs when/because for whatever reason, samples with two negative traits are excluded, the example demonstrates it well: if P(a, b), P(~a, b), P(a, ~b), P(~b, ~a) all equal 0.25:

If you exclude the (~a, ~b) sample then within the population that remains it looks like a and b are negatively correlated. (p(a|~b) = 1, p(a|b)=0.5)

It's interesting because this is something that happens a lot => when dating, looks negatively correlate with niceness within people you date because you don't date people who are neither. Diseases in hospital populations are negatively correlated because if you don't have anything you're not in hospital.

<comment><USER11> Great examples, thanks!

Can you suggest any good material you know on stats? (I'd prefer videos, but everything works) It seems to me you have a very solid background.

<comment><USER12> look up 3blue1brown for some instructional videos on math, including some on stats

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this just a term for the outcome of a sampling bias?

<comment><USER14> This is a special case of sampling bias.

</comment></comment><comment> pure-awesome Took me until reading the example involving stamps (three or four times) to finally grok it, but I finally understand now.

:)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the inverse of two wrongs don't make a right.</comment>


Social Fixer – Chrome Extension Hacking Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/socialfixer/posts/10155117415829342 <comment><USER2> It's nice to see such a straightforward account of what happened. I've never heard of the extension before but it looks decent.</comment>


SF Is Actually The New Palo Alto - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/24/sf-is-actually-the-new-palo-alto/

<comment><AUTHOR> "All of these people rarely, if ever, interact with people outside the tech world."

I think we have to interact with people outside the tech world to build really good products?</comment>


Beware of How Millennials View Office Promotions - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/experts/2015/10/26/beware-of-how-millennials-view-office-promotions/ <comment><USER2> > Millennials watch who gets promoted very closely because what leaders reward > tells them what is truly valued in the organization, and what the leaders > want to reinforce in the culture.

The word "millenials" in this paragraph should be replaced with "employees".

Years ago, my employer asked us all to read the Netflix slide deck about their company culture. In that slide deck, the point is made that what is important to a company is not told by the values inscribed on a plaque mounted to a wall, but in what happens inside the company every day. That has stuck with me through the years.</comment>


Rupert Sheldrake, TEDx Lecture REMOVED BY TED - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zamrs3nE9ys <comment><USER2> Sheldrake has been pushing his pseudoscience of "Morphic Resonance" for decades now. Nobody owes this man a platform for his garbage.</comment>


Some notes on making a random Erlang program (egitd) faster - <AUTHOR> http://andrew.hijacked.us/article/324/optimizing-egitd-introduction

<comment><USER3> Actually I learned this myself just this week. Don't fear the binaries in Erlang. You need to learn how they work, and in particular they can surprise you a bit if you don't turn fullsweep on by hanging around in the binary heap longer than you'd expect after all processes are done with it, but you are _not_ doing the runtime any favors by using a lot of "strings" instead. (Fullsweep isn't the only answer either, it's just an easy thing to quickly say in an HN post.)

In Erlang, slices of binaries are by default references to the original, and if you want a true copy (within a single Erlang OS process, sending it across processes will make one automatically of course) you need to ask for it, with binary:copy, available only in relatively recent releases. In the context of where Erlang tends to run, I think this is the correct default behavior, but it does mean that you end up having to do at least a little smidge of memory- management-type thinking. Since your Erlang code is very likely to be something that takes a packet in, does "something", and sends it somewhere else without hanging on to it indefinitely, this can work well as long as you don't leak references.

<comment><USER4> > Actually I learned this myself just this week. Don't fear the binaries in > Erlang.

I don't understand why you would though: Erlang's binaries are one of the sexiest, simplest, most readable and most fluent ways to work with raw binary data.

Sure they're reference-counted on a shared binary heap instead of the pre- process one and you have to be careful about sharing sections of binaries and hanging onto them, but apart from that it's utterly fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who didn't notice - this series currently has 5 more articles - <USER2> need to click "Next post" at the bottom. Wasn't immediately obvious for me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what Github thinks about the changes to this program -- whether it's fast enough for their needs. I tweeted this at github; I hope they respond. <http://twitter.com/zckzck/status/36447074698399744>

</comment><comment><USER7> Mailing list post announcing the blog series:

[http://www.erlang.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm- cgi?4:mss:56379:201102:p...](http://www.erlang.org/cgi-bin/ezmlm- cgi?4:mss:56379:201102:pmcahfadajbdldpnmegi)

</comment><comment><USER8> This was really cool. It just goes to show you what an experienced programmer with the proper understanding of the tools can accomplish. He right away zeroed in on the blocking nature of certain operations and "erlangized" it, making the entire thing almost as fast as git-daemon.</comment>


Brad Feld: Google Voice Was So Very Close To Working - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/01/google-voice-was-so-very-close-to-working.html <comment><USER3> The other feature that I wish was possible is connecting two google voice accounts to one phone number. At first, I thought it was going to be a great solution for our kids; have a single number we give to our school, after school classes, pediatricians, etc that when you called it, it automatically would ring our home phone, my wife's cell, and my cell all at the same time. Unfortunately, you can only attach a phone to a single account, so my wife and I either both have to use it in only this one situation, or simply not use it at all for this situation.

I can see why they limit it because a phone number has a cost associated with it and you wouldn't want a user to have a 100 different voice accts, but I think this kind of usage would be pretty useful.

<comment><USER4> This is partly inaccurate. You _can_ connect two Google Voice accounts to one number, as long as it is marked as your "home" or "work" number (not a "cell").

However, if you actually used your cell phones in this way, then you'd give up the SMS receiving I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Google Voice as my primary personal number, and have had several folks tell me that it "rings and rings" (voicemail never picks up). And I would have to agree, their transcription is a joke.

All that said, its still a pretty damn good service for being free. But they have a lot of work to do before Voice is ready to be a part of their Google Apps offering.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: Google Voice still has no "keep your number" support; poster attempts to forward a phone number to another phone number that forwards to his other phones; hilarity ensues.

<comment><USER7> IMO, I think the reason why they don't have LNP isn't because of technical reasons (meaning that they could have added LNP long ago), it's because Google Voice isn't ready. They don't want to see the horror stories of people committing to Google Voice and being disappointed - as it is, it has a low enough enter/exit friction that people don't feel bad if it isn't working right.

The Author is giving the Google a lot of benefit of the doubt here - <USER2> can only ride their karma for so long before people start expecting a product that works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've also noticed that Google Voice, despite its awesome feature set, is just not very reliable. I absolutely prefer to use it as my primary phone number, but I've noticed repeated problems with just using the service, a good deal of the time.

Outbound calls (from my phone) that use the Google Voice service often times just don't connect.

Inbound calls often don't ring my phone, and go straight to voice mail.

I've never noticed an SMS message fail altogether, but I have seen a number of occasions in which it was delayed so significantly that it might as well have.

Perhaps the most important glitch to me (and this isn't a service complaint, so much) is that MMS messages are just ignored. I don't receive them, or any notification that one was sent, and from what I can tell, there is no message / delivery failure sent to the sender either. This is a problem for me.

Despite all these problems, I still LIKE Google Voice, and continue to use it, despite its unreliability. If I'm dealing with time-sensitive matters or financially sensitive ones, I just give out my non-IP phone number, to ensure that I at least get the calls, but my main want for Google Voice is to replace my regular number, so that I can change phones & carriers at will, that doesn't really sit well either.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've had GV since it was GrandCentral and I still can't make heads or tails of it. I have my GV number, SkypeIn number, plus my regular phone number. All three are using some form of VoIP yet all negotiating takes place over 10 digit number. I thought it would be a great way for me to recieve calls while travelling but the utility is limited at best. Fring is moderately useful in being able to link MSN, Skype, and SIP. But GV is left out.

I'm still waiting on one true phone number to rule them all. Until then I'll continue to use Skype and check my GV mailbox.

</comment><comment><USER10> The Google Voice number I chose with was bombarded with calls from collections agencies. A freed number is more likely to come from someone who has abandoned their service due to non-payment. Google should have checked for this before offering these numbers. Based on what they've already built screening for collections calls would've been well within what they could do.

When I attempted to disable the number the process was extremely frustrating. I couldn't simply turn it off. I had to reassign it to another valid phone number. (No thanks.) I eventually got around this by following their suggestion to disable several AT&T forwarding and messaging services. This left me unhappy. What if I want to use these services for something else?

<comment><USER11> _Google should have checked for this before offering these numbers._

In a lot of NPAs (area codes) there just aren't any never-assigned numbers left. My brother waited, for months I believe, for a GV number in 512 (Austin).

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure when he was trying to get his number, but I got a 512 number when I signed up a few months ago. I think I could even pick among a bunch of 512 numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you make sense of the economy - codex-paulus I'm often struck by the sheer number and variety of companies and jobs that exist in the economy. I can often go through the list of businesses in an office park and find something I had no idea was a business, ex., fabricator of plastic grocery store displays. Obviously someone has to make them but I would never think of that as a business. I contrast this with the seeming lack of business opportunities I come up with. I know that this lack of opportunities is just an illusion caused by my narrow experience, so how can I overcome this? I try to take advantage of interactions with random people to find out what they do but I'm wondering if there is something more systematic I could do? <comment><AUTHOR> You could look through the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes. That will give an overview of what exists.

Fair warning, though: If you see, say, "Rubber and plastic footwear" (code 3021), and you think "Hey, there ought to be some low-hanging fruit there - how hard could it be?", well, you will probably find that the state of the art there is considerably more sophisticated than you thought.

That is: I suspect that picking a category, and deciding that there should be some opportunity there, is a poor way to proceed.

<comment> codex-paulus Yes. I suspect this is the case as well. I guess I just don't like restricting my self to such an arbitrary process as the industries I have direct experience in or happen to know people in (lots of overlap between these two categories)</comment></comment>


New Social Media Question on DS-160 and DS-260 Visa Applications - <AUTHOR> http://immigrationgirl.com/new-social-media-question-on-ds-160-and-ds-260-visa-applications/ <comment><USER2> This is alarming considering many people have multiple handles. Anonymous speech is a major reason America exists[1] and is a constitutional right[2]:

> _In Watkins v. United States (1957), NAACP v. Alabama (1958), Bates v. > Little Rock (1960), and Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation > Committee (1963), the Court protected the anonymity of members of > controversial groups to ensure their First Amendment right of association._

Imagine a visitor has handles not tied to their real name. (Maybe they don't feel comfortable criticizing their government under their real name)

Should the visitor be forced to list these sensitive identifies in order to enter America?

Keep in mind that lying to border officials is pretty much always a reason to be permanently barred from _any_ country.

I hope our allies lead by example and don't respond in kind - I'd hate to have to get turned away at the Peace Bridge because I wouldn't lie and wouldn't endanger my privacy.

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

[2] [https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/32/anonymous- speech](https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/32/anonymous-speech)

<comment><USER3> > Imagine a visitor has handles not tied to their real name. (Maybe they don't > feel comfortable criticizing their government under their real name)

I have used at least 100 personas over the past decade.

But I've gone out of my way to avoid associating _any_ of them with my meatspace identity. I compartmentalize by VM, Internet connection path via VPNs and Tor, contacts, activities, interests, and language.

> Should the visitor be forced to list these sensitive identifies in order to > enter America?

I wouldn't. Because I'm confident enough that they couldn't be associated with me. Not without concerted effort by the FBA and/or NSA. Also, I have retained no records of all but ~10 of them, so I couldn't disclose them if I wanted to.

So bottom line, if you have sensitive identifies that you wish to keep private, they had better be thoroughly compartmentalized. Nobody who knows you in meatspace should know anything about any of them.

<comment><USER4> So you get a visa of some kind, maybe it's not just a tourist visa but one that lets you stay here for years, maybe eventually you even get a green card, maybe you get married and have kids here.

If they ever find even one of those identities, they can legally kick you out forever.

If you even later _get citizenship_ , they can possibly revoke that citizenship and kick you out forever.

It's a pretty big risk there.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's a huge risk.

But if an immigrant has identities that would get them kicked out, disclosing them would just keep them out. And if any of those are readily discoverable, it's probably not worth even trying to get a visa or immigrate.

But if there are ~innocuous identities, it's best to disclose them. Unless there are links to not so innocuous ones.

<comment><USER5> But even if all of your 10000 identities are innocuous, perhaps disclosing as many as 10000 identities itself get get your visa rejected.

<comment><USER3> That's an _excellent_ point.

So if you're going to have numerous identities, it's best to do it right. And maybe then not disclose them.

But still iffy, if you know that you'll likely be emigrating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> No one will bother. Because this does not affect citizens.

Let's see how many will call their congressmen about this because it violates rights of non US citizens.

<comment><USER2> > No one will bother. Because this does not affect citizens.

I, a US citizen literally JUST spoke out against the practice in the post you are directly replying to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am so glad I left the US to get a PR in Canada. I have a multiple entry 10-year tourist visa to US now. The immigration system will never get reformed. Once the recession follows in a year or two and unemployment goes up no when is going to talk about immigration(no one cares now but they will care even less).

</comment><comment><USER7> They're adding more hurdles for prospective immigrants, and for those that get through the system to retrospectively invalidate naturalization because of incomplete information on a form.

[https://theintercept.com/2019/04/04/denaturalization-case- ci...](https://theintercept.com/2019/04/04/denaturalization-case-citizenship- parvez-khan/)

</comment><comment><USER8> And remember that they want the list of all the clubs and associations you have ever been "associated" (not just a member) with in your lifetime if you apply for a green card. They want the address, name of the president and dates of association, for your entire life.

</comment><comment><USER9> > estimated that 0.005% of U.S. visa applicants worldwide, or in the range of > 65,000 individuals per year,

1,300,000,000 people apply for visas each year?!

<comment><USER10> That cannot be right. There are about 10 mil visas issued, so the number of applications cannot be much higher (it costs $160 to apply). So probably 13 mil.

<comment><USER11> My US Visa is good for ten years (B1-B2 from Argentina, paid $160 and submitted the DS-160). If they all are like mine, then maybe it's 1.300.000. That's consistent with the total 10M you mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW this has been a question on the ESTA (visa waiver for, say, Australians) for at least 2 years.

<comment><USER13> Ya but isn't it optional?

<comment><USER12> As far as I remember it's the same question. It's easy to say no ... I mean, I _have_ a Twitter account, but I can't remember the last time I posted. Easy enough to forget about, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does someone know which platforms/providers are available in the dropdown menu? I mean, sure there will be Facebook and Twitter but what about HN/Reddit/Imgur/Whatsapp for example?

<comment><USER15> Someone else took a picture of the drop down menu:

[https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/checkpoints-borders- policy-d...](https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/checkpoints-borders-policy- debate/1972026-ds-160-us-visa-application-now-requires-social-media- accounts.html)

It seems to match the list that appeared in the news earlier: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/world/americas/travelers-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/world/americas/travelers- visa-social-media.html)

> The proposal covers 20 social media platforms. Most of them are based in the > United States: Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Myspace, > Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine and YouTube. But several are based > overseas: the Chinese sites Douban, QQ, Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo and Youku; > the Russian social network VK; Twoo, which was created in Belgium; and > Ask.fm, a question-and-answer platform based in Latvia.

<comment><USER16> I applied for a visa waiver for a short term trip to the US a couple of weeks ago. They asked about social media, but the question was optional. Surprisingly, Github was also on the list there. I'm not sure what border patrol agents will think of my pull requests - but so long as that question is optional I'm going to opt out of answering it.

<comment><USER17> Obviously they'll deny you entry if you don't adhere to the national coding style. It's about time a nation has the courage to enforce curly braces on a new line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It would have been helpful to get the bill number so we could know who voted for it... Oh, wait, the president just declared that this is the way it is (justified by "terrorism" of course.)

I thought we had rules.

<comment><USER19> US government operates on a number of bases -- not all rules are based on legislation.

Generally, by order pf precedent; Constitution, case law, legislation (US Code), regulation (Code of Federal Regulations), and executive orders. Plus others, such as court procedure, prosecutorial discretion, and more.

LLI's resources at Cornell University are a good start (though not a complete list).

[https://www.law.cornell.edu](https://www.law.cornell.edu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody listed "NONE" and run into issues? One might also delete accounts or add caveats that they are not your personal accounts?

Also yet another reason to stop engaging in these networks. This is actually using them for surveillance and network analysis and you have no insight into what's happening. The companies are allowing it.

Just have to hope your ex high school girlfriend isn't an anarchist or has a friend of a friend that "liked" a terrorist video I guess?

<comment><USER21> It looks like, according to the article, you at least have to have a history of email accounts. I don't know if that applies for the other social accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone who wants to see the exact wording can start a DS-160 application at [https://ceac.state.gov/genniv](https://ceac.state.gov/genniv).

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder what happens some of your social media accounts are private. Do they just move on, or do they get the data from the provider?

</comment><comment><USER24> There's absolutely no search hits on the text of this question. Is this real?

<comment><USER25> Well of course you won't find search hits for this. This is an online form you get when applying for a visa. It doesn't get indexed by search engines since it's hidden behind an application system.

<comment><USER24> It's obviously a hoax, which is obvious with even the smallest amount of research. People who fell for the hoax should be pretty embarrassed.

[https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF- other/DS-160_...](https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/PDF- other/DS-160_Example.pdf)

<comment><USER25> You're linking a DS-160 example from 2017. I don't understand what are you trying to disprove (or prove) with this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> That's why I am not going to visit the US. It is essentially becoming another dystopian police state. Shame because there is so many great places to see there, but there is also plenty of other countries that are no paranoid controlling freaks. I can only vote with my wallet.

<comment><USER27> Which countries do you travel to that DO NOT check social media as part of their visa process?

Here is a 2015 article talking about it being done in the UK and how the US is lagging because they were not using social media as part of the visa process.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12054754...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/12054754/Immigration- officers-to-check-social-media-of-applicants-to-root-out-fanatics.html)

<comment><USER28> China has never asked me for my social media accounts in any of the multiple times I've applied for a visa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You have few, if any, fundamental rights at or near the US border. It is why PR releases from the ALCU call it a "Constitution Free Zone".

<comment><USER30> As we can clearly see with this comment, that's a headline that does much more harm than good. In fact: you are broadly subject to search at the US border (that "exception" to the presumption against search was in effect during the administrations of the framers of the Constitution), but that's approximately the extent of it (don't get us started on that dumb map they drew).

It helps nobody to perpetuate the idea that you lose your rights to due process, &c simply by dint of being intercepted by CBP at the border. Similarly: citizens of the US can neither be detained indefinitely nor denied entry at the border.

<comment><USER29> Yes you conveniently ignore that you are not secure in your persons, effects, or papers at the border. What happens if you refuse to unlock your phone as a US Citizen?

<comment><USER31> The constitution doesn't guarantee that you'll be secure in those things "under all circumstances." It says you shall be secure in those things "against unreasonable searches and seizures." Searches at the border have always been considered reasonable.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Survey Finds Foreign Students Aren't Applying to American Colleges - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/survey-finds-foreign-students-aren-t-applying-american-colleges-n738411 <comment><USER2> No shit.</comment>


David Einhorn: Hedge fund's performance 'far worse than we could have imagined' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/31/david-einhorns-greenlight-capital-says-fund-is-down-18percent-this-year-aft.html <comment><USER2> Where is the investor letter referred to in the article?</comment>


Quantum gates implementation by X-ray single-photons around rotating black holes - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.04640v1 <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for the startup announcement followed by the press release from Google Research committing to buying one.</comment>


"Behind every great civilisation lies a financial secret."  - <AUTHOR> http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/heath_11_08.html

<comment><USER2> _Finance has its very own 'genes', in the sense of certain business practices, and it boasts a potential for spontaneous mutation thanks to technological innovation. There is competition between firms for resources; a mechanism for natural selection, with weaker practices, firms and individuals wiped out; scope for speciation, with the creation of wholly new species of financial institutions a key feature of the past few years; and scope for extinction, with species dying out altogether._

Reminded me of this documentary I've seen once before but can't remember the title. The film's hook was to approach the modern American corporation as a person then psychoanalyze it accordingly. As you may have guessed, by the third act of the film you want most of these companies under question to be sent off to the loony bin.</comment>


Ask HN: What podcasts do you listen to? - <AUTHOR>

If you're an eternal optimizer like me, you hate idle time. So while traveling or waiting for public transport, I love to listen to podcasts to further educate myself.
Right now I'm listening to the Stackoverflow Podcasts and sometimes to this week in django.
What podcasts do you recommend, both tech and non-tech/business? <comment><USER2> RadioLab (<http://radiolab.org>) is simply the best podcast ever created ever. Other than that, I listen to This American Life (<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/>) for serious stuff and You Look Nice Today (<http://youlooknicetoday.com/>) for comedy. And for a little shameless self promotion, check out the Rails Envy podcast (<http://railsenvy.com>) for ruby/rails news.

</comment><comment><USER3> I propose a Hacker News podcast, which would consist of progress updates and lessons learned from start-ups. The host could call each participating start- up every once in a while and then assemble these clips to a show. I won't take on the task of recording it, but would be an avid listener.

</comment><comment><USER4> The only ones I listen to with any regularity are Stack Overflow, Wait! Wait! Don't tell me! ([http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=518...](http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=5183214)) and This American Life (<http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Podcast.aspx>).

I was listening to Planet Money ([http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=944...](http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=94411890)) but it got hard to keep up a few months ago - it should have been a weekly podcast, not daily, IMHO. I've also occasionally listened to Hanselminutes (<http://www.hanselminutes.com/>) and Herding Code (<http://herdingcode.com/>), and while they focus on Microsoft technologies a little too much for my taste, they'll do in a pinch.

</comment><comment><USER5> Gdgt Weekly and TWiT for 'Tech' as well as NLO (<http://nobodylikesonions.com>) and Stop Podcasting Yourself for comedy/entertainment.

Although none of these will help you learn anything they're really good at keeping you occupied/entertained.

<comment><USER6> Also, This Week in Virology.

<http://www.twiv.tv/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> radiolab is awesome (radiolab.org)

I like 'the brain science podcast,' and it's pretty much all I listen to on long drives: <http://www.brainsciencepodcast.com/>

Ginger Campbell, the author of the brain science podcast also publishes "Books and Ideas" podcast which is enjoyable: <http://booksandideas.com/>

edit: Not exactly a podcast, but if you subscribe to The Economist, you can download the entire issue read by actors on the day of release. I listen to that on drives too sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Agreed that Radio Lab and Stack Overflow are the best ones, but I would add Venture Voice to that list too. Google Developer Podcast is occasionally interesting. Hanselminutes may have a few good episodes, but is usually too Microsofty. There are also some nice language podcasts out there, at least Learn Thai Podcast and JapanesePod101 are quite good. All of these can be found on iTunes.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dan Carlin's Hardcore History , The History of Rome, Econ Talk, and TED talks. As I have a very long conmute im always on the looking.</comment>