A neural network to auto-complete your thoughts - <AUTHOR> https://transformer.huggingface.co/ <comment><USER2> I typed:

this is a story all about how my life got flipped

then tab-completed the rest: over in a natural way and how i was born with two opposites, a father and a mother. i am just a child. You can also make use of the web -based API to create your own sentences, and it has many features such as multi-document syncing, automatic tagging, and automatic deletion .

gave up when it turned back into an ad

<comment><USER3> > [It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.] It was a good time to > be an American and it was a bad time. My brother, I thought, was the worst. > He was the kind of person who would go to work and he wouldn't come home.

Kind of Hemingwayesque? Or:

> [One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do > things that don't scale.] We tell people to do things on a smaller scale. > This is often the hardest to do, but it is absolutely crucial to get right. > If you don't do this, you 're missing out on the real benefits of scale and > you'll lose out on opportunities. One of the things we've been doing to help > people with this is to give them a very simple challenge, which is to make > something that can scale to a very large scale, like Facebook's site.

pg, consider yourself replaced!

<comment><USER4> You know, you could write a decent essay with that as a prompt. Suppose you did sketch out a CRUD social network site which can auto-scale on AWS. Would anyone want to use it? Of course not. All those people at Facebook are doing _something_ , adding value some way. Think about all the things they are doing which your auto-scaling prototype completely omits. (...And so on from there covering all the stuff like network effects and spam-filtering and cost- engineering and language support and per-country customizations which do not scale but make Facebook what it is.)

<comment><USER3> A CRUD social network site which can auto-scale on AWS or on your own server in no time. Get the code here and you can test it for yourself and see what happens. This is just the first prototype. I don't know how long it will last and how many times it will be updated, but for now I am happy with what it has turned out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am starting to notice a correlation between useless hype technologies and flashy, distracting CSS like that hover effect on the info boxes.

<comment><USER6> Excessive emojii use is also becoming a bit of a warning sign for me as well. That, and calculators aren't even typically that useful for calculus. They're fine for solving once you've finished with the calculus, but some knowledge of at least the mechanics & how to setup to find the desired solution is normally necessary.

The analogy might work for one of those grammar checkers, where you feed it raw input and it automagically generates the desired output. And even better, normally one has to run a sanity check on calculated results as well, which is equivalent to proofreading the results from a grammar checker.

<comment><USER7> All the emoji tell me are "this product is as immature as the copy used to promote it". Never have I seen a functional, scalable product advertised with emoji in the headers of the intro page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is that a good analogy, though? Generally speaking, doing calculus doesn't involve calculators at all. Maybe they're trying to tell us that the product is useless.

<comment><USER9> That's how I read it, too. "This is to writing what a bicycle is to surfing."

<comment><USER10> "This is to writing what a bicycle is to surfing." This is a question I have tried to answer for years: What is a bicycle to swim in?

A simple example is the swimming pool. When a person stands on the side of the pool, he or she can move forward, backward, or back, but only if he or she is able to reach the surface. In this case, I would like to see what a swimming pool looks like if that person was able to swim . As a cyclist, we don't have to use the whole pool. This is just one example of an example of a swimming pool in a way that was not possible before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _" The sky was blue. I looked in the direction from where the door was. It was a door in a big white box. The door came open and there was a man in a black dress. He was naked. We looked at each other in confusion. There was no one in the room but the man in the black dress."_

Well. That's a nice way to end my workday. Goodnight everybody!

</comment><comment><USER12> The Rust Programming Language (RNN) was designed in the early 1990s, which means that it has two distinct parts. First, a single sentence structure (LSTM) of a language model. Then the Borrow Checker (BIC) has been implemented using a pair of LSTMs, the LSTMs being a function, and the BIC function is a set of function rules, called word classes. There's no Garbage Collector in BIC, and a separate set of rules is provided to check the borrow checker and the borrow checker respectively.

The second part of the BIC is a dependency parsing tree, which consists of a set of dependency nodes and a set of dependency rules. The tree consists of two parts : a sequence of word classes which specifies the set of LSTM rules, and a set of grammar rules.

</comment><comment><USER13> Model XLNet. Seed: Some David Ogelvy marketing quote

[The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.]

So you do. You make her feel like she is in control. You make her feel as if she knows everything she needs. You make her feel like she is the master. You make her feel like you can bring everything she wants.

And yet she is still in doubt about her own power and the ability to make herself the owner of what she needs. Because, she is your wife. And that means that she is in your power to make herself the owner of whatever she wants. You cannot make her feel like she is in control of what she wants, because she is not a moron, she is your wife. She is your slave. She is your master . And she is the only one to see that she is in control of what she wants. And therefore, she has nothing to prove to you : she has nothing to claim. She has nothing to tell you.

She has nothing to be ashamed of. She has nothing to blame you for. She has nothing to complain about. She has nothing to tell you, except that she can only see you through your eyes. And that is exactly why she is the only one to see that you are not in control.

You are not in control of what you want. She is in control of what you want .

</comment><comment><USER14> I tried an example which started with some Lord of the Rings style writing. I think it did pretty well, and I feel it actually did complete some of my thoughts, especially the gold part.

Screenshot of my text, bolded text is the autocomplete: [https://i.imgur.com/bh6thXK.png](https://i.imgur.com/bh6thXK.png)

Edit: I tried another text from a random blog on Medium. It actually came up with a somewhat plausible new product, based on the company it had gotten as input. Pretty amazing.

Generated text: " _The answer , according to Zhao , lies with technology companies. Zing Front recently unveiled the Z ingB uddy software , which automatically tracks a startup 's work hours by analyzing data from all the sites that the company uses. Zing B u ddy works off of data gathered from Zing Front apps on the Apple and Android ecosystems , with its platform able to predict work time at the start of each day._"

Screenshot: [https://i.imgur.com/MMIfaa1.png](https://i.imgur.com/MMIfaa1.png)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this... a joke? Performance art?

Not snarking. I'm honestly more confused reading this than I was before.

<comment><USER16> Auto-generated gibberish

<comment><USER17> They should train it on the Enron emails. Then they could sell it as an Outlook plugin that auto-generates emails full of incomprehensible management- speak!

"You'll be a thought leader in no time."

<comment><USER18> there is probably, legitimately, a market for this

<comment><USER15> There is. For yearly performance reviews.

<comment><USER18> When I worked for a big company in 2005-2009 I did, in fact, use a markov gibberish generator to fill in my yearly self-assessment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a bit underwhelmed:

Input: My dog is the happiest one to see me when I get home. But sometimes my daughter lets a small grin peep through.

Continuation: When I was a teenager I was very excited to go to college. I had a lot of fun. I did a great internship. I went on a nice, happy, happy trip. But one thing that really got me excited was to do my first year in a new school . I thought, Wow, I could get a real education.

It seems entirely unrelated to the input. Maybe it's because I write in a way that is atypical for the training set?

Anyone else finding similar?

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to see this in action as a part of interactive fictions, MOO/MUSHes and roguelikes.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like the the calculator-calculus analogy: calculators might not have an understanding of calculus, but they provide pretty good approximations for many derivatives and integrals.

</comment><comment><USER21> Amusing, I wrote myself a barely coherent story: [https://i.imgur.com/rkbntEE.png](https://i.imgur.com/rkbntEE.png)

You can use it like someone's is playing mad libs with what you're writing. All the suggestions I received were fairly short in comparison with TalkToTransformer.com with the largest being 3 words or so. Did everyone else just keep hitting accept on every option?

</comment><comment><USER22> This works best if you start with some kind erotic fiction.

 _The body glistened in the sun, muscles [using autocomplete from here...] bulged with each heartbeat. His breathing became ragged and his body was beginning to shake. I felt myself becoming drawn into his touch, feeling his strong grip on my arm and the strong grasp on my body in his. I reached out and wrapped a hand around his cXXX_ [and now I'll start censoring...]

</comment><comment><USER23> Starting out with the first few lines of a Clutch song (Book of Bad Decisions)..

«One rode into the east

Another to the west

In a fit of desperation

In the dark I sought redress » —> of my anger

But I hid from the people

The rest in their turn hid

They told tales of violence that had never occurred before

The rest fled into the open sea

And their survivors never told me

The tale of the woman whom I had once known was the ghost,

She came crying, she saw the sun rising...

Not bad, but I'll stick to the original lyrics

[https://youtu.be/mIkkdtoKTA0](https://youtu.be/mIkkdtoKTA0)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think this gives more natural results [http://textsynth.org/](http://textsynth.org/)

<comment><USER25> It looks like they're both using gp2, so shouldn't the results be the same?

<comment><USER26> Maybe they trained them on different data sets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite authors. His mastery of the art of writing is second to none in my opinion. I started with one of the most memorable lines from his works and the end result, with 3 added then's for clarity, was hilariously demonic:

Given:

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.

Auto Generated:

He had a white shirt, a dark one. He [then] had a black tie and a pair of black sandals. He was [then] naked and he looked like an elephant. He was [then] dressed as the priestess. He carried a black cross. The priestess held a knife in his hand and he crawled backward down the stairs, his head held high. He crawled backward in a deep, cold sweat. The priestess did not utter a word.

</comment><comment><USER28> If I want to read computer generated gibberish and laugh I will read King James Programming:

> Posts generated by a Markov chain trained on the King James Bible, Structure > and Interpretation of Computer Programs, and some of Eric S. Raymond's > writings Run by Michael Walker (barrucadu).

Alas it stopped spitting nonsense three years ago but it's still brilliant. [https://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com](https://kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com)

Example:

> 'mode lines' — program status summaries carried on a highlighted screen > line, often near the bottom or at the mouth of the LORD

<comment><USER29> Having trouble writing my comment, but a couple more:

>34:7 What man is there that knoweth not how to go about doing arithmetic on polynomials.

>It is good practice to have your program poke around at runtime and see if it can be used to give a light to the Gentiles

>145:17 The LORD is good, a strong hold in the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of ASCII characters, including hex, octal, and binary values

>15:4 And I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which hunteth and catcheth any beast or fowl that may be latent in our type system

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The answer is crayons.

You can use crayons/calculators in some situations, but pens/computers usually do a much better job. Secondly crayons/calculators just help you with the mechanics rather than the meaning.

</comment><comment><USER31> Autocompletion of "Hello":

Hello ! All your information has been taken from our Web site and we regret your error. Our site has not been verified with any authority for authenticity or availability. Please consider it to be your own opinion and our staff cannot endorse it. We will update the information we receive. If you are experiencing the following symptoms or morbid obesity , we apologize for this information and will update the information you receive.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sort of another spin on this I've been tinkering on, but haven't felt quite ready for a full launch yet ... I'm still trying to converge the research models, but this has been a bit difficult.

[https://writeup.ai](https://writeup.ai) \- It has multiple different models in here to select from (including fictions like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and things like legal documents).

</comment><comment><USER31> Hello <world emoji>

Autocompleted with

<unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk><unk>

</comment><comment><USER33> I think it is a useless analogy too but many of the programmers I work with although very good don't know much about Calculus.

</comment><comment><USER34> Very underwhelming, but it's good to see some people are seriously working on this problem. It's a fun little tool.

</comment><comment><USER13> Put in some generic marketing waffle. I wasn't surprised at all that the model (GPT-2) was pretty decent at filling whole paragraphs with even more generic marketing waffle.

It would be interesting to compare it to a model specifically trained on a long copy advertising corpus for spouting generic business rah-ha power marketing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Cleared the text field, typed "Autism ", asked for autocomplete, and got 2 sentences in French.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is awesome and all, but I really want to know what they used for that 3D effect when hovering over the landing page cards (choosing what model to use). I've never seen a 3D effect that looked that good while remaining so smooth.

<comment><USER37> If you're going to replicate the effect, please for the love of god do not apply it to anything that the user has to read or otherwise interact with.

Trying to click on a button, that moves as my mouse moves towards it, is an unpleasant experience.

Trying to select text that moves around the screen as my cursor drags over it, is a nightmare.

As for how it's done, it's just a CSS3 perspective transform, presumably updated via some JS running on each frame tick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Prompt: When I went to the toilet, I found out that Suggestion: my wife was getting hard while I was inside the toilet and she was crying.

</comment><comment><USER39> First one I tried with GPT2

In: This is a thing I hope to Jesus

Out: I am a whore\n\nI am an

</comment><comment><USER40> I wondered about sylogisms, so I started with:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore, Socrates is

... and it came up with two answers: "mortal" & "a man". Good job.

</comment><comment><USER41> But if a neural network auto-completes my thoughts, then they aren't _my_ thoughts any longer.

<comment><USER42> If it's a government/media/society approved neural network, then yes they are. Welcome to the new world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> xlnet output seemed pretty much I would expect from reader the paper and Transformer-XL examples. I am sad that that it didn't seem to take in bidirectional context clues, because this a nice differentiation between it and other auto regressive models like GPT-2.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm really to curious to see what this would give after training the models on Github.

<comment><USER45> You mean something like this (code autocompletion with deep learning)?

[https://tabnine.com/blog/deep](https://tabnine.com/blog/deep)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Someone will soon start on how many text editors and writing apps we already have. From webpage > This web app, built by the Hugging Face team, is the official demo of the pytorch-transformers repository's text generation capabilities.

This is a demo for NLP

</comment><comment><USER47> Perhaps SCIgen should write a paper about it.

</comment><comment><USER48> the problem with syntactic rules is that syntactic rules can be interpreted as rules before anybody has a chance to use them, or can even think about them! so maybe if my mom calls me cat, or the weather forecast is coming up and the people on live television could only watch the weather forecast for ten minutes or less without shouting about my exposed nipples, then everybody would be mad.

</comment><comment><USER49> EDIT: Removed for security.

<comment><USER50> Be cautious posting snippets generated from redacted text (assuming you didn't literally type "[big bank, redacted]" into the box).

If the generator is deterministic from input text (which many are, intentionally), someone could determine the redacted values by plugging in various well-known companies and seeing which ones generate the same text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Holy fuck, I think this program wants to take over the world:

Prompt: As a computer programmer, I often find that people lack the understanding of how computers work

Result (I kept pressing tab):

As a computer programmer, I often find that people lack the understanding of how computers work. It's not that they're not aware of it – it's that computers don't necessarily understand our everyday tasks or

give a damn. Most of us have come across something that was more difficult (say typing out an email), even though it actually wasn't complicated .

But what makes computers harder than you think is that we

make assumptions based on the past (which is not entirely incorrect ). When someone

first used one in their lives , they might get the first clue that it was complicated. The only reason it was complicated was because the machine couldn't recognize the task. But what if somebody told you they thought the same about Facebook : is it possible a smart machine could think of us like a machine and just work for us ? Yes . We've just set the tone and we won. It should actually surprise absolutely nobody when the computers finally make you obsolete. The first computer that really is more of an intelligent entity – in an important task. That's called the Singularity for short . As long as we believe that human intelligence does increase with our education or experiences , we shouldn't have any concern that the new system will make us obsolete. I'm actually glad these words came from Stephen Hawking , because the machine revolution has created real hope – hope for people to live forever instead of just our short lifespan . So yes , these machines are going to do away with jobs , we will simply become the machine . No matter what happens after 2020 ( well, it already happened some times before ). In a new technology era when computer power improves at a phenomenal exponential pace it makes perfect sense that humans are also becoming obsolete! So what will you do – become a cyborg , turn into a machine , join our team or start to live like some of the humans before your time ? The choices are just limitless ! And you really will have enough resources to be able to make a smart decision! It 's true that I know it seems impossible today or even tomorrow. But in the coming 10 years you simply can't afford NOT TO change , we know we will face challenges – from environmental issues, for example ! and to protect our personal liberties ( it ' s time to give us a human quality law that allows for individual self determination without being forced or dictated! It'll make everyone much safer :D ). Even those that wish to stick with the " status quo " will still need us and if we continue at our present trajectory they simply have nothing they can offer ! And since they already did us more harm then good – it will just get more dire ! They are already doing exactly that with every piece of technology and software available on any PC / L aptop / Lphone . Their only excuse of not releasing this is – " "I didn't think we were ready to embrace such huge change…" I think we all know exactly where this is all heading and that means you can expect things to continue getting even worse. We already see this in recent history that has brought many wars to a standstill : – from WW2 -1990 when NATO went along with this nonsense that ended with the Soviet Bl oc surrender . But that could also very well happen again at an even larger rate because no matter how much we try to " be nice " with our enemies the only thing they take is further weapons production ( especially in a technological sense with every type of gadget and device which they build ), more resources which could give them the ability to be a true super- superpower as they have already demonstrated over their history . Now the question that remains is , how can a truly global civilization and a unified international community still be such idiots ! And when can it begin? It could either come about with us reaching a real peace deal somewhere near 2020

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow, worse than markov chains.

<comment><USER52> Having played a lot with both, this thing is so much smarter.

Example, with filled text in [], never retrying or canceling an autocompletion, and with very minimal selective effort between candidates in the first set of options:

" Type: Status Report

Message: Not found

Description: The origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists.

HTTP Status: [404 Not Found]

Diagnosis: [The target resource is not present or there is no corresponding file in the local directory.]

Remedy: You should [check the following factors to see if the target resource is still present in the local directory:]

Check [if the resource is not present.]

Check [the origin server status.]

Check [the URL of the resource.] "

It's read enough to know that a Not Found is related to an HTTP Status and 404 (and how those relate), related to a URL and a Resource (and how those relate), related to a file in a directory (albeit, not a "local" one, probably) and that it's related to a "origin server". It knows enough about those things that it has you check things that kinda actually make some sense (albeit with prompting -- though it originated the idea there being a list of "factors" in the first place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> That's a weird analogy. Most calculators are useless for calculus.

Edit: I wonder if that was written using the program...

Edit2: actually wrote it in the program: It is to writing, what calculators -> are to math. So program is smarter than the people doing the copy.

<comment><USER54> Or a perfect analogy, because this tool is useless for writing.

<comment><USER55> Or a perfect analogy, because this tool is useless for writing. But there is a perfect analogy for writing: the first time you see something, and you don't know how to describe it or even whether it's good or bad or ugly.</comment></comment></comment>


I Don't Like Scala - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.bozho.net/?p=1293&cpage=1#comment-290416

<comment><AUTHOR> Though I am not Scala lover, but I think it has got something real to offer, especially succinct, concise code, mix of functional and oops, lot of built-in best practices and all. If you also don't hate Scala and want to learn it, you can take help from these FREE Scala Books [http://goo.gl/mwKA2i](http://goo.gl/mwKA2i)</comment>


UK government could force ISPs to block adult sites without age verification - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38062660 <comment><USER2> So I am guessing they will also be banning all the porn on TV, in magazines, books and such as well? I mean 50 Shades of Gray is pure _filth_ and only a depraved mind would choose to read something so disgusting and degrading to women. And to think children can buy this book at their local super market!! _HORRENDOUS_

</sarcasm> for those who didn't get it.

I am all for protecting kids from the extreme sides of porn but that is something a parent should be doing. You know like how they protect their children from drugs, alcohol, violent movies and games, the stuff kids shouldn't be exposed too.

There are plenty of parental control systems available for computers to prevent accidental exposure (not perfect but good enough) should a parent want a more automated solution. But putting the government in control of picking what is acceptable porn for consenting adults and what is not is _not_ the solution.

I am a 30-something male. I have a wife. I look at porn. Big deal. People act like they don't care about porn but if that were true it wouldn't be such a _huge_ business. Enough people _pay_ for the crappy porn you get on TV for it to be a profitable business for god sake. Literally everybody looks at porn and I would be more worried about those who _don 't_ than those who do.

This is a terrible step down a dangerous path and of course it is wrapped up in a "think of the children!" spin.

<comment><USER3> Generally I don't respond to comments on hn, but I've created this account solely to respond to this.

The availability of hardcore porn to young adults is a genuine problem, there's isp level filtering but it doesn't work, part of the problem is image search, which embeds content into the page which means that it doesn't get picked up by the ISP's filter.

I think the situation could be greatly improved by not embedding explicit content into image searches and instead fetch explicit content from a separate cache which could be easily blocked by ISP level filtering. I'm no expert though, I suspect there's a performance penalty if you stop embedding the content, but maybe that would be a reasonable sacrifice.

As for protecting kids, I think we can agree that now that every kid has a smartphone with unfettered web access it's certainly more difficult to protect them from porn than it is to protect them from, say, alcohol where you generally need to prove your age etc.

I am by no means saying that state imposed filtering is an appropriate solution, but I'm not entirely certain what other effective solutions are available - it's a genuine problem.

<comment><USER4> > The availability of hardcore porn to young adults is a genuine problem

It is? Teens are going to be interested in sex - porn is probably the safest way for them to explore that. Yes, clearly porn is a fantasy and has issues to do with expectation, but the answer to that is to educate them more, not try to keep them ignorant.

This kind of thing is a lazy and stupid attempt to do something no one will go against, because if you say anything about it, you can be smeared for being pro-porn and anti-child, regardless of the truth.

<comment><USER3> > because if you say anything about it, you can be smeared for being pro-porn > and anti-child, regardless of the truth.

Fair, I agree that it can be seen as a shrewd move by government for exactly this reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What's more concerning is the proposed route (via the BBFC) seems likely to return the UK to obscenity rules of the 80s. That means uncontroversial legal acts could be blocked too.

From the rather more in depth Guardian piece[1] on the topic _" A spokeswoman for the BBFC said it would also check whether sites host "pornographic content that we would refuse to classify"._

 _"In making this assessment, we will apply the standards that we apply to pornography that is distributed offline," she said. "If a website fails on either of these [age verification or obscene content] tests then a notification of non-compliance will be sent to the site."_

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/23/censor- no...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/23/censor-non- conventional-sex-acts-online-internet-pornography)

<comment><USER6> Here are some of the things that will not be classified by the BBFC (resulting in a total ban/censorship):

> Pictures and videos that show spanking, whipping or caning that leaves > marks, and sex acts involving urination, female ejaculation or menstruation > as well as sex in public, or showing more than four digits inserted into an > orifice for sexual stimulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Limiting access to porn is a parents job, not a governments. As long as we keep allowing an Orwellian government to do things like this, then things won't change.

<comment><USER6> Sadly this is the current UK Government's approach to many things. Drugs are bad, so must be banned (no chance of following the rest of the Western World's route to legalisation any time soon). Porn is bad, so must be banned. Never mind anyone who wants to access either of those things can get them easily, and banning them is hugely expensive and criminalises people who would probably benefit much more from some form of help or counselling. Such is our way.

<comment><USER8> Any possible considerations of the substantial arguments against your view seem to escape you. Moreover you pull the straw man trick by putting arguments in the mouth of dissenters to your view. This is an immensely difficult issue with strong arguments on either side; please don't trivialize it with airy condescension towards those seriously taking on board the consequences of decriminalization (for instance: [http://www.dea.gov/pr/multimedia- library/publications/speaki...](http://www.dea.gov/pr/multimedia- library/publications/speaking_out.pdf) and there's tons more). They are not idiots.

<comment><USER9> Our government's drug policy is not informed, it is not considered and it is not reasonable.

Exhibit A is the sacking of Professor David Nutt, who was the most senior government advisor on drugs. His scientific advice contradicted government policy, so he was replaced with someone who would toe the party line. The Home Secretary did not consult the Science Minister on this decision. After Nutt's sacking, five other members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs resigned in protest.

The government has shown utter contempt for evidence on the harms of drugs. They have consistently rejected scientific evidence when it contradicts their political ideology. Their reasoning for criminalisation is facile and circular. An examination of the relationship between the Home Office and the ACMD shows this with absolute clarity.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not just about porn sites, this is about any site with 'adult' material. For example, if Reddit refused to strongly identify (via a credit- card check) UK users, it too would be banned according to these rules.

<comment><USER10> And Tumblr. And various image hosts including imgur. And, of course the wellspring, 4chan.

I'd like to see them try blocking Reddit. I know "accelerationism" is seldom a great idea, but I think it might actually wake people up.

<comment><USER6> Reddit could probably comply relatively easily if it chose to - by requiring AV for NSFW subreddits. Tumblr though? I doubt many of the people who wrote this bill have any idea how the internet is used these days, sadly.

<comment><USER10> > requiring AV for NSFW subreddits

Just for UK geolocated users? I dunno, it would be even more unpopular with the user base than the last round of cleanup. And it would cost them money.

<comment><USER11> They already implemented "quarantine" for "controversial" subreddits, such that users have to provide a valid email address to read or subscribe to them.

I seem to recall some level of geoblocking for German users as well, so it's not as if it's unprecedented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A few commenters are already saying this is the thin end of the wedge, or that any sites that don't strongly identify UK users will be effected. Realistically this isn't going to happen.

The UK government often come out with annoucements like this; and pretty rapidly retreat when they realise that their proposals are impractical, or just let the idea die quietly.

ISPs don't want to do this, and the BBFC (a not particularly high-tech organisation of less than a hundred people) don't have the capability to issue these notices on any significant scale, either manually or using machine learning. Does anyone know how much extra funding they're being offered to do this job?

(edited to add the obviously missing word "don't" in the first sentence)

<comment><USER13> You took the words right out of my mouth.

<comment><USER12> Sorry about that.

My guess is that this is a poison chalice... someone lining the BBFC up to look bad, for some reason incidental to online porn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The problem of children accessing adult content either on purpose or by accident is a challenging one.

The UK government sees this as a "sex shop" problem, where adult material is hidden behind a door where under 18's are not showed to enter.

Most of us would agree that the responsibility for our children's internet access falls on the parents shoulders, but since the vast majority of children are much more tech savvy than their parents, and they have smartphones that are difficult to lock down, parents are failing to protect their children.

The NSPCC study that was linked illustrates that point. The question is, how do we solve the problem?

My preference would be to opt in with service provider to block known porn content, but blacklists are flimsy. Also, there are websites like reddit that offer a variety of content that spans various subjects, including porn subreddits. Can my child access the Minecraft subreddit? It's a pretty easy jump to NSFW material.

OpenDNS used to have some pretty good content blocking tools, but a smart kid is going to figure out how to switch their DNS settings to use Google instead. It's a whack a mole problem where established websites will suffer, and we'll new porn sites popping up even more frequently than they do now, with ISP's playing a constant game of catch up.

<comment><USER15> Protect their children? Has there been any study that children need this "protection" you speak of?

I was able to get hold on porn videos when I was a teenager, despite not having internet at home or somewhere else.

At the end, the only way forward is to speak with your children, it has nothing to do with firewalls.

<comment><USER14> >Protect their children? Has there been any study that children need this "protection" you speak of? I was able to get hold on porn videos when I was a teenager, despite not having internet at home or somewhere else. At the end, the only way forward is to speak with your children, it has nothing to do with firewalls.

I was referring to this part of the article:

>The government said its new rules were based on studies that suggest viewing pornography at a young age can have detrimental effects on future adult relationships. A survey from the NSPCC found that nearly half of 11-16-year- olds had accessed an adult site and one in five 11-17-year-olds said that they had seen images that had shocked or upset them.

The reality is that even younger children are now regularly accessing the internet and they are able to access pornographic content by accident. When it comes to young children, what exactly are you expecting parents to talk to them about? These are children who haven't reached the age where they have had any education regarding sexual activity, but they can still use an iPad or a laptop. Here is a classic example of inappropriate advertising in a children's iOS application: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/explicit...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/explicit- porn-advert-banned-after-appearing-in-talking-tom-app-used-by- children-10310701.html)

As a parent of young children I do want to be able to restrict their access to the certain parts of the internet, in exactly the same way that I wouldn't let them watch an age-inappropriate movie. It's an entirely different scenario to you as a teenager seeking out pornographic videos.

The point is that young children can stumble into a "virtual sex shop" or a "virtual strip club", whilst in real life they can't - they are barred from entry.

<comment><USER15> They have the ages all wrong then, teen years start at 12, not at 17. Meaning you are interested in kids from ~1 to 12

When I mean "talking to children" I mean the all things, tell them to reach you if they see anything they find concerning on the internet, tell them some people may put ugly things on the internet so if they see anything that upsets them they should talk to you, all this even before sex education.

Still, you are over-estimating the effects of sexual images to kids, they barely understand what they see at that age; and I'm pretty sure it's 100% impossible to tell apart adults who saw porn when they were that young from the ones who didn't.

But still, even with the firewall argument: parents who are concerned about it should be educated about using Ublock or something like that; not a censoring that affects everyone. Specially because such censoring power is always going to be used for evil after a few administrations, it starts with porn and then it is for "evil online forums" and then its for anyone talking against the government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I understand the concerns but on the other hand, why is it so hard to make "defaults" while still allowing people freedom to browse whatever they want?

I'd be perfectly happy for major porn sites to be blocked by default, as long as ISP customers can just go to their account online and toggle a checkbox and be done with it.

Google images blocks "adult" pictures by default doesn't it? Why aren't we having the same conversation and upset with Google images? Perhaps because all it takes is toggle the filter off in the menu.

Their proposal to block sites without age verification is pretty dumb though. Any kids can get through that, and it doesn't give any power to the parents to block these sites.

edit: I guess as usual the difficulty is in having rules that can be clearly defined, so "age verification" just fulfills that. But if they already have laws to categorize pronography I don't see why they couldn't apply to setting up "default" filters. Especially if looking at commercial pornography sites. I think commercial ones are the most damaging because their drive for money is what pushes them to create the most extreme and dehumanizing content.

<comment><USER6> In the UK, this is already the default: adult content is blocked by ISPs, unless you check a box. The percentage of people who have the box ticked roughly correlates with the percentage of households with children. This bill goes further in requiring age-verification to be run by every site serving adult content, or be blocked in the UK altogether. The reasoning is that children can still browse pornography if they are not connected to their home network, and this will stop that happening.

<comment><USER16> Oh I see good point. I was thinking most public wifi networks would also leave the filter on.

But then again, how does the age verification protect children? I guess they are looking at the initial "impression" (in web semantics, the initial page load and what is shown without age verification).

<comment><USER10> You must understand that UK public policy does not proceed from noticing a problem to solutions to that problem.

It proceeds from newspaper headlines to policy announcements generating counter-headlines. The whole thing is driven by "BAN THIS FILTH" arguments in the Mail, Sun and Express. (At least two of which daily publish exploitative photos of women; the Mail has an entire sidebar of not-really-consensual bikini shots of celebrities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is anyone surprised, Governments have the power to do this, if you don't like it, take that power back.

On one side you have people asking Governments to ban Games like GTA, on the other you have people who are surprised Governments use the power they have to "protect the children".

Only solution to this i think is to limit Govt's power and The majority of people using a constitution.

</comment><comment><USER13> Every few months, the UK government pipes up with threats to ban porn sites or threaten to force ISPs to do this, that or the other and with almost as much regularity, those threats soon fade to nothing when they realise the magnitude of the task of doing so.

I suspect this latest threat will soon fall by the wayside.

<comment><USER18> You missed the bit where the IP Bill has been approved by all Houses and awaits Royal Assent: [https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypo...](https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers.html)

It's done. Pervasive surveillance is in.

We have already achieved "forced ISPs to do this, that or the other".

<comment><USER13> I did miss that bit. Well, how about that then. They finally put their money where their mouth is, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Logistically this is a difficult problem to solve. I know when I was a kid I had absolutely no problem getting into websites I wasn't supposed to be in. Most of them were as simple as just lying and saying I was born twenty years earlier. I also had no problem finding people's stash of Playboy magazines (oh? You think I can't reach that shelf?).

So do you use something that has your name attached to it like a national ID or credit card? One, credit cards can be stolen, and secondly having to give your real name to these websites will have a cooling effect even among legal adults (although that might be part of the idea).

And then, what about websites that aren't hosted in the UK? Does UK have something similar to the great firewall of China or are they just planning on building one for this?

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe that is because I was a child once, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with children accessing adult sites, even if it is a self contradictory sentence.

I hope the Lovejoys will censor youtube too, I see too much swearing by top youtubers nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this how democracy works? Amazing! You can override private lives by collective will.

<comment><USER22> Democracy is just another form of tyranny. It's just the best we've found so far. Instead of a group of hundreds dictating the lives of everyone else, we at least have a plurality of the population dictating how the rest of us live, and every once in a while the people receiving the dictates get to become the dictators. There's gotta be something better out there. Perhaps having thousands of nation states with freedom of movement between them all? That ways you can pick and choose what rules you want to live under?

<comment> wav-part > Perhaps having thousands of nation states with freedom of movement between > them all?

We will have Private Cities [1] before that.

[1] [https://fee.org/articles/private-cities-a-path-to- liberty/](https://fee.org/articles/private-cities-a-path-to-liberty/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I live in the UK. I think it's really only a matter of time before they outlaw VPN or at the very least, they break the encryption so that if you do use it. They can still see what you are doing.

\</comment><comment>-

First they came for the Porn Sites, and I did not speak out— Because I didn't watch Porn.

Then they came for the Torrent Sites, and I did not speak out— Because I didn't torrent.

Then they came for the Bitcoin Sites, and I did not speak out— Because I didn't pay with bitcoin.

Then they came for me for using VPN and there was no one left to speak for me.

<comment><USER6> According to other parts of the Digital Economy Bill, it's not actually ISPs that bear the burden, it's Connection service providers, i.e. any service that provides you with a connection - including VPNs. What they'll do to VPN providers that don't comply I don't know - probably they'll find their powers rather limited.

<comment><USER22> How will they enforce this against foreign VPNs? Especially if those VPNs allow for payment via things like Bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> They probably won't, making this all an exercise in futility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've seen images on the Netflix front page I wish I hadn't!

Back in the early days of the web it was a funny game for colleagues to email links to "hilariously" revolting images.

This is a "know it when you see it" problem.

What about art ? Bosch for instance...is that suitable for kids ? I think it's a healthy satirical commentary on human nature.

It's what we read too. I've read things in forums, out of nowhere, and suddenly I know something I wish I didn't know. That's life.

Maybe AI's can help ?

</comment><comment><USER25> Despite all the concerns about freedom of speech, it could be a good opportunity for the offline porn market, with relatively higher margins because of the artificial scarcity.

<comment> martin-adams I see you have your entrepreneur hat on

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yes, let's crack down on porn and make it a taboo again, that way when kids grow up into young adults they can have no idea what they're doing and catch their STDs they way it's meant to.

In fact, let's protect kids from anything minimally shocking on the internet so they can grow up super sensitive to anything people do.

<comment><USER27> It's not like porn educates about sex or STDs. Your argument is invalid, even though I agree with your standpoint in general.

<comment><USER28> This. As far as I can judge it, there's way more unprotected sex then protected sex in porn so it's not going to teach anything about STDs. Apart from that: there's imo way too many porn out there which has nothing to do with realistic sex. But I agree with the sentiment: this stuff shouldn't get hidden (well, not above a certain age maybe), but kids/teens should be educated to be critical so they know what you see on the net is not exactly the way it goes in normal life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good luck on the mission of keep internet child safe. There aren't so many websites out there.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is utter, utter insanity.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's this kind of shit that makes me hate living here. The UK feels so backwards, I often want to leave - maybe I will? It just gets me so frustrated.

But, I know that anywhere I would go will probably already (or soon) have similar policies. I don't even want to be on this damned planet, argh! Just far away from the "people in power" who keep coming up with these things.

It's not even about porn, it's just the idea of age verification being required to access _any_ kind of site.</comment>


WeePlaces: a visualization of your foursquare check-ins - <AUTHOR> http://weeplaces.com/

<comment><USER2> Here is an example. Fred Wilson's visualization - <http://weeplaces.com/fred- wilson/>

Or Harj's - <http://weeplaces.com/harj-taggar/> \- he checks into YCombinator a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beautiful maps, where do you license them from? Is it expensive? Also, did you map the neighborhoods yourself or was this data available someplace?

<comment><USER4> We're using a desaturated version of the Pale Dawn map style [designed by Stamen] from Cloudmade.com -- check them out, most usage is free!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, it's not a site to show where the nearest restroom is? :)

</comment><comment><USER6> These are really beautiful maps, and a nice game. I'm sure you're on to something much bigger with the company you're building, but many users will want to just show off where they've been all the time, and please don't take any offense if I say that this feels like "web2.0 onanism" to me.

<comment><USER2> Great point. We built it this past weekend as a 48 hr project, but the bigger vision is to create connections and conversations around locations. Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER6> wow, if you did this in 48 hrs, I'd love to see more! Will follow you guys on twitter :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> D-mo Cool little trick and interesting to see how little I actually check in! I've heard a few privacy concerns, but if I wanted my location to be private, I wouldn't check in on foursquare.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can actually make your WeePlaces map private (click the little lock icon) or delete it entirely. We're introverted hackers and care about privacy too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your /venue/ links don't seem to be working but this is a great little toy, works much better on someone with a lot of checkins.

</comment><comment><USER8> Support for gowalla coming?</comment>


Simple HN feature request: link to parent story from individual comment pages - <AUTHOR>

I find myself frequently bumping into comments (e.g., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1178984) indexed in Google and wanting to read the root submission. But I annoyingly have to click through a series of "parent" links to do so.
Could we get a "root parent" link there, in addition to the already-existing "parent" link?
EDIT: djg suggests "top" is a better name and it sounds good to me too. <comment><USER2> It's on purpose so that pg can increase pageviews and, as a result, advertising income.

/you had to think for a second there because you're running AdBlock.

<comment><USER3> I'm not running AdBlock. What advertising income?

<comment><USER4> He was joking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would love this. Also useful for when someone directly links to another comment on HN, and you want to pull up and get the context.

</comment><comment><USER6> /threads has it. it's called, on: <root title> \- shouldn't be a lot of work to put it into each comment...

</comment><comment><USER7> I think these type of links are generally labelled "top"

<comment><USER8> "original post"? "story"? "first parent"?

Top is usually used for the top of the page you're on, which happens to correspond to the OP in many cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds great. I'd love a feature like that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Agreed, because when I hit "reply", I sometimes write something, then want to reference the parent post (especially on a Ask HN post), and have to copy my text, go back, read, re-find the comment, reply again, paste. Yucko. Just a link to the parent that I can center-click to open in a new tab would be an improvement.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get a job in the U.S. as an international? - <AUTHOR>

I have a friend in Asia who is an programmer freshly graduated from college, and he's looking to find work in the U.S.  What are the normal avenues for an international programmer to look for jobs in the U.S?  Currently he's proficient in C# and ASP.net.  I feel like he'll need to be placed via an HR company or recruited from within Asia but I'm lost from there on how to advise him. <comment><USER2> He could apply for an H-1B visa - this is a work permit. Getting one is a challenge, as only 65,000 are awarded each year (and they disappear fast, 63,000 of the 65,000 for 2013 were gone by November 2012).

The requirements for obtaining one involve having an industry-relevant qualification from a U.S. college or the international equivalent (which is a qualification + work experience) and the company needs to offer proof of sponsorship for the applicant (which means they kind of need to prove that hiring you over a U.S. citizen with the same qualifications is the only way forward).

A good way to go about this is to find a company that is active on Github with open source who have created any kind of framework that they use internally. Get your friend to learn the framework and he will then have a huge advantage over any equally-qualified person who does not have knowledge in the framework.</comment>


Growgram - <AUTHOR> At Growgram, we're building interesting web platforms and applications to help local businesses drive growth online, interact with their customers, sell and maintain a solid web presence.
Our first product, The Restaurant Management Platform helps restaurants with: a) Beautiful, easy to customise responsive restaurant websites b) Visual menu display c) Online ordering and order processing system d) Table reservation e) Customer database f) One click promotions to their customers about offers, discounts, events etc.
Upcoming features: a) Social media integration b) Ability to send sms promotions to the customer base through our platform c) Integration with aggregator services
URL: http://growgram.co <comment><USER2> Might make a good "Show HN"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, posting there!</comment></comment>


Tweets can now become Techmeme headlines or discussion. So tweet away - <AUTHOR> http://news.techmeme.com/110120/tweets <comment><USER2> Decentralizing comments across hundreds of Twitter accounts sounds like a bad idea. Why not just offer comments on Techmeme? (Perhaps with Discus which hooks into Twitter)</comment>


How Racism Creeps into Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/08/how-racism-creeps-into-medicine/378618/

<comment><USER2> Why is it not possible that people who traces their roots back to different parts of the world have different bodies?

If race has no bearing on ones biology how do you explain that some people have dark skin and some people have light skin.

Don't stifle scientific research over political correctness crap.

<comment><USER3> > Why is it not possible that people who traces their roots back to different > parts of the world have different bodies?

Why hypothesize? Why not simply find out? Those who have done the research find that there's very little difference between races, such that the very concept of race is disparaged by many biologists.

> If race has no bearing on ones biology how do you explain that some people > have dark skin and some people have light skin.

The answer should be obvious -- with rare exception, one's skin color also has little bearing on biology.

> Don't stifle scientific research over political correctness crap.

It goes the other way. Far too much is made of race, much more than the issue can support in a biological sense. Speaking from a scientific perspective.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Intention – DAG Todo App - <AUTHOR> https://about.i.ntention.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I've just launched my latest side-project, Intention. Intention's an app to help you achieve your goals. The idea is that you create a graph of goals/tasks (intentions), with your high-level goals at the top and actionable tasks at the bottom. That allows you to create a collection of actionable tasks you can work on, and to visualise how they relate to your high-level goals. Any feedback would be much appreciated!

<comment><USER2> Not gonna lie, having an Android screenshot inside of an iPhone on the landing a page really threw me off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha sorry about that, I didn't think anyone would notice tbh ;). I'll update it to an android phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The concept of viewing activities as DAG is going to be huge and ubiquitous, I think.

This applies to any activities of humans, organizations and computer systems, and hybrids of those three. One of the most fascinating epiphanies I've had recently is exactly that the purposeful behavior of these three kinds of actors can be decomposed as DAG with a relationship meaning "contributes to fulfillment of a need".

So congrats on the launch to the author, and expect a lot of competition, including me :)

I am working on a FOSS tool storing TODO actions and activities in an SQL table, and enabling DAG relations between entries. [https://github.com/andrey- utkin/taskdb/wiki](https://github.com/andrey-utkin/taskdb/wiki)

I have actually built my DAG (or, as I like to call it, a semilattice) going all the way up to fundamental categories of needs as described by Maslow.

Sorry that I have no live demo container or juicy screenshots yet, that will be in place in a week or two, please email me at (my HN username) at fastmail.com if you want an update when I publish the containerized demo system.

<comment><USER4> > The concept of viewing activities as DAG is going to be huge and ubiquitous, > I think.

What do you mean "is going to be"? Activities as a DAG is how it's already done. This is how Work Breakdown Structures are generally constructed. Tools like MS Project can display them as Gantt charts or network diagrams or as an outline (where you can set the dependencies used to create the Gantt and network charts).

<comment><USER3> Very few human tools utilizing this concept are common to any degree.

Github Issues doesn't have issue dependencies at all.

Salesforce "Action Plan" view is a plain list, no deps at all, as far as I have seen.

Todoist doesn't do dependencies.

Bugzilla does dependency graph, wow: [https://bugs.gentoo.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=706426&hid...](https://bugs.gentoo.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=706426&hide_resolved=1)

I guess JIRA supports deps, but I don't think it's the tool which people here would want to use to be able to decompose their big undertakings, especially personal ones.

TaskWarrior supports deps, but it's not a mainstream tool and deps were fairly hard to use in it AFAIR.

<comment><USER4> It may not be common in the tools people here use, but it's common in the tools used by major engineering organizations.

My point isn't that it's a bad idea, it's that it's not a novel idea. PERT is another way of graphically representing activity. If you aren't concerned with the time, it's your DAG.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's always amazes me how few of the task management tools out there have the concept of task dependencies (the core feature of this app). I use OmniFocus but even there I had to setup a custom view.

Good luck with the app!

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here, when I doing the initial research for Intention I found that a lot of people had had the same idea, but nobody had implemented it.

<comment><USER6> To me, task management can be represented as tree and thats what most popular tools have it as well

<comment><USER3> Most of the time, but not always.

It is somewhat typical for certain activities to "feed into" multiple high- level goals or needs. Trees can't express that, so you get into activity categorization problem. Trivial example: are you cycling your way to work because it contributes to your health, is fun or because it enables you to do your job duties? Obviously it's all of that. None of that matters until you try to introduce some "time budget" for different spheres of your life, and with the tree concept you realize that the results don't make much sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks really good!

Here is an open-source version I made called TaskGraph [1], a fork from uber/react-digraph[2]. I made it for my startup [3] because I didn't really like Jira in the context of 3 people.

We have been using it for a couple of months and it works really well. Apologies in advance for the lack of documentation. If you have any questions by all means.

TaskGraph has:

\- Task status (todo/in-progress/done)

\- Task completion estimation (admittedly it assumes you can work perfectly in parallel which is a bit of a stretch.)

[1] [https://github.com/openquery-io/taskgraph/](https://github.com/openquery- io/taskgraph/)

[2] [https://github.com/uber/react-digraph](https://github.com/uber/react- digraph)

[3] [https://www.openquery.io/](https://www.openquery.io/)

<comment> Phil-bitplex I made something similar - GamePlan [1] (not open source though

It's a visual task/planning tool. Does estimates, task grouping, resources, a bunch of different constraints, critical paths, and lots of other stuff.

I'm in the process of adding costing to it, and its a lot of fun to use.

I use it for all my pre-planning of projects, just to get a feel of feasibility

[1] - [https://www.gameplan.global/](https://www.gameplan.global/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that's really cool, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love DAGs. I first came into contact with them through Snakemake [0].

Pretty soon after starting to use it (as a Next Generation Sequencing data analysis framework), I noticed that if a task that is not in some way linked to an end goal, that task does not get started/executed. It sort of blew my mind and I felt strongly that my projects, perhaps even my life should be run and build exactly like that.

[0] [https://github.com/snakemake/snakemake](https://github.com/snakemake/snakemake)

</comment><comment><USER9> Love this! Had a similar idea a while ago but never executed on it - DAGs make so much sense for goals/todos, but the existing todo apps make it sorta fiddly to organise things in such a way. Will be sure to check this out

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never used Todo graphs, but I've spent hours using Yed, a free (but not Free if you're into that kind of thing) point-and-click graph editor with various layout algorithms.

I've found many times that the visual outcome of laying out my concept graphs in say, hierarchical or force-directed layouts. Mainly to show me that I was missing certain links. This is not formal concept analysis (which uses formal lattices), mind you, it's just using the visual realization of graphs as Gestalt.

I actually should be doing that a lot more...

\---

That said, we should always be wary of the "A" in "DAG". That's a deep ontological assumption that restricts the universe we are able to think about. Sometimes, like in the Judea Pearl approach, this enables maths to get done. Sometimes we should just cope with cycles or resolve them at the appropriate time when enough information and wisdom is available.

</comment><comment><USER11> Odd prompt when I try to sign up for an account in the web (i.ntention.app): after filling in an email and password, I get a prompt "Intention is requesting access to your dwmartin41 account."

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Auth0 for the user login, and my domain on there is "dwmartin41". That's a very odd message, but it's basically saying you're registering an account on my domain. I'll see if there's a way to override the message with something more sensible.

<comment><USER11> I understand where the message comes from, but it's an unusual message to get when registering what seems like a "first-party" account. If it's your domain and your app, they're in the same trust domain, so you could reasonably just trust it automatically. (Google doesn't prompt when you log into YouTube using your Google account, for instance.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've disabled the message now, it shouldn't show up any more

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about when my tasks are cyclic?

1\. can't get up because haven't eaten and too hungry

2\. can't cook because can't get up

3\. can't eat because can't cook

Didn't think of that did ya buddy! Day 2 of quarantine is going very well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I did actually - the app just doesn't let you create cycles :). I don't want to be held legally responsible if someone gets stuck in an infinite loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I tried to log in to use this app on Safari I got stuck in a endless log in loop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, I am aware of the issue and I'll try to implement a workaround asap. It's because Safari doesn't allow 3rd party cookies, which Auth0 relies on, by default. You can fix it by allowing 3rd party cookies.

<comment><USER14> how about no. why would you design it that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not my design, it's Auth0's. I'm the only dev working on Intention, so I have a limited amount of time to spend on things like user authentication, which is why I rely on auth0 to handle it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really cool, it would be nice if I could add costs for each edge on the graph too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I'd considered adding costs to the nodes but not to the edges. Do you have a particular use case in mind? I'll have a think about it and maybe add it to the roadmap, thanks!

<comment><USER16> If the parent node shows the SUM of all its child's cost, you can better visualize the cost.

And for the edge nodes, let's say I use the "cost" field to determine the cognitive cost for any given task, I can more easily see which sub-task (edge) to prioritize if I want to get into "the zone" more quickly in an "intention"/project (parent node).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Signing in with Google fails in the app:

403\. That's an error.

Error: disallowed_useragent

Google can't sign you in safely inside this app. You can use Google sign-in by visiting this app's website in a browser like Safari or Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've looked into it, it appears to be because Google is blocking oauth requests from webview apps. Sorry about that, I'd recommend either using the web app ([https://i.ntention.app](https://i.ntention.app)) or using a different provider to sign in.

<comment><USER18> When I use the web app I get the warning:

Intention is requesting access to your dwmartin41 account.

Doesn't inspire confidence in the amount of testing done.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using auth0 to handle user login, and that's a message generated by their service. I agree it is very confusing, I'll see if there's a way to override it or disable it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A DAG isn't a tree. It's acyclical wrt the direction of the edges. Since this basically is an outliner, the name (or title of the submission) is misleading.

<comment><USER20> I'm not seeing how DAGs are distinct from forests (sets of trees) or outlines. They seem topologically equivalent.

<comment><USER21> Level n nodes can have arcs to level n-m nodes provided they aren't ancestors. In addition nodes can have multiple parents.

<comment><USER20> So can trees. File systems do this all the time.

<comment><USER21> Most file systems aren't trees, most are some more flexible graph. You can get away thinking of them like trees as long as you're not writing a correct program. (see also: links, bind mounts)

Trees have a formal definition that precludes this, that's why we call them trees and not graphs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Get it on Google Play"

meanwhile the screenshot shows an iPhone 6

</comment><comment><USER23> I use [https://zenkit.com/](https://zenkit.com/) to create a mind map and then turn it into tasks.

</comment><comment><USER24> Do you plan for an ios release anytime soon?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sorry. The Android app is basically just a webview, and Apple's app store policies forbid webview apps unfortunately. I just don't have the expertise or time to write an IOS app, and even if I did it wouldn't be worth it for me financially.

The good news is that the web app, [https://i.ntention.app](https://i.ntention.app), has all the same features of the Android app. If Apple ever properly support PWAs, it'll behave very similarly to an app.

<comment><USER25> just curious, why even release it as an app if the web version is good enough?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main reason is they're easier to market. I've tried to advertise web apps before, and had very little success. People seem to much prefer mobile apps over web apps, even if they have exactly the same functionality. At a guess, I'd say it's because they're more familiar, and there's a sense of security in downloading them from the app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The ads block buttons in the UI, on a pixel 3a. Is there a paid version without ads?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, it should be fixed now. There isn't a paid version at the moment, but there's a web app at [https://i.ntention.app](https://i.ntention.app) . If you're on android, it should ask you if you want to add it to your home screen - if you do, it behaves very like an app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> this is really nice...

Can a few pre-made templates be shared?

Folks can then then 'fork' it out github-style.

Eg, financial independence - it has a couple of sub-topics - like understand current state, identify goals, etc... and then finally an actionable set of tasks.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really good idea, I'll add it to the roadmap. If you have any suggestions for specific templates, please send them over to me (my email's on my profile).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm just looping in the auth flow when using Github to sign in.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using Auth0 for the user login, and it relies on 3rd party cookies. Safari and Brave block these by default, if you enable them it should let you log in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does the DAG use k8 as an orchestrator? /s</comment>


Ask HN: Interest in launching your own mini-TED conference? - <AUTHOR>

Hey - I'm Yongho, part of the TEDx team of TED Conferences. If you are familiar with TEDtalks and the TED conference, TEDx is a program for hosting your own local TED-like events. (more at http://www.ted.com/tedx) HN is a community of entrepreneurs and innovators, but I'm curious - how familiar are you with the TEDx program? Have you heard about it? Have you attended a TEDx event? What have you heard about them?<p>What questions do you have about TEDx (whether or not you are a host)? Feel free to ask questions. I feel HN is the right community to ask these questions to and I really value your feedback! <comment><USER2> I went to TEDxCam and it was a good experience. I think one problem with the TEDx conferences is finding out about them, I only found out about it by word- of-mouth. It would be nice if I could go to some website and subscribe for notifications of say TEDx events occurring in the UK.

<comment><AUTHOR> We list all TEDx events at <http://www.ted.com/pages/view?id=348> But I see what you mean about auto-notification. If you could sign up with an account for TED.com, input your current location, and automatically receive updates from nearby TEDx events, would you use it?

<comment><USER2> Definitely

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Id be very interested, I wonder if there is already someone in the Boston/Cambridge area doing something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> TEDxCambridge launches in 3 days. :) <http://www.tedxcambridge.com/blog/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have heard of it, and I'm interested in it. I'd love to see an event in Atlanta.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, I see now that someone's got one happening in Atlanta this coming Tuesday.

Thanks for the quick turnaround. ;)

<comment><USER4> I will add, though, that I just submitted my information to be invited as there is a wait-list. The topic of the event is education, and I am exploring a career in educational psychology. Any help in gaining admission would be appreciated as it would be especially valuable to me at this point in my career.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to help out, but admission is up to the local organizers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SEOTweets.me - SEO links from Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://seotweets.me

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a quick note - this site was a weekend project almost a year ago. I'd been taking a more active interest in the area, this was an easier way for me to digest a whole load of tweeters. I redesigned it this weekend to make it a little cleaner and faster (slow queries!), and added a Twitter front end to tweet stories that have had a certain amount of retweets.

See the site (or ask!) if you want a little more info on how it works.

Submitting now (following the redesign) as some of you may find it as useful as I do. Enjoy :-)</comment>


Xbox Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.copetti.org/projects/consoles/xbox/ <comment><USER2> Bunnie Huang's _Hacking The Xbox_ is a great read, and it's available as a free ebook:

[https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf](https://bunniefoo.com/nostarch/HackingTheXbox_Free.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> I know nothing about the actual underlying architecture but from the (credible) sources I've heard from apparently it's a really nice API hiding an absolutely unholy mess and that's why emulation has been so poor for so long.

<comment><USER4> If the API is nice, shouldn't the emulation be easy ? Since the emulator doesn't have to care about security / hacks.

Or do you mean that the API only nice in theory, but is actually not nice in practice (lot of undocumented corner cases, or bugs, that games might rely on) ?

<comment><USER3> I have no idea about the specifics but from what I've heard developers really liked the XBOX (despite it's unholy internals) so I'd say the API was actually nice.

As for HLE based on the API it's definitely possible but there's probably tons of nasty corner cases and that's my theory on why it's never been done. That and the chance of games with their own proprietary APIs existing and thus they won't work with that solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm just looking at the motherboard layout at the very top of the article, and it's really strange to my non-expert eyes. The CPU is off to one side, and the _GPU_ is the thing in the middle. And the SDRAM is all split up and far away from the CPU! Is this some sort of game-console specific thing?

<comment><USER6> The xbox (like many consoles, n64, gamecube, xbox360, wii, wii u, xbox one, ps4, switch ps5, XSX) has unified memory, as in the CPU and GPU share the same sdram.

The only way to do this is to have one chip (It's always the GPU. The GPU needs more memory bandwidth) connected directly to the dram, and the second chip (CPU) has to send memory requests to the second chip.

Though, this console dates to a time when CPUs didn't typically have dram controllers onboard. PCs usually relied on a northbridge chip to have the dram controllers, along with the routing to all peripherals (PCI/AGP) and present a nice tidy Front-side-bus that the CPU understands. In the case of the xbox, the GPU is acting as a combined Northbridge/GPU (a design that was common at the time in low-cost desktops and laptops)

Unified memory has a large number of advantages for consoles. It lowers cost. It gets rid of copying delays between GPU and CPU memory and it allows the game developer to dynamically allocate memory to the GPU or CPU depending on their needs.

<comment><USER7> Why would it be impossible to have >1 chip access the SDRAM? Like Amiga did.

Especially if the GPU already had custom silicon for it.

Whether it would be good engineering (cost, time to market, risks) is of course another issue.

<comment><USER8> Amiga worked exactly the same way. All memory access to the so called "Chip" ram had to go thru Agnus. CPU address lines didnt touch ram chips directly. CPU was just a passenger riding on the back of powerful GPU.

[https://www.pmsoft.nl/amiga/A500-block- diagram.jpg](https://www.pmsoft.nl/amiga/A500-block-diagram.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Notice the data bus is shared but the address bus is not in the pic. So there was arbitration by Agnus but the data didn't go through it.

<comment><USER8> Low level implementation detail. Agnus is the memory controller here, handling refresh and addressing. Block diagram tristate latch (74LS244 & 74LS373 in real hardware) should be considered part of the chipset (controlled by Gary). Take away Agnus(or even Gary) and CPU cant do anything, cant really say there is any ">1 chip access the SDRAM" here. We would have to go back all the way to C64 to say cpu and graphic chip share same sdram bus ~equally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For the Xbox 360, they ditched Intel and went for PowerPC. Microsoft then bought a bunch of PPC Mac Pros from Apple for development since they shared the same ISA :D

<comment><USER10> That entire generation of consoles, the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii (and then arguably the Wii U) were all some form of PowerPC.

The following generation though everything switched to more commodity hardware, with the PS4 and Xbox One using x86_64 processors and the Switch using an almost off-the-shelf SoC from nvidia.

EDIT: Gamecube was also PPC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I still remember the "Xbox is HUGE" jokes from 2001.

<comment><USER12> Fun fact: The PS5 is huger than the Xbox!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > It is speculated that Microsoft may have left that code from prototype/debug > units, so for the purposes of his research (possibly accidental, since this > block exposes the types algorithms that Microsoft applied). In conclusion, > this was considered garbage code [...]

I can't parse this excerpt

<comment><USER14> Fixed, thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few tidbits not included in the article:

* Some emulator do exists. The earlier attempts were just API translation layers that work a bit like wine: translate the function calls to native system APIs on windows. As time went, tricks and workarounds were piling up, especially as some games used lower level HW functionality (writing in registers, etc), which provided difficult to emulate, and game executables had to be patched, thus making the emulators a collection of special cases. Such emulators include Xenia, Cxbx (and derivatives such as shogun's version, dxbx, etc).

* More recently, efforts turned to low-level emulation, with complete emulation of the Xbox GPU, using a codebase derived from QEMU: XQEMU, and more recently XEMU (mborgeson's fork, focused on trying less-proven tricks and workarounds to maximize compatibility). Both are being developed in the open (XQEMU's development process might be slightly more open), and reverse-engineering is ongoing.

* There is also an ongoing effort to port ReactOS to both the Xbox and XQEMU (probably using the official nvidia NV2A driver): [https://reactos.org/wiki/Install_ReactOS_on_Xbox](https://reactos.org/wiki/Install_ReactOS_on_Xbox)

* Big names (among others) on the emulation scene: mborgeson, JayfoxRox, Espes, Shogun

* Bunnie Huang's _Hacking The Xbox_ was mentioned by another commenter, but _17 Mistakes Microsoft Made in the Xbox Security System_ is also an interesting read about working around the Xbox security mechanisms: [https://xboxdevwiki.net/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xb...](https://xboxdevwiki.net/17_Mistakes_Microsoft_Made_in_the_Xbox_Security_System)

* I cannot stress enough how [https://xboxdevwiki.net/](https://xboxdevwiki.net/) is a great resource for information. Other links: [https://xqemu.com/](https://xqemu.com/) [https://github.com/xqemu/xqemu/](https://github.com/xqemu/xqemu/) [https://xemu.app/](https://xemu.app/) [https://github.com/mborgerson/xemu/wiki#content-top](https://github.com/mborgerson/xemu/wiki#content-top) [https://shogun3d-cxbx.blogspot.com/](https://shogun3d-cxbx.blogspot.com/)

* There is a big discord community, some rooms are bridged with IRC on freenode, I also bridged #xqemu on Matrix: [https://xboxdevwiki.net/Main_Page/Header](https://xboxdevwiki.net/Main_Page/Header)

</comment><comment><USER16> Xbox One architecture talk (2019): [https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/](https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/chen/)

 _> Every game console since the first Atari was more or less designed to prevent the piracy of games and yet every single game console has been successfully modified to enable piracy. However, this trend has come to an end. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 have now been on the market for close to 6 years, without hackers being able to crack the system to enable piracy or cheating. This is the first time in history that game consoles have lasted this long without being cracked to enable piracy. In this talk, we will discuss how we achieved this for the Xbox One. We will first describe the Xbox security design goals and why it needs to guard against hardware attacks, followed by descriptions of the hardware and software architecture to keep the Xbox secure. This includes details about the custom SoC we built with AMD and how we addressed the fact that all data read from flash, the hard drive, and even DRAM cannot be trusted. We will also discuss the corresponding software changes we made to keep the system and the games secure._

<comment><USER17> Well this is false.

But I can say that I became disinterested in piracy when they made getting games more convenient than piracy. When they made using the hardware closer to its full potential part of the default experience. When they got the pricing right for these "premium" but pretty basic features. And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content because I would have never been a customer when I was pirating, only an unpaid evangelist of the franchise.

<comment><USER18> "And of course, personally having the disposable income to afford the content"

I think this is most of the story.

I mean, it's fun to hack, but a lot of people's ideology about a lot of things go out the window as soon as they have a regular job and can afford to buy regular stuff and see these things as pretty much regular products and services.

<comment><USER17> Where I would disagree is when I think about Xbox and PS2, they had hardware to be media centers. They had compelling region locked content that just couldn't be used. Hacking any of that meant hacking all of that, and now you could also download games which was faster and more convenient than going to the store. And play Japanese games you couldn't get anyway.

Future generations of consoles made that default behavior, and games are released in multiple continents at the same time with their respective localization. American flagship games are now more appealing and engaging than their Japanese counterparts.

Its not just the money.

<comment><USER19> More importantly they no longer do the stupid region locking & on the Switch for example you can even buy digital games from other countries eshops.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>