Eliezer Yudkowsky on the Singularity, Bayesian Brains and Closet Goblins - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/ai-visionary-eliezer-yudkowsky-on-the-singularity-bayesian-brains-and-closet-goblins/ <comment><USER2> I am heavily biased as I was active on Overcoming Bias (Irony?) and then later the Less Wrong forums, but every interaction I have had over the years with Yudkowski or his followers has been insufferable.

Beyond just the pathos of that, I take major issue with the lack of technical depth of MIRI and the rest of these "futurist" prognosticating semi-doomsayers with respect to current AI state of the art, or even proposals for actual roadmaps to AGI.

Their Step 1: Create AGI; Step 2: ??; Step 3: Doomsday reasoning chain has led to what is in my mind the silly concept that AGI can be built to be "safe" to humanity. This leads to false hope and to things like the AI Safety Pledge aka "Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence"[1] - for which admittedly I am a signatory largely cause my research adviser did and it was the thing to do at the time.

That said, I thought his response to how he differs from Kurzweil - moreso the conclusions he comes to - are pretty spot on.

[1] [http://futureoflife.org/ai-open-letter/](http://futureoflife.org/ai-open- letter/)

<comment><USER3> The reason they don't have roadmaps to AGI is because they do _not_ want AGI to be made before the Friendly AI problem has been solved.

When you think about the vast space of mind design space, plus all the ways we've made mistakes reasoning about even simpler & stupider optimization processes like evolution, I don't think they're being too silly.

If any of you want a quick and insightful introduction, this video is very good: [https://vimeo.com/26914859](https://vimeo.com/26914859)

<comment><USER2> >The reason they don't have roadmaps to AGI is because they do not want AGI to be made before the Friendly AI problem has been solved

Right, which is an impossibility in my opinion. There is an inherent conflict between systems with asymmetric power and capability in a resource constrained environment. Trying to get around that fundamental principle is an exercise in futility.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate? "Systems with asymmetric power" presumably refers to the AGI - or does it? Maybe you are referring to the AI box or the utility function design or the "nanny AI" which is meant to contain the AGI? I don't know what "capability in a resource constrained environment" refers to because that could refer to pretty much anything in our universe or any finite universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For all that I loved his hpmor book I can't stand to read him speaking the way he does. It feels like he tries too hard to sound smart and has built his own hill that he gets to be king of and ignore the rest of the world from the top of.

<comment><USER6> I disagree that he tries too hard to sound smart. I despise the tendency to unnecessarily use complex words when simple ones will do. Police officers, for example, are rightly famous for this tendency. In Eliezer's writing and in this Q&A, the complex words are there because they are the most concise and precise expression of what he's trying to say -- simpler words would either be inaccurate or would have to go on at length.

For example:

Horgan: Is college overrated?

Yudkowsky: It'd be very surprising if college were underrated, given the social desirability bias of endorsing college.

You'd need a few paragraphs to explain what Yudkowsky means to people who don't already understand social desirability bias.

<comment><USER7> Yudkowsky has a way of thinking that he believes everyone else should adopt. He is skilled at using phrasing to frame his statements in his way of thinking.

For example, instead of saying something like, "a lot of people think college is good," he phrases it in terms of a bias. Why? Because if he can get the other person talking about the subject in terms of biases, then he has advanced his own favorite way of thinking.

But is liking college really a bias? And if so, compared to what norm? He offers no explanation; he just asserts it.

<comment><USER4> I don't think he's saying that liking college is a bias. Or rather, he is, but I think he's saying something subtly different (which implies the former): that those who denigrate college, or are "meh" about college, take a "social desirability hit" \- they are likely to be seen as either unintelligent manual labourers, or Philistines, or annoying self-taught outliers, or insulting people who have put in the hard work to go to college, or a combination. And therefore young people grow up in such an environment and many of them have a strong belief, in such an environment, that college is a necessity, and don't really consider the evidence dispassionately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >I'd try to do all the things smart economists have been yelling about for a while but that almost no country ever does.

Yudkowsky then mentions NGDP level targeting, consumption taxes, land value tax, negative wage taxes, Singapore's healthcare and Estonia's e-government.

Is there an economics textbook or article that explains in layman's terms what those things are and why they are good ideas?

<comment><USER9> NGDP level targeting says during economic downturns, the government should fill the gap between the downturn and the previous economic output level (creating jobs, buying things, paying people to do things, etc). Basically, don't let an economic downturn interrupt people's lives—always give them something to do and opportunities to grow.

land value tax comes from the idea nobody should be able to "own" land, you should rent land. When there's a more profitable use for your land than you are current exploiting, you must give the land up. The UK enjoys things like 99 year leases on land instead of in the US where you "buy" land and own it until the heat death of the universe.

negative wage taxes is like basic income if you make the "negative wage limit" really high. The government pays you because you don't make enough (maybe for reasons outside your control, like all jobs you are qualified for are now done by robots).

Singapore has free computerized centralized healthcare that doesn't cost a million dollars a person-year like in the US.

Estonia lets you get something resembling a "mini passport" with no international recognition (perhaps some cross-EU identity recognition, but no residency benefits), but with legal ties to an Estonian "e-residency" so you can verify your identity online electronically (chipped smart cards verified by government records, etc).

<comment><USER10> > land value tax comes from the idea nobody should be able to "own" land, you > should rent land. When there's a more profitable use for your land than you > are current exploiting, you must give the land up. The UK enjoys things like > 99 year leases on land instead of in the US where you "buy" land and own it > until the heat death of the universe.

That sounds like the scariest solution to the problem of land ownership. There are plenty of cases where the government decides that somebody must give their land up to expropriate more value from it with Eminient Domain laws. Who gets to decide when land is not extracting enough value? Politicians who are bought out by private corporations controlled by a board of directors, none of whom live anywhere near the land being expropriated? Land should be collectively owned by the people living on it and producing from it.

<comment><USER11> Land value tax sounds like a proposal to return directly to feudalism.

"Using land the most profitably" (ie. extracting the most tribute) will become de facto ownership for the controlling entity through tribute, while everyone else will be tenants of the few controllers.

<comment><USER8> I think what the grandparent meant was that if you were not using the land profitably you are going to _want_ to 'sell' the land to someone who can use it more profitably and is therefore willing to pay a high price for it. If you didn't do that and just rented the land you would lose money because of the high land tax.

I think 'selling' here means "giving the other guy the privilege of having to pay lots of taxes instead of you".

<comment><USER10> I think renting land in any fashion is morally reprehensible. Though I don't fit in with much the neoliberal HN crowd as an anarchist communalist.

Ownership should be restricted to the community of inhabitants of the land. The processes around controlling the land would be voted on democratically, and a federation of community ownerships with local representation would deal with extra-community processes around broader land decision making.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unfortunately, the questions the interviewer asks are all rather trite. On the flip side, most of the answers are rambling and barely coherent. Not the finest presentation of the field as a whole. :(

<comment><USER7> I find Horgan very frustrating as a writer. He seems to prefer trite controversy over deep understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Knowing nothing about this field, reading the comments did serve to temper my enthusiasm for the article.

<comment><USER8> I only see three comments, one by a guy who complains that Yudkowsky was mean to him and has no academic credentials, one from a guy who calls Yudkowsky overconfident (in what, his belief that we should be cautious?) and naive for being a libertarian and one from a guy who admits he also knows nothing about the field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> >I don't think that humans and machines "merging" is a likely source for the first superhuman intelligences.

I have to disagree with him a little bit. I think "merging" is already happening and will continue to accelerate. AI/Human feedback loops are easy to conceptualize. AI does its own thinking, when it is unsure it consults an array of humans for their opinion. Repeat ad infinitum. Maybe a second array of humans proofread AI decisions, watching for conclusions they disagree with. It might not be a matrix plug in the back of your head, but data centers and human-arrays stuck in a feedback-loop, (communicating bidirectionally with screens, cameras, and eye movements) probably offer a scenario that out performs either the machines or humans in isolation. Each augments the others limitations.

Are machines faster by themselves, or with a human co-processor to consult at their discretion? Can a machine go "hey im not great at this task yet, but humans seem to accelerate at it"?

<comment><USER15> When Ray Kurzweil talks about merging with the machine, he talks about it in the literal sense (as nanobots in your body, or uploading your mind to a computer). You seem to view the merging in a broader sense, which I agree is happening.

<comment><USER14> [http://abstrusegoose.com/171](http://abstrusegoose.com/171)

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102627914061/dilbert- pocket](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102627914061/dilbert-pocket)

(the philip k dick in me thinks, if we merge, the machines would absorb us, not us them into our blood. the borg > cyborgs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll just leave this here: [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko's_basilisk)

<comment><USER17> Dude that was years ago. Give it up.</comment></comment>


CNN Sending Eight Times More Staff to Royal Wedding Than to Japan - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/03/statistic-day-cnn-devotes-8-times-much-manpower-covering-royal-wedding-japans-crisis/35923/ <comment><USER2> I was having a conversation with an editor I work with about CNN the other day, when the following occurred to me:

I feel like the root of CNN's problem is that they have more or less abandoned the pursuit of "quality" reporting in favor of "popular" stories.

In any publication, there is always this tension between quality and popularity. Consider how much has been going on in the world this past week, in particular with regards to the earthquake in Japan and the uprisings in the Middle East. I've been following those stories closely on the NY Times, which in my opinion has done some excellent reporting on both topics.

Now consider the "most popular articles" on the Times right now:

        1. The Times Announces Digital Subscription Plan
        2. The Quad: Grant Hill's Response to Jalen Rose
        3. Paul Krugman: The Forgotten Millions
        4. Pogue's Posts: 'Chimping' and Other Photo-Taking Tips
        5. David Brooks: Social Science Palooza II
        6. Ex-Racehorses Starve as Charity Fails in Mission to Care for Them
        7. William D. Cohan: Degrees of Influence?
        8. Timothy Egan: Frankenfish Phobia
        9. Letter: A Letter to Our Readers About Digital Subscriptions
        10. SAT's Reality TV Essay Stumps Some

You know, I probably end up reading half the articles that appear on the Times's most popular list, and I enjoy them greatly. But if the Times just gave up on doing "real" reporting and focused instead on these kinds of "popular" topics -- well, I'm sure I'd pretty quickly lose interest in the publication and go find another source of news and interesting tidbits.

Which brings me back to CNN. I just have this feeling that this is what their business team was seduced by. Somebody looked at their numbers and said, "Hey, we don't get nearly as many viewers when we run an in-depth expose on the state of women's education in Afganistan as we do when we broadcast Lindsay Lohan's court proceedings live. So let's just ditch that newsy stuff and focus on what our viewers really want."

This strategy of following what's most popular probably works in the short run. But in the long run, it can be devastating to your brand if it comes at the expense of quality.

<comment> brown9-2 I don't think many people would disagree that this strategy has already destroyed CNN's brand. You don't need to qualify that with _can_. The long- term implications are already here.

<comment><USER2> Well, I think the executives who _made_ the decision to pursue this strategy might very well disagree with me. I'm also not convinced that it's common sense to pursue quality over popularity.

In general, following your metrics _is_ the sounder strategy. If CNN were to A/B test the "education in Afghanistan" story against Lindsay Lohan, what do you think would win? I have to guess Lindsay Lohan by a mile.

Unfortunately, I don't have an easy answer for distinguishing between metrics you "should" follow vs. metrics you should not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It makes sense in a strange way. For a disaster or war, you put as few people in harm's way as possible, and overdub the reports in other languages for non- English markets in the studio. Viewers need facts and often the images speak for themselves, and the nature of the situation justifies endless replay of the same bits of footage.

For showbiz/celebratory type stories, almost all the reporting (in multiple languages) is talking to camera because viewers who care about that stuff _want_ the experience of being there, so they enjoy it vicariously via the reporter. Also, there needs to be a much larger flow of material because people who want to be entertained get bored more easily.

There's a huge audience for this sort of thing. I was reading an economics paper a few months ago observing that the wedding of Charles and Diana generated the equivalent of 8 or 9 billion dollars in today's money, over the course of 20 years. This upcoming one is expected to add something like a billion to the UK economy just this year.

<comment><USER4> Good point, not to mention the fact that sending people to Japan or other disaster would require additional logistics planning or add strain to a damaged local food supply chain.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried public transport in London ? Or the local food.

<comment><USER4> As a matter of fact, yes and I found them to be both adequate. The university I attended (USA based) sends freshman overseas during spring break for a ridiculously small amount of money. I chose to go on the London trip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does Japan need any more foreign reporters who don't know Japanese to report on the tragedy?

They encumber Japan less by sending fewer reporters. I see this as a win-win.

They can send more, in-depth, reporters when things have settled so they can do their investigative stuff and give some insight.

Sending people right now would be more or less taking advantage of a fresh disaster story and riding it till it had no more to give.

I don't see how it's a bad thing that they're not sending more reporters to Japan. Keeps the sensationalism down, puts less strain on a strained infrastructure, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7>
      "Earthquake terror figures rise
      Princess Di is wearing a new dress"
      -- "New Dress" / Depeche Mode (1986)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the networks' bureau size has any play in this. As large as Japan is, it wouldn't necessarily surprise me if a large part of the 400 staff were based out of London regularly and that the London office were a few times larger than the Tokyo one.

Not that I'm defending this absurd proportioning of reporting, just looking for other factors.

</comment><comment><USER9> How would the figures have differed if the earthquake was properly announced six months in advance?

</comment><comment><USER10> Sensationalist bottom feeder People magazine crap gets a lot of attention.

I wish that we as a culture were more concerned about things that really mattered. Unfortunately, we have people obsessed with how they look and what's going on in "famous people's lives", 90% of which is tabloid distortion or outright fabrication.

I blame marketing for this. People are convinced they need stuff they don't really need, and the best way to do it is to say "person you admire uses X". The reason CNN is sending all these people is they know it will make result in great ad revenue.

 _sigh_

<comment><USER11> "I blame marketing for this."

OK, but why does the marketing _work_? I'd submit the marketing is more effect than cause. We have significant support in the human brain for tracking social status and the leaders of the (perceived) hierarchy. We don't have very much support for "important long-term risks and issues". It may be unfortunate, it may yet kill us all, but it's not surprising.

<comment><USER10> Marketing fundamentally is about matching up a solution with a need, and convincing that the solution being provided is better than others.

The problem is that often there are solutions with no need, thus the need is manufactured (becomes a want).

My wager is that celebrity coverage, and the products that advertise on that time are nearly all in the category of wants, and often frivolous/stupid ones at that.

<comment><USER11> I don't think anyone had to _create_ a need to observe the ranking of the perceived-by-the-brain-as-local social hierarchy. Gossip has been with us for as long as recorded history goes back. This is nothing more than the gossiping impulses translated into modern connected society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The PBS News Hour is the only real news program left.

<comment><USER13> That's been the case for 20 years. There has never been enough quality reporting to fill a 24-hour news channel, and so the time is naturally filled with easy garbage like popular scandals and blathering pundits many with undeclared agendas.

<comment><USER14> My local NPR station does a good job filling up 24 hours. There are some repeats of course but very little of it is the crap you'd find on CNN.

<comment><USER13> NPR doesn't need footage, their programming is more than half something-other- than-news, they repeat programs a few times, and most importantly they're funded by subscription and grants, rather than by advertising dollars driven by ratings.

They do substantially better work than CNN, but they're not really analogous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Except it appears that, according to an update, CNN is sending 'only 50 "reporters, cameramen and crew"' to the wedding. The WSJ (who first reported this about CNN) is refusing to retract it because, well, that's just the kind of quality reporting you get from the modern WSJ.

</comment><comment><USER16> John, do you wanna go to London, report on the wedding, live in the nice hotel, eat at the nice restaurant, all expenses paid? Or there is also another job available - Japan, increased radiation levels, hot water and electricity may be available at the hotel,...

<comment><USER17> I'd pick disaster-Japan in a heartbeat. I'm probably not alone here in that attitude, which is why there's such outrage about this.

<comment><USER16> would you need 8 morons to accompany you on the trip, or better them being distracted somewhere else?

<comment><USER17> Ha! Point taken!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think this makes perfect sense. That wedding has been being planned for a long time; CNN _knew_ it would be the media event of the season.. so they are probably setting up a lot of infrastructure.. sending managers.. etc as this whole to do. The staff going to Japan would necessarily be much leaner.

I wonder how many "journalists" as opposed to "staff" went to Japan vs the wedding.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you were a CNN reporter, would you rather go to a fancy wedding or a disaster region?

I can't help but think this factors a bit into where the reporters are going. It also saddens me that we as a society are willing drive our attention (and ad dollars) to weddings over disasters and wars.

<comment><USER14> Do the reporters really have that much say where they go? (Or at least enough to alter their overall distribution?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's worth considering that the people who watch cable news may very well want huge coverage of a royal wedding. Why not? It's a made-for-TV event. Very entertaining to some folks. Increasingly the people who want better/faster coverage are going elsewhere. Throughout the disasters in Japan one of the best sources of news I found was an individual doing live translations from JP news sources on U-Stream. From there NHK-TV doing live coverage of press conferences. I don't see any good reason to wait around for the western media to spoon feed me information in-between commercials for erection drugs.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't think the disaster victims care much for more reporters. Total non- issue.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've long ago given up on CNN and other cable news networks. All the cable news channels are dumbed down to the point of annoyance. The only exception is CNBC, which of course is financial news. CNBC, perhaps because of its focus on the economic perspective seems to keep closer to the facts, and also gives more interesting analysis. One thing for sure, CNBC, wont be covering the royal wedding. They may at most, show a clip of it, followed by how much it cost the British taxpayer.

</comment><comment><USER23> cnn is in the _business_ of viewership, not news... you know, kinda like mtv

<comment><USER24> It's kinda sad; they used to be good, 20 years ago. They really made their mark covering Gulf War I.

Although I suppose I'm not sure whether they were good, or just better than other TV coverage of the time.

<comment><USER25> Pet peeve: the first Gulf War began over 30 years ago. It did not involve the USA directly, though they were providing military aid to Iraq.

<comment><USER26> While some people refer to the 1980's Iran-Iraq was as the "First Persian Gulf War" and the 1991 was as the "Second Persian Gulf War", most of the usage I've seen is to call them the "Iran-Iraq War" and "Persian Gulf War", respectively.

If it makes you feel any better, there were a half dozen world wars before World War I and World War II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The aristocracy represents the worst aspects of Britain - the cronyism, unthinking deference, inflexible adherence to tradition and gigantic social class divisions. As far as is possible I intend to avoid watching or reading anything about the royal wedding when it occurs.

</comment><comment><USER28> The traditional media has not been about journalism. It has been about portraying the appearance of journalism, which has always generated just as much revenue at a fraction of the cost. This is why I'll be happy when the old guard finally goes bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER29> Let's be fair. Knowing CNN, the analysis will probably be more than 8 times as deep as their analysis of Japan. Don't underestimate CNN when it comes to overanalyzing the most trivial of issues.

</comment><comment><USER30> Probably for the best, this disaster-porn obsession is pretty sickening.

</comment><comment><USER31> At the end of the day, we get what we celebrate.

They're only doing this because it's likely that they'll receive 8x the ratings for the royal wedding than for Japan coverage. Sad, but true.

<comment><USER32> So, the new informal credo for journalism should be "if it blings it leads" instead of "if it bleeds it leads"? Doesn't rhyme, though :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does Traffic = Ad revenue?

<comment><USER34> Viewing = (indirectly post ratings review) = Ad revenue

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's the point of sending English speaking journalists to Japan, where they typically do intro pieces from the streets of Tokyo, then segue into footage provided by Japanese news organizations?

At last in England they'll understand what's going on around them...

<comment><USER8> Brilliant point. News organisations can really annoy me when they send reporters to the scene of an event just to do the same piece to camera that they could easily have back in the studio, and this is further compounded if they don't speak the languages necessary to do proper reporting.

Also, in a country that's struggling to recover from a disaster, every news organisation sending hundreds of reporters to the region might be a huge drain on resources.

<comment><USER36> There's a reason why they still send out reporters to get their boots on the ground and try and figure out what's actually happening. Research.

Any lazy journalist can just sit back, crib a whole bunch of feed and stills and press releases floating off he internet and boilerplate it into the column inches without bothering to make even the most cursory check for facts, but there's a word for such slack jawed lacklustre button pushing: churnalism.

People used to complain about news helicopters flying over scenes of disasters such as flooding, saying things like "Why don't they pick up some of the stragglers and ship them to safety?"

The answer is: Because that is not their job.

Reporting on what is going on _is_. And that means going in there, asking questions, getting the agency to rope in a native speaker to translate where needed, and actually bearing witness to the sort of things that end up on your screen, or in print.

They have to go in there and report, because nobody else is going to - and if nobody else reports, nobody will know how bad things are until that ignorance comes back and bites us.

Journalists - at least the ones truly earning their crust - do what they do because they have a compelling need to show the world what they do not know, and need to know.

They are the ones whose job it is to bear witness.

<comment><USER37> They're not going to _do_ any significant research in Japan.

They're going to take establishing footage of their personnel, then repeat aloud what they're told while showing disaster-porn imagery.

<comment><USER5> >then repeat aloud what they're told while showing disaster-porn imagery.

Pretty much standard for a royal wedding then

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can only upvote. I'm speechless.</comment>


Showoff:  Presentation software for software developers - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/schacon/showoff

<comment><USER2> I think this is a very neat project. I'm also curious what other alternatives exist for making simple, straightforward presentations in something that is not powerpoint.</comment>


Response to "Thoughts on HAML" - <AUTHOR> http://railsnotes.com/395-response-to-thoughts-on-haml/

<comment><USER2> My main problem with HAML is that it is another markup language to learn. And, it's just not worth it time-wise to switch everything over (or even new templates) over to HAML. This is especially true for cross-functional teams that include not only coders, but designers and other people who already know HTML very well. Adding HAML will just cause confusion.

IMO, the benefits of HAML are fringe.

<comment><USER3> You do not have to switch everything over in one step or ever. The good thing about HAML is that you can mix HAML and ERB in a single project and everything works just fine. If you want, you can gradually convert old ERB templates to HAML or you can just use HAML wherever you want and leave the old ERB code as it is. This way you can try HAML without any risks and see if you like it or not. After the initial learning curve, HAML is really great.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any Indian Agriculture-Tech Startups Working for Welfare of Farmers.? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://kisannetwork.com/](https://kisannetwork.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.ekisaan.com/](http://www.ekisaan.com/)</comment>


Researchers Crack the Web's Most Popular Turing Test: Captcha - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/77431982 <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6625351)

</comment><comment><USER3> Impressive, but surprising that it detected "sccpticism" \- one would think that they would spend a few hours or so putting in a dictionary lookup for the candidate answers.

<comment><USER4> That would be cheating, until the system has a sensory pathway to understanding the dictionary.</comment></comment>


Sourcebuster.js - <AUTHOR> http://sbjs.rocks/#/ <comment><USER3> Piggy backing off of this post. I'd like to take the opportunity to remind people of the security hazards of referrer addresses and keeping sensitive information out of your query parameters. __If you have third party images or third party links on your site, sensitive user information is leaked through the referrer address __if the data is in your GET parameters. If you have an OAuth scheme, double check to make sure you don 't have external links or third party images in your login/redirect/authentication process. Sensitive information should ALWAYS be sent via POST request and your referer policy should be set appropriately. Read more here: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Refere...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Security/Referer_header:_privacy_and_security_concerns)

</comment><comment><USER4> I just love it when I enter a store and someone who followed me go tell the seller all the shops I visited, what I shopped, for how long, what I searched and what I read

We have to stop this non-sense, and stop calling this « innovation »

<comment><USER5> This absolutely doesn't do that though.

<comment><USER6> No, this _absolutely does_ form part of the marketing loop.

Profiling visitors based on their referrer to —quoting TFA— "show relevant content" is exactly this sort of creepy nonsense that leads to you (store owner) knowing where I do my research and being able to infer more about me than I've explicitly told you.

<comment><USER5> To me just using referral data is not creepy at all. All this script does is keep track of where people are coming from. It's not using questionable tricks, it's not building profiles and it's not combining or using other data. All it know is you're an anonymous visitor that came through source X.

<comment><USER6> Just using it for what?

We're arguing slightly different things. Sure, _guns don 't kill people_. Referrer as an aggregate statistic, on its own is pretty harmless. _This_ script doesn't even phone home on its own.

But it's what you do with that data. How you collect it. What you collect with it. How you aggregate, or infer from it. Modern sales funnelling and marketing is all sold around targeting users. That's what this all feeds into.

<comment><USER5> Referrer data has a lot of non-shady uses and it is really useful. That's why we have GDPR, so we can use referrer data as intended by preventing people from combining data.

Also, I don't think you can equate this with guns.

Try equating it with metal. Yes, you can make it into a gun, but you need to have lot of different things in place before you can use it to do harm.

Referrer data is completely anonymous. If you want to combine it into a profile, you need layers and layers of complexity and other data before you have something you can use it to target users based on their interests. With GDPR, this is illegal without consent anyway so I think you're overreacting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be clear, this "buster" isn't breaking any browser boundaries. It just uses whatever referer header the page gets from the browser.

<comment><USER8> Looks like it also parses UTM params but yea, it's not doing anything special or nefarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't get the point of this in a client script. What does it do that can't be done server side with the http headers? Maybe it can be useful inside SPAs but this sort of info should be immutable and read only which is next to impossible on front facing apps.

<comment><USER10> You can still emulate the Referer header in order to trick the server side. It's easier to do this on the client side in order to avoid complexity on server-side because the servers need to be aware of all the browsers used by the client.

<comment><USER9> Makes no sense. What complexity are you talking about? You get that info on the client to create another request to the server in order to send it over?

<comment><USER10> Unless you're only tracking the pageview events, it's not an additional request. Most of the analytics SDKs use either XHR or Pixel tracking. It's often easier to build up a separate analytics pipeline rather than using the backend server logs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been looking at the Chameleon extension recently. Anyone have any experience with it? Apparently it spoofs a ton of stuff to make tracking harder.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hmm. I thought browsers stopped giving out referrer years ago ... !?

<comment><USER8> There are options to control the referrer in various places, but it is still included by default. The only situation I can think of where its blocked by default is when navigating from https to http.

<comment><USER13> Which seems to happen here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19295836](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19295836) -> [http://sbjs.rocks/#/](http://sbjs.rocks/#/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I clicked the link through feedly but it said my source was direct

<comment><USER15> Because you went from a https site to a non secure one ([http://sbjs.rocks](http://sbjs.rocks)) so the referer header was hidden.

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer#Referer_hiding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer#Referer_hiding)

<comment><USER16> I did the same but it worked for me (said hn), why didn't it work for the parent but it did for me?

<comment><USER17> Same for me and I'm curious why (Safari on iPhone)

<comment><USER18> I believe it's due to HN including this:

      <meta name="referrer" content="origin">

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems pretty fragile. I visited first from Feedly and then from HN and both times it counted my visit as "direct" (ie no referrer).

Or is this just Firefox kicking ass?

</comment><comment><USER19> Your source is: direct visit.

No, I clicked a link from 2 different domains (my rss reader and here) - <USER2> that means my browser privacy addons work? :)

</comment><comment><USER20> For a while I had referrers turned off in firefox almost everything still works but it did set off a few anti bot scripts on larger websites.

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know why chrome does not have an option to turn off the Referer header globally?

<comment><USER22> Because many websites will get upset if you don't have your referrer available to track you /shrug</comment></comment>


How Homejoy (YC S10) Launched in 30 Cities in 6 Months - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/This-Startup-Launched-in-30-Cities-in-6-Months-Heres-How-They-Did-It#ixzz31nnQX8Q7

<comment><USER2> We've had terrible service with Homejoy. I gave it a few tries and I'm too nervous to try again. You can't see who will be cleaning your house until you're locked in. There's no quality control.

It seems it may be a problem that's better distributed (ex: word of mouth in your local area).

<comment><USER3> I've had the worst service with Homejoy of any startup/tech-related company in the history of my life, and lord knows as an "early adopter" I tend to try them all.

I super, duper, ooper, do _NOT_ recommend Homejoy. It is WELL worth your time --at least at this point--to find a cleaning person on Craigslist or something like that and have a short talk with them to determine competence.

Homejoy is sending out anyone with two legs to "clean" your place.

<comment><USER4> Hi Otis,

We are so sorry to hear you had such a poor experience using our platform and we would really like the opportunity to turn that around.

Please look forward to an email from us soon.

Best, Team Homejoy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Homejoy has been the worst experience for me. I got credit for their company as a perk from my job and I'm so happy we've moved on. I got 3 cleanings from them -- never again. Every single cleaning I got from them required 2 phone calls. Every phone call was 15 mins on hold. Every payment was wrong, every credit was wrong.

Try Exec if you can. They seem to know what they're doing.

<comment><USER6> Homejoy has been really flaky for me too. We've had problems with billing and inconsistent cleaning. I may try out Handybook now that Exec has folded into them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr: I asked homejoy to take my money and they couldn't.

I first learned about Homejoy in October of 2013 and immediately signed up for a recurring cleaning, automatic billing. Almost every time Homejoy called me to reschedule. I only had the same cleaner twice, even though I picked 3 different "preferred" cleaners. Finally, after about 12 cleanings, they didn't show for cleaning 13. Turns out that since October their recurring billing system wasn't actually billing me. So they cancelled my appointment without any notice. I was never told of an accruing balance, even though I spoke to them frequently because they called to reschedule so many times.

<comment><USER4> Hi Bahman 2000,

We are so sorry to hear you were effected by our growing pains. We have improved the process regarding our billing and sincerely apologize for any inconveniences this issue caused for you and your family.

If there is anything we could assist you with, please feel free to reach our support team 1-855-728-4569, 7 days a week, 5 am - 5 pm PST or firstname.lastname@example.com.

Best, Team Homejoy

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had a good experience with homejoy thus far, we usually get the same guy and he does a good job. It's not cheap but worked out well for us in SF.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pretty insightful article about growing fast. It's a shame that people are overlooking the content of this article and instead using hackernews as their personal version of Consumer Reports. Posting personal communications between yourself and Homejoy on hackernews is taking being an assh*le to a new level. It's also devaluing the purpose of 'hacker' news.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would be interesting to see how well they can scale. Have used them three times with quite a range of difference in the quality of cleanings. (A couple more times the cleaner just didn't show up) Judging by their recent hourly rate increase, they seem to be confident at where they are at...

</comment><comment><USER11> I just launched [https://www.lawncheer.com](https://www.lawncheer.com), I'll be honest, I am modeling everything I do after homejoy. All of Adora's articles/interviews etc, have been super beneficial and insightful, along with bookmarked.

<comment><USER12> You probably already know this, but your site is down.

<comment><USER13> Site loads for me. However I recall seeing your site many months ago, and I think it's a great idea, but misspelling "guarantee" on the homepage really gives it an illegitimate feel. Aside from that, best of luck. I think you've got a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The great thing about Homejoy's business model is that consumers who are happy with the service will provide a solid source of recurring revenue. Also, there is no need to maintain a physical presence in a city aside from the city operations manager, so overhead is remarkably low.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, once you have found somebody that you like there is very little incentive to stay in their system.

<comment><USER16> Insurance maybe? I pay DogVacay 15% because they cover the crazy shit that usually doesn't happen, and then I can relax. Dog sitter got in a car accident? DogVacay sends someone to pick up the dogs and bring them to another place. That sort of shit.

<comment><USER15> Good point. On the other hand, what do we know about the insurance that Homejoy provides its cleaners? There is a lot of grey areas for most of the collaborative consumption startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've never used it, primarily because it is about twice the price of the local maids we get.

Is there an advantage of using Homejoy over a local cleaner who you know and trust?

</comment><comment><USER18> being a 40% more expensive than others like hassle.com and with the comments I see below, I wonder "how well" the business is going.

It's clear to me that the second point: "Reduce Friction At Every Turn" doesn't apply to customers.</comment>


Pizzahut.com.au hacked -- 240k AUS credit cards stolen - <AUTHOR> http://www.pizzahut.com.au/

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems to be up and down, but it redirects you to here: <http://pastehtml.com/view/chfqrjo1j.html> and states the following:

        Dear Pizzahut

        It has come to my attention that we have

        It has come to my attention that we have absolutely
        ripped apart your internal security systems

        Do you want to know what we took?

        ~240,000 Australian Credit Cards.

        ~60,000 Australian Members

        Your dignity.

        Woopsies :c</comment>


"Fine Bros Entertainment" attempting to trademark the word "react" - <AUTHOR> http://www.tmfile.com/owner/fi/fine-brothers-properties,inc28.php <comment><AUTHOR> Kind of hoping facebook's legal team gets on board in opposition to this. This is an unbelievable abuse of the copyright system.</comment>


Freelancer.com is destroying my life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/3a2af69cf977

<comment><USER2> I saw this on /r/webdev and came here to check if it had been posted, glad it has. I hope you receive a resolution on this, and I'm glad when checking on all the freelancer sites, I decided against used Freelancer.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect users of these sites are fully aware what kind of a bad deal these websites are. If you are in a situation where you cannot be fully employed or start your own business, they seem like your best hope. These websites are exploitative because they can hold the livelihood of people on already shaky ground hostage. Since the clients on these websites know that the users may be somewhat desperate, they can drive prices down - it becomes a race to the bottom.

What can the OP do, short of creating publicity of Freelancer's behaviour? There does not seem to be any protections ensuring that the author gets paid. He'll be held to the 'terms of service' \- which will always be in the client or Freelancer's favour - this is not enough.

They make me think of the rent seeking nature of the 'sharing economy' which just weakens the market and distorts it because it takes advantage of people who do not have an escape. Like if you're uncertain whether you're going to have a place to sleep or eat in the next month.

[http://tomslee.net/2013/08/why-the-sharing-economy- isnt.html](http://tomslee.net/2013/08/why-the-sharing-economy-isnt.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> The CEO of Freelancer.com actually chimed in on the Reddit thread...

...and made everything sound vastly worse. Link here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/243klv/freelancercom...](http://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/243klv/freelancercom_is_destroying_my_life/ch3omxj)

Basically claimed Freelancer.com had done everything correctly, and that they do accept drivers licenses. But since he didn't dispute a single thing claimed by Dustin, the only way to interpret it that he thought the confused, contradictory, run-around Dustin got from Freelancer.com's CSR reps was "correct".

</comment><comment><USER5> after reading the reddit thread linked to below, i wouldn't go near freelancer.com; the reddit thread caused me to wonder whether it's even a legitimate business. Three things really caused me to blacklist freelancer.com: (i) the CEO's remarks--never disputed a single fact alleged by Dustin (OP) if anything appeared to corroborate them, and concluded by saying that's how we do things here at freelancer.com; (ii) more than a few people posted to the thread who had also been treated the same way by freelancer.com --ie, cases in which the developer had completed the work, the client was happy with it and _wanted_ to pay, indeed had in fact paid freelancer.com but freelancer refused to pass the money along to the developer; and (iii) the timing of freelancer's byzantine documentation requirement--in Dustin's case like at least a couple of others mentioned in the reddit thread, freelancer.com's requests that the developer supply redundant documentation to verify their account only occurred _after_ the dev had done some work on a project and the client had had paid freelancer.com for that completed work.</comment>


Is anyone interested in creating a team for Hackathon 09? - <AUTHOR> http://sunlightlabs.com/hackathon09/

<comment><USER2> Sure. I can get to the DC, Philly or NY events and am considering joining.

<comment><USER3> Yan, I added you to the Philly discussion, hopefully you'll get the email.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, replied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone in the Austin area interested in doing something?</comment>


It's Not Just TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> http://zacjszewczyk.com/Structure/Its%20Not%20Just%20TechCrunch.htm <comment><USER2> Looks likes a url encoding problem with a ' character. Correct link appear to be [http://zacjszewczyk.com/Structure/It%27s%20Not%20Just%20Tech...](http://zacjszewczyk.com/Structure/It%27s%20Not%20Just%20TechCrunch.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> 404</comment>


Interview: Richard Stallman (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://kerneltrap.org/node/4484

<comment><USER2> _JA: How do you react to the opinion that non-free software is justified as a means for raising dollars that can then be put into the development of completely new software, money that otherwise may not have been available, and thus creating software that may have never been developed?

Richard Stallman: This is no justification at all. A non-free program systematically denies the users the freedom to cooperate; it is the basis of an antisocial scheme to dominate people. The program is available lawfully only to those who will surrender their freedom. That's not a contribution to society, it's a social problem. It is better to develop no software than to develop non-free software.

So if you find yourself in that situation, please don't follow that path. Please don't write the non-free program--please do something else instead. We can wait till someone else has the chance to develop a free program to do the same job._

What a lunatic</comment>


Detecting memory leaks in Linux Kernel & Implementing OSes in managed code. - <AUTHOR> http://psankar.blogspot.com/2010/11/detecting-memory-leaks-in-kernel.html Detecting memory leaks in Linux Kernel in 10 easy steps & Implementing Operating Systems in managed code. <comment><USER2> If the kernel hackers wanted a garbage collector so badly they could have written one, the reason they probably didn't is because it's not precise. LINQ is not a life saving feature in kernel space.

Overall I think kernels should not be written in high level languages because high level languages hide memory and hardware, the two components that need to be managed by the kernel in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> Somehow, writing an OS in a higher-level language really appeals to me. I doubt I'd ever get around to it, but the idea calls to me.</comment>


Is Uber Really Worth $40B? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/uber-valuation-40-billion-justified/

<comment><USER2> No way - $40B is just nuts, and I think underestimates the ability of other companies to get in on the action. Many of the drivers I've used have multiple smartphones running, one for each service, and just bounce around to whichever gives them bookings. Add in multiple new services - and Uber's growth will suffer.

<comment><USER3> Uber is totally worth $40B. They have a great brand and tbh that matters a lot. When you are looking for an alternative to a taxi, you will remember Uber and not their competitors. The article nicely compares Uber to eBay, who got a similar advantage. When eBay came out, there were a lot of other auction sites, but eBay became the household name. Uber is a true disruptor. The biggest taxi company that does not own a single taxi. If I could invest in Uber, I would.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Uber is a true disruptor but it can't be worth $40B! It's got massive growth but does it have the ability to keep control? Like mikehawkins I think the market share will dilute. Look at what happened with Meercat and Periscope.</comment>


Hillary Clinton: Putin's tactics like Hitler's before WWII - <AUTHOR> http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/03/05/hillary-clinton-putins-tactics-like-hitlers-before-wwii/

<comment><USER2> Boom, boom. Hear the war drums.

Our problem is that there are too many very wealthy people who make too much money sending poor and middle class kids to war.

I can't talk to what Russia is doing because I am unsure of the details. Still Hiliary Clinton seems to be "pot calling the kettle black" in the sense that in my lifetime my government (USA) has invaded many countries, attempted and sometimes succeeded in overthrowing many governments (many of which were democracies that were not rolling over for elite financial interests).

For those of us Americans who love our country, it is really time to make our voices heard by: get to know your Congress critters, donate money to ACLU+EFF+FSF, etc. It is also important to understand that the Clintons, the Bushes, Obama, etc., etc. are owned by the financial elite - bought and paid for.

I am not sure, but I think the very best thing to do is crowd funding organizations that support the interests of common (non-elite) people.

<comment><USER3> Than you would probably put your time to better use by actually reading up on said details instead of penning a tangential HN comment.

Because now your comment comes across as 'I have no idea what's going on, but your should do X,Y,Z'

<comment><USER2> Why don't you say what you believe?

I have read a lot of international coverage of this situation, but the international news coverage is so different thn USA news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hillary Clinton is uniquely qualified to lead our empire!

<comment><USER5> In the morning to you

<comment><USER4> ...and in the morning to all the boots on the ground

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that Hillary is parroting the words of Canada's Conservative government and is then praised by John McCain.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/john-baird-compares- russia-s...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/john-baird-compares-russia-s- actions-in-ukraine-to-nazi-invasion-of-czechoslovakia-1.2558118)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hillary is not the best when it comes to foreign policy. She supported the Iraq war (which instead of appearing 'tuff ended up costing her the nomination and the presidency), she backed the laughable accusation that Gaddafi was supplying Viagra to Libyan troops, and now this stupid comparison.

That being said at this point she looks to win in '16

</comment><comment><USER8> And here's a view from another angle: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash- crimea-western-expansion-ukraine-fascists)

<comment><USER9> Now that article reads like propaganda, almost panicking. I hear the reason is that London's financial centre is ~30% dependant on Russian oil money. If that were to stop, UK GDP would drop 5% or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how the US would react if Crimea pulled a Texas? Declare independance from Ukraine, then request protection and anexation by Russia?

They could become the Lone Hammer state

</comment><comment><USER11> Godwin's Law is leaking.</comment>


"I Used AI to Clone My Voice and Trick My Mom into Thinking It Was Me" - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/i-used-ai-to-clone-my-voice-and-trick-my-mom-into-thinking <comment><USER2> Nine years ago, my late wife had developed a tumor in her throat next to her vocal chords. She was fighting cancer while trying to be a mom to our 3 young boys. Directed radiation treatment was ruled out for this tumor, leaving surgery as the only viable option. The downside was the very real risk of her permanently losing her voice.

Hoping that she'd one day beat the cancer, but may not have a voice, I came up with an idea of trying to "capture it" in 2009 - hoping that it could be algorithmically rebuilt in the future. I reached out to a number of individuals that ultimately put me in touch with a research group that had a proprietary setup for capturing samples and rebuilding the voice. Over the Thanksgiving break, I managed to get access to a soundproof recording room and they worked with my wife to capture samples over a period of 4 hours.

Having worked in the infosec space since the 90s, my first reaction is often either how new tech/innovation can be used to bypass a control and how one could detect/prevent that. It's easy to lose sight of how something like this could fundamentally changes a persons life.

<comment><USER3> This is a great post, although I am sorry for the experiences you went through to acquire this perspective.

Thinking more about the specific use-case you have in mind, I find myself wondering how sentiment and inflection might be captured via a synthetic voice. Would it be inferred by context? How would that inference deal with things like sarcasm/irony. I wonder if there could be some input mechanism for controlling the inflection - what would that input interface look like? Could it go off facial expression?

I wonder where the existing tech sits in the uncanny valley for this space...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went camping in the alps once. On our last night, my friend took a bowl and gathered ashes from the campfire. Half ritualistic, half jokingly, she said that those ashes mark our trek and experiences, that she would carry the ashes back home no matter what.

I was very confused how she would pass a bowl of unidentified ash from the airport security (we only had a backpack each). She drafted a poorly done and obviously fake death certificate. It was not campfire ash anymore, it was the remains of her father.

The people at the airport were visibly awkward, they tried to be as accommodating as they could. She flew back home with a plastic bowl of ashes from our campfire, it even had some parts of birch and branches.

Airport security was easily fooled. And the author's mom is easily fooled too, motherly instincts be damned. Would a neural net be fooled by the author's attempts? I know for sure that an automated security system would sound the alarm on my friend. I 'd like to see adversarial networks fighting each other on such premises. A son network trying to fool the mother network and vice versa ad infinitum, at least 1 billion of simulation hours in. What kind of wonders would come out

<comment><USER5> Why would ashes be forbidden on an airplane?

<comment><USER6> I can see easily half a dozen problems you can wreak havoc with with ashes on an airplane. Ashes or any dust, actually. Remember, it's essentially a closed, hermetic, environment.

<comment><USER7> People have this idea that air on an airplane is constantly being recycled. I'm guessing that is where your objection comes from.

In reality the engines are constantly producing a stream of hot compressed air which is bleed off for various subsystems. One of these is the air conditioning systems. These cool that air and filter it so that it's clean and at a reasonable temperature for passenger comfort. The air is added to the cabin at a pretty much fixed rate and the pressure is regulated by a dump valve which dumps excess pressure overboard. There is no real recycling of air.

<comment><USER8> I'm genuinely curious,

How do they regulate oxygen levels?

Or are those levels more or less the same as on the ground but it's the pressure that incommodes?

<comment><USER9> The pressure changes with altitude, not the gas makeup. So at 35kft/10.6km the air is still 21% oxygen. The gp is right, the engines bleed off some of the fresh air from the compressor stages in the engine, before the combustion stage, and use that to supply the cabin. This is called Bleed Air - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_air](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleed_air)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many years ago, I briefly used to do the reverse. I was tired of constant calls by certain people, so I jokingly started to pick up and say "the subscriber is currently unavailable; please leave a message after the tone <BEEP>". Fooled two people with it before realizing that's a little too disrespectful and stopping.

<comment><USER11> I did this one time as a joke, the other person hung up immediately. I only figured out weeks later it was a good friend I hadn't seen in ages who had happened to be in town that day and had wanted to get together.

They were ... not very happy when we realized what had happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> (Disclosure: I work at BuzzFeed)

I do recommend watching the episode of Follow This as suggested in the article (episode 7) if you're interested in the latest deepfake tech, and its implications for fooling people who can't obviously tell it's fake.

<comment><USER13> Hi,

> required

Is this even legal according to GDPR?

[https://screenshots.firefox.com/MnEgMtsGavMlxcts/www.buzzfee...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/MnEgMtsGavMlxcts/www.buzzfeednews.com)

<comment><USER14> It's legal if you can use the site just normally after you've pressed the _Reject All_ button and no data is collected in that case. Otherwise, it doesn't comply with GDPR. (Disclaimer: IANAL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was tempted to sign up and try using it for our daily scrum standup conf calls for fun. But after thinking about it I'm also terrified of the possibility that my account or data could be compromised. Imagine the damage someone could do by calling up a relative, posing as me, and saying that I'm in trouble and need money or something?

<comment><USER16> Something you know, something you have. Time to share some authentication bsecrets with family.

<comment><USER17> "Hi mom can you authorize my logon request?"

"Sure honey."

"200 OK. Eh I mean, thanks."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was hoping there was another method of doing this instead of playing the audio file out the speaker and using the phone in speakerphone mode.

I have a stutter that is especially bad when I first talk on the phone. I used to do something similar where I would record an introduction and then play it when the phone connected.

The quality wasn't great, but it was better than me not being able to say anything.

<comment><USER19> You could probably configure the computer as a bluetooth microphone

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only reason this 'fooled' his mom is because cell phone sound is already bad, so the obvious garbles, fluctuating intonation and weird pauses seem normal.

So it's impressive, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

<comment><USER21> That's not as big a drawback as you might think. There's a guy on YouTube[1] that with a channel fashioned after one of those Saturday morning edutainment shows who debunks hoax videos, and one of the tricks he frequently points out is when the video quality has been deliberately degraded to mask editing flaws. It's good enough to fool anybody not looking for it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOXxzW2vU0P-0THehuIIeg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this would fool the "My voice is my passport" identification systems that I noticed cropped up on a few of the telephone services I was using in the UK?

<comment><USER23> Ahh sneakers reference [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVgWpVXb64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zVgWpVXb64)

<comment><USER22> Yeah, made me a smile a little when I first encountered it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Kinda a strange way to go about this, but interesting none the less. I don't know much about Lyrebird or how long they've been around, but as others have noted... this sounds like a really terrible voice call at best (so far as the samples have shown).

I want to use it, but I wouldn't use it for any real products today. Amazon Poly isn't amazing either, but sounds more natural than these samples. Yes, it's only a few stock voices, but it's a lot closer.

<comment><USER25> >> this sounds like a really terrible voice call at best

Do you believe this isn't an advertisement for Lyrebird?

<comment><USER24> To be a good ad for Lyrebird, I would have at least put a ton more into the Obama/Trump voice samples. Enough that they didn't sound like they came out of a voip connection from the 1980's. All the current demo's make me think is "Well, if I'm going to do anything voice, use Poly".

Like I said, it's a really cool idea. If I could realistically duplicate my voice I'd certainly use that. But as of right now... meh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Public key verification is ultimately needed in all end-to-end encryption systems to offer a strong guarantee that the conversation is not subverted by a man-in-the-middle attacker. If can be done by using the Socialist Millionaire Protocol ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_millionaires](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_millionaires)) and a shared secret, but more often the verification is arranged in-person, out-of-band, manually.

As realtime, realistic voice synthesize is thought to be difficult, a voice/phone call encryption system usually circumvents this problem by using the caller's voice as the proof, as both recognize each other's voice. In most phone encryption systems, like many commercial systems, or the ZRTP protocol by Phil Zimmermann, or the "safety number" in Signal, they allow both parties to read out their pubkey's SHA-256 hash digest (usually encoded to words) aloud, as a mean of verification.

If this type of AI-based voice synthesizer becomes widely-available, it could be disastrous to cryptography. It is not the end-of-the-world of course, as targeted attack with social engineering is not an issue for most people, and those who need this level of security is going to perform out-of-band exchange anyway, but still, the certainty of voice-based key verification would be greatly weakened.

<comment><USER27> Cryptography doesn't solve social problems.

Cryptography doesn't solve political problems.

Cryptography solves communication problems. That's. It.

<comment><USER28> Being sure that it's really my son talking to me over the phone is primarily a communication problem, no? The social and political implications are quite large, but they can be addressed by solving the communication problem. This can involve crypto.

Or am I missing something?

(I say nothing for or against the particular scheme proposed by gp, just against parent's implied generalized dismissal of crypto to solve this problem)

<comment><USER26> Agree. I was just talking about a pure technical issue of voice synthesize, and its implications to voice encryption. In other words, a communication- over-the-phone problem. I didn't mention nor intended to talk from a political or social perspective.

While I understand the parent comment's stance that cryptography is not the magic sauce, I don't think it's related to my comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The cadence of his speech in the video was clearly off. It was pretty jarring to me.

It didn't sound like the mom was buying it either. Her tone of voice was somewhere between "I'm going to play along with this" to "Dear god I think my son is on drugs again."

<comment><USER20> Definitely not convincing to me either. But things sound so bad over a cell phone conversation, which kinda makes this works if you squint your ears and drink a liter of spirits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The examples in this thread don't seem very convincing for me, is that because I know that it's an AI?

Not judging his work here, but it sounds like an unstable VoIP call.

<comment><USER31> I agree that it's not convincing. But I think over the phone it makes it close to indiscernible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there anything at all like this open source?

<comment><USER33> Sure is: Festival, HTS, Merlin, and a gaggle of wavenet implementations. You'll have to put in some work, it's not turnkey, but you can get some really good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> In what sense can this actually be considered to be "AI"? It's software that builds a voice profile from input sources and then uses that profile to generate waveforms. Where is the intelligence?

<comment><USER19> Artificial intelligence can be defined as training a model with real-world input/output pairs & approximating a general solution to generating output for arbitrary input.

In this case, your brain (the "non-artificial intelligence") can take some text and control your vocal chords to emit sound waves to produce speech. You can even learn different voices like a cartoon character voice artist. The artificial intelligence can learn to do the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A few years ago, well before Trump was a thing, a writer asked me what I feared about the future. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I answered 'the post-truth society'. Even without AI algos, we were already well on our way with 'traditional' evidence forging technology and public discourse manipulations, to cast reasonable suspicion on everything we see or hear.

Simple AI accelerated and deskilled the former, and combined with ubiquitous social networks exponentially empowered the latter.

The thing is: these truth undermining technologies need not be perfect to have the effect, just 'good enough' to cast significant doubt and allow near everyone to believe their own 'truths'.

The result will be a highly dis-empathic society, where trust beyond the most closest 'clan' is close to nil and even then some.

Confusion always empowered narcissist and sociopaths, the con-artists and the cultists. It isn't so hard to see anymore how old civilizations could devolve into the dark ages.

<comment> gm-conspiracy Agreed.

We have already seen this work on "lo-fi" ads.

Ads with obvious spelling and grammar errors, meant to immediately engage those who have no concerns of such things (filter out the critical thinkers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Clearly there's a lot of potential for abuse here. On the other hand, similar technology has enabled radio reporter Jamie Dupree to get back on the air after losing his voice to a rare neurological condition:

[http://jamiedupree.blog.wsbradio.com/2018/06/18/back-on- the-...](http://jamiedupree.blog.wsbradio.com/2018/06/18/back-on-the-air-with- jamie-dupree-2-0/)

</comment><comment><USER37> What's wrong with wolfie?

[https://youtu.be/MT_u9Rurrqg?t=45s](https://youtu.be/MT_u9Rurrqg?t=45s)

</comment><comment><USER38> It clearly sounds synthesized.

<comment><USER39> Also sounds pretty close to a spotty VoIP connection.

[http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/problems/robotic.html](http://www.voiptroubleshooter.com/problems/robotic.html)

<comment><USER40> That's because state of the art vocoders (as used in VoIP) _are_ voice synthesisers. The encoding process breaks your voice down into a series of coefficients, which are sent sent to the decoder (voice synthesiser) at the other end.

When you talk to your Mum on any modern phone system, there's an argument that you're actually speaking to a voice synthesiser that sounds like her. Maybe we need to view the thought process as the person rather than the voice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So much for audio recordings being evidence in court.

I always wondered why emails were evidence. They're just text, anyone could fake an email.

<comment><USER42> Sure, you could say the same of any document, electronic or not. Most crime is not that complicated.

      It turns out that the metadata footprint left on a computer creating a document- if you can seize it- is rich in detail enabling creation date and the like to be identified. Mail servers may hold logs. Often a fake email or document is part of an offense and proving where a faked email was sent from becomes quite relevant, and yes, ends up as evidence in court.

You may hear a prosecutor say "and on the 30th of june 2011 did you send the following email..blah..blah"

There is a reason for that- they are establishing the possibility that it is actually evidence. Its not clear cut, otherwise we wouldn't have courts. You proffer evidence and convince people of it's weight. And that will continue to be the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I rarely call or use the phone vs. texting. I would think that almost half the population rarely use the phone too.

Also the perpetrator is going to have to spoof my exact number to trick friends & relatives. Who I would hope would after speaking to a fake me would then text me soon or a bit after talking with comments & questions.

</comment><comment><USER44> Trolling your mom is a pretty weird target, one of the people who would have the least suspicion when talking to you that your trying to deceive them esp if planning dinner like the article

<comment><USER45> In Japan "It's me!" scams where a criminal pretends to be their mark's child over the phone and asks them to wire money are / were quite common. I guess they would find this useful if they knew who they were meant to be impersonating.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Lyrebird: [https://lyrebird.ai/](https://lyrebird.ai/)

Demonstration from the author of the Buzzfeed article: [https://soundcloud.com/cwarzel/2018-02-06t19-53-39769z-1](https://soundcloud.com/cwarzel/2018-02-06t19-53-39769z-1)

Demonstration using Trump's voice: [https://twitter.com/LyrebirdAi/status/904595052521025536](https://twitter.com/LyrebirdAi/status/904595052521025536)

</comment><comment><USER46> FWIW, secret agents have been doing this in movies for years. Took them long enough...

</comment><comment><USER47> This is very sad :'(

</comment><comment><USER48> or on a different angle...[swaps grey hat for black hat]

...used AI to clone victims voice and used deep fake to social engineer customer support staff into compromising security swapping SIM card, draining bank account, opening new credit accounts and mortgages, and to call random people @55h@ts, then snicker and profit..</comment>


Man offers to resign after showering during live video meeting - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/03/man-offers-to-resign-after-showing-during-livestreamed-video-meeting <comment> lone-commenter > ... we have a small favour to ask. Millions are flocking to the Guardian for > _quality news_ every day.</comment>


Don't blame porn for erectile dysfunction - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/16/pornography-erectile-dysfunction-sexuality <comment><USER2> That's a hard subject to discuss, but the delivery comes over as rather flaccid.</comment>


Jonathan Blow: "C++ is a weird mess" - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-02-jonathan-blow-c-is-a-weird-mess <comment><USER2> I feel any article on a new language should have at least a partial spec and preferably at least a rudimentary interpreter or compiler. Otherwise what's the point of the article? Especially when it's lobbing around things like 50% win for instance.

The only actual information I can find about it is videos, which is kind of useless.

<comment><USER3> I am a little disappointed he hasn't released the source, but I am also sympathetic. He wants to be free to change major things about the language while he's designing it, and that's harder if other people are using it.

That said, if you want to know what Jai is about, I recommend starting from his first video: [https://youtu.be/TH9VCN6UkyQ](https://youtu.be/TH9VCN6UkyQ)

The first couple dozen videos are all pretty dense, with him presenting the basics of the language pretty efficiently. (His more recent vids are more like development vlogs) Yes, videos are slow, but for me I don't think I would've appreciated his design choices without all the context.

I also found watching his process for inventing the language extremely instructive, just as a programmer. It has substantially formed my own process and thinking over the last few years.

<comment><USER4> > He wants to be free to change major things about the language while he's > designing it, and that's harder if other people are using it.

I don't se why, if proper versioning is implemented.

<comment><USER5> You'd have to implement proper versioning for one, which takes nonzero effort. Furthermore people being people, they'll complain about breaking changes regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _People think a programming language should be a complicated ecosystem_

Who thinks that? Everyone I work with wishes for simplicity. Sure, we recognise that there are tradeoffs and constraints, but simplicity is prized above complications.

</comment><comment><USER7> Jai seems like an overall nice design, conservative and practical. I certainly hope it does well.

If I had to ask for one language feature for game-related code, it would be a compiler backend targeting the various shader "ISAs". It should be relatively easy since the exposed architecture by the APIs are quite high level.

It would be useful, if only to make sharing data layout between the GPU & CPU less annoying (padding float4 slots by hand, sigh ...), as well as constants and other stuff.

Especially as modern rendering techniques are more and more compute shader heavy (tiled/clustered shading etc) we could definitely use some nicer high level language features in there instead of the usual preprocessor contraptions.

<comment><USER8> _If I had to ask for one language feature for game-related code, it would be a compiler backend targeting the various shader "ISAs". It should be relatively easy since the exposed architecture by the APIs are quite high level._

It is pretty easy to write a Lisp that does this.

But for now, glslify seems to simplify things. [https://github.com/glslify/glslify](https://github.com/glslify/glslify)

<comment><USER9> I've not used it, but from the videos I've seen Varjo ([https://github.com/cbaggers/varjo](https://github.com/cbaggers/varjo)) looks like a good one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would ask: Why not Rust?

<comment><USER11> If you watch his videos, he explains it a few times. Same with Go, D, and several others over the course of all of those videos.

<comment><USER12> Specifically, he says he doesn't like "big idea" languages, and says that Rust is one of them.

<comment><USER4> > Specifically, he says he doesn't like "big idea" languages, and says that > Rust is one of them.

If that's the full scope of his technical argument then I don't see why it's a good idea for anyone to waste their time reading up on his vaporware language. I understand why the author feels the need to promote his work but his promotion angle and lack of technical arguments speaks for itself.

<comment><USER13> His view of Rust is a little more nuanced then you're getting here. Back in 2014 when Jonathan Blow started talking about the reasons for making a new programming language he discussed several languages including Go, D and Rust and provided specific reasons why they didn't satisfy his view of what a language for game programming should be. During that talk he said at one point; "if we're all writing programs in Rust ten years from now then that's great because I think it'll be a lot better than C++."

You should consider watching at least the first part of that talk. It made a splash at the time because there are several insights that people found provocative.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH9VCN6UkyQ)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hewlett Foundation offering $100,000 for design of automated essay grader - <AUTHOR> http://blog.coursekit.com/post/17766559470 <comment><USER2> That's ridiculous. Essays are already being shoe-horned into the 3-paragraph/introduction/conclusion format and (I believe) it's quite harmful to budding writers.

An automated system of marking will mean two things:

1\. Students will write more essays because they can be marked faster but... 2\. The increased quantity will dictate an even more strict "style".

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmmm.... more information here: <http://www.kaggle.com/c/asap-aes>. There are three awards: 1st: $60,000, 2nd: $30,000, and 3rd: $10,000.

The award level seems low even though "[E]ach team maintains full, exclusive and absolute rights to their intellectual property".

</comment><comment><USER4> I suspect that any truly adequate automated essay grader would imply strong AI or at the very least some optimization process good enough that it might as well be strong AI.

</comment><comment><USER5>
        ...  to gage students' work ...

Really? "gage"? This is an academic blog ...</comment>


How thick is the atmosphere? A derivation of the Boltzmann distribution - <AUTHOR> https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/how-thick-is-the-atmosphere-a-derivation-of-the-boltmzann-distribution/amp/ <comment><USER2> Note that while the temperature rockets up to 1000C in the upper atmosphere (thermosphere), it's offset by the decrease in density: almost a thousand-fold between 100-150 km.

High temperature is not the same as hot. Those particles have a high temperature which means they're moving around a lot (crude estimate from conservation of energy: v = √kT/m). When you touch a "hot" thing, the heat you feel is all those particles bumping into your body. So in the upper atmosphere those particles might be very excited, but the low density means there isn't sufficient heat transfer to burn you.

EDIT: There are other interesting considerations. Rocket controllers use precise atmospheric models to know when to throttle down/up during a launch. There is a point called maximum dynamic pressure (max Q) where the stress on the airframe is maximised due to the speed of the vehicle and local air pressure. On Shuttle launches you hear the controllers call out "Go at throttle up" to let the pilot know that it's safe to punch the engines. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em- Krwbn25A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em-Krwbn25A)

<comment><USER3> Unless you're moving faster than possible for your particles to return to equilibrium. (either via conduction or via radiation) After all, heat transfer is a large scale statistical phenomenon.

So, if you're moving fast, despite the low density you're hitting a lot of (anisotropic) fast moving particles. This is a difference between static friction and dynamic collisions.

This is why space ships still need heat shields bigger than expected by just friction alone.

Edit: yes it is related to maximum dynamic pressure, you could call it maximum heat differential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also fun: "The Kármán line... represents the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space.... Theodore von Kármán... was the first person to calculate that the atmosphere around this altitude becomes too thin to support aeronautical flight, since a vehicle at this altitude would have to travel faster than orbital velocity to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift to support itself."

[https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line)

<comment><USER5> Is this actually a well-defined altitude, or does it depend on the properties of the vehicle? (Certainly, the minimum speed to maintain level flight normally does.) The Karman line is near but distinct from the boundary between the thermosphere and the exosphere, which is well-defined: it's where atoms become so thin that their mean free path becomes so long they stop bouncing off each other and just follow parabolic trajectories under gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to upvote this twice. I love articles that explain scientific principles in a way that I could explain them to my 11 year old daughter. This article is a perfect example, balancing the equations that I want to see with the text that she needs to grasp the concept without understanding the equations. These random never-thought-about-the-physics-behind-that articles are terrific.

<comment><USER7> You have a gifted daughter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Statistical mechanics is one of the most underrated Physics disciplines, having been largely replaced with the simpler thermodynamics in many undergrad courses.

If there was one Physical formula for humanity to leave behind, it should be Boltzmann's entropy formula. Conceptually linking microstates to macrostates could lead to a glut of other discoveries, including thermodynamics (think Industrial Revolution), solid-state (semiconductor stuff), and molecular/nanoscale physics.

<comment><USER9> Aren't statistical physics and thermodynamics complementary? Thermodynamics is about deriving results given an equation of state and statistical physics is a method for finding the equation of state.

<comment><USER10> Yes, thermodynamics is rooted in empirical results and the use of thermodynamics in industrial age engineering pre-dates the statistical mechanics explanations of why the laws of thermodynamics are true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> you had me at lagrange multipliers

</comment><comment><USER12> A similar derivation is given in the first edition of Kittel's Thermal Physics, as well as in the Quantum Mechanics book by Griffiths IIRC.

<comment><USER7> Does Kittel define Shannon entropy?

<comment><USER12> I'd have to grab the first edition copy from the library but I think not, he does use Lagrange multipliers though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Should K.E. be labeled as vertical kinetic energy in the first set of equations instead of vertical potential energy?

<comment><USER7> Yes, you are right. It's a typo.</comment></comment>


Open source cloud platform from Yandex (support for Docker is announced) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cocaine/cocaine-core

<comment><USER2> Cocaine is a terrible name. Not only is it difficult to search, it makes for awkward conversation.

        "What platform do you use to run your infrastructure?"

        "I use cocaine"

Ignoring the name, I'm excited for more personal PaaS options powered by Docker.

<comment><USER3> I think it's great. Come and ask me about Yandex's cloud platform next week. I'll remember it instantly.

I'm definitely gonna start using project names like "suicide" or "gonorrhoea"

<comment><USER4> [http://unethicalblogger.com/2011/11/13/ten-poorly-chosen- gem...](http://unethicalblogger.com/2011/11/13/ten-poorly-chosen-gem- names.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love it ! :) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3L4spg8vyo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3L4spg8vyo)

</comment><comment><USER6> Cool that they're planning to support Racket so early!</comment>


Java 9: The State of the Module System - <AUTHOR> http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/spec/sotms/ <comment><USER2> The cool thing is that compared to many languages/platforms, Java already has an _excellent_ module system. Just look at the horrible hacks you have to go through in C++, Ruby or Python to manage multiple projects written in different versions of the language or with different versions of dependencies are just ridiculous, especially if you're developing on multiple platforms. Oh, you want to deploy it too? Have fun.

Let alone the IDE support. I think it's truly amazing that I can make a project with 3 different JVM languages and get instant IDE autocompletion and warnings when calling methods between those languages. The source -> .class -> .jar thing has turned out to be a remarkably visionary design (or just a very lucky hit). For comparison, C# still compiles and "tools" that much slower because .class files are missing in the pipeline.

It's a testament to some of the true goodness of Java, despite its unpopularity in hipper circles, that they don't think a Maven-managed folder full of JARs is good enough.

Of course, this is really a JVM thing and you'll also get it if you use a different JVM language so you can actually get the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER3> Practically speaking, Maven (the executable tool) and pom.xml (the language) create a hot dependency mess when projects get past the toy stage. Maven makes most simple things impossible and a few challenges trivial. "Hamstrung" is the word that comes to mind. Coupling a declarative, own-the-world, XML programming language with innumerable slap-dash/poorly maintained plugins is the pits.

All that said, maven repositories and the groupId:artifactId:version:type:classifier organization of modules are really genius. As you say, this genius shines in IDE's where, as just one example, you get nice binary/source .jar distributions automatically downloaded to your local repo. Having an IDE's debugger be able to seamlessly and accurately step through 1st party java sources and 3rd party source .jar sources is always so impressive to me.

Gradle (and Ivy before it) help paper over the pain and expose the good parts of the maven ecosystem. I have some gripes with Gradle, but after seeing it in action (and now that IDE's can grok its project configs) I'm so happy to be ditching maven/plugins and hand-written pom's for the most part.

Java needs a holistic dependency management/dependency injection/artifact repository/publishing workflow rethink where well-defined concepts like semver are enforced in the version numbering scheme, making it easier to express "safe" legal version ranges in transitive dependencies.

<comment><USER4> I admit that maven on large projects can lead to some dependency problems, while not the final solution I found that Maven Enforcer Plugin[1] helps to reduce this mess, makes it harder to keep the dependencies because sometimes you have to exclude them everywhere and add your own by hand, but I don't see any better alternative, APIs change.

[1] [http://maven.apache.org/enforcer/maven-enforcer- plugin/](http://maven.apache.org/enforcer/maven-enforcer-plugin/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yet another feature that Android devs won't get.

By the time Java 10 gets out, they can see how libraries that make use of modules, reified generics, value types, GPGPU integration, JIT plugins are out of reach.

Worse even, having library devs writing two versions of their libraries.

Google's fork of Java is leading to a Python 2 - 3 scenario.

<comment><USER6> Is there an actual JSR for reified generics? I was under the impression that would generally break VM compatibility.

I have a hard time believing Google will stop supporting Java on Android, especially considering how widely they support it for other various platforms. I do know Go support for Android was recently released though.

<comment><USER5> > Is there an actual JSR for reified generics? I was under the impression that > would generally break VM compatibility.

Not yet. But it might happen, it depends how value types get implemented.

Check "New Bytecodes, New Objects", "Adventures on the Road to Valhalla":

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/community/jlss...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/community/jlssessions-2015-2633029.html)

> I have a hard time believing Google will stop supporting Java on Android

Of course they won't stop supporting it. After all they stated at Google IO 2014, that only Java matters and they could not see why anyone would want to use something else.

But they also don't show any interest to reduce the gap with the official Java.

Even the actual version lacks many of the Java 7 libraries.

> I do know Go support for Android was recently released though.

It doesn't have any official support from the Android team.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, thanks for the links. Honestly, I tend to avoid writing Java in favor of native languages at this point largely because of latency requirements. I still wonder where code sharing outweighs the type cast overhead for most JVMs though.

> It doesn't have any official support from the Android team.

Go on Android definitely seems to be in its infancy.

<comment><USER5> Just as extra info in case you aren't aware, Java is also compiled directly native code on Android as of 5.0.

[https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/index.html#AO...](https://source.android.com/devices/tech/dalvik/index.html#AOT_compilation)

And apparently Oracle is finally joining the third party JVMs by adding AOT support to the reference JDK, but it might only come after Java 10.

This together with the upcoming value types and JNI replacement, might eventually close the gap with the alternatives.

Not being a Java zealot, as a polyglot developer I use a bit of everything, just spreading the word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Or, you know, you can use OSGi ([http://www.osgi.org/Main/HomePage](http://www.osgi.org/Main/HomePage))

<comment><USER8> Use complex to achieve simple, that's Java Style, :P

<comment><USER9> OSGi isn't that complex, it's more that modularisation is inherently complex and people try to wave that away. When thinking modularisation through you quickly end up wanting depencency managament, versioning, modules and dynamic updates (meaning no restart of the VM when updating a module), and combining all of this is inherently difficult to design, and some of the stuff the JVM wasn't really designed for from the beginning. OSGi solves all that in a quite nice way, but for political reasons Oracle doesn't want to use OSGi ('not invented here syndrome').

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't solve the versioning problem. That's a little disappointing.

<comment><USER11> My reading is it's hard enough as is because of backwards compatibility. They seem to be under massive pressure to deliver something for JDK 9 and can't push the deadline much longer.

If memory serves me correctly I remember Mark Reinhold saying to do it "right" they would have to run a linear equation solver like Eclipse/P2.

<comment> dj-wonk It would seem that one of the JSR 376's key goals is to provide a saner way to manage dependencies than the Java classpath.

See also: [http://wiki.osgi.org/w/images/thumb/e/e2/Classpath.jpg/500px...](http://wiki.osgi.org/w/images/thumb/e/e2/Classpath.jpg/500px- Classpath.jpg)

<comment><USER11> They say that but I don't know anybody who actually uses classpath (java -cp). Most people use a custom class loader, container and module system. In addition Oracle cops out of versioning. So I'm not sure who they are targeting.

<comment><USER12> > Most people use a custom class loader, container and module system.

Huh? That sounds like a lot of work reinventing the wheel. Could you give me some details on how that's arranged?

<comment><USER11> The most extreme example is probably WildFly that has just the JBoss Modules JAR in the class path. That sets up class loaders for the modular service container that in term sets up class loaders for all the deployments.

Every Java EE server (even Tomcat) sets up its own class loaders. So does Jenkins/Hudson, Maven, all RCP platforms, even applets. It's really rare to find applications where all the code is in the class path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk See also:

JEP 261: Module System [http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/261](http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/261)

Java Platform Module System (JSR 376) [http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/spec/](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jigsaw/spec/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I've used C# for a long time, but have barely touched Java. How does this differ from the idea of "Assemblies" in the .NET world?

<comment> iso8859-1 See [http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html#assemblies](http://www.25hoursaday.com/CsharpVsJava.html#assemblies) (and the rest of that page)

and [http://stackoverflow.com/q/90578/309483](http://stackoverflow.com/q/90578/309483)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> is this the same module thing that's coming up in c++17( or later, it it doesn't make on time.)

<comment><USER5> No.

C++ modules are more like packages.

Java modules, which happen to exist in other languages like .NET, Delphi and Ada, are akin to having a set of dynamic libraries exposed as a single library. With the ability of having symbols that are only visible to the dynamic libraries that are part of the same module.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Feels clunky doing require/export at the package level. Why not allow exporting of individual classes, for example?

</comment><comment><USER8> Will java drop the bc in the future ? (e.g. 1.4 1.5 1.6) With the time by, java have a heavier bc problem.

<comment><USER16> What is "bc"?

<comment><USER17> I think he means "backwards compatibility".

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I was stuck on byte code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> i really like how simple it is to declare the module metadata and how easy it is to read it</comment>


Love is a Fallacy --Max Shulman - <AUTHOR> http://184.108.40.206/webpages/chdrew/files/Love%20Is%20a%20Fallacy.pdf

<comment><USER2> The linked article was transcribed from a famous short story, unfortunately by someone unwilling to proofread his work. It's riddled with typographical errors and missing words. Such a shame, because it's a first-rate story, well worth the read.

I've just surveyed a number of online copies of this story, and all of them have typographical and other errors, just different ones.</comment>