Good for Google, Bad for America - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/opinion/peter-thiel-google.html <comment><USER2> Eric Schmidt chairs the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) [1], the US government knows about the Google/IBM China relationship.

One big concern is with the China/Google/IBM OpenPOWER [2,3] collaboration. Advanced hardware chip technology is one big thing China currently does not have.

The US doesn't want the Google/IBM OpenPOWER Foundation to hand China the keys to the kingdom in the form of advanced microprocessor chip technology and know-how, thus giving away the US hardware chip advantage, i.e. gifting the gap...

~> IBM Venture with China Stirs Concerns (2015) [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/ibm-project- in-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/ibm-project-in-china- raises-us-concerns.html)

~> China has never had a real chip industry. Making AI chips could change that (2018) [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612569/china-has-never- ha...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612569/china-has-never-had-a-real- chip-industry-making-ai-chips-could-change-that/)

[1] [https://innovation.defense.gov](https://innovation.defense.gov)

[2] [https://openpowerfoundation.org](https://openpowerfoundation.org)

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

<comment><USER3> China arguably is even further behind in software.

So we should make sure that all open source software development is shut down, especially since software's role in military technology s only growing, lest China gets access to it.

I'm all in favor of Gothub being banned, and while we're at it let's get rid of the AOSP as well. And Linux is clearly a curse and while we're at it let's jail Microsoft execs for open sourcing .Net as well.

<comment><USER2> Some things are more significant than others. Like giving someone fire for the first time. Epochs mark the era before and after. Gifting the gap changes the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 'At its core, artificial intelligence is a military technology.'

False premise. How is it a military technology at its core as opposed to any other technology? Or every technology is a military technology at its core, in which case, so what?

<comment><USER5> I am dumbfounded at how many people are missing his point.

\- When airplanes came out, their first application was military.

\- When networks and computers came out, their first application was military.

\- When satellites were first developed, their first application was military.

A.I. has a lot of uses, but it is another new technology, a whole new field of computer science that is rapidly evolving and has clear, identifiable military applications. And its early stage of development means that each breakthrough can pose a strategic military advantage.

This is true whether you agree with his point about the morality of Google partnering with China.

<comment><USER6> New medicines also find their way into militaries. Should we hoard those?

What about agricultural technology? Modern farming methods feed a billion people, but armies march on their stomachs. Should they all go hungry?

<comment><USER2> Funny you bring up the meds thing.

One of the problems that just surfaced in the news yesterday is the realization that almost all prescription meds are manufactured in China. The risk that poses to the US population and DoD is incalculable. How do we get off China meds?

<comment><USER6> I note you avoided the question.

In your view, should we hoard medical technology? Doing so will lead to countless unnecessary deaths and tremendous suffering. Is that worth it in your eyes to preserve a military advantage?

<comment><USER5> It is also clear that not every technology is permanently hoarded or seen exclusively as a military advantage.

If the Chinese were known to have stockpiles of Mustard Gas (a bio weapon not otherwise applicable to civilian life), then perhaps the US having exclusive knowledge of a cure or preventative substance would be a military advantage.

Your premise is that AI at its current stage is equivalent to a cure for cancer. I disagree.

<comment><USER6> A few points.

First, mustard gas is not a bioweapon. It's a chemical agent. There will never be a cure because it's like saying that you have a cure for fire.

Second, the point raised above is that things like food preservation technology implicitly confer military advantage. The same is true of many lifesaving medical technologies, especially things like celox that treat trauma.

And then there's cryptography. I find it hard to believe that you (or anyone on HN) support Joe Biden's approach to restrictions there. But that's quite clearly a dual use technology.

Finally, I never said it was equivalent to a cure for cancer. I don't believe that, and it's disingenuous to put words in my mouth. But things like self driving cars probably will actually save lives, and even independent of that I think it's worth examining very critically what restrictions we as a free society are willing to impose to gain military advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait until he finds out that Google researchers publish scientific papers about the latest machine learning advances for the entire world to read. And so do universities! Heck, teenagers are learning about this stuff! Why allow that?

The logical conclusion of "we shouldn't let China have machine learning" is that it should be locked down like nuclear weapons research. But it would be even more difficult to control, because you only need graphics cards, not uranium.

<comment><USER8> We cannot know what research they don't publish. Google also patents DL stuff, sometimes ridiculously broad like the patent for Dropout. And they gobble up any companies that have a chance to rival them, like DeepMind. Google is an advertising company though, it's where they make their money. I doubt we ll see real AI or weapons from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it more than a little surprising that no one here has an issue with google starting an AI lab in China. Instead all I see pointed out are the motives of the author.

</comment><comment><USER10> _The screwdriver is a military technology. Forget the sci-fi fantasy; what is powerful about actually existing screwdrivers is its application to relatively mundane tasks like driving screws and carpentry. Though less uncanny than Frankenstein's monster, these tools are nevertheless valuable to any army._

<comment><USER11> I think using screwdrivers as an analogy underplays the potential importance of AI. Electricity would be a better analogy.

<comment><USER12> nukes is the best.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The premises here range from true to arguable.

1) AI/ML is a dual use technology, one with both civilian and military uses...plausible. Worth noting that ITAR* already restricts transfer of a variety of technologies to others. Maybe AI/ML should count? 2) China is the enemy of the US...debatable 3) Google's presence in China gives it government greater access to these tech's than it otherwise would have...plausible

Seems like a generic opinion piece to me.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations)

<comment><USER14> > 3) Google's presence in China gives it government greater access to these > tech's than it otherwise would have...plausible

Even if Google didn't have an office in China, Chinese researchers could just as well learn from NIPS proceedings, etc.

<comment><USER2> This is not about NIPS proceedings. It's about advanced nextgen chip hardware capability, something China does not have. It would be like giving someone a rocketship when they don't know how to build and pilot a plane. Inorganic technology transfers -- phase shifts like this -- are ripe for disaster. Without internal time-tested checks and balances, gifting the gap is a recipe for chaos -- NOT a recipe for containment. How long will the chaos last? Hard to see. Does anyone have a model for that? It could lead to their undoing, and others' too. Haven't we learned that lesson yet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of noise about who Thiel is, not a blip on why he is wrong. Usually a good bet for him being right

</comment><comment><USER12> you know someone's right when people attack them as a person instead of their message

</comment><comment><USER16> Should nations regulate AI like they regulate advanced military technologies? Or like they do crypto?

I say no, the genie is way too far out of the bottle for this to be effective. Any nation that wants an advantage in AI will have to secretly develop their own advances and rely on secrecy rather than regulation to preserve their advantage.

Any nation that attempts to regulate AI tech for military purposes will only be hurting themselves, and gaining little.

<comment><USER2> Hardware asymmetry is one of the things that secures your advantage. 10th generation chips vs 5th generation chips gives you asymmetric advantage, just like 5th generation fighters vs 3rd generation fighters are no contest. The ability to design and manufacture your own chips guarantees supply and the control to optimize and scale production capacity as demand requires.

We invented the microprocessor and SV has 40+ years of accumulated knowledge and hard-earned experience built into every chip. When an adversary is 40 years behind and has not yet developed the capability to make their own chips, that's significant. We rode that curve from beginning to end, and catching a ride on an exponential rocketship gives you a massive a head start -- a secure long-term advantage, one that's almost insurmountable if you don't give it away. So let's not do that. There's an optimal path. Let's find it.

<comment><USER6> China has extensive fab capacity down to 28nm and in-country access to processes as low as 16nm. That puts them roughly where we were in 2011. They also have market access to 10nm and will likely have market access to 3nm before the US has in-country access to it. Furthermore, the actual location of those advanced fabs are all in SE Asia, particularly Taiwan and South Korea. Tech transfer is inevitable, market access will continue to exist in peacetime, and in the event of any conflict they will simply take what they want. Meanwhile, the US is basically stalled around 7nm and has been for quite some time.

Taken together that means that we have at most an 8 year lead on what is in play literally right now in china. Given their investment level it's pretty likely that they will hit parity within two years. And Huawei was first to market with a 7nm CPU design. This is what you term a "secure long-term advantage"?

<comment><USER2> You watching the news?

<comment><USER6> Is there something on that dragged your attention away from the fact that your earlier assertions about the US's continued dominance of semiconductor fab were incorrect?

<comment><USER2> You mapped out a trajectory you think things are going to follow. Things change. No more technology transfer. Protecting IP is the key to what happened yesterday.

<comment><USER6> Things do change. That doesn't make your specific prediction of what they will change into correct. Given that your previous assertions about the past and present were wrong, I doubt you are correct about the shape of the future.

Happy to bet on it, though.

<comment><USER2> You're referring to part of the process, I'm referring to the whole process -- i.e. full independent capability / self-sufficiency -- and currently China has zero capability to manufacture advanced chips independently [0] ...

      Huawei would love to source its chips and other components
      purely from Chinese suppliers, but as of today it is unable
      to do so ... There is no production line in China that uses
      only equipment made in China, so it is very difficult to make
      any chipsets without U.S. equipment.

[0] [https://wccftech.com/china-is-still-multiple-generations- beh...](https://wccftech.com/china-is-still-multiple-generations-behind-in- chip-manufacturing/)

<comment><USER6> Malarky. By the same measure the US can't manufacture anything at all anymore because it can't source all the parts of any single supply chain from solely inside the US.

China has-- currently, not theoretically-- in country fab just a few years behind, and has been actively building plants at 10nm. We know they've already bought equipment for 7nm. So the idea that somehow the supply chain is holding them back is just wrong.

Not only that, but U.S. equipment doesn't lead here and hasn't for quite some time. Taiwanese equipment does. Are you really arguing that China does not and will not have access to Taiwanese Fab equipment? Because if so, you should know that TSMC is already moving fab to China.

<comment><USER2> We will see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let me see if I understand this right: New Zealand citizen and Facebook board member Peter Thiel criticizes UK-based DeepMind and its sister company Google for working with non-US countries on AI technology.

In addition, there's no mention that three of Thiel's key investments (Space X, Palantir, and Anduril) require contracts from the US government, which is run by a President who Thiel helped get elected and is very hostile towards China.

<comment><USER18> It's a huge fail by the NYT that they failed to disclose Thiel's role as a Facebook board member, etc. This is no opinion piece, it's aiming to benefit the writer and his interests/investments.

<comment><USER19> It absolutely is an opinion piece which is why the disclosure is not required. Why would someone write an op-ed that's not to their benefit?

<comment><USER18> Yup. The quality standards on opinion pieces, even at NYT has drastically decreased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pretty unbelievable the times published this opinion piece by Thiel. Without any real evidence to back his claim and given Thiel's past, its hard for me to imagine this isn't him pushing a false narrative for some emotionally charged ulterior motive.

<comment><AUTHOR> What claims do you see him putting forth "without any real evidence"? I don't see how it's at all off base to assume China might take a military interest in AI labs Google establishes in Beijing.

EDIT: Ah, I see that Thiel said elsewhere that China already carried out espionage inside Google and hasn't backed this up. That claim is absent from this op-ed but it may be CYA for those comments on his part.

<comment><USER20> Context: Thiel originally made this claim in a speech where he claimed Google is committing "treason." [1] Given his "evidence" that's obviously insane. A large fractions of large multinationals have offices in China. I assume the editors at the Times told him that was a non-starter so he toned it down a bit.

Nowhere in the article does he disclose that he, at one point, owned 10% of facebook, a top competitor of Google's.

Most ironically, Facebook announced they'd open an office in china over a year ago [2].

He makes unsubstantiated claims that technology coming from this lab will be useful in the military before all else etc. He neglects to mention Google's public intent for the office, which has nothing to do with the military [3].

[1] [https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should- probe-...](https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe- google-9846a042-e689-49bc-bdc7-595988ce5d8c.html) [2] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17607992/facebook- allowed...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/24/17607992/facebook-allowed- china-censorship-ban-hangzhou-zuckerberg) [3] [https://ai.google/research/join-us/beijing/](https://ai.google/research/join- us/beijing/)

<comment><USER2> China currently does not have the capability to design and make advanced hardware microprocessor chips. The Google/IBM OpenPOWER Foundation is simultaneously researching nextgen chips and teaching China how to do so.

Giving China this capability, i.e. gifting the gap, will give China an advanced hardware capability they do not have and did not earn. It will undoubtedly be used by the Chinese military. The supercomputer labs is the primary target.

The AI race is already a big unknown, and the Chinese government internal checks and balances are inorganic and not yet tested. Remember the tenets, be slow to speak and be wary of unearned wisdom. What is the point of accelerating this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we should all totally disregard Thiel as a lunatic. It's not as if he has been right in any of his choices so far

<comment><USER21> He was right about funding the Trump campaign.

<comment><USER22> I think there's a difference between betting on a winning horse and making the _right_ choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> FWIW, I don't take anything from the NYT (especially opeds) at face value. Same goes for generally any media outlet, but NYT (also other outlets) and tech companies are competitors. Keep that in mind and take the NYT's weekly piece on Google, FB, Amazon, Apple etc almost being the worst companies in the world with a pinch of salt.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good for Thiel, Bad for Journalism. I expect to see people pushing for their own agenda on Twitter, not on a journal that won 100+ Pulitzer prizes.

<comment><USER2> How many NYT op-eds has Thiel written? He's only written one tweet [1].

It's rare. The significance of that should tell you something.

[1] [https://twitter.com/peterthiel](https://twitter.com/peterthiel)</comment></comment>


Loginned (Dude - we're famous) - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2393

<comment><AUTHOR> I would be happy that he mentioned Hacker News, except that I think this refers (partially) to us:

 _Really, the only thing worthy of note in this whole discussion is the fact that it's taking place. This reinforces our usual points about the social psychology of peeving, and the odd mismatch between the popular enthusiasm for linguistic analysis and the lack of competent attention to teaching the relevant concepts and skills._

Yeah, well, says you, Liberman.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I search through pages linked from HN? - <AUTHOR> Most of the posts here on HN are links to pages on other web sites. How do I find pages featuring particular words among these?<p>E.g. I'd like to find an article on digital signal and processing which probably had the words like "signal" and "filter" in its text but all I can remember about the title used on HN is that it probably didn't feature either. <comment><USER2> The search feature on HN offers custom options for a variety of metrics.

One tactic I use is to search on words in some comment I left in the discussion. If I search on my HN name, words I probably don't use overly much and check _comments_ , I can frequently find it.

Sometimes, fiddling with the time frame helps. If I have some hand wavy idea of when I read it and not enough other info, I will resort to playing with that element of the search engine.

It's tedious, but sometimes results in successfully finding what I was looking for.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not commented anything that time. And I can't remember if it was 3 or much more months ago. I'll get too much of irrelevant comments if I search for "signal" or "filter" in comments on HN.

<comment><USER2> Then let me suggest as an alternative you give a description here of what you recall and see if you can get lucky and have someone go "That sounds like _this_ link".

<comment><AUTHOR> It described some signal processing/filtering science I've never heard of before :-)

I've always wished HN had tags...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Put this in Google, and see how it goes:

        signal filter "http://" site:news.ycombinator.com

You will need some variations, like including "[https://"](https://"), but this is a good start.

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't this only search through titles and commentaries? What I am looking for is NOT under the news.ycombinator.com domain.

For example lets open the main page, there is a "Microplastics found in 93% of bottled water tested in global study" title on it. Click on it and you'll get to the [https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bottled-water- microplasti...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bottled-water- microplastics-1.4575045) page. Within the article text it mentions "major national brands across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas". In this example I would like to search for "Africa" (which is not mentioned in the commentaries) and find this article as one of articles posted on HN and mentioning Africa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You'd have to use a crawler or make a basic one to curl and grep

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just hard to believe nobody has made one yet.

<comment><USER5> well I started to build one with proxycrawl some months ago but I got busy and couldn't finish it. I should publish the source on github so others can finish it</comment></comment></comment>


"Bicycle of the Mind" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/bicycle-121262546097 <comment><USER2> >literally in 1980 you programmed a computer if you bought one

This is the biggest difference to now for me. Because computers were so new you would be getting your hands dirty with hardware and operating system level stuff.

Now, you hardly leave the browser and really could stay in the browser to do almost anything you want to.

<comment><USER3> Human brains have scarcely changed in the interim. We still struggle to store more than a few bits of information in short-term memory and being able to multiply two two-digit numbers without having to resort to pen and paper is still tough for many.

The "bicycle" has evolved into smartphones, and is a better bicycle than ever. Instead of trying to memorize a seven or ten digit number, I always have a device handy to save a phone number (or better yet, IG username). Instead of trying to run numbers in my head and getting confused, there are apps like Soulver[] that no only help with doing the math, but help ascribe meaning to the numbers.

The Internet fundamentally changes computing, changing the metaphor as well. The bicycle (smartphone) lets us onto bike paths (the Internet), to visit stores (web pages). I can reach out to a dozen people and organize lunch from my phone, before I even get out of bed and go for a real morning bike ride.

[0] [https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/](https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The graph showing calories per gram per kilometer is very interesting. I wonder though, for bicycling, how the energy cost of paving the surface we bicycle on is factored in, if at all? On 'natural' ground, depending on the terrain of course, bicycling can be substantially harder than walking, well- nigh impossible over rocky ground.

And by analogy, what kind of negative impact does the computer bring to the process of mind. If I have to think hard about something, I typically close my eyes, not reach for my laptop. Although the fact that so much knowledge is now at my fingers tips probably trumps anything. Henry Ford wasn't nearly as smart as Leonardo da Vinci, but his access to knowledge enabled him to create vehicles Leonardo could only imagine.

<comment><USER5> Amplifying your mind by programming the tools you need is more like bicycling without a trail over rocky ground, walking it up steep slopes and carrying it over fallen trees, than it is like bicycling on a road.

Programming is helpful for finding cases you didn't think of and remembering the details you aren't working on right now (like writing) - but only for programming.

 _Writing_ is the bicycle of the mind.

<comment><USER6> > Writing is the bicycle of the mind

Are you thinking about Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_of_Feeling)

<comment><USER5> No, but thanks for the link - I don't think I've read that one (though I can never tell from Ted's titles). Text: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang)

Maybe I should have said " _Language_ is the bicycle of the mind", but we didn't invent that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think we can return to the glory days of computing with one small tweak: insist that OS vendors include a lean and clean compiler in the default install.

An OS that ships without tools to make apps for it is not an Operating System but rather an Appliance System.

And, for those who will reply "but my disk space and all the bloat of a compiler onboard methodology" \- well that'd be a next step: destroy the bloat.

<comment><USER8> Not compiling but Windows ships with VBScript, JS, and Powershell, all with the ability to interface with the OS. I used VBScript for the first time a while ago to make a step in a batch process and it was pretty convenient.

<comment><USER9> And MacOS comes with Perl, Python, and Ruby in /usr/bin. Plus several UNIX shells with scripting ability.

<comment><USER8> Didn't a lot of computers back then just come with a BASIC shell, not any compilers?

<comment><USER9> Right. But we are talking about how modern computers come with development systems too. While I'm sure the percentage of hobbyist programmers on modern machines is far smaller than in the 8-bit era, it's not like modern machines don't come with at least some development tools too.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that was my point. Saying it has to be a compiler is arbitrary.

<comment><USER7> It should be a compiler because that's the best way to write efficient, non- bloat software with your computer.

All the other methods encourage bloat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most of the time we are programmed by the device itself. That is to say, we should program a PC instead of having it dictate our day and tell us what to do. An email inbox for example is nothing more than a todo list created by someone else and apparently we have to check each item off and reach the mythical 'inbox zero'.

Then we have the browser where news comes at us randomly and we have 100 tabs open but no idea how or where those tabs come from - they are an example of how unorganized our thoughts are when we use the web. There's no curation, no attempt to organize information, because apparently its done already for us in the form of Google and other crawlers.

</comment><comment><USER11> The VR computing revolution presents the opportunity for us to get back to the "bicycle of the mind" frame of mind: where computing gives us tools to augment human intellect. For example, there are a set of office applications out there that (i) can make an office worker 10x more productive at his/her job than otherwise and (ii) are only possible to build in VR/AR. The goal for us/people in this ecosystem should be to find them and build them.

[https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula](https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula)

<comment><USER12> That's very optimistic, but it's hard for me to see at this stage in the game, how AR/VR can make someone 10x more productive, especially when it just appears to be a VR window manager.

<comment><USER3> AR has its place, but a paperless office doesn't seem like the right fit. The factory floor does though! [https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass- isnt-dead-and-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass-isnt-dead- and-its-the-future-of-industry/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So much commentary on this quote and no one mentions a possible link to LSD as inspiration? It's taboo to say it because the subject matter is illegal. But this is honestly one of the most psychedelic-sounding Steve Jobs quotes I can think of.

</comment><comment><USER14> The page is down, and I don't know if this is related but there was a great clip of Steve Jobs describing computing as being a bicycle for the mind, in terms of how it comparably amplifies our capabilites. One of my all time favourite quote from the guy and an ever enduring thought for me whenever I need to be reminded about why I do the stuff I do.

<comment><USER15> The metaphor is brilliant, it's simple, relatable and embodies an insight about the nature of personal computers.

About "man-machine partnership" and how computers amplify the human mind, the concept goes back to Douglas Englebart's work at Stanford Research Institute, namely the paper "Augmenting the Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" (1962).

[http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138](http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138)

The influence is so direct and clear that I wish the Medium article had at least mentioned his name.

<comment><USER16> Cf. "The Mother of All Demos"

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

Arguably, we are using the dregs of the possibilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the most important things for tinkerability of an OS is the shell. IMO bash has dropped the ball in the last 20 years. It's a poor programming language experience. I think we should replace bash with node.js Javascript shell, that will bring back LISP style computers back in vogue.

<comment><USER18> Please God no. There are so many useful and usable scripting languages, why infect our shells with JavaScript too?

<comment><USER17> You can get out of the box graphical output capabilities with javascript. So you can start outputting things in HTML if necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I love the whole "bicycle of the mind metaphor", but think about what it means in the context of omnipresent smartphones: using a bike burns a lot less calories than walking , so what does it do to our minds if for so many mental- related things, instead of applying our mind to them the hard way, we use our pocket computers?

What would it do to my body and my weight if for every meter I used to walk, I would instead take the bike?

</comment><comment><USER20> This was a really great article. I particularly liked the "cultural" reference at the end of this:

> 19/ "Computers are such a part of life that many people believe computers > don't invade their privacy…life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is > inevitably linked to a computer."

> How's that for east coast optimism?

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what Steve might say about smart phones today.

They were intended to be bicycles of the mind, but perhaps they've become a 'gerbil wheel of the mind' for most consumers instead?

</comment><comment><USER22> They never thought to test a condor riding a bicycle. Sounds like flawed experimental design

</comment><comment><USER23> Even more so with the pocket smartphone.</comment>


Detroit executives are killing off slow-selling cars in favor of SUVs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-16/why-the-american-sedan-is-marked-for-death <comment><USER2> Are American auto makers once again going to be behind the curve when gas prices shoot up again? I assume someone in the executive suite has an ace up their sleeve this time. The canary in the coal mine will be GM bringing back Hummer. :-)

I dunno, "the market is going SUV and not looking back" makes me think they are once again being short-sighted. If nothing else, it means we won't be getting much in the way of innovation from the U. S. makers.

<comment><USER3> > I dunno, "the market is going SUV and not looking back" makes me think they > are once again being short-sighted. If nothing else, it means we won't be > getting much in the way of innovation from the U. S. makers.

I suspect this time its more of a "Young people aren't buying cars, so extract more money out of the older folks for a bit until we hit the wall."

Ridesharing has taken a big toll on all the car manufacturers.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't say ridesharing. Young people are broke and they aren't going to buy new cars when a car payment is the equivalent of their student loans

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I grew up in Detroit, and my whole family worked in the industry. My parents met working at GM, but now they refuse to buy GM after how former employees were screwed during the Old/New GM transition. Add in the ignition switch debacle and they are untrustworthy.

Now add in the fact that many don't want to buy SUVs (my grandmother can't get into a SUV) and this is yet another silly short term play that will hurt them in the long run when fuel prices increase. My 2016 gasoline VW Golf wagon gets almost 40mpg highway - show me a SUV that can do that.

But hey, I can always continue to buy European cars, and I will. As much as I would love Detroit to succeed, they just can't see more than 2 years in the future.

<comment><USER6> VW also expects 40% of their car sales to be SUVs.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us](https://www.reuters.com/article/us)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > President Donald Trump's vow to relax fuel economy rules could add momentum > to the SUV and truck boom and invite General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. > to pull the plug on some passenger cars.

Is there anything this administration won't ruin for future generations?

</comment><comment><USER8> Note: they're not talking about the death of sedans in America—they're just talking about the death of _sedans made by American car companies_. To the extent that the most popular sedans (Accord, Camry) are made by foreign car companies, this trend is somewhat less important.

<comment><USER9> Sedans in general all look sooo similar. For the person not too deeply interested in cars, how will their lives be different if they chose a focus, civic, or corolla?

It seems like car safety standards, which aren't a bad thing, have just led to an uninspiring and very similar collection of sedans here. Would be refreshing to see a 4-door car that is interesting without being a muscle car or a sports car.

<comment><USER10> A Corolla or Civic will generally be more reliable than a Focus, and have greater resale value. Compare a used Focus and Civic in the same model year, condition, mileage, trim level, and price. The Civic sells for $3k more than the Focus.

<comment><USER11> Exactly: these cars don't sell because they're unreliable; both the Ford Focus and Fiesta are on Consumer Reports worst car list of 2017. Unfortunately there are a few American SUVs on that list as well. So caveat emptor.

<comment><USER12> Ironically, they've probably ended up there for their persistently terrible automatic transmissions. Silly mistake for an American company to be making...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if there's more brand loyalty to American auto manufacturers in cities/states where the roads are not well maintained. Thus their base naturally shifts towards SUVs as the ride quality of sedans comparatively degrades.</comment>


AI May Have Finally Decoded the Bizarre, Mysterious 'Voynich Manuscript' - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/ai-may-have-finally-decoded-the-bizarre-mysterious-voynich-manuscript <comment><USER2> Interesting.

Of course proposed Voynich Manuscript decipherments are a dime a dozen, and even here on Hacker News accounts of various 'successes' crop up about biannually.

That said, I particularly like how diligent they are in acknowledging the risk of false positives.</comment>


Assessment of Antiretroviral Effects of a Synthetic Aluminum-Magnesium Silicate - <AUTHOR> http://sciencedomain.org/abstract/2831 <comment><USER2> I had trouble finding the pdf of the article

[http://imsear.li.mahidol.ac.th/bitstream/123456789/175066/1/...](http://imsear.li.mahidol.ac.th/bitstream/123456789/175066/1/bjmmr2014v4n8p1672.pdf)

are they sure these metals are non-toxic?

<comment><USER3> Often treatments balance the toxicity and mortality rate of the "medicine" with that of the disease, e.g. chemotherapy. HIV treatments have long been among them.</comment></comment>


Overtone – Collaborative Programmable Music with Clojure - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/overtone/overtone <comment><USER2> Here's an example of what's being done with Overtone: [http://www.repl- electric.com/](http://www.repl-electric.com/)

<comment><USER3> See also Meta-Ex [http://meta-ex.com/](http://meta-ex.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love Overtone, it's really an amazing tool.

Some time ago I wrote an (incomplete, unfortunately) algorithm to procedurally generate music with Overtone and even though it's incomplete I sometimes still use it today to make small pieces of piano music for hobbyists videogames and stuff. It's interesting what can come out of it even with very simple parameters.

Here's a few examples:

[http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/proc-7.ogg](http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/proc-7.ogg)

[http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/proc-8.ogg](http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/proc-8.ogg)

[http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/random- piano.ogg](http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/random-piano.ogg)

[http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/professional- pianist.ogg](http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/professional-pianist.ogg)

[http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/hammering.ogg](http://www.morgawr.eu/stuff/hammering.ogg)

The style can vary depending on various parameters, speed and notes. It's far from perfect and very dissonant at times, but still fun.

I even wrote a Ludum Dare[0] game once using this type of music, all procedurally generated with overtone, and even though it didn't get amazing ratings, the highest among them was music. Funny. [http://www.morgawr.eu/ld27/index.html](http://www.morgawr.eu/ld27/index.html)

[0] [http://www.ludumdare.com/](http://www.ludumdare.com/)

</comment><comment> vertex-four For those in the UK, there's a networked live coding festival in Birmingham this September: [http://networkmusicfestival.org/about/](http://networkmusicfestival.org/about/)</comment>


Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/technology/the-spy-in-the-soda-machine.html?hp <comment><USER2> _"When you know you're the target and you don't know when, where or how an attack will take place, it's wartime all the time," Ms. Hallawell said. "And most organizations aren't prepared for wartime."_

The government should get in on this with pen testing and honeypots. Even individual companies don't have the resources it would take to make it an even contest. The government can't protect everybody, but it could change the risk/reward calculations of being a criminal cracker. (If done correctly, admittedly a big if.)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Agent 13, is that you?"

</comment><comment><USER4> Misleading title- I didn't see much mention of a soda machine. :)

<comment><USER5> I think soda machine was used to catch user's attention about the topic of cyber vulnerabilities..

<comment><USER6> Mountain Do While...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fundamental problem is that having a highly secure network costs large amounts of money and time (in direct work and as a knock-on effect of reduced efficiency due to the overhead).

That and a lot of the software used in the Enterprise was intended initially for smaller companies in a much less hostile part of the market.

I have no idea how to solve this problem, systems and software are basically insecure from the ground up and often for convenience/cost reasons that is the way they where _designed_.

As an aside I installed an older ReadyNAS today (little raid box) and out the box it created AFP and CIFS shares with guest access on the local network, now that is fine for me as it's a wired only network and there are only two of us in the office but how many medium sized companies without IT departments are running little NAS boxes that are shared to the world over WiFi and that is just one recent example I can think off.

</comment><comment><USER8> the output of htop is almost distinguishable here

[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/business/Vulnerabl...](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/business/Vulnerable2/Vulnerable2-superJumbo.jpg)

"Companies scrambling to seal up their systems from hackers and government snoops are having to look in the unlikeliest of places for vulnerabilities."

</comment><comment><USER9> "Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines"

<comment><USER10> I vanted orrange.

<comment><USER11> "Zee machine gave me grape."

Deus Ex reference, I'm guessing. (The first one.)

<comment><USER12> Isn't is "I vanted orrange. It gave me lemon-lime"?

<comment><USER10> Ja!

Laputan Machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > as countless third parties are granted remote access to corporate systems.

> 23 percent — of breaches were attributable to third-party negligence.

23 percent of countless is > infinity.

Leaving yourself exposed from third party equipment connected inside your firewall is your own negligence.

</comment><comment><USER14> These networks need to be better modularized with respect to security. I'm sure it's expensive, but it has to be cheaper than dealing with big security debacles such as Target's recent one.

<comment><USER15> That's what I was wondering as well. Why does your HVAC monitoring system need full network access (or even inside the firewall)?

I'm not a networking guru, would someone care to enlighten me?</comment></comment>


Amazon will end affiliate program in California if new law passes - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/29/amazon-kills-associa.html <comment><USER2> Some important background on this.

At issue here is sales tax. By state law, the tax is owed by the citizens to the state no matter where they make the purchase. To make enforcement easier, the tax is supposed to be collected by businesses. In theory the tax is owed regardless, but as a practical matter when businesses do not collect the tax, customers don't volunteer the information and the state loses revenue.

This annoys states to no end. _However_ courts have long ruled that a company that is not in a state cannot be forced to be regulated by that state, even if it does businesses with residents from that state. They can't do that because that is interstate commerce, which the Constitution says is regulated by Congress, not the states. But if the company has a presence in that state, then it can be forced to obey state regulations, even if the actual commercial act crosses state boundaries.

This is all old hat, and was settled back in the 1800s with catalog companies.

The new twist here, that several states (now including California) have pursued, is declaring that the existence of an affiliate program with state residents is a business presence in that state. Because it is a presence, they can make Amazon collect taxes.

Amazon's position is that affiliates are not Amazon employees, and are not a presence of Amazon in that state. And therefore those laws are unconstitutional. However Amazon has chosen to not contest these laws in court. Instead Amazon has chosen to cut off all affiliates in any state that tries this tactic. It thereby guarantees that it no longer has a presence in that state, and it doesn't go about trying to collect taxes from people in that state.

The net result is that Amazon loses some business, the state continues to not get taxes, and some residents lose a source of income.

<comment><USER3> So... if I understand correctly, if I am a resident of California and I buy books from Amazon, I pay no sales tax (isn't that the same as VAT)? Does this mean that Amazon books in Washington are more expensive (because I Amazon must collect the taxes, because the state can force it to, because it has a physical presence there)?

<comment><USER4> If you live in CA and buy books from Amazon, Amazon does not collect sales tax. You are still required by law to pay it. The onus is now on you to calculate the amount and include it when you file your income taxes.

<comment><USER5> In most tax jurisdictions they call this a "Use Tax". In theory here in Washington you're supposed to file that with the state annually/quarterly/monthly/whatever interval they set for you, but in practice no individual actually does. Businesses that remit sales tax to the state do have a field on the form to include their own use tax as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> __Update __

Governor Brown just signed the aforementioned affiliate nexus taxes into law minutes ago. They took effect instantly.

<comment><USER7> Couldn't find any news stories that weren't just reporting on the "what ifs", but the press release from the governor's office is available here: <http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=17101>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, what exactly is deemed "presence?" Apparently an Amazon distribution center in Texas was deemed "presence" a while back. On the other hand, surely Amazon operates a fairly extensive network of data centers, warehouses, and other fixed-location logistical inputs in California? Is that "presence?" Where is the distinction lie?

<comment><USER9> Yes, I'm really not clear on that either. Can someone with a legal background provide some clarification?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I received notice today from 4 of my affiliate programs that they are terminating their programs in California. I expect the remaining few to notify me soon enough. I may end up registering again with these program using an Oregon address if I feel like my site is something I still want to work on if this goes down the way it is looking.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps you'd like to consider a Wyoming shell company?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2708336>

<comment><USER12> With your _legal address_ in Wyoming wouldn't you need a personal address to which Amazon would need to send correspondence?

Or if you open a bank account for this legal enttity, wouldn't the bank want an address they can actually correspond to?

<comment><USER13> That is why you have that legal address. That is where all correspondence for the business is sent. This is called a statutory agent.

<comment><USER12> all correspondence? Not just legal correspondence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This sounds like a terrible idea from a technology standpoint as each county and city seemingly has different sales tax rates. To comply with taxation, every out of state company will now need to pull the active sales tax rates for the shipping destination and then apply this to the order.

What happens if the rate isn't kept up to date?

Are states like California actually ready to supply this data in a form that is easily consumable as a web service rather than a PDF file, to avoid hindering interstate commerce?

Personally I don't think Amazon is completely the victim in this situation. Their attorneys spend quite a bit of time and money figuring out how to avoid paying tax. I interviewed once for an Amazon.com company who's "primary" development offices were in California, yet their checks came from their "legal" headquarters in Nevada. Shady at best... for example: <http://www.lab126.com>

<comment><USER15> There are companies out there like <http://www.avalara.com/> that exist to help deal with the complexities of state, county and city sales tax rates.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Affected companies will end their affiliate programs so they don't have to pay the tax. This means that the state won't collect the tax revenue anyway. It's obvious that this is just a ploy by competitors (Walmart) of companies with successful affiliate programs (Amazon).

</comment><comment><USER16> There's an open letter on Votizen opposing the Amazon tax and requesting a veto:

<https://www.votizen.com/letters/27/>

You can sign it yourself as a California voter, or simply tweet out a link and ask for retweets to get more signatures.

</comment><comment><USER17> Frickin fantastic. There goes my business model...

<comment> T-hawk Would moving out of California be an option? Or at least doing the minimum to establish residency somewhere with fairly lax requirements?

<comment><USER18> What would prevent one from changing to some fake address if you get paid in bank transfers anyway? Where could this go wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2711202> (Veto the law that will end affiliate programs in California)

</comment><comment><USER19> They're clearly doing this because they know the affiliate marketers will complain a _lot_ , and not because there's much of a direct relationship financially.

<comment><USER2> Not at all. They are doing this because they don't want to get into an unnecessary legal fight which could go either way.

<comment><USER20> Or do the obscenely complex logic for each of the tens of thousands of jurisdictions each year required to calculate sales tax.

<comment><USER21> 50 jurisdictions, actually. Less considering that some states don't have sales tax and still more aren't going this route.

<comment><USER22> actually there are far more than 50, as many counties and municipalities have their own sales tax rates on top of their state's rate. not only that, but it is far more complex than just one fixnum per jurisdiction as each is able to establish rules on what is taxed and what is not. the prime example is food, where the local laws on what counts as non-taxed food always seem a bit byzantine.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, you're completely right.

I'd still note that every single national retailer manages to do it ok.

<comment><USER23> They have local managers for every region and sub-region. Amazon doesn't have a manager assigned to Sonoma County to make sure that everything's on the up and up regarding Sonoma County tax laws. Amazon's actually much better equipped to handle the problem because of their size. It would be a real nightmare for a small site that can't afford even a single full time accountant.

<comment><USER4> How many small sites that can't afford a single accountant are running affiliate programs?

<comment><USER24> Hundreds of them. Anyone can set up a copy of iDevAffiliate (and many do), and thousands of small businesses have programs run through networks like ShareASale, Clixgalore and CJ. You can start a professionally managed 3rd party affiliate program on a network for $75-350.

There are hundreds of thousands of products with affiliate programs on ClickBank. Most of them are info products and software being sold by an individual with no employees.

<comment><USER20> Thanks dan. Links like this are why I read HN

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are they doing this for tax reasons?

<comment><USER26> As an example of how complicated this can get:

Many states and municipalities tax "cookies" differently than other food items. For a long time Fig Newton used "A cookie is just a cookie, but a Newton is fruit and cake" as their most prominent add copy, and while some people have referred to Fig Newtons as cookies, the people who produce them don't. Would you like to be the person in charge of figuring out, for every jurisdiction in the US where its relevant, whether or not a Fig Newton is a cookie based on relevant law and precedent? There isn't a consistent answer that applies everywhere. And that's just one product among the many, many that Amazon sells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am pretty sure the payment made to Associates Program is classified by Amazon as "advertising fee". I'm not sure how it would hold up against any accounting audits by IRS, for example. Amazon do send 1099-MISC to Associates Program member.

</comment><comment><USER28> Adam Carolla's Podcast gets a good source of it's income from Amazon's affiliate program.

</comment><comment><USER29> Alright guys, so we all lost our Affiliate programs. What are the legal implications for just putting down an out-of-state friend's address in our Amazon account information?

</comment><comment><USER30> its interesting (to me) that they avoid collecting sales taxes in various US states, but that (at least for AWS) they are compelled to collect VAT for _all_ EU states because they have a presence in at least one of those EU states...

</comment><comment><USER31> Can I add/posit that, perhaps the reason Amazon is also taking this pretty passively other then just shutting down and waiting to see if the law changes - is that the affiliate marketing programs are perhaps just not that valuable to them any more with their market position?

</comment><comment><USER32> Lawyer types: if one were to, say, incorporate in Delaware, and then rejoin the Amazon program from a Delaware address (presuming that's possible) -- would that be legal?

<comment><USER2> I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

As long as Amazon didn't know you were a California resident, you'd probably get away with it. However you'd be opening Amazon up to the possibility of a lawsuit from California. If they figure that out, they will _not_ be happy with you.

<comment><USER33> Wouldn't creating a Delaware corp for all of this be massive overkill? Anything purchased through the corporation for an employee's (your) use would then be taxed, too, right? This sounds like a pretty significant hassle, and really only a good idea for someone who makes _a lot of money_ from their Affiliate stuff.

<comment><USER34> There are plenty of people who make _lots of money_ from Amazon

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I suspect Amazon secretly wish they could just get rid of their entire affiliate program. If it was so profitable, they wouldn't be getting rid of affiliates left and right. If you think about it, most people who buy thru an Amazon affiliate link probably would've bought it from Amazon anyway (due to its huge brand recognition, dominance in Google, etc).

So, when an affiliate refers a sale, sometimes they're losing money, not making money.

<comment><USER36> This is incredibly unlikely.

Bringing people to a store, virtual or otherwise, is incredibly valuable for that store. Amazon has literally 1000s of people doing that, constantly. Instead of finding a good/best price on an iPod, I send people to Amazon, etc. Don't underestimate that value.

<comment><USER35> don't overestimate it either. I know people who make tons of spam thin pages ranking for searches like "Nikon D40 camera Amazon coupon". All they have is a link to the Amazon page, and they make lots of money thru it. That's a sale Amazon would have irregardless</comment></comment></comment>


Controling power outlets via Bluetooth - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zuli/zuli-smartplugs

<comment><USER2> I don't quite see why they want to make this.

Remote controllable power outlets have existed for a very long time. At this point, you have dozens of options, and several home automation industry standards that allow all these options to interconnect with each other. You can combine plugs, light switches, motion sensors, keypads, door openers, thermostats and virtually everything else in your house with any brand's Zigbee or Z-wave hub, or directly from a PC/app over wifi.

Z-wave/Zigbee are already low-power mesh networks. I don't think there's any advantage to re-implementing that over Bluetooth with a different protocol, while the disadvantages if you ever want to do more cool home automation stuff than just power plugs are many.

If for some reason this all sounds scary and you'd prefer just plugging something into the wall and using an app, that's been on the market for years too. The easiest way to get started is to walk into your nearest Best Buy or Home Depot and pick up a Belkin Wemo switch. It plugs into any outlet just like this Kickstarter but connects to your wifi network instead of BT. There's an Android app to control the plugs (from inside the house or over the internet), but they also speak UPnP so are easy to integrate into your own software.

<comment><USER3> I believe they went with bluetooth because all smartphones have it, it doesn't require a special base station and can send simple serial commands fairly easily from an iOS app.

Honestly though, I prefer wi-fi over bluetooth because I can connect to an entire network of smart devices. Bluetooth would limit me to one device at a time.

<comment><USER4> This claims to create a mesh network. If that's done well, you should be able to talk to all devices at once, even outside of regular Bluetooth range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's another pretty similar Kickstarter project going on right now. It's wifi (802.11n) vs BLE - looks pretty sharp. It lacks beaconing but has a similar open API and also looks pretty well designed: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plugaway/plugaway- your-s...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plugaway/plugaway-your-smart- home-on-your-smart-phone)

Both have online load/consumption monitoring (I wonder how exactly the Zuli stores/handles that when there's no app around?), which are probably the biggest thing separating them from existing remote power outlet products.

(For logging power, the only relatively cheap options I've found is hacking a Kill-A-Watt sensor chip (see: [http://www.mikesmicromania.com/2013/04/moteino- kill-watt-har...](http://www.mikesmicromania.com/2013/04/moteino-kill-watt- hardware.html) ) or buying a Watts up? PRO - both are more much more expensive/involved solutions than either of these two new devices.)

<comment><USER6> I believe that one way to measure the current for relatively cheap would be to break the neutral line and throw a current-sensing resistor in it. It would create a small voltage drop across the resistor. If you know the voltage drop and the resistor value, it should be pretty trivial to determine the current through the neutral line. Equation to do that would be:

lineCurrent = (Voltage of the current-sense resistor) / (resistance of the current-sense resistor)

Considering a current sense resistor is fairly cheap ([http://octopart.com/13fr200e-ohmite-988758](http://octopart.com/13fr200e-ohmite-988758)) it shouldn't be terribly expensive to do. You should be able to throw that between a Vin- and Vin+ on a linear optoisolator and send the values back to a microcontroller to be reported.

I'm not an EE though, so grain of salt.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, in theory you could build your own but having something UL rated is an advantage. AC is a lot more dangerous than DC, so you should really know what you're doing before mucking around.

There are a few more components for building a basic board: [https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProject...](https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/FinalProjects/s2008/cj72_xg37/cj72_xg37/index.html) [http://enerjar.net/Hardware.html](http://enerjar.net/Hardware.html)

Building a more accurate power meter is pretty involved: [http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/power- meter/](http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/power-meter/) [http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/power-energy- met...](http://coolarduino.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/power-energy-meter-phase- power-and-energy/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it possible to use more than one device to control an outlet? As far as I know, Bluetooth devices can only be paired to one other device at a time. If that's the case here, then the outlet is tied to (for example) one phone -- but I might have a couple phones, tablets, and computers from which I'd want to control the outlet.

</comment><comment><USER8> Bluetooth doesn't seem right for this - the range is just too short to really be useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting to me to see all these new fangled home automation devices come to market, especially when really inexpensive technology has been around for decades: [http://www.x10.com](http://www.x10.com)

<comment><USER10> I've used x10 on and off since the early 80's. And... it sucks. When it works, it's cool, fun and cheap. But reliable it's not. For starts, all the inexpensive units I've used only support one-way commanding and the commands are susceptible to collision. Send a command to turn a light off and just hope that it goes off. Want to dim a light? All the commands are incremental so you'll have to do stuff like send 8 dim commands to get to a known minimum state then send 4 brighten commands to brighten to the desired level. And since it's one-way with no acknowledgments, you just hope that your commands were received and that the light was on to start with. Fun to play with, but I'd never trust it for anything but toy usage.

<comment><USER11> I've been using Insteon for a few years now (insteon.com). It's like x10 done right. There are acknowledgments, grouping, security, 256 brightness levels, extended commands, wifi+power-line communications, and a 6-byte namespace (for no collisions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title should probably read "Control power outlets via Bluetooth Low Energy"

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

It's BlueTooth Low energy, a fairly recent standard, the technology used in iBeacons. It's range is about perfect for a room. Several of the comments seem to be considering the older bluetooth standards.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why is there _nothing_ about security mentioned there?

<comment><USER14> Probably because it leverages the security built into bluetooth.

<comment><USER13> That does not reassure me.

 _" We discuss our tools and techniques to monitor and inject packets in Bluetooth Low Energy. Also known as BTLE or Bluetooth Smart, it is found in recent high-end smartphones, sports devices, sensors, and will soon appear in many medical devices. We show that we can effectively render useless the encryption of any Bluetooth Low Energy link."_

[https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop- program/pr...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot13/workshop- program/presentation/Ryan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> zuli.io</comment>


A nimble robot dog: Meet A1, a lifelike four-legged robot - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/1302507328642543617 <comment><USER2> Something about the 'tippy taps' that the robots are making when not moving is pretty unsettling to me. Definitely in the 'uncanny valley.' Spot from Boston Dynamics doesn't do the 'tippy taps' \- but I remember their older models did.

It looks a lot like what Boston Dynamics had maybe 5 years ago or so. With nice modern batteries I assume. Any clever innovation here?

<comment><USER3> Yeah and it seems like a hack. "We can't figure out where the leg is, so slam it into the ground until it stops. Twice a second." Reminds me of resetting servo motors, or printers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few days ago I backed this tiny version of Spot: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petoi/bittle/descriptio...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petoi/bittle/description)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been hoping that cheap Boston dynamics clones would start coming out. I wonder how long it will take before something is really consumer affordable

<comment><USER6> I wonder about that. Quite a few twitter replies about this being stolen technology. Not even replicated. Stolen.

<comment><USER5> Would anybody really be surprised?</comment></comment></comment>


How I failed to replicate an $86M project in 1 line of code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ryanfb/how-i-failed-to-replicate-an-86-million-project-in-1-line-of-code-615048a1f9d0 <comment><USER2> The post starts with a false premise that:

"[a medium post has been] doing the rounds the last few days, describing how an automated license plate recognition (ALPR) system being developed for the Australian Victoria Police could just use the open-source ALPR system OpenALPR instead"

The original post was pretty much a tech demo, and noted a bunch of issues. I think the point was that an ALPR project shouldn't really cost $86M.

ALPR is a well studied problem, there are a number of commercial solutions. I've no doubt there are even a number of solutions already deployed in Australia. Such systems are routinely used, for example, to monitor the speed of traffic (see Traffic master).

And as the original post showed, there are even open source solutions to the problem that work pretty well.

So yea... $86M seems like a lot when there are probably off the shelf systems you can buy at a much lower cost...

<comment><USER3> The Victorian police system was first running in cars on public roads in 2012. No doubt there are plenty of solutions available today that have been developed since then, but they probably weren't considered at the time. That $86m has covered development of the software and hardware and at least six years of running costs for the program. So yea, I'm sure $86m sounds like a lot when you compare it to some random piece of software that does a small portion of the project.

<comment><USER2> The first ALPR systems were deployed in the late 1970s.

Fixed camera systems were rolled out in Australia in 2005...

So.. ALPR is not new. In 2012 there were multiple systems available. 86MUSD seems like a lot to adapt existing research or existing systems. Even if that includes acquiring/maintaining several vehicles.

Maybe the whole project is being mischaracterized. Perhaps it included requirements completely unrelated the ALPR (face recognition, driver identification? don't know...).

But with the information available, 86MUSD seems like a lot.

<comment><USER3> For a start, it's not USD (why on earth would an Australian organization talk about costs in USD?). And of course we know it includes requirements completely unrelated to ALPR, it connects to a bunch of existing databases and systems to do live tagging of stolen vehicles, vehicles owned by people with an active warrant or suspended license, etc.

<comment><USER2> In 2012 USD a Australian dollar were basically 1 to 1 exchange rate. So it doesn't really matter does it? As to why I might expect it, well... USD is pretty much the international standard, so on an international website I often expect things to be quoted in USD...

Right... "connecting to a bunch of existing databases". Does not sound like it's worth 86MUSD to me. But there we go, I guess we just disagree on this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What if they created the 57 line project, and spent $86 million to improve OpenALPR?

<comment><USER3> Then it would be useless to the people who spent the money, because they wouldn't have the cars and cameras and ongoing support and research that they wanted to spend that money on.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you're arguing a different point. My assumption was that 'x' == "86 million" AND 'x' == "the amount it costs to develop the software". So, I would just replace "86 million" with "actual cost of developing the software".

<comment><USER3> Yes, I was arguing that your assumption was wrong.

<comment><USER4> "straw man" \- an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with this article more. Yes, $86M is sure expensive with lots of efficiencies. But the first one is oversimplifying the technical aspect, which is missing the point on the sources of inefficiencies. The project can't be using openALPR at its current level and it is hopeless to use it as a starting point to get decent accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER6> The first article points out the inefficiency and does a good job of replicating some basic functionality. It's basically saying "with this starting pointing, the performance is not as good, but we could probably make it a lot better without spending $86 mil"

IMO, this one is saying "I'm gonna push the starting point even further back and complain about someone making a suggestion about inefficiencies."

But that's the internet I guess.

<comment><USER7> A little digging seems to indicate that the author makes a living as an engineer whose livelihood relies on customers paying for solutions provided by the company he works for, so naturally it is offensive that someone would criticize inflated costs associated with a third-party, closed source solution to a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Two problems:

1\. You've shown the success of OpenALPR isn't perfect, but I'm sure the closed source alternative isn't perfect either. It might be better, but is it $86 million better?

2\. If we spent $86 million on developing OpenALPR, it would be an incredible product that everyone could use, without paying so much to the overhead of an executive structure.

<comment><USER3> To even begin to answer your question, you'd need to know what the project included besides the software that OpenALPR could theoretically replace. Like how much hardware has it bought? How much of that money went to paying police officers for time spent developing requirements, testing the prototypes, and learning the eventual system? How much of it went to the research needed to develop this system some five years before openALPR was available? How much went to paying the software developers a normal first world wage and benefits for five+ years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure you could make it realtime with more than 10x improvement:

Scan a thinner section of the video because the sky/ground is useless, and process every 10th frame.

<comment><USER10> This requires a vehicle to be right in front of the (police) car. Not very practical as most of the license plates you get to scan will be in other locations of the video - you know, since the car in front of you may be there the next 10 minutes whereas cars drive past you and are parked to the side all the time.

<comment><USER9> you could narrow it 1/3rd at least without really affecting results at all, then include the 10x improvement from skipping frames, since you really don't need that many. The world doesn't move that fast.

<comment><USER11> Actually, the world (the part of it you're interested in, i.e. the license plate) does move that fast, relative to the camera, in terms of pixels/s. You need 10fps for patrol car ALPR to work well.

Source: I've worked with ALPR for 7 years.

<comment><USER12> You just need a short exposure, blur is not related to framerate, it is related to exposure time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Original author of the original article this person is responding to. Saw this response earlier today which made me a bit sad, but mostly excited that people are having a crack at it themselves.

It's currently Father's Day here in Australia so I don't have a chance to respond right now. On the road all day.

I'll have to do a follow up next weekend, I'm absolutely flat chat both in and out of work at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whether the actual project is worth exactly $1 or $86 million is not the issue. Not even whether a $1/67 lines of code can replicate a $86 million project.

The real substance -- and the first posts hints at it -- is that government (and private sector) projects are more often than not many times more expensive than they should be.

Sometimes because they are overengineered (in 2005 it would be 200 Java programmers building a EJB/SOAP/XML monster that requires 10 workstations to run), other times just because they can (charge more). The same way health related projects and vendors can charge a ton for trivial stuff (even plain plastic syringes).

In many countries, it's also because the bigger the project, the more greedy intermediaries can get a bite.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't understand the hate that's being directed at this article. This author isn't the person basically said, "LOL. I'll string together some python in an afternoon and do it." This author tried to replicate the "How I replicated an $86 million project in 57 lines of code" article, and unsurprisingly came to the conclusion, "No, he didn't."

<comment><USER12> Well, YouTube-encoded video is a severe mistake and it was his assumption that this would be representative of video out of a commercial camera.

It is not.

The camera is also not calibrated. Text recognition does not work well on video whose distortion characteristics are not known.

I am not at all surprised that this is his result.

This morning I calibrated my dashcam and used OpenALPR to replicate this, and I got FAR better results than this blogger.

At the end of a 30-minute section of heavy traffic, I had many hundreds of license plates with 95% confidence or better. I do not have a way to verify the plates automatically, so I don't know how many of those are actually correct.

I filmed at 2560x1440 at 30fps.

<comment><USER15> And all of this is true of the original boastful post, but yet no one was suspicious of those results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> can't tell if incompetence or malicious.

everyone knows dashcam, even on 1080p, simple can't be used fir license plates! humans can't read most of them. specially after youtube compression! this is such a known fact that the more serious youtube reviews show a warning about all that before dashcam reviews.

</comment><comment><USER17> Often time the devil is in the detail.

</comment><comment><USER18> OpenALPR has a premium service ([http://www.openalpr.com/cloud- stream.html](http://www.openalpr.com/cloud-stream.html)). Has anyone tried it?

</comment><comment><USER19> I think this is a good case for why all government software should be open source.

How many police departments around the world are spending absurd amounts of money for this technology? It would make much more sense both cost and productivity wise to have one big project that anyone can improve on instead of multiple inferior projects.

Not to mention that all of this is paid for with taxpayer money, so it is reasonable for those same taxpayers to have access to the code.

<comment><USER20> Please join my campaign at [http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto](http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto) \- this is exactly why we want all government software to be open source

(Shameless plug)

<comment><USER21> i think there's some gov't contractors that survive off these inefficiencies. They will fight tooth and nail against OSS in gov't, and since they are often more connected, it's quite likely they can win.

<comment><USER22> Full disclosure: I'm one such contractor. We work with small and local government. Cities and counties mostly.

I personally don't have a problem with open source software and use it extensively outside of work. However, the big problem with it is technical support. If you are a government organization and the OSS you are using has a bug, who do you contact to get it hotfixed ASAP or find you workarounds?

That's one of the biggest advantages of commercial software: it is often sold with support contracts that entitle customers to certain levels of support, which can be critical to get things fixed and minimize downtime.

I know there are companies that focus on supporting OSS deployments, but from what I have seen in my own niche, they charge a ton of money that often surpasses what the equivalent commercial package would cost.

<comment><USER23> > Full disclosure: I'm one such contractor. We work with small and local > government. Cities and counties mostly.

...

>If you are a government organization and the OSS you are using has a bug, who do you contact to get it hotfixed ASAP or find you workarounds?

You, or someone like you, presumably?

<comment><USER24> That's a nice theory about OSS but it seldom works in practice. It can take a very long time for even experienced and skilled government contractors to learn enough about a code base to fix major defects. And even then there's no guarantee that the project maintainers will accept that patch into the mainline, so if they don't that puts you into configuration management hell. Governments need a "single neck to choke" along with some reliable assurances of support levels and time to resolution.

<comment><USER25> It seems to me that govt agencies could still pay contractors to build these things, just with the requirement to make them openly available as part of the contract.

If others step in to offer support contracts as well, great! Competitive environments for that would probably be good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much better it would work if either article specified the Australian training data that is included, instead I believe it is defaulting to the US set.

As for speed, there appears to be an OpenCL option that should be investigated.</comment>


Ask more of your phone: The Google Pixel 2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/new-pixel-2/ <comment><USER2> Ask for headphone jack.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15401973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15401973)

</comment><comment><USER4> Honestly I find the dual tone design ugly. Does anyone else find it ugly too ?

<comment><USER5> Looks like a hardware lab prototype case to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple's best camera ever spot didn't last very long</comment>


How I hacked Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.dataphoric.com/how-i-hacked-hacker-news/

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked at the data from 1.3 million Hacker News stories and found that _when_ a story gets submitted makes a _big_ difference (up to 172%). This article shows the analysis and results.

I used the official Hacker News API to get the stories using Python, and used R and ggplot2 to do the exploratory data analysis and plots.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would love to see a meta-analysis of the 'when to post on HN' articles to see if a) there's consistency, and b) if the stories themselves have skewed subsequent conclusions (i.e.: will everyone now post at 7:45 on Sunday morning?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely! The "success metric" will be different for different analyses, though, which would make that tough. The obvious choice is to look at the mean number of votes for stories submitted at different times. I looked at a binary condition instead: the fraction of stories which get more than N votes. This biases things less towards "super-star" stories which get tons of votes, and focuses on whether a story gets discovered at all.

There is a bunch of analysis I did behind the scenes to motivate this choose. I'll be posting the source code for my analysis, so it will be easy for anyone to critique and compare.</comment></comment>


Automatic for the Sheeple - <AUTHOR> https://trackchanges.postlight.com/automatic-for-the-sheeple-a8adaa3facac#.q6rzruror <comment><USER2> Never liked Peter Thiel. But now I know why.</comment>


Artificial Intelligence Might Solve the Security Skills Shortage - <AUTHOR> http://www.darkreading.com/operations/how-artificial-intelligence-will-solve-the-security-skills-shortage/a/d-id/1327756?piddl_msgid=324922&piddl_msgposted=yes#msg_324922 <comment><AUTHOR> I have to beg a revision to this analysis of AI as a solution to the InfoSec industry skills shortage. Point of fact, the skills shortage in cybersecurity is no longer about a lack of bodies performing any of the automated data mining and intrusion detection functions AI is currently able to do, and may advance further in years to come, but actually about human beings with the right skillset to do what AI can never do. We are looking at human beings who can not only intelligently leverage "tools" like AI, pentesting toolkits like Kali Linux, and the myriad hacking/cracking soft and hardware tools out there, but also to think like and counter Black Hat human threats with similar skillsets.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service published an insightful paper "2018 Security Outlook - Potential Risks and Threats". In this paper they acknowledge that the skills shortage in cybersecurity will continue to be unsolved. In fact, they predict such a growth in automated tools with decision-making and other AI attributes and there is an embedded warning in this outlook that we can not blindly trust everything these systems produce. We need human beings as hackers, as analysts, as overseers of the AI armies predicted for 2017-2018 or we will lose control of the cyberwars we are currently managing.

To sell current and predicted AI tech as a solution to the security skills shortage is to suggest the problem is something other than it is. And if we suggest that, when AI is improved and proliferated, there will be a mistaken sense of comfort among some in the industry, and especially among those who are not "in the know" that will actually do more to threaten InfoSec as an industry, and the actual safety and security of our systems, in that it will create a vulnerability in the widening of the security skills hole - the human factor.

We love our tools, we love AI and we love technology. It will never be a solution to the ever-growing shortage in qualified human hackers desperately needed to fill seats in InfoSec roles across the needy customer base. All new tech needs human monitoring and if the AI as anticipated here comes to pass, you will need yet another large body of human assets to make it successful.

<comment> purple-dragon Perhaps it's because I am involved in the security industry, but I struggled to find any substance or "thought-leadership" in this article. Your comment, on the other hand, was far more interesting and substantial—so thanks for that!

<comment><AUTHOR> Having worked in tech for as long as I have, and being able to apply some of that human element of foresight based on "gut feeling" to what I read, I see a lot of the same sentiment echoed out there among the InfoSec talents who are in the trenches. I'm not the only one who sees the InfoSec talent shortage as being about people. Add more tools, add more people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Please prove me wrong, but I fear that "AI security" means that if your behavior/usage pattern is different than anybody else's, you are automatically marked as suspect.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is something I've been thinking about more and more...

At what point will AI get "good enough" where the work to accommodate edge cases in human behavior is considered too expensive to implement?

Will it simply be more economically viable to expect those people to conform to the "standard" or else be selected out?

We already see this to some extent where so much energy for improving peoples lives and "changing the world" is built on the assumption that everyone has an Android/iOS smart phone with Wifi/4G/LTE data access and a Facebook/Google account.</comment></comment>


NewsBot: The fastest way to find related articles - <AUTHOR> https://getnewsbot.com <comment><USER2> That is really awesome! I really like the UI and the idea.

I am wondering... Is there a Lucene Index underneath?

There are "only" 200.000+ Articles, since when are you crawling?

and are these really "curated", as it states? Are you guys really reading/filtering everything by hand?

Thanks!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Tom! Max from Lateral here, we made the extension. We're using the Lateral API to recommend news, specifically the news recommender.

The news recommender pulls in content from various news sources RSS feeds and processes them so we can recommend them. So the curation is regarding the sources not the articles. We started collecting articles in November last year, there's actually over 330K now.

You can read a bit more about the news recommender here: [https://lateral.io/docs/text-matching/pre-populated- recommen...](https://lateral.io/docs/text-matching/pre-populated- recommenders#news)

<comment><USER4> Just checked out Lateral and it seems really cool. Just wondering what your monetization plan is. I'd like to use this for a site I develop at work, but wouldn't want you guys to suddenly announce exorbitant fees or shut down due to insufficient funding.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the interest!

We have a tiered subscription pricing based on the amount of calls being made and records being stored to recommend from. I'd be very happy to chat in more detail and to send over some additional information. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While thinking about this as a consumer, I didn't quite get it, as I don't remember wanting article recommendations, let alone _news_ article recommendations or wanting them enough to install an extension to provide such. But once I saw the Buffer integration, I realized that this may work well for content marketers. It was only after that that I noticed the "Follow the story" feature, which is much more useful for consumers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is an explanation of how it works: [https://blog.lateral.io/2015/07/newsbot-under-the- hood/](https://blog.lateral.io/2015/07/newsbot-under-the-hood/)

<comment><USER8> I think the main piece of puzzle is missing - how they are geting IDs of similar documents ?</comment></comment>


Opinion: Run from the hills: In a pandemic, big cities are islands of safety - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-run-from-the-hills-in-a-pandemic-big-cities-are-islands-of-safety/ <comment><USER2> I wonder which one the author lives in, big city or town? I would think most people feel safest where they live so I can understand why one would feel safer no matter where they call home.

I can also see how once herd immunity takes hold how you might think it is safer, but what a terrible price is required achive it.

I actually live outside a small town/city < 10K and can tell you people are taking this pandemic seriously. I live next to a highway and the amount of passenger vehicle traffic is down in my estimate 90%. I had to go into town yesterday to pick up a prescription and the streets were empty.

I think there may be some truth to the argument for greater public services being offered in big cities than small towns, including hospitals but what happens if during this pandemic another disaster occurs? Small towns and their citizens are generally prepared to spend long periods of time isolated from others because they don't have as many of the supports offered in large cities, this creates almost an immunity to dependence of these services.

When I lived in Vancouver we had a unusual cold snap and snow event and I watched the news as people were fighting over rock salt, others were hoarding it and price gouging their neighbours. It was no surprise when the toilet paper rush occured, these things are happening while the supply chain is still functioning, what would happen in Vancouver if an earthquake or major flood took out the transportation network?

Living in a herd is generally safer until things go bad, then you better hope your not one of the weak lest you get trampled.</comment>


AI used for first time in job interviews in UK to find best applicants - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/27/ai-facial-recognition-used-first-time-job-interviews-uk-find/ <comment><USER2> "The algorithms select the best applicants by assessing their performances in the videos against about 25,000 pieces of facial and linguistic information compiled from previous interviews of those who have gone on to prove to be good at the job."

How the hell is this supposed to be even remotely unbiased or have even a decent false negative rate? The things they're screening for are pretty much guaranteed to be artifacts of socioeconomic circumstances. Also, an actor would absolutely ace this test and also be a horrible employee because they have no actual competency for the job unless the job is talking to people on camera.</comment>


Controlling Gadgets with Google Home, IFTTT and Node-RED - <AUTHOR> https://webhookrelay.com/blog/2019/01/29/google-home-ifttt-node-red/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys, finally found some more use cases for Google Home besides being an over-engineered kitchen timer! :)</comment>


Global flight paths in pictures - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-22657086

<comment><USER2> I'm curious about one thing: Are these the _actual_ flight paths of planes, or are they lines drawn between destinations?

e.g. I thought that flights over the Atlantic travel via different routes depending on whether they are going east or west, to take advantage of the prevailing winds. Or maybe they just alter their height? Does anyone know?

A quick bit of web searching doesn't seem to give the answer to the data on these pictures; apparently they are from <http://openflights.org/> but it's not clear if that data is 'just' lines between destinations or the actual waypoints of the planes.

<comment><USER3> It looks more like shortest paths between airports. Actual flight paths of actual planes can be found at [0], e.g. [1], the path of the recently redirected Pakistan International flight.

[0] <http://www.flightradar24.com>

[1] <http://www.flightradar24.com/2013-05-24/13:06/PIA709>

<comment><USER4> Optimal flight paths can deviate significantly from the shortest path, as can be seen in this Boeing paper. [http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_0...](http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_03_09/article_08_1.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very similar to Aaron Koblin's work visualising the same thing from 2005: <http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/>

<comment><USER6> I thought the same thing. The big advantage of Aaron's work is that it mapped actual plane positions during flight instead of the (theoretical) straight path between two airports.

If you zoom in at one of Aaron's visualizations - especially close to an airport - you can see the redirects, loops and alternative approaches that the air traffic controllers directed planes to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Find it interesting that the flight paths naturally show outlines of the continents.

<comment><USER8> We find places near water more desirable, especially coastlines. A lot of big cities are on coastlines

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say more desirable, but definitely more accessible, especially during the times when most modern cities were founded or developed a special position among similarly sized villages and ships (either ocean-going or river boats) were the most natural means of transporting goods.

<comment><USER9> Places near water tend to have milder climates which humans definitely find desirable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Go to newairplane.com and click "flight tracker" for some awesome animated visualizations by Boeing

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmmm more flight paths to Hawaii than to any of southern Africa (or so it seems)

<comment><USER12> To some extent that's true, but the crowdsourced data probably exaggerates it (I suspect American leisure travellers are more likely to submit their flight details to an open source flight tracking project than Angolan businessmen). London to South African routes operated by multiple carriers are conspicuously missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> data comes from <http://openflights.org/>

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a bird over Europe

<comment><USER15> Oh yeah, so it does. Order from chaos!!!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Technologies to help prevent abuse of power? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Sousveillance. Does anyone honestly think that George Floyd's killer would have been charged if there wasn't a video recording from a bystander?

</comment><comment><USER3> Stop. There are no utopian technical solutions to human socio-econo-political problems. Please stop.

<comment><USER4> I think the question is about technologies that help to reduce the abuse of power, even if they don't prevent the abuse entirely.</comment></comment>


Scientists are making human-monkey hybrids in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614052/scientists-are-making-human-monkey-hybrids-in-china/ <comment><USER2> What in the actual fuck</comment>


This man is about to blow up mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://m.nautil.us/issue/45/power/this-man-is-about-to-blow-up-mathematics?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=471438ef1b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_02_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-471438ef1b-60848981 <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13712839](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13712839)</comment>


Is Software Eating the Useless Class? The Story of Marc Andreessen - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/software-is-eating-the-useless-class-c2b04461bb67 <comment><USER3> The cant of this article is kind of grossing me out. I don't disagree with the predictions of this, but I reject the notion of people as being "useless" because they can't interface with technology. Such a position is a paperclip maximizer ([https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)) of efficiency. There are other worthwhile things.

Are artists useless unless they can produce design? Are "idiot" friends who make us laugh but are generally low-achieving "useless"?

<comment><AUTHOR> They are economically useless - not useless as people. In fact, that's kind of the point. Here's a quote from Andreessen that highlights that potential:

"Imagine six, or 10 billion people doing nothing but arts and sciences, culture and exploring and learning. What a world that would be."

<comment><USER4> "Imagine six, or 10 billion people doing nothing but arts and sciences, culture and exploring and learning. What a world that would be."

This kind of reminds me of the people I've met that want to start a company, but don't seem to realize that 99% of it is going to involve tasks that are not fun or enjoyable.

For a successful society, we need people doing work that nobody else wants to do, so we have can have successful artists and people that want to explore.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think being a great scientist or artist revolves around doing repetitive tasks that aren't not fun or enjoyable. I believe people want to do difficult jobs, as long as they're meaningful.

<comment><USER4> True, but what about the jobs that aren't meaningful, but still need to be done? and what about the people that aren't capable of being an artist or a scientist?

<comment><AUTHOR> Any job that matters is meaningful. But that still leaves many working a bullshit job. That's no fun. As for people who aren't capable of becoming artists or scientists, which I think would be a small % of people, well I hope they have UBI and can live happily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> why do people need "jobs"? Does a person playing xbox and smoking weed all day not have the same value?

<comment><AUTHOR> Compared to the people creating art, furthering science, and improving our society?

<comment><USER5> yes. why is an individual's value tied to what he contributes in a close to post scarcity world?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If history has taught us anything, the problems that technology creates - <USER2> solves. What's the worry?

<comment><USER7> there's no worry for anyone working in tech</comment></comment>