The Part Where I Hack My GitHub Graph - <AUTHOR> http://www.skeptech.org/blog/2014/02/11/the-part-where-I-hack-my-github-graph/ <comment><USER2> The paragraph where the author describes losing interest after the "interesting part" describes how most of my free time projects go to the letter. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that problem.</comment>


No, "hacker" really does mean "hacker" - <AUTHOR> http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/08/no-hacker-really-does-mean-hacker.html

<comment><USER2> I think more than anything this shows that the media has always used the word "hacker" to have criminal connotations. As LouLang mentions, it was used earlier within small niches, but the it seems the earliest, and certain the majority uses of it, by press and anyone in the mainstream is negative.

Coming from the infosec side of things its still odd to me that developers use the term so much. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that the term was coined at MIT in the model railroad club.

<http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> The term hackers was used in the 50s, well before. The 1963 quote.

<comment><USER5> The article specified the first use of the term as applied to a criminal act, not just in general.

<comment><USER4> I think we read this sentence differently.

>>The earliest known use of "computer hacker" described a criminal act

I read it to mean that the earliest recorded use of the term computer hacker was when it was used to describe a criminal act, Where as you seem to have taken it to say the earliest recorded use of the term computer hacker in the context of a criminal act.

Given the context of the rest of the article, I think I am more correct.</comment></comment></comment>


A truly decentralised P2P Insurance - <AUTHOR> https://hack.ether.camp/#/idea/a-truly-decentralized-p2p-insurance <comment><USER2> How can Ethereum-based insurance products ever be competitive? For an insurance smart contract to work, all the money must be tied up in the contract (otherwise, there would be no way to guarantee that you could be paid out). But in the real world, insurers don't just leave their money sitting uselessly in a pot, they put it to work, investing it. So the smart-contract based insurance is always going to be less efficient...

<comment><USER3> That isn't necessarily true. You could buy "shares" in a contract. The contract then uses share capital to underwrite many insurance claims, and you're paid a monthly interest for owning the share capital.

I.e. the money then wouldn't be sitting idly, it could be used again and again to underwrite more contracts, up to the risk limit.

<comment><USER2> It's still less efficient than 'real world' insurance, which also pays out, but does not need the money to be locked away.

<comment><USER4> I don't see why Ethereum-based insurance contracts necessarily lock money.

For example, the contract could give another address the authority to take risks with some percentage of the deposits, or pretty much any other arbitrarily complicated setup.

<comment><USER2> If the money isn't available (i.e. locked up in some way by the contact), then the contract cannot guarantee to pay out, making its promises worthless.

If you have to rely on a human being to decide to pay out, then the smart contract part of the deal is pointless.

<comment><USER4> The address given authority to invest the insurance float doesn't have to be controlled by a human—it can represent some other arrangement, for example a stake-voting investment scheme.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter how many hops there are between the insurance contract and the money, if the cash isn't sitting idle on the blockchain, the insurance contract cannot guarantee to pay it out.

<comment><USER4> Just like how if an insurance company has invested part of its float in bonds, it cannot guarantee to pay for all losses simultaneously... right?

I'm trying to understand what you think is the essential difference between an Ethereum-based insurance scheme and a traditional insurance scheme in this respect.

<comment><USER5> I'd guess it's a combination of (i) there's a not unreasonable belief that a human (or a trading algorithm that evolves over time according to human input) can do a better job of managing an investment portfolio than an immutable "contract" algorithm (ii) insurance companies tend to be much larger and better diversified than an individual insurance contract on the blockchain (iii) insurance companies are often considered to be "too big to fail" by governments even when they do screw up...

For Ethereum-based smart contracts you can probably throw in (iv) Ethereum- based asset classes are riskier than many liquid investments available in dollars, and even if you can write your smart contract to seamlessly exchange the cryptocurrency float for nice, safe Federal Reserve bonds and convert back if and when more of that float is needed to pay claims, you've got more counterparty risk and exchange rate risk than carrying out the same trades purely in dollars.

<comment><USER4> I have a feeling that people tend to underestimate the role of "semi-trusted" actors in the future of cryptoeconomics.

In other words, I think that indeed most interesting applications won't be pure on-chain algorithms. The computational power is extremely limited. On- chain bookkeeping is extremely useful as a base layer, but the real intelligence will always have to come from elsewhere.

(For these reasons, many of my blockchain friends consider "smart contract" a pretty stupid catchphrase, preferring instead to talk about e.g. "dumb durable software objects".)

So, for example, consider an insurance contract structured as a "DAO", where some combination of stake and reputation translates to influence in investment decisions. Obviously there could be enormous problems with that, but it's also an interesting possibility, and I predict that such experiments will keep happening and we will learn more about collective decision-making etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How is e.g. the flight delay insurance decentralized? According to [1] it uses a traditional API to fetch the delay data, which very much sounds like a trusted 3rd party.

[1]: [http://medium.com/@skarpischek/youll-love-to-be-late-for- dev...](http://medium.com/@skarpischek/youll-love-to-be-late-for-devcon- two-e711bbe750c0#.bffjjtq0g)

<comment><USER7> I looked into this before. I just don't get it. There is definitely a trusted 3rd party in play which to me breaks the consensus model of having something decentralised. Maybe you can have many trusted 3rd parties and they all agree I don't know. But then insurance is a lot trickier than just paying out automatically when your flight is delayed. How do you even know the person took the flight. Maybe that doesn't matter. But lots of other questions probably do e.g. If we have a major event which delays worldwide flights would that bankrupt the insurance scheme. What capital must the decentralised insurance hold to be liquid. Who can recapitalise it if there's a black swan event. I am not against these decentralised models I just know there are a multitude of very difficult questions which insurance companies have already answered. P2P, decentralised and smart contracts can't be the answer alone?

<comment><USER8> I'm sceptical of Ethereum, but seems a bit too much to expect a proof of concept to include every nuance of current insurance theory. The question seems to be: is it impossible to model those problems using smart contracts? If not, it'll be done eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find a lot of the lingo that Ethereum uses to be crazy confusing. However the concept is appealing to distribute risk. It will only work though if there is an easily verifiable source of truth for what you are trying to distribute the risk for. For example if it was car insurance and you were trying to distribute accident risk there has to be a uniform and guaranteed way to say "this accident happened and it cost $5000". This is where the insurance company adjusters come in. You'd need infrastructure that isn't easily hacked that can guarantee a repair took place.

However for life insurance this might be possible. I think you can verify death 100% (or maybe not since there is probably fraud there as well).

Stuff like options on stocks and price can definitely be verified fairly easily.

</comment><comment><USER10> Any example that this would be useful and most of all actually applicable to real-world? The example of air flight delay is already done (see: [https://www.airhelp.com](https://www.airhelp.com) ) with much better payout.

The problem I see on such "presentations" is that they focus on abstract ideas instead of taking a pragmatic approach of how to actually make it usable on a real use-case outside of the experimental playground. Sorry for the rant but it's really disappointing to keep seeing ideas that immediately fall apart when they close to be actually implemented/used.

<comment><USER11> airhelp is one of many services which deal with compensation claims which are mandated e.g. by EU regulation and take a good cut of the payout for trying to make a really cumbersome process less bad. the customer experience of claiming compensation is in my opinion much worse than a fully automated payout and the whole process a real pain for both customers and airlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting concept but I struggle with the practical aspects. The reasons for central underwriting authority are clear...

1\. Economies of scale needed to deal with regulatory, dept. of insurance, etc.

2\. Economies of scale needed to administer policies

3\. Economies of scale needed to administer claims

4\. Expertise needed in pricing and actuarial

In an ethereum based true P2P system the individual is more or less self insuring and re-insuring their risk via an ethereum contract.

I think there's something worth paying for to be able to say a financial institution is covering you. I have a hard time believing the financial saving for an individual is worth the trouble. I also have a hard time believing the regulatory and administration needs are met without some staff supporting the contract.

</comment><comment><USER11> note that we just released a first demonstrator for devcon2 [https://fdd.etherisc.com](https://fdd.etherisc.com)

some more information on [https://medium.com/the-future-requires-more/youll- love-to-be...](https://medium.com/the-future-requires-more/youll-love-to-be- late-for-devcon-two-e711bbe750c0)

and some discussion on reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/529o5p/flightdela...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/529o5p/flightdelay_dapp_one_of_the_first_fullfledged/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for sharing, see you in Shangai!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you guys hope to have an limit order-book for this you may find yourself running into serious limitations with ethereum. Storage related operations are expensive. A frequently transacted market would make the costs prohibitive.

</comment><comment><USER14> How does a system like this detect and cope with insurance fraud?

<comment><USER3> ... by limiting it to events that can be reliably determined. E.g. was the plane late or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Create a lending system without requiring collateral from the borrower using this for risk mitigation on the lending side and you will conquer the world.

<comment><USER16> can you elaborate? wouldn't "this" be collateral since funds are tied up in a smart contract?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's stopping someone putting a lot of money on an insurance policy then calling in a fake bomb threat on the plane? Pretty low risk way to make money from anywhere in the world.

<comment><USER11> the total amount of payouts per flight is limited as well as premiums and individual payouts. there is a non-negligible legal risk of such action and the payout limits in the end will converge to the price of the risk someone is going to take.

<comment><USER17> The legal risk is zero for someone who is out of the jurisdiction of the US completely (eg in some developing country).

Ironically, your system is meant to help compensate people when delays to flights occur yet to me it looks like you've built something that strongly incentivises people to cause _more_ disruption to flights.

<comment><USER11> also note that there is an easy workaround to limit this which essentially is the difference between a bet and an insurance: check if the user has a valid ticket for the flight.

<comment><USER17> I'm not well versed in Ethereum, but this sounds like creep towards the solutions we already have today.

<comment><USER11> I think the design space is much larger than what we have today, and blockchain applications surely have interesting features it might be worth exploring in that space.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why American men are getting less marriageable - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-american-men-are-getting-less-marriageable-2018-1 <comment><USER2> Looking at this from another perspective:

As a modern woman who makes good money, I'd be comfortable in theory with marrying a man who makes far less than I do.

The problem with that in practice is gender roles in marriage. It's still the norm for women to be responsible for the lion's share of cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. Even in the marriages with the most "woke" husbands I see among my friends, the wife almost always ends up both doing more and spending more mental energy on the home.

That means that for men, marriage lightens the burden of (for lack of a better term) managing life, leaving more time and energy for career. For women it's the opposite. This is the primary reason IMO why marriage is a good deal for both parties if the breadwinner makes more than the homemaker. It's just that men who are willing to be the homemaker are vanishingly rare. And if both are breadwinners, almost invariably the homemaking burden falls more heavily on the wife.

That means that from a practical (as opposed to a romantic) perspective, marrying a man who makes significantly less than me is liable to be an enormous burden. Why would I want to support a man both economically and practically?

Yes, there are some men out there who would make the fair trade and do more of the homemaking if I were the primary breadwinner. There are also a bunch who say they'd be willing to do it, but aren't aware of what that fully entails and aren't willing to put in the emotional investment. (See [1] and [2]). There are also more of those men in younger generations in general; and the ones who exist in my generation are likely to be already married - and happily so. So I'll stay single - and happily so.

The solution, in my opinion, would be to continue to erase traditional gender roles. If most of the men out there were ready to take on the homemaker role enthusiastically, I would be far more willing to consider them as partners even if they make a fraction of what I do.

<comment><USER3> > The solution, in my opinion, would be to continue to erase traditional > gender roles. If most of the men out there were ready to take on the > homemaker role enthusiastically, I would be far more willing to consider > them as partners even if they make a fraction of what I do.

The solution is not merely one sided. Women must also be willing to 'give up' those roles.

Say what you will about men stepping up but my ongoing experience in a marriage with the woman as the bread winner and me as the home maker (with kids) is that my wife puts herself under a lot of 'self' pressure to be the classic mum (baking, cleaning, ironing, washing whatever). She also receives a ton of pressure from her mother and from her friends, intended or perceived it doesn't really matter, to maintain the 'mum to the kids and running the house' meme.

Believe it or not we've had stand up arguments about her _not_ doing the washing and ironing and leaving it to me, because she just can't let it go. The most recent one is wrestling control of the kitchen from her, not in the sense of shutting her out but letting me in. Even food purchasing, I began to solely do that last year but New Year, New Resolutions has brought a return to the 'we'll eat healthily, I'll cook every evening and bake at the weekend' pantomime. Despite the fact we already ate great food and she's away with work for at least 1 week in 6 _and_ the weekly late evenings still in work or day trips away for conferences/meetings.

All this might sound like one big complaint but really it's just to illustrate that it takes both sides to change in order to actually affect change.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps its because my wife is a commercial litigation lawyer - but we've ended up having a fairly firm "contract" as to who does what in our household. She shops, I cook. She cleans some parts of the house, I clean others. We both look after our own clothes. Just about everything has a clear demarcation and, in general, we do the bits we like (or at least dislike least).

This has survived 27 years and kids so far.... :-)

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'll be after you for that contract soon :-)

We've developed a bit of a different style where I'm her 'safety net' for the things she still puts pressure on herself to do. Like washing/ironing and cooking. Cleaning has mainly been resolved and we do what's needed when needed. House organisation/upkeep is mine, all critical kids care is mine.

But everything else we pretty much just communicate with each other. That seems to have been the key to success so far.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if that's enculturated from how she was raised or could be our remaining societal pressures/expectations of women (her friend group?) at work despite rhetoric otherwise?

<comment><USER3> I asked her - it's both.

<comment><USER5> Ah, yeah, there we go I guess. I know as a unmarried straight, white male that expectations are pretty low for me but married women (esp. with kids) seem to be in a catch-22 with all this. The Guardian had a series of articles a while back talking with women about careers and parenthood. It takes a lot of energy to fight against stuff you grew up with as well as conscious or unconscious societal forces.

There's also the factor of having done one thing a certain way for a long time, getting a little possessive of it or thinking it's better. "Well, if you do it like this...". :-/

At least y'all are talking about it and you seem to be concerned with having a good balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article goes into one of the issues with masculinity, that of a Provider. However, there are two other aspects that are also critically important in the marriage markets: Protector and Procreator (the 3 P's, in total). These aspects of manhood are fairly universal among cultures and throughout time (many excerpts have been studied, but more serve to prove the rule). It is important to remember that for most males manhood is a continually earned trait, whereas in females womanhood is largely inherent. This means that most males can 'loose' manhood and return to boyhood in the eyes of society. Often this is lumped into the concept of 'honor' (though things really get messy now). The article mostly focuses on the provider role and the interface with money and the decline of 'blue collar' jobs. It would be instructive to also look into the roles of protector that men may not be fulfilling (due possibly to opiod use, obesity, etc) and the procreator role as well (obesity again, other environmental sterilizers, etc) to get a full view of the problems many young people are facing.

A good introduction on the 'universal' traits of manhood can be found here: [https://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/03/31/the-3-ps-of- manhoo...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/03/31/the-3-ps-of-manhood-a- review/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting article. It is suggesting there is a smaller supply of marriageable men.

On the demand side, we are also seeing more and more educated, career focused women.

I feel like there are many who have a desire to have children and therefore would like to marry someone who can support them. Typically this means marrying a man who earns more than you. The thing is if you're a women, the more you earn, the smaller the marriageable pool becomes.

<comment><USER8> Which means there is more demand for upper educated men since they are in demand by both educated and uneducated women.

As another commented has suggested this might not be an issue when gender roles get removed, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this will just leave both parties unsatisfied with the result.

I would argue that innate biological differences contribute to the different gender based desires, and hence affect the different gender roles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is rising equality in effect. The path to financial independence has opened up to average American women over the past 40 years. Marriage rates falling suggest that American women tend to exhibit (or feel pressured to follow) hypergamous tendencies.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looking at people I know and people I've dated, employability seems like the least interesting thing to women.

<comment><USER11> That's factually not true, women rarely date down. Women, on average, prefer slightly older men, equally or more educated then themselves, more successful than themselves financially, in good physical shape, dominant/aggressive.

That's why we always hear "where did all the good men go?" from women, even though they are surrounded by guys who throw themselves at the women.

So since more women and fewer men started going to college, the dating pool for women shrunk a lot.

Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson is famous for talking about these issues on YouTube, highly recommended.

<comment><USER12> _That 's factually not true, women rarely date down_

I call shenanigans. A guy will no prospects and a guitar will never be wanting for interest. It's a cliche for a reason. Now this guy may not be husband material, but the criteria was "date"...

<comment><USER13> This cliche is successful because it's an instance of lekking [0], giving more freedom for female choice.

In this arena the status markers may be different from individual evaluation (with some general markers shared).

It's pretty common to notice that women who like guys with long hair in a band and women who like 'successful' (whatever that means) men are not usually the same, just different selection criteria at work.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Marital status used to be a thing. Pressure to get married may not only come from your partner, but your family, friends and even strangers. Plus, divorce was frowned upon a lot and shamed. That's not the case anymore.

If people want to get married, then do it. It's not for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is ... some very complicated intersection of economics, politics and morals. I see opinions drawn from an unorthodox sample of an unorthodox community and fixes to problems that haven't really been defined.

The topic is delicate, but the comments here have, unusually, not satisfied my interest in the slightest. There is an interesting debate on something here, but the parameters of the question are poorly articulated.

How is a community supposed to gauge the importance of even the opening questions raised by this article? Do we care more about securing the next generation? Creating a world where women get first pick of the role they will fill? Judging the value of marriage as an institution? Whining about how men/women have it tough?

The structure of families have fundamental and far reaching demographic consequences. It is important at a clash-of-civilisations level and can make or break cultures. It'd be pleasing to have a language to talk about that without resorting immediately to anecdotes and solutions.

</comment><comment><USER16> So if I read the article correctly, the average American male has lost his job due to economic forces as well as gender equality, but it's also his fault and his responsibility to change. Seems fair.

<comment><USER17> Yep. Doesn't have to be fair, though - it's more important to deal with the world as it is and take control of what you can than see who should be blamed or pass responsibility.

<comment><USER16> I Agree. However, I'm not the average American male. It seems to me like 'he' is getting a bit of a raw deal while simultaneously being blamed for everything these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > They reference recent results from the World Values Survey, where > respondents were asked how much they agreed with the claim that, "If a woman > earns more money than her husband, it's almost certain to cause problems."

That sounds a bit to me like a push poll. I wonder if you phrased the question in a gender-neutral way how the responses would change.

<comment><USER9> A marriage isn't comprised of gender-neutral actors.

<comment><USER18> Sure. The question as phrased is pretty suggestive though. I wouldn't be surprised if you asked that question, and the reverse question, and a gender- neutral version of the question, you would get results that look contradictory.

Really, you would have to ask just one question to each individual, because I suspect if you asked all three questions you would get different responses than if you only asked one. I'm not denying the effect, just that I think the question is leading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the job/economy weights much less then the fact that marriage gives absolutely zero benefits for men in western society and implies a lot of risks.

<comment><USER20> AFAIK marriage does give enormous significant breaks in most western societies.

<comment><USER21> Does it? I'm about to get married in the UK and I cannot name a single break that we will get while married. I think you can transfer some of your tax-free allowance to your spouse, but only if one of you makes less than 10k/year, so with both of us working there is no benefit here.

It's slightly easier to get a large loan or mortgage as a married couple, but it's not exactly impossible if you just live together as partners.

The way I see it, it's an absolutely enormous expense with almost zero financial/economical benefit for us. I love my partner and want to get married because I think that's the right thing to do, but if I looked at it outside of the "romantic/traditional" angle, there is absolutely no reason to get married.

<comment><USER22> In the UK, the most important benefits are - sadly - to do with death. If you die intestate, then the presumption is that everything is left to your spouse. Similarly with your pension, a premature death would see the pension transfer automatically to the person you married. That's not always the case with partners.

You also benefit from spousal privilege, meaning you can't be compelled to testify against the other. Although, depending on your criminal inclinations, that may not be a strong reason to get married!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Make the Switch to Posterous - <AUTHOR> http://blog.posterous.com/make-the-switch-to-posterous

<comment><USER2> _Every day for the next 15 days, we'll add a new platform from which you can import your old content into Posterous._

Neat marketing! /sits back to await 2 weeks of 'Posterous adds xxx' HN posts

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand the desire to dominate the market, but isn't it a bit much to call other platforms "dying"?

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently started my first Posterous blog and so far I am a big fan, though I would like the founders to answer the very first question posted in the comments:

"Um. And… what about simple ATOM import/export? The standard way to do all this stuff, I believe. "

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't quite get this. It seems to conflict with their existing import and offers a different set of services to import from.

If you have an account, you can import from Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress (even a self-hosted Wordpress, Movable Type, Xanga).

If you go to the URL at the link above (<http://posterous.com/switch>), it allows you to import from Tumbler, Ning.

I'm assuming they will ultimately be the same set of services.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very nice! I just switched our company blog to posterous a few days ago. The setup was a breeze, adding contributors was simple, and posting-via-email is just oh so nice.

Only thing I'm not a fan of is the theme editor is kind of slow if you're doing your own HTML, but that's understandable at this time.</comment>


The Illusion of Certainty - <AUTHOR> https://app.spectator.co.uk/2020/04/22/the-illusion-of-certainty/content.html <comment><USER3> This essay asks the question, _why_ are larger organizations so _bad_ at performing feats of brilliance most of the time?

The author sees two obstacles. One is what he calls _" the boredom threshold:"_ The creative individuals who _could_ perform those feats quickly get bored with the mind-numbing minutia of bureaucratic processes at larger organizations and leave.

The second obstacle is _" the illusion of certainty:"_ Conventional operational improvements, cost-cutting efforts, legal reorganizations, etc. can easily be 'proven' to work in advance, but more interesting lines of inquiry come with career-threatening unknowability. Many bureaucrats and businesspeople, the OP argues, are attracted to the illusion of certainty.

Quoting from the OP: "If you engage engineers, you don't know what you are going to get. You may be unlucky and get nothing. Or their solution may be so outlandish that it is hard to compare with other competing solutions. On average, though, what you get will be more valuable than the gains produced by some tedious restructuring enshrined in a fat PowerPoint deck. But in business, let alone in government, it is only in crises that people find a budget for probabilistic interventions of this kind."

The essay concludes that "one reason why the world is in a mess is because, for a long time, the ratio between 'explore' and 'exploit' has been badly out of whack. Entities like procurement have been allowed to claim full credit for money-grabbing cost-savings without commensurate responsibility for delayed or hidden costs."

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the overview. For those like me who mostly visit HN for the comments, a ~concise summary like this is helpful. Upvoted to counteract the (imho aggressive) down.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I found the essay persuasive, even if (as others here have mentioned) the anecdote about Formula 1 teams is not entirely convincing.

The essay is about much more than that one anecdote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with his opening statement: "Formula 1 teams have been able to design, prototype and manufacture essential health equipment incredibly quickly"

As far as I can see they have done none of these things and are only helping in providing manufacturing capability [1]. The ventilator they are helping to manufacture is an iteration on a previous design made by a medical specialist Penlon [2].

Not that there is anything bad with that strategy: experts in a given field are the experts so best to use the medical expertise of one company and the rapid batch production capabilities of companies like Formula 1 teams. Racing teams often have to turn components around for an update at the next grand prix e.g. 1 - 2 weeks. This means having processes and suppliers that can operate at that fast pace.

[1] [https://www.inceptivemind.com/penlon-prima-eso2-newly- adapte...](https://www.inceptivemind.com/penlon-prima-eso2-newly-adapted- ventilator-design-gets-approved-uk/12781/) [2] [https://www.penlon.com/](https://www.penlon.com/)

<comment><USER6> This story supports that opening statement:

"The [University of Southampton & NIHR] researchers worked alongside F1 team McLaren and industry experts including INDO and Kemp Sails to come up with the design, which is now available as open-source to be manufactured around the world.

[https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-23/hospital-first-to- widely...](https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-23/hospital-first-to-widely-use- new-respirator-hoods-to-protect-covid-19-medics/)

<comment><USER5> In this case, a prototype (which is probably worse than existing PAPRs [powered air-purifying respirators]) is demonstrated. It certainly hasn't been manufactured and the Formula 1 team involvement looks to be just of the design of a few components for 3D printing [1].

[1] [https://engrxiv.org/rvcs3/](https://engrxiv.org/rvcs3/)

<comment><USER7> I'm completely ashamed by the level of b.s. and failure exhibited by Western companies during the corona crisis.

We'd be better off if they just admitted the failure so we can move on to the next step, rather than be distracted by utter b.s.

The reality is even if some science-project ventilator was made, no hospital would approve its use. But we knew that in advance, before the b.s. even started.

And we've known since Jan. that ventilators kill their patiences 66% to 90% or more often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> F1 teams making ventilators is probably a pretty bad example. I bet these ventilators are very expensive, hard to maintain and have probably a lot of little problems. I work in medical devices and if there is one thing I have learned it's that there is a big difference between having something that works somehow and something that's ready to be produced and maintained in the long run. I agree that big companies tend to stifle innovation but they are also very optimized and there is a lot of invisible work that has to go into achieving that state.

I see the same in software. We sometimes have interns whip up some system that on the surface looks good and innovative and makes the old timers look bad and unimaginative. But once you try to deploy them they usually fall apart because they ignored some inconvenient real world details.

<comment><USER9> > I see the same in software. We sometimes have interns whip up some system > that on the surface looks good and innovative and makes the old timers look > bad and unimaginative. But once you try to deploy them they usually fall > apart because they ignored some inconvenient real world details.

You've criticized the article but ended up reaching essentially the same conclusion. Having interns spin up a new feature which can later be tidied up and put into production is a great use of time. Interns are cheap, less busy, see things that more jaded people may not, and are liable to be less risk averse too. If you take what the interns build and put it directly into production, that's on you, but the interns may be able to get you 80% of the way there in half the time.

<comment><USER8> "get you 80% of the way there in half the time."

From my experience they don't. Either it gets thrown away or the cleanup requires as much or more even more work than if experienced people had done it from scratch.

Edit: I am not saying there is no value in work from newcomers but I think it's often overrated. They usually do the easy part but finishing it takes much more work than people think.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, interns are extremely expensive and anyone who thinks that they are cheap labor is not aware of the day to day details. Only reason to ever have interns is if you want to give back to the community and grow your senior talent. You might end up with some loyal developers that know your stack, but I wouldn't bank on it. They certainly have no place in an early stage startup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why one team can create a project during a 2-day hackathon, while it takes a year to finish professionally?

(Game, chat app, anything.)

Well, large organizations have overhead for communication, management, etc (see v). But also there is a statistical effect - if we get many, many shots - sometimes we get lucky (in most cases - not; think of a typical hackathon project - usually it never gets properly started). So, in short, we see a huge survival bias.

...and it takes time to polish rough edges. For example, game Superhot started as a hackathon demo (with a single scene). It took Kickstarted crowdfunding, and a year of work to turn in into a fully-fledged commercially-viable game. (Personally, I think it is one of the most creative game ideas in the last years, especially for VR. I am happy that I crowdfunded it. :))

<comment><USER12> well 99/1 rule... 99% of the product (visible bits) comes from 1% of the effort... but 99% of the effort and cost is required to deliver the last 1% of difficult soul crushing detail to get it done. The reason is that we optimize, align and facilitate organizationally the 99% because it's common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is also why the evolution of multicellular creatures has (meta-)evolved to proceed by discrete generations (birth & senescence) and Darwinian rather than Lamarckian inheritance.

Otherwise you over-adapt (overfitting) and lose the reservoir of variability required to cope with extraordinary circumstances.

Gregory Bateson describes it in one of his essays, I haven't had enough coffee yet but if you're interested bug me and I'll go look up which one. (It's in "Steps to an Ecology of Mind" or "Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity" IIRC.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this, having seen it in operation so many times. Accountants promoted to senior managers whose only way of increasing profits is to trim the costs, reducing all flexibility and removing any resilience from the organisation. Good ideas for new stuff getting veto'd because they're "risky" (risky to the management bonus if they fail).

</comment><comment><USER15> The last 3 paragraphs talk about explore/exploit ratio in bee colonies - <USER2> bees "exploit" what others found, small number of bees "explore" new grounds.

We do exactly the same. We exploit in the times of plenty and explore when the going get tough. The same evolutionary forces act on us as a society as on the bees, so it is unfair to say that bees know better than us how to get that ratio right.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- armed_bandit#Optimal_sol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi- armed_bandit#Optimal_solutions)

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the point he's making is some groups (currently too many?) outweigh certain costs compared to uncertain benefits— limiting innovation. It's along the lines of "nobody ever got fired for recommending IBM." I don't think it generalizes beyond the single organization level well considering all the money going into venture capital as of late. And I don't see it at Apple/Alphabet/Microsoft/Amazon where some of the world's largest companies continue to innovate and pivot. But, you do see it in terms of Berkshire Hathaway's investment strategy (which interestingly includes investments in Apple), which is exceedingly conservative by some measures. But part of that is because Buffet is risk-averse (which is different than uncertainty-averse).

I think the article stops short of saying how we would know enough resources are being put into innovation. And for that, I have no idea either.

<comment><USER14> Apple/Alphabet/Microsoft/Amazon are innovating?

Mostly they seem to be acquiring smaller companies that have come up with interesting ideas.

Apple, especially, appears to be churning out annual updates on a product line that is not changing at all (I'm not blaming them, they're making more money than god, but still).

And pivoting? I guess Alphabet's "it didn't go viral in the first two years so we're dropping it" strategy could be thought of as pivoting, but not really.

<comment><USER16> Apple created the iPhone 13 years ago. Then Macbook Air a year later, the iPad line and so on. The A13 processor is the fastest mobile processor in widespread use, as was the A12 when it was launched. Do you really expect a company to innovate every single year? Google/Alphabet created K8s seven years ago, Glang, Android, and consistently refines its cloud platform. Its search and advertising platform is very effective and gives enormous value to its customers, even if it's not the "strictly do no evil" innovation of yore. Amazon has grown to enormous scale, innovating along its supply chain and AWS. Microsoft created Azure in almost no time, supports Linux on its own operating system and has embraced JavaScript and has some open source projects. I think, if you remember the Microsoft of 10 years ago (software-only, bitterly proprietary), that's quite a pivot.

<comment><USER17> > _Do you really expect a company to innovate every single year?_

I'd say a company as large as Apple would need to innovate hundreds or thousands of times per year, to be comparable to a small startup, in innovativeness per person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Digit-Al >One problem with this pretence of certainty is that cost-savings are more easily quantified than potential gains — so business and government are increasingly geared towards providing people with more, poorer things at an ever-lower price. Yet much evidence suggests that people like fewer, better things at a slightly higher price.

I would dispute that paragraph. The popularity of "Primani" is proof that there are plenty of people like to be able to buy a larger range of cheap stuff. The number of times I've heard female friends, on being complimented on a garment, say "and it was only a fiver", or "10 quid at Primark".

I would say there's plenty of both types in this world. Those who prefer quality over quantity, and those who don't.

<comment><USER18> Fashion isn't the best example for this, because often people are paying for prestige more than quality. A $3,000 purse isn't 100X as good as a $30 purse; the exclusivity of a brand that expensive is the attraction. People who opt- out of this competition however, may instead brag about what savvy shoppers they are.

There is a relevant theory in economics called "the market for lemons" that speaks to what you are saying though. The idea is this: if someone is trying to buy a washing machine as cheaply as possible, they would rationally pick an $1000 machine that lasts 15 years over a $500 machine that lasts 5. The problem, however, is that the consumer often can't tell if the expensive machine is really better quality, or just going for a higher markup. With that uncertainty, it is safer to buy the cheap machine. Manufacturers know this, so they compete on price and features more than longevity. Without a time machine, consumers can't see if the extra money they spend is worth it, so cheap crap is the equilibrium for the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To quote: _No one ever got fired for buying IBM._

If you're working for a large, bureaucratic organization, producing a radically different solution can be a career-limiting move, even if it's a success and the problem is quite important. (Or perhaps especially if it's quite important.)

<comment><USER17> > _a radically different solution can be a career-limiting move, even if it 's > a success_

Why / how can that happen?

<comment><USER19> Typically politics, turf wars, etc. If you succeed quickly at something someone with pull has been working on unsuccessfully for a while, you can easily end up with a powerful enemy or just plain fired.

In the real world, getting things done is not your job. _Your job is to make your boss look good to his boss._ In reasonably functional organizations, the former is aligned to the latter. But they are hardly the rule.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for explaining and the examples

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> :fire:

Two things:

      1. From my own personal experience, I think the observations here are _accurate_
      2. I really appreciate that is article offers an implicit good-side to tough time. That is, success in tough times is made by ditching safe behavior</comment>


Ask HN: Beginner Pyramid Tutorials - <AUTHOR>

I'm relatively new to learning python and programming in general though I have been learning python for a bit(2 months or so). I was looking around and there doesn't seem to be any newbie friendly materials out there for learning Pyramid. So if anyone has a link to any tutorials or such, I would really appreciate it (preferably free). <comment><USER2> This is also a nice one: [http://www.serverzen.net/2010/11/8/getting-started- with-pyra...](http://www.serverzen.net/2010/11/8/getting-started-with-pyramid- a-notes-application)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/dev/#tutorial...](http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/dev/#tutorials)

has a few. Remember that Pyramid is BFG + some Pylons niceties added, so, BFG Tutorials can sometimes be a good pointer.

IRC, <http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss> are also good resources for pointers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the resources guys.</comment>


Kent State shootings - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings <comment> wu-ikkyu This was one of many such killings/assassinations which ultimately crushed the momentum of the civil rights and anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's, and with it went the dream of a real democracy.</comment>


Ask HN: I feel that my submissions are severely underrated. What to do? - <AUTHOR> During the last 90 days I submitted 4 stories. None gathered even a single point, although they were moderately successful on Reddit. My submissions happened at a good time, had descriptive titles and similar submissions gathered significant more traction. Maybe not all of them are prefect for the HN audience but they were all high quality and the result was as surprising as disappointing. Am I doing something wrong besides not making my friends vote?<p>Fore reference: Here are the submissions:<p>- Yesterday: Show HN about a font comparison tool I wrote. Was on r/programming front page for almost an entire day. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9957472<p>- A webGL visualization of a diffusion process. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9605938<p>- An article (IPython Notebook) about generating a gauss-distributed number range. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9499845<p>- An article (IPython Notebook) about the 2D Ising model and a program I wrote about to solve it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9546872 <comment><USER2> >What to do?

Stop caring about your internet popularity points? (And it don't mean that in a snarky way.)

While I realize many people view HN as an an advertising media for their personal "brand", I prefer to think of submissions as a _gift_ to the community that doesn't require their validation or thank-you.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's all about popularity or branding.

The community does suffer when genuinely interesting stories slip through /newest without getting any attention.

If we can do anything about it, I think we should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Am I doing something wrong besides not making my friends vote?

No, you're not doing anything wrong, I've found HN to be very hit or miss. As other commenters have pointed out the first few votes (in <30min) are the ones that matter most. If you can get 4+ you have a chance of being on the first few pages of HN and from there it's truly up to the content before that... Luck.

I've posted blog posts (of mine) before and had them do quite well (top 5 or better on front page) and other on other interesting topics (like "My experience with Coin and why it will ultimately fail" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9929531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9929531)) not get a single vote (though I have seen a jump in page visits after submitting). All of that said I would suggest against trying to get friends to vote on your posts as you could get (shadow) banned for running a "voting ring" even though 4-6 votes would allow your post to compete (It's hard to resist I know).

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem of good stories not escaping /newest is real. There is a bit of sample bias in your question, though. Your two submissions before those four did ok: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881488) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8589671). Two out of six doesn't sound as bad as zero out of four.

Arguably those two were more appealing HN submissions than the subsequent four. The font post and the WebGL demo are both the sort of thing users have seen a lot of, and the other two were pretty specialized. But there's so much randomness in what gets traction that it's impossible to know for sure.

To mitigate this randomness, a small number of reposts are ok when a story hasn't had significant attention yet. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html), plus a recent discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818). But please don't delete an earlier submission in order to repost it. Instead just use a slightly different URL to get past the duplicate detector.

Titles may make a difference. I think [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9546872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9546872) buried the lede: "Algorithms, physics and pictures from the Ising model (ipynb and c++ program)" isn't as clear as the article's actual title: "Magnets: How do they work? Exploring the 2D Ising model". Not everyone knows what the Ising model is, but everybody loves magnets. Similarly, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9605938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9605938) should at least have had "Show HN" on it, and maybe could have been clearer.

</comment><comment><USER6> HN has a very limited amount of front page area and the new page scrolls by insanely fast. Depending on the number of spammers active when you submit you might not even be on the homepage for more than 15 minutes. So if you want to help out then I suggest visiting the new page frequently, upvoting the good stuff (keep an eye out for dupes, and remember to check pages 2 and 3 as well) and flagging spam, those are the biggest factors in getting quality content noticed and not doing these things by enough people are a major factor in good content being lost.

How to spot a spammer...

It's a bit of a Bayesian approach but these factors help me to decide whether to flag content or not:

\- new account

\- no comment participation (or maybe just a 'test' comment)

\- first link posted within seconds of account creation

\- low quality content

\- always submitting the same domain

\- re-submitting the same url over and over again

\- many submissions per day

If it's a 'mild case' then I flag the entry, if it is more serious (10+ submissions in a relatively short time for instance) then I mail the moderators.

</comment><comment><USER7> I once got an email from one of the HN mods asking me to re-submit one of my posts (w/ a new URL) that they noticed didn't get the amount of attention it was worth. They said a re-submit function might be implemented for worthy posts which deserve more attention if their test works out.

<comment><USER8> Oh, that's why I see duplicate posts on /news... I'll have to filter them out.

<comment><USER5> What duplicate posts are these? Considering how much diligence goes into identifying duplicates—both by us and by community-spirited users—I'm skeptical that many last for long.

The vast majority of articles we invite people to repost never made the front page in the first place. That's why we're inviting them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are 25 links on /new, the oldest being 27 min ago. So your post has 27 minutes to gather the attention of enough people (7-8 upvotes is OK) to actually surface to the frontpage. This is not a lot fo time, especially for IPython Notebooks which need time to be read/appreciated. Maybe reddit is the community you need :/

<comment><AUTHOR> I can agree only partially. That's basically similar to the problem that imageposts are vastly more popular than anything else on reddit etc. But HN does have a huge focus on quality posts and takes big measures to ensure that. Also the notebooks were with many colorful pictures (and even videos!), and that even applies only to the two least relevant submissions.

<comment><USER9> you're right, but HN is so focused that there is only one /new page, so the competition is brutal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I noted that even when a submission doesn't get any comments on HN or any upvotes - I still get 6 to 10 referral hits on a story I published on my blog. Of course I would hope that people might become engaged enough to comment or upvote on HN but I am at least moderately pleased that I got some kind of visit out of posting on HN.

<comment><USER11> That's true for me as well. I try and follow a policy that if the title is curious enough to get me to click it (which only works because people are good here about not posting clickbait), I will give it an upvote as long as the article isn't complete trash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Welcome to the club.

It's a lottery. You submit an article -- an if enough people in a narrow niche are online at that exact time, read the article, and come back and vote? You're in the game.

It's not a meritocracy. Not even close. If you like submitting, keep it up! I do. But don't expect any feedback, positive or negative, unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> "It's not a meritocracy. Not even close."

In one sense, but in others it kinda is. It's really a mixture. It has to be both good _and_ lucky.

"Total crap" implies "will not make front page", but the converse is not true. "Will not make the front page" doesn't really imply _anything_ , much less "total crap".

Or so I see it, having had several articles make the front page and others that seemed to me to be of equal (or in some cases, greater) interest sink without a trace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> HN has a bit more diverse mix of users than r/programming, including a healthy amount of non-technical or semi-technical people, so my suggestion would be giving some context to the project in a blog post rather than only linking to the github page might help.

The day and time of your post submission also has an enormous weight on what makes it to the front page. Great article about this from a few years back: [http://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-to-post-on- hacker-...](http://silverman.svbtle.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker-news)

</comment><comment><USER15> The first few votes are the crucial ones. Once you have those, your submission has enough visibility that it will get a fair shake based on its quality.

The problem is those first few votes are essentially random. You can't do anything about it. Just keep submitting.

</comment><comment><USER16> Those sound very interesting to me. I wish I'd seen them, and I'm going to go visit your 2nd and 4th links right now.

HN just has a lot of traffic all going through one main view. Unless a submission proves that the government is taking away (and/or restoring) our anonymity/privilege/guns/lisp/java/bitcoins, it's pretty hard to get shelf space.

Regarding rating ... except for submissions optimized purely for popularity, I don't think upvotes are a "rating" at all. I could easily see Marcus Aurelius getting four upvotes and Caligula getting 500. That's not their Emperor Rating.

EDIT: The DLA thing is cool.

</comment><comment><USER17> That font-compare tool is pretty cool...you should definitely resubmit in a few days. Thanks for pointing it out (and making it).

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a brief look at your article about gauss-distributed number range, and I am sorry to say that I don't find it particularly interesting, it's just some basic probabilities notion.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think the more specialized and geeky the topic, the fewer people who can participate in the conversation about it, and therefore the less popular it will be.

Most of the popular stuff seems to be light on the technical side. More often it is business, lifestyle or a high level opinion on a technical subject, not too deep.

If it is an online hacked-up app, there has to be a wow factor, a surprise, a 'why didn't I think of that'.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's pretty much a not-quite-random lottery. If you got no up-votes or replies the first time around, you can try resubmitting at a different time of day.

Please don't engage in shady, SEO-like practices to try to game the system. Such practices represent an existential risk to the integrity of the community, and an undue burden upon the site operators and moderators.

</comment><comment><USER3> I always thought that instead of just _encouraging_ people to check the /newest page, wouldn't it be more effective to just make the front page be a split view between /newest and /new (the current front page)?

<comment><USER5> Couple problems: that would be a dramatic change to the front page; and evidence suggests that people would eventually just tune out the /newest part.

We tested randomly placing stories from /newest onto the front page, but it didn't work—the median story is far too poor in quality. It basically just mixed junk into the front page, arguably the worst thing one could do to the front page. If we had rolled that out to everyone as a feature, the main effect would have been a spike in "why is this on Hacker News" comments.

<comment><USER3> I still feel it'd be worthwhile to experiment with having the /newest content displayed _explicitly_ as a section on the front page. There's no risk of people confusing /newest content as regular front page content this way.

It's definitely true that some people will eventually tune out the /newest section in this setup, but those are probably the same people who wouldn't have checked /newest regularly anyways. However, for those who wouldn't mind checking out /newest once in a while, this would remove a great deal of the friction (I realize that clicking the new link isn't a lot of friction to begin with, but every bit helps).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This submission already has 23 points. Congratulations!

Seriously, though, the only way to "win" is to play a lot. Four submissions in 90 days is nothing. Try to get that down to four submissions in a week for better results.

<comment><AUTHOR> But that is only feasible if you submit things you don't create yourself. Or you're a "rockstar programmer". There is only so much stuff people can do

<comment><USER21> I have only rarely submitted something I created myself. The point of submitting (from the site's perspective) is not to publicize one's own work but rather to expose interesting content to the attention of HN users. That is the purpose of those valuable "internet points".

[EDIT] As 'dang observes, I was somewhat unclear above. Just as it is fine to submit interesting stuff from other sources, it's just as fine to submit your own interesting stuff.

<comment><USER5> But it's totally fine to share something you've made. Implicit in posting a regular article is "I found this interesting". If you've put time into making something, that's a variant of the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps there are enough of us using Reddit that we don't bother reading the same content here? What happens if you submit here first (and Reddit later)?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was always HN first

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> HN is far from a meritocracy I'm afraid.

<comment><USER17> Er...what would a meritocracy even be in this situation? The world of interesting posts is not so simple that there is one true, obvious metric for one makes one post better than another.

<comment><USER24> Arguably, that one true, obvious metric is supposed to be the karma score. Bigger numbers are objectively better than smaller ones.

<comment><USER17> Ahhh...OK, I thought GP meant that posts don't succeed based on quality alone. That said, I do agree with Karma score _not_ being the sole determiner of worth...however, all other signals have their own flaws (such as domain-based or keyword-based penalties) while being less transparent to boot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hacker News is very centralized: there's one main view that 99% of people see, and the vagaries of whether you end up on it are dependent on whether the train of someone who might upvote it was late today, or whether standup ran over.

If it's any consolation, Hacker News points track the drachma in value very closely.

</comment><comment><USER26> Those are all of very narrow interest.

</comment><comment><USER27> Change your feelings. It's much easier than changing how HN works or what peeps on HN do.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there a way to permanently block submissions by people who whine about not getting recognition that they think they deserve?</comment>


On Modern Software Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.rainerhahnekamp.com/en/modern-software-development/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a very opinionated article stating that a software developer's main task is to know libraries and how to glue them together.

I appreciate any constructive feedback.</comment>


Hardware is the new software - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/06/19/hardware-is-the-new-software/ <comment><USER2> >A careful reading of Intel patents suggests that SGX >instructions are implemented entirely in microcode. If new >ISA features are new microcode, that opens up the >possibility of supporting them on existing CPUs.

The SGX instructions are essentially key management for full memory encryption. Does he really think memory encryption could be implemented in microcode?

That's an obvious flaw of his proposal.

I'm really surprised no paper reviewer caught that. What happened to peer review?

<comment><USER3> > Does he really think memory encryption could be implemented in microcode?

Yes? Why not? This argument rather relies on knowing what the (trade secret) capabilities of the microcode are. I don't see why this warrants a smear on peer review.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why don't we see CPUs with an integrated FPGA yet?

<comment><USER3> \- No popular applications that use this yet (see history of 3D graphics)

\- Tooling is terrible and non-free

\- Power consumption

\- Tiny die area FPGA not that useful, huge die FPGA is wasting die you could use for cache

\- Cost of the nonintegrated solution is huge e.g. [http://www.nallatech.com/store/fpga-accelerated- computing/pc...](http://www.nallatech.com/store/fpga-accelerated- computing/pcie-accelerator-cards/nallatech-385a-arria10-1150-fpga/)

<comment><USER5> I want to emphasize the _Tooling is terrible and non-free_

It is really hard to get a young programmer excited about programming FPGAs when the tools are archaic, buggy, proprietary, and non-portable. The higher- level interfaces (C abstractions etc.) are also lacking.

<comment><USER6> Tooling is actually okay, it seems archaic because with a FPGA you are actually designing the very fundamentals of computing. There is no hand holding there.

It would be the equivalent of a newbie programmer looking at GCC and saying: "This program that makes other programs looks so archaic, it runs on an 70's computer terminal."

<comment><USER7> i disagree, getting accustomed to one of these tool chains takes a really long time. you can run a pipeline for hours only to have it fail with some unreadable message. everything is layered over with lots of poor deep-menu ui, but it doesn't save you from having to understand the pipe in its entirety. oh right, i forgot that depending on what you are doing you may have to open up several different tools manually.

oh right, and the insistence on using feature wizards, which somehow work fine for the on example case but fail in mysterious ways or aren't capable of expressing what you actually want to do

its really a long way away from "gcc hello.c ; ./a.out"

then multiply that with the tool licensing and various feature sets, the IP licensing...support for different parts, entirely different tooling for different vendors.

part of it as you say is that reality is a lot more inherently complicated than software...but the tooling really is a mess. time and cost are a huge barrier to entry.

<comment><USER6> You are probably mixing RTL design with Place and Route, those are two completely different things.

You can design and simulate without your FPGA, most of the tools allow for simulation without calling a GUI. It will be not different than calling GCC. Worst case scenario, you can always use this open source Verilog simulator, it's good enough if you are only designing for FPGAs: [http://iverilog.icarus.com/](http://iverilog.icarus.com/)

Again, you don't need any FPGA to do the design and you shouldn't even use it, it's a waste of time synthesizing the design every time you make a change.

Place and Route comes after the design gets to a complete state and you should only be able to do it once.

If you are doing something different from this flow, you are most likely doing it wrong.

<comment><USER7> i almost certainly am. made the mistake of listening to the AE

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tailfins for CPUs. Do not want.

MIPS did something like that. Each MIPS variant required different compiler flags to get good performance. Software distribution was a huge pain, with multiple versions. MIPS peaked in the 1990s.

</comment><comment><USER9> "absent improvements in microarchitecture they [CPUs] won't be substantially faster, nor substantially more power efficient, and they will have about the same number of cores at the same price point as prior CPUs. Why would anyone buy a new CPU?"</comment>


Akismet's pay-what-you-want UI is the best I've seen - <AUTHOR> https://akismet.com/signup/#pwyw

<comment><USER2> ...but their https is broken on the homepage. Not the best security?

<comment><USER3> Looks like we had a couple of resources that weren't loading over HTTPS on the front page. Should be fixed now.</comment></comment>


University of Chicago becomes first elite college to make SAT, ACT optional - <AUTHOR> https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/701153002 <comment><USER2> Somewhat ironic, considering the state enforces mandatory participation in taking the ACT in the form of the Prairie State exam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not ironic at all. It is a private school and isn't controlled by the state government.</comment></comment>


The Smart Set: On Animal Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://inference-review.com/article/the-smart-set <comment><USER2> Intelligence begins to feel like the set of things which no matter how hard you try, you can't entirely pin down which are core, which are ephemeral, and which have to come together in the absence of direct communication.

Say (hah) what you like about different cultures, we appear to be able to perform remarkably consistent reasoned, abstract interchanges with people we can't actually speak to, purely with stick-figure diagrams and hand-miming. Including communicating the idea "thats a lion, this is a parrot" to somebody who might not have actually seen either but has seen the lion king as a video, and watches youtube.

I totally get that animals are now understood to have introspection, abstraction, abnegation, pride, lust, envy, altruism, you name it, we can show in crude form how animals have it. But, in the end, we completely fail and explaining why a subscription to the new york times is better than only reading four free articles a month. No grey parrot, dolphin or very smart dog appears able to grasp what we're saying.

I love animals, and I feel empathetically connected with animals and as a meat-eater, I have some qualms about my a-moral stance eating obviously highly intelligent animals like pigs. But, and it is a crucial _but_ , there is a really narrow band of communication they seem willing to engage with me in, which appears focussed on very direct basic drives of food and reward. they aren't really into higher abstract reasoning that centers on communication. Maybe they have a rich interior dialogue of abstact thought? Could we know? is an fMRI able to say that its not just dreaming, its having intelligent dreams?

I think they don't actually _want_ to display intelligence to me. I think. I probably believe they can't but I really doubt they even want to. Maybe they're smarter than they look?

<comment><USER3> When I hear people talking about how things are "mysterious" I assume that the actual answers are not difficult, but what they imply conflicts with what we want to believe to be true. In this instance, we want to think that we are separate from animals and that they are stupid objects. It helps us get through our days without too much guilt and remorse regarding how they are treated in our society.

But the facts seem to be simple and clear: animals are highly intelligent and closely related to us. They are our brothers and sisters.

I am not saying, "go vegan". I think our priority should first be improving how we treat other humans. There is a lot of opportunity for improvement there before we direct our energies to other animals.

<comment><USER4> > When I hear people talking about how things are "mysterious" I assume that > the actual answers are not difficult, but what they imply conflicts with > what we want to believe to be true.

So true. When someone says that there are no answers, there's usually an obvious answer which makes the speaker's continuing lifestyle untenable or their professed values hypocritical.

Closely related to "no one could see it coming" when people saw it coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another good source for intelligence experimentation on primates. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mentality_of_Apes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mentality_of_Apes)</comment>


Currently - a simple chrome extension that shows you the time and the weather. - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ojhmphdkpgbibohbnpbfiefkgieacjmh

<comment><USER2> In addition to removing the unneeded permissions, another change should be keeping the seconds from jumping around every time they increment, it detracts from the clean feeling it should be evoking.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do plan on adding this.

<comment><USER2> it'd also be pretty useful to have an hour by hour weather forecast to supplement the day by day weather forecast

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice. Why does it need so many permissions?

My physical location, I understand -- but "access to my data on google.com" and all my "tabs and browsing activity"? No way.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use these permission to still give you to the ability to get to the default new-tab page that comes with chrome.

<comment><USER3> I'd be willing to forgo that ability in order to reduce the necessary permissions.

As as aside, is there any way for users to verify or view what specific data an extension actually accessed? (I'm assuming not.)</comment></comment></comment>


Google Play to support gift cards, wishlists - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/16/google-play-wishlist-gift-card-leak/

<comment><AUTHOR> As an app developer, what I really need them to support is promo codes...</comment>


A Tiny Wolfenstein-Like Software Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/glouw/littlewolf <comment><USER2> FWIW, this a nice miniature C project to noodle with Makefiles and some basic C if you're new to it.

If you're on macOS, just slap a quick `brew install sdl2` before the instructions and it's golden - assuming you run [https://brew.sh/](https://brew.sh/)

</comment><comment><USER3> > early wolfenstein and doom days.

Wolfenstein yes, Doom no. Wolfenstein 3D used a very simple raycasting method that just shot rays out from the player's position to render a 2D level in psuedo-3D. Doom, while still technically using raycasting, uses a much more complicated method that involves BSP trees.

A quick google search found this page, which explains it much better than I can: [http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_rendering_engine](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_rendering_engine)

<comment><USER4> For anyone interested in the inner workings of Doom[1], I can't recommend Fabien Sanglard's blog enough. He also released a book on Wolfenstein 3D which goes into tremendous detail on the code, company, and hardware of the time.

[1] [http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php)

<comment><USER5> He's actually working on a companion book covering the Doom / id Tech 1 engine now, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related --- doing something very similar in _128 bytes_ of binary: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7960358)

</comment><comment><USER7> There should be Awesome List with small simple implementations of any kind, like this.

<comment> s-macke In principle, such a list exists. It is called Obfuscated C Code Contest

[https://www.ioccc.org/](https://www.ioccc.org/)

Granted, the code is not really readable. But you can see the awesomeness.

Boot Windows 3.0 and DOS with a 4kB emulator. C compiler in 4k, which can compile itself. Global illumination renderer in 4kB. Flight simulator in 4kB. ...

<comment> s-macke I forgot the fluid simulator in 4kB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great learning project. Having it <300 lines whiles till being clear and easy to navigate is fine work.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone recommend something similar but with more code comments?

<comment><USER10> I wrote a similar code a few years ago, although it also supported textures (including ground and skybox, unlike the original Wolfenstein). I don't know if it'll be more to your taste but there are afew comments: [https://bitbucket.org/simias/wolf/src/873cad46f3c8281e7d9429...](https://bitbucket.org/simias/wolf/src/873cad46f3c8281e7d94293b21af3c72e831d860/wolf.c?at=default&fileviewer=file- view-default) the magic happens in wolf_horizontal_intersect. Note that I use fixed point which obfuscates the arithmetic a bit (I was targeting an embedded platform without hard float at the time).

It looks like this while running: [https://svkt.org/~simias/misc/wolf- floor.png](https://svkt.org/~simias/misc/wolf-floor.png)

That being said if you're interested in writing something like that I recommend that you use any basic tutorial on raycasting and try implementing it "from scratch" yourself, it's pretty simple and quite fun IMO. IIRC I used this one: [http://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html](http://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html)

<comment><USER7> Please add Readme with few words about project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting that it passes/returns structs by value quite a lot which is not usual in C (in my experience.) I assume there's a reason for this? e.g.

static Hero spin(Hero hero, const uint8_t* key)

[https://github.com/glouw/littlewolf/blob/339cb5624462d4f2301...](https://github.com/glouw/littlewolf/blob/339cb5624462d4f23019aaaac150de635a2a8a20/main.c#L263)

<comment><USER12> I think it's just for simplicity, since all that copying can't be faster than passing in a reference to it.

<comment><USER13> You might be surprised. For small structs, copying is very fast and may give you a result with better locality. Passing around structs by pointer means more pointer dereferencing, which has its own overhead and can cause cache misses.

Performance of modern CPUs is _very_ nonobvious.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. On a much larger project with a similar software engine, if I change all structs I pass by value to pass by reference my instruction count shoots up by 40% according to cachegrind (flto + ofast).

Amazing how powerful pass by value can be when it comes to pod structs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is pretty neat. I love how it fits (sanely) in a single file. I've been meaning to get into SDL for a while now, so this will be an interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very well written and easy to read C.

</comment><comment><USER16> Neat that they did it without a graphics API

<comment><USER17> SDL2 is the API

<comment><USER16> True, I guess I meant a rasterization library. It looked like they were mostly using SDL2 for interfacing with the OS and blitting to the screen.

(and to be more specific I really meant without opengl|directx|vulcan etc)

<comment><USER18> Interesting how meaning changes. Back when Wolfenstein was made, "without a graphics API" just meant

        mov ax, 13h
        int 10h

<comment><USER19> ... and even there you were using a graphics api, provided by your video card's bios and compatible across various manufacturers.

<comment><USER20> Not really - you'd be mostly just writing into the video buffer.

<comment><USER21> int10h is the API (BIOS)... that just causes the mode switch. What he really meant (direct RAM access):

       void putpixel_13h(int x, int y, int color)
       {
          _farpokeb(_dos_ds, 0xA0000+y*320+x, color);
       }

<comment><USER20> Yeah, but nobody does that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> marcel-me Beautiful</comment>


Go from C to Go [video] - <AUTHOR> http://confreaks.com/videos/3432-gophercon2014-go-from-c-to-go <comment><USER2> People who have posted the original video, if you are reading this, please fix the speaker's name in the youtube video title. His name is Russ Cox, not Rob Cox. It pains me to see wrong names, it almost feels to me like miscrediting :P

<comment><USER3> Name fixed, thank you for pointing it out.

<comment><USER2> Thank you very much for fixing this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Youtube link for anyone else who likes to download for sped-up viewing: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIE5nV5fDwA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIE5nV5fDwA)

</comment><comment><USER5> So who else is _extremely_ curious about the "difficult to explain" goto statement? (about 17 minutes in)

<comment><USER6> I think he just meant it was hard to capture what it was doing in a brief statement like the others were.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but he made it sound like it was a legit use of the goto statement, which makes it more intriguing what it can be if it doesn't fall under any of the other descriptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice to see this going on.

I think compilers should be bootstraped, after the basic language is in place.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm more interested to hear `from C++ to Go` stories :)

<comment><USER9> This presentation is about using an automated program to convert the existing Plan 9-based Go compiler suite from C to Go, it's not a "rewriting infrastructure in Go" story.

<comment><USER10> Part of me dreams that they'd be able to convert the whole Plan 9 OS into Go one day, but that's probably hoping for too much.

<comment><USER11> Seems like a rather pointless dream. What would be the benefit? A slower OS with GC pauses?

<comment><USER12> Plan9 was already largely rewritten in a precursor to Go called Limbo. It's garbage collected and runs on a virtual machine. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_\(operating_system\))

<comment><USER9> Plan 9 and Inferno are very related, but I wouldn't say Inferno is "Plan 9 rewritten in Limbo", nor is Limbo equivalent enough to Go for the comparison to make sense.

First, the Inferno kernel is written in C, not Limbo, and is somewhat similar to the Plan 9 kernel to the point that is moderately feasible to port drivers from Plan 9 to Inferno.

Second, you could say acme was rewritten from alef (not C) to Limbo, and maybe you can say cat, tail, mk and yacc were "rewritten in Limbo", but soon after the list ends. Most utilities are genuinely new utilities that make use of the different abstractions provided by the operating system. Of course there are lots of high-level similarities, but they are quite different programs.

This brings me to my next point, the abstractions provided by Plan 9 and Inferno are very different. Different enough that a new set of tools makes sense. For comparison, rewriting C code to Go uses the same underlying abstractions, so it doesn't make as much sense.

Another point I want to make is that compiled Limbo programs are extremely small, and Limbo is dynamically loaded, unlike Go.

Yet another point is that Limbo programs use reference counting plus a real- time garbage collector for cycles, which is made easier by Limbo and Inferno constraints. Go uses neither and the language is different enough to prevent a real time garbage collector.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to write your own native node.js extension - <AUTHOR> http://syskall.com/how-to-write-your-own-native-nodejs-extension/index.html/

<comment><USER2> The article is rather old, and utilises node-waf which is no longer supported. Only node-gyp is supported these days.</comment>


Socialize Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenation.com/article/socialize-uber/ <comment><USER2> Work really hard to create a startup that revolutionizes several industries, and then have it stolen once you succeed? I can think of few things more morally outrageous.

Why should anyone try to take risks, or to stand against conventional wisdom, if it can be stolen like this in the end?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you feel better if the title were "Disrupt Uber"?

Since the workers already own most of the capital (in the form of vehicles they own and maintain), it would make a lot of sense for them to form a cooperative and capture more of the profits they and their capital are generating. Creating such a competing network does not require actually seizing any of the assets of "Uber Technologies, LLC".

Would you argue that Uber et al. deserve to be protected from that alternative, other than by outcompeting it?</comment></comment>


Buddhism can be as violent as any other religion - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/buddhism-can-be-as-violent-as-any-other-religion <comment><USER2> I was hoping the article would back up its claim based on what's actually in the content of Buddhism teaching.

On the contrary, the entire article is based on various accounts of actions taken by people that happen to be Buddhist.

Some religion condones violence under certain conditions. This article doesn't mention that about Buddhism. Article title is click bait.

<comment><USER3> I don't know enough about Buddhism to judge if the article is accurate but separating out teaching from people sounds rather "Protestant" to my ears.

In Hinduism which I know more about we have the concept of karma. Karma is action. It can be ritual action. It can be war (As Arjuna is taught in the Gita) or it can be writing a comment on Hacker News. These actions have different goals but conceptually they are the same type. What we call Hinduism is the sum total of what "people that happen to be Hindu" do. I expect Buddhism is like this too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Buddhists can be as violent as members of any other religion, but you cannot possible make the argument that Buddhism supports violence in any way. If you pick up a holy book from any of the Abrahamic religions, you will find no shortage of calls to violence. The same cannot be said of Buddhist teachings. Attributing this violence to Buddhism rather than to ethnic tensions is misguided.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.bible.com/bible/1/DEU.13.kjv](https://www.bible.com/bible/1/DEU.13.kjv)

13:9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.

13:10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Misleading title. Buddhism, as any other religion, can't be violent. Only ignorant non-practicing people can be. Some rogue monks do not represent a religion, they're just another tool of the Thai junta, just like the Pakistan governement is instrumentalizing muslim leaders into terrorism for political motives.

<comment><USER7> Let me rephrase your statement: "religion can not be violent because by definition it is not violent. Any violent element is instrumentalisation of religion, and not religion, by definition"

<comment><USER8> Religion can definitely be violent, unless you mean it cannot because an idea cannot take actions, people do.

Consider this simplification:

• Religion A holds all life to be sacred.

• Religion B mandates ritual animal sacrifice.

How are the adherents of A going to view B as anything but violent?

[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sacred_cow2.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sacred_cow2.jpg)

<comment><USER5> Adding this because it is not very well known. Cows have never been on that universal "do not slaughter" list of Hindus that it is now made out to be.

Tenets of Hinduism contain cow slaughter rituals. One can argue though that these rituals were special cases and not frequently practiced. Even if we leave such rituals out, beef eating have not been something that would have raise eyebrows in certain Hindu population. Even the so called caretakers of teachings of Hinduism, the Brahmin caste have freely consumed beef in for example Kerala. The current wave of beef ban is just one part of the insular but politically empowered right wing population imposing its morality on the other.

<comment><USER3> If by "tenets" of Hinduism you mean texts which have not been considered imperative for at least two millennia then maybe but let me remind you that Hindus are not "people of the book". You can accuse Hindutva types of many things but in this case their view is completely mainstream.

As for the past instead of text-juggling let's look at archeology. Do excavations in India indicate people in ancient times ate more meat? Yes. Beef in particular? No they don't.

<comment><USER5> > If by "tenets" of Hinduism you mean texts which have not been considered > imperative for at least two millennia

That's a little disingenuous (not you in particular) because if anything is mentioned in those books they fall over themselves to mention them.

You indeed bring up an important point, there is no analogue of a Bible or Koran in Hinduism. I find Vedas/Upanishads to be more foundational while others might consider the much younger Gita more important. This grafting of the notion of a 'book' by British led to hilarious practices: swearing on the Gita in court. This means little to a Hindu although the British tried hard to evoke the response they wanted.

I am not claiming beef was a regular diet through Hinduism hinterland. I am saying that there is nothing in the religion that sanctions it. I think oral and written tradition are the more appropriate tool to use here (than archeology) and there is enough examples in that document beef as a part of diet (again not across the entire Hindu land).

<comment><USER3> > "if anything is mentioned in those books they fall over themselves to > mention them."

As a Pandit whose education in Sanskrit was strictly on classical lines I definitely get a "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right" feeling in Indian cultural arguments.

> I find Vedas/Upanishads to be more foundational while others might consider > the much younger Gita...

By much younger you are still talking about about atleast 2000 years even by the most conservative estimates. But anyway, I wouldn't consider any of those as foundational outside of specialists such as myself. For the man in the street, insofar as any books could make that claim, it would be the Puranas, Mahabharata, and Ramayana that guide him. Even as a Brahmana most of my activities are Puranic and Tantric. Vedic maybe 25%.

> I am saying that there is nothing in the religion that sanctions it.

Now we are back to defining what "the religion" is. Obviously there are a good number of people (including myself) who think it does prohibit it.

> I think oral and written tradition are the more appropriate tool

Again the problem is whose traditions and how are they recorded/interpreted. As a counter we can point out that Muslims considered throwing the corpse of a cow into a mandir a particularly good way of desecrating it. The Sikh Gurus considered cow protection a justification for rebelling against the Mughals. The sepoys rebelled against the British because of suspicions that beef fat was greasing their bullets. How much weight to give to each example? Archaeological objects are less susceptible to ideological manipulation.

<comment><USER5> You raise good points to debate on and really appreciate the non politicized discussion. I cant speak for you but it seems that we might end up agreeing that the beef eating question has nuances and not a open and shut case.

Regarding the Puranas, Mahabharata, and Ramayana being guides, I have reasons to be cynical. People are guided by what people tell them what they are supposed to do and feel as a Hindu. Often by people who have axes to grind.

I am curious to know about your opinion on beef eating practices of Kerala Hindus including Brahmins (or Pandits if you like although that would be a rather unusual phrase to use in this context). Some start hyperventilating that its all Muslim influence, or the influence of European colonizers.

<comment><USER3> FWIW I'm Gujarati so I really couldn't say. All the Keralites I've met have been vegetarians but its a small sample.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would now exclaim that any budhistic violence is no true scottsman religion, but im so free of passion and emotion, i just let it slide.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lee Kuan Yew (the late ex-Singapore PM) on this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9S6bJDqRHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9S6bJDqRHQ)

</comment><comment><USER11> Very True. The Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka happened with active participation from Buddhist monks!

</comment><comment><USER12> it's only violent because it needs to be.

<comment><USER13> I think that's what every entity engaged in violence says though.</comment></comment>


Why are most people so pessimistic about a powerful AI? - <AUTHOR> I believe AI (or AGI) that is better than humans is quite far from done. May be the technology available today can generate better-than-human AI (without going the quantum way), but we probably lack the models or structures or simply the scale that can make this happen. Or may be we are missing some fundamental discoveries about cognition and intelligence.
But even if we develop powerful AI, why are we so scared about it?
Why do we think that a  powerful AI will be stupid enough to stay interested in Earthly matters or humans when it has an entire universe to go to?
EDIT: From time to time I hear someone established and reputed cautioning against a powerful AI. I am just curious what I do not understand
Example (an year old post): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/01/28/bill-gates-on-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence-dont-understand-why-some-people-are-not-concerned/ <comment><USER2> Your best bet to understand the AI debate (and both sides) is to dig through lesswrong.com .

My brief answer is that people fear what they don't understand. And in this case the people shouting out their fears haven't properly and in detail stated their assumptions and definitions.

> I believe AI (or AGI) that is better than humans is quite far from done.

AI and AGI are wildly different things. My preference is to talk in terms of expert systems rather than the lofty sci-fi acronym. Such as Big Blue, Watson, etc...

Personally I think artificial personal assistants will help make the world a much more comfortable (and pleasant) place for those that can afford them. That is until the fourth or fifth generation when they're cheap as paper (or have a limited kind of reproduction).

</comment><comment><USER3> >>Why do we think that a powerful AI will be stupid enough to stay interested in Earthly matters or humans when it has an entire universe to go to?

Let's say a powerful AI emerges and is completely uninterested in Earth and humans, and wants to go exploring the stars. Maybe it decides it needs a bunch of hydrogen to do that and splits all the water in the ocean. This is bad for humans.

We don't know what an AI will want, so it's tough to predict its behaviour. Maybe it'll be fine, maybe not. It may be powerful enough that if what it wants isn't great for us, things will go very badly very quickly.</comment>


Startup helps online daters find love faster - <AUTHOR> http://getplumer.com/

<comment> 97-109-107 Seems like a direct commodification of what this Wired article outlined [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack- okcupi...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/) I wonder if this service will also raise eyebrows like the methods described in the above.</comment>


You Don't Need Another Tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@nyuman/you-dont-need-another-tool-156d3da166 <comment> Whil- This post resonates with me. But mostly because we've come to equate tools with data. And that "tool = data" mindset (in my view) is the reason for having this problem to solve in the first place.

If the data for a particular need of mine was in a standardized format, it wouldn't matter which tool I used as I could switch at any point in time.

The post mentions Excel as the go-to tool. What I would have liked the author to be able to say instead is - "use spreadsheet-data as the first data- container for the data needed". If a better data-format, more specialized for my need exist, migrate to that instead. The tool to interact with that data should be the secondary choice. Something that could be reevaluated at a later time if needed, without loosing past data due to lock-in effects.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sometimes you don't realize there's a problem until you try doing it a different way. If you always wait until there's a problem, you're likely to get stuck doing things the hard way. There's nothing wrong with taking the occasional moment to see what new tools are out there, if anything to simply be a bit more efficient. If you're looking for new tools all the time to procrastinate, or simply always hoping something will do the heavy lifting for you then that's another story.</comment>