Animated vector map - <AUTHOR> http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs-assets/?procedural/tronish.yaml#16/40.7123/-74.0044 <comment><USER2> Cool! I'm curious about the traffic patterns -- for example I see them slow down towards areas of complexity and speed up on straights.

Is this just an emergent property of the number of control points on your traffic curves, or was it intentional?

It would be cool if some kind of max-flow algorithm were applied to generate realistic traffic flow speeds; a kind of baseline throughout measurement for the road system geometry without further detail.

</comment><comment><USER3> Black screen for me. console is full of

> main thread tile load error for 19299/24641/16: Error: There was a network > error[object XMLHttpRequestProgressEvent]

<comment><USER4> I think your first instinct should be to provide your browser with version# and system.

It works for me on my iPhone.

<comment><USER3> Chrome and Firefox on Windows 7

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first I thought this was using real-time traffic data and I got overexcited. It still looks pretty neat nonetheless!

Running smoothly on latest Chrome on Ubuntu 14.04.

</comment><comment><USER6> While the Tron styling is cute, I think there's some real map usability improvements here. The high contrast between buildings and roads, and seeing flows of connections between roads (albeit backwards from the actual flow direction), makes these maps really easy to interpret in a dense city environment, compared to, for example, Google maps' low contrast white and pale gray blocks (they're designed to enable typography to be more visible). I find with this visualization, I'm able to orient myself very easily in a city I know, and identify landmarks far more readily than I am on Google's busy view.

If this distinguished between footpaths, train tracks and roads, and correctly interpreted traffic flow directions, it would actually be the beginning of something pretty useful.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's more stuff here: [https://mapzen.com/tangram](https://mapzen.com/tangram) [https://github.com/tangrams/](https://github.com/tangrams/)

</comment><comment> jay-anderson Cool. One minor criticism: this is in NYC, but the direction of movement looks like cars driving on the left side.

<comment><USER8> It's everywhere else, too!

SF: [http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tr...](http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tronish.yaml#15/37.7846/-122.3995)

London: [http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tr...](http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tronish.yaml#15/51.5097/-0.1034)

For me, the traffic-pulses on two-way streets everywhere look like they're on the _right_ side… but I think I see a few one-ways where the pulses are going the locally-correct direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is an awesome example of a procedural city generator. Care to share the algorithm?

<comment><USER10> A little too awesome unfortunately. (It's NYC) [https://goo.gl/maps/p4UKe](https://goo.gl/maps/p4UKe)

<comment><USER9> Sad. I was confused by "procedural" in the URL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally found Helsinki: [http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tr...](http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tronish.yaml#14/60.1634/24.9405)

All nerdporn aside, I have to say I find this map easier to read than a standard map for seeing transport routes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Rail is shown the same way as roads, I'm not sure if this was intended:

[http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tr...](http://tangrams.github.io/tangram-docs- assets/?procedural/tronish.yaml#16/50.6306/3.0816)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow this looked beautiful on my iPad for a few minutes then it got so hot I had to take the tablet off of my leg. If I left it on longer I reckon it would damage the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER14> This worked great for me. Nice work. I like the presentation and UX dynamics a lot. Feels solid, almost no lag.

Pinch zoom would be cool, but I'm not complaining. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> aaaaand I just lost another tab in Google Chrome. Hooray for installing Firefox Nightly.

I wonder if something like this could be made fairly easily in SVG. 3D-ish buildings would be hard, but I suppose the roads could be animated paths.

</comment><comment><USER16> WebGL, and more generally, browser as 3d engine, fucking rules. It's going to replace your desktop, your OS, your HTML and all that other garbage you've been working with for the last 20 years. Mark my words.

<comment><USER17> Especially as now all modern browsers support WebGL.

Interesting stats: [http://webglstats.com/](http://webglstats.com/)

<comment><USER18> So websites that already have an interest in WebGL and probably therefore have an audience interested in WebGL are used to measure of WebGL adoption?

Slightly skewed sample methinks.

<comment><USER17> As all modern browsers support WebGL (now also IE with v11 and iOS with v8), the stats show which browser version on which platform supports which WebGL features/extensions.

(I am not related to that website. Afaik Google used to contribute too.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SoftBank Reveals $6.5B Loss from Uber, WeWork Turmoil - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-06/softbank-posts-6-5-billion-operating-loss-on-wework-and-uber <comment><USER2> It seems pretty clear that Softbank were badly misvaluing We and Uber. The second they hit the public markets suddenly Softbank could no longer sustain their paper valuations which is causing this loss. It's kind of funny that Softbank can mark its own homework on this - they buy the company and then because the investment isn't liquid they can basically choose any valuation they want for the companies they own. It'll be interesting to see how sceptical people are of the other companies in the Softbank portfolio. For example, they acquired ARM for $31Bn- what are they claiming it's worth now?

<comment><USER3> >Softbank were badly misvaluing We and Uber.

I don't think these two really belong together. We is probably worth nothing, and even that might be generous. Uber is worth billions with the only real debate being how many billions.

<comment><USER4> WeWork has actual real-estate assets. So, they do have _some_ worth.

Certainly not Softbank's valuation-levels of worth, but it's still not nothing.

<comment><USER5> WeWork, for the most part, does not own actual real-estate assets. They mostly have actual real-estate liabilities - leases.

They do own a relatively small amount of property, like their partial ownership of the Lord and Taylor building, which for reference is now considered a huge mistake (it's bleeding money).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $6.5B is the _recognized_ loss, i.e., the lowest possible amount they can get away writing off on their accounting books.

The _real economic loss_ may be much higher.

<comment><USER7> To agree with this. As someone with more of a general economic and metrics background, I was quite amazed when I first learned of the breadth of possible valuation methods IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) allows for. Some are pretty close to what you'd expect for the valuation of a financial instrument (after all, equity is one of those), while some are 'pretty far away'.

<comment><USER8> Are you allowed to switch between them at will, or is there a legal inertia that pushes you to continue reporting using the same one?

<comment><USER9> I think he's talking about the levels of fair value measurement

[https://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/ifrs/ifrs13](https://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/ifrs/ifrs13)

No anchor links on that page, so I'll just quote some snippets here:

Level 1 inputs are quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities that the entity can access at the measurement date.

Level 2 inputs are inputs other than quoted market prices included within Level 1 that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly or indirectly.

Level 3 inputs inputs are unobservable inputs for the asset or liability. [IFRS 13:86]

Unobservable inputs are used to measure fair value to the extent that relevant observable inputs are not available, thereby allowing for situations in which there is little, if any, market activity for the asset or liability at the measurement date. An entity develops unobservable inputs using the best information available in the circumstances, which might include the entity's own data, taking into account all information about market participant assumptions that is reasonably available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Other investors have been saying that SoftBank has been overpaying for years. It looks like they were right and you need to discount any SoftBank valuation by about 50%.

The SoftBank playbook has an even bigger negative impact on employees. They are granted options at an inflated price. When the stock collapses (Uber, WeWork, Wag) they lose more than others because most of the comp is in equity.

As an employee, I would stay far away from any SoftBank funded company.

<comment><USER11> And, of course, they _paid_ for that comp (exercising of stock options) in cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I keep thinking about Nick Leeson, the trader who caused Barings Bank to collapse.

He was highly successful with his speculative trades, but eventually things got out of hand and he was having to make bigger and bigger gambles to try to recover the lost money, until it all fell apart on him.

You can talk about being a fund with a view to 300 years of the future, but you're not going to get there if you act recklessly with the _now_.

</comment><comment><USER13> Taking huge risk and huge losses would be acceptable.

But this is also a guy who fails to enforce the bare minimums for corporate governance in companies where he is the major shareholder.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's refreshing to see that the financial Shenanigans SoftBank was playing with WeWork and even Uber backfired like that in the end.

Manipulating pre-IPO valuations as aggressively as they did was just insane.

<comment><USER15> _Manipulating pre-IPO valuations as aggressively as they did was just insane_

Never forget the endgame was to dump it at the inflated valuation on retail investors and pension funds. This was a heist on the scale of Madoff, if they pulled it off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's like these investors never learn that the "our unit economics are horrible, but it'll be worth it when/if we become a monopoly!" philosophy rarely plays out well.

The same industry that harps on about how disruptable old school monopolies are, is somehow buying into that? I don't get it.

<comment><USER17> I mean, the strategy has created all of the biggest winners: Amazon, Google, Facebook, Spotify, eBay, PayPal, (maybe) Airbnb, etc.

Each of them effectively monopolized something for close to a decade.

It's not a failed proposition; it just might be harder to pull off in some spheres than others, and harder as more money gets funneled into startups, and harder as the giants jump into your newly minted market, or acquire that new market.

<comment><USER18> In the winners within your examples (I'm not sure why Spotify and Airbnb are on that list), the economics around their unit costs were fantastic, because they aren't selling physical goods or services. That's the main difference between those companies and WeWork/Uber: There's no way to drive margins low enough at those companies to justify valuing them like Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Side note, is a Bloomberg subscription worth it? I'm looking to get a subscription and a lot of their articles are great. Especially ones by Matt Levine.

<comment><USER20> > is a NEWSSITE subscription worth it? [...] a lot of their articles are great

Generally speaking, if you enjoy the content regularly enough please subscribe to newspapers and the like. News is dying or forced to deface itself to please ads and pageviews because people don't pay for quality content they like.

<comment><USER19> I'm going to try both Bloomberg's and NYT's trial subscriptions and see what I like. Economist wasn't that great IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> then we can say success of a fund does not correlate with its volume

</comment><comment><USER22> Nothing was stolen. Masa handed him the first ~5 billion after a 10 minute meeting, no due diligence, no anything.

Then threw more good money after bad. And in the end ended up in a terrible position beholden to a scam artist.

But that's very different from theft. He essentially took every possible step to ensure he ended up in this position.

</comment><comment><USER23> is this a sign of bubble popping? although I am not sure can this spread outside of Saudis and Softbank.

<comment><USER24> The last decade has seen global monetary policy create a situation where cash is very cheap (i.e. many central banks are now offering close to zero interest rates and some have actually seen negative interest rates).

That cheap cash then finds it's way into assets like stocks and housing with that cheap money putting upward pressure on those assets.

In that same climate we have seen a decade long stagnation in wages, next to zero inflation and we are now entering a stagnated and slowing global economy.

With those contradictory growth signals, the real question is how long will that cheap keep flowing, as it is the only stopping those artificial asset bubbles from popping.

<comment><USER25> Add to that the global "QE" programs which are driving up equities even higher. This whole system seems to act synergistically now, perpetually driving stocks higher and higher. Will it collapse altogether (and when)? Who knows

<comment><USER24> History is full of examples of over priced bubble assets that have eventually collapsed.

So I don't think the questions is _will it_ collapse but instead _when will it_ collapse?

<comment><USER26> When investors want or need their capital back. Lending is so cheap right now that it probably makes mores sense to keep borrowing rather than liquidate a poor investment at a loss. So I think the equities bubble is going to continue until the lending well runs dry (which could be decades).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> adam neumann should stop by saudi embassy

<comment><USER28> Please don't do this here.

<comment><USER27> You are right

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Vision Fund is probably pretty dead. I can't imagine anyone giving them money in the future.

<comment><USER30> Think you'd be surprised.

One bad quarter for a guy that talks about 300 year timescale.

<comment><USER31> Who's this guy and where his money come from? If it's based on fossil fuel revenues seized by autocrats, please explain how his plan can be sustained for centuries.

<comment><USER32> "This guy": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son)

> If it's based on

Not really. Son himself got most of his money from investments into Alibaba.

What you are probably referring to is that the Saudis are large investors of the vision fund. I don't share your optimism that there won't be insanely rich people with little accountability in the centuries to come.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much did Google pay for kaggle? - <AUTHOR> Online communities seem to be a hot thing right now. What is the value add for companies like google? <comment><USER2> I'm taking a big risk here, so using a throwaway account.We (investors) took a slight loss on this one.

All I can tell you is the exit was at around 12 MIL. Ca$h and a small amount of stocks for a few stellar engineers (I think 7 or so).

This was an Acqui-hire. From what I hear, Google was pursuing some individuals for over 2 years.

Sorry, don't ask me follow up questions.

<comment><USER3> Hi

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty hard to know unless someone has inside knowledge.

You can take a point of reference from the funding history - [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kaggle#/entity](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kaggle#/entity) $11M Nov 2011 followed by 1.75M in Sept 2015. The first was an amazing raise for their stage. Obviously pretty smart people and an area people wanted a part of . Appears the later was a bridging round as it's been tagged Series A like the first.

They laid off 1/3 staff earlier in 2015: [https://www.wired.com/2015/02/data- science-darling-kaggle-cu...](https://www.wired.com/2015/02/data-science- darling-kaggle-cuts-one-third-staff/)

That was 7 of 20 roles. They're now more like ~80 employees, according to LinkedIn. However, admittedly a lot aren't tagged right (investors, advisors, interns and people associated with Kaggle). Either way, appears the pivot in 2015 worked.

So you can straight-line from there. That's circa 3-5x employee growth over 3 years, which you can conjecture at least has a relationship with actual growth. That's not too shabby either. With growth over that timeframe and stage you'd probably be more interest in the story over the last 6-12 months, which is harder to gauge. It may have plateaued, it may have spiked.

So if you anchor the Series A at, say, 20% of the value. Then multiply out growth, then put a multiple on that you're looking at 100 at the low end and maybe 500 at the high-end. Likely somewhere square in the middle.

That's guesswork, but gives a ballpark view.

<comment><USER5> To me that sounds optimistic. A bearish view would be that they limped to enough revenue to cover the costs of operating a solid recruiting and contest site; non recurring revenue of, say, $15MM without a strong growth or margin story.

Kaggle was a great recruiting play; given that Google bought them, and not a recruiting company, I would bet that this is an acquihire.

<comment><USER4> That's a fair scenario too.

If they were covering costs at 15M+, that's not too bad and a pretty serious business. You'd hope for a multiple on that (and the investors would be wanting some level of return too). So for met that puts me a the bottom of my range (~6x multiple).

You're right though, they may have just hit a ceiling and the multiple could be a lot lower. I was taking a bit of a punt on what I saw. You've also got to consider the cash component, earn-outs, etc. If you put all that together the 6x or more doesn't seem off-base. It's also the kind of setup that might have multiple people interested in acquiring them.

Another more positive read on "ceiling" is that is they wanted to execute on a bigger vision and the Google acquisition gave them the platform to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you curious about how much they paid, or what the value of it is to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both. It seems to me in the last 12 months or so, the value of niche online community has skyrocketed. For a company like google, what is the value add of these communities?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how much they paid, though you might be able to find out through crunchbase or something similar.

I think the value it brings to Google is several-fold. I'm probably missing a few, but here's what comes to mind.

1- Brand: Google seems very data scientist friendly. Data scientists will want to use Google technologies because Google is the 'data science' company.

2- Information on trends: Are data scientists suddenly spending a lot of time working in some language, or abandoning another? Are the Kaggle forums overflowing with a lot of Tensorflow related ML problems? Google could use this information to know what decisions to make (bonus: the people who'd curate and analyze the information are probably data scientists).

3- Promote/amplify: Google can hawk the crap out of Google related data science products to that market. And Google can probably provide GCP credits to registered Kaggle users, so that they can spin up their own little server, run their models, and get accustomed to using GCP in the process.

Those are just some thoughts. They likely have even better plans!</comment></comment></comment>


Olive Garden commercial written by a bot is pure internet gold - <AUTHOR> https://thetakeout.com/this-bot-generated-olive-garden-commercial-is-an-intern-1826829189 <comment><USER2> "Update, 2:50 p.m.: Friends, in our eagerness to find a spark of joy on the internet, we've all been had. "</comment>


Rails & Security - Egor Homakov slides from DevConf, Moscow - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.fr/2012/06/slides-rails-security-from-devconf.html

<comment><AUTHOR> These slides really need more exposure in my opinion.</comment>


A Proposal For the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on A.I. (1955) - <AUTHOR> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/dartmouth.html <comment><USER2> My opinion is that you can't talk about the Dartmouth Project without eventually mentioning the Lighthill Report [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthill_report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthill_report)], an investigation from a British mathematician as to whether the UK Government should put all its egg in the AI basket.

It's a highly recommended read [[http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf](http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/lighthill.pdf)], or you could watch his presentation of the report (to Minsky amongst others) [[http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/](http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/events/lighthill1973/)] it's also on YouTube.

He was astute in identifying that AI has succeeded in A) Automation of well defined tasks, C) Investigation of problem solving processes, but failed to product much in the way of B) the combination of A and C, an independently intelligent artifact.

It's been a while since I read it, but I remember the video being entertaining, especially the exchanges between the Lighthill and the Minsky, and the analysis being relevent even to today's state of AI.

<comment><USER3> Very informative, but Minsky was not at the debate, it was Michie, Gregory, & McCarthy.

The Lighthill report destroyed the UK's lead in AI at Edinburgh.

Edinburgh's AI lab, founded by Donald Michie, a wartime colleague of Turings & Richard Gregory a vision & theory of mind expert.

Edinburgh had a Robot Arm that could assemble various wooden toys from randomly scattered blocks using vision & planning.

Edinburgh had produced POPLOG, a widely used European LISP (with less brackets :) )

Michie was a proponent of Machine Intelligence, his "trial and error" BOXES algorithm could learn to balance a pole - everywhere else used hand engineered Symbolic GOFAI.

Michie BOXES enabled learning robots that anticipated neural nets & SGD using reinforcement learning.

Edinburgh's unique vision was world leading at the time. Sadly European industry followed Lighthill's lead - the 1st AI winter.

Lighthill was a pure mathematician and not well qualified to vet AI, his criticisms proved wrong in hindsight - Edinburgh had automation, vision & learning on a PDP-11.

Pariah in Europe, Donald Michie went on to help develop Japanese robotic assembly lines and use BOXES for factory & satellite control. Here he laments : [18:24] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0306rt1/micro-live- ser...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0306rt1/micro-live- series-3-28031987)

<comment><USER4> POPLOG was more than a LISP! It was an IDE for POP-11, Common Lisp, Prolog, and Standard ML. All other languages were incrementally compiled to POP-11. Lisp was the least used of these in my experience at Sussex.

\sidebar:

POP-11 has Lisp-y list support with a Pascal-like syntax. It was pretty nice. It had assignment the right way around (if you have the stack as a mental model):

      5 -> x

Grad students and undergrad keeners were advised to learn enough LISP to read papers from the MIT AI Lab :)

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

It was pretty well done, but not exactly fast on a 1990 Sun minicomputer shared by a hundred students.

Almost all of our undergrad assignments were set and submitted via the POPLOG system, including lecture notes and tutorials: 'teach texts' with hypertext links. You could highlight code snippets with the cursor and run them in the REPL. All pre-web on a VT-100. Great stuff.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, many thanks, I was thinking of Popplestone & Burstall's functional language POP-II from Edinburgh. POPLOG was developed at Sussex.

Did you work with Margret Bowden's robotics group ?

<comment><USER4> I took Boden's mandatory first-year class Intro to CogSci in 1990. She was head of department, so I saw her around but I didn't know her well. I enjoyed the class very much.

She was a very respected figure in philosophy of cogsci and AI, but I don't recall her doing any practical robotics, which was barely present at Sussex at that time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Alan Perlis epigram #63: When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.

<comment><USER6> What's funny is I feel in some ways the exact opposite is true.

When Google creates a program to learn Go, it learns go so well that it knows it (arguably) knows it far better than any human (even if it isn't flawless).

But what did we learn about go? Well, we learned a bit about the opening I guess, since Lee Sedol has become fond of the "AlphaGo opening," but other than that... not much, right?

That's the funny thing about neural networks. They can converge to a set of weights that, when activated, perform better than any human. But we can't look at Weight 483 and Weight 958 and say "Ah, that's where it decided the corner is very valuable!" or something.

It learns, we don't. We can only learn from what it can then show us it has learned.

<comment><USER7> This is not true. We _can_ look at networks and manually look at their weights to determine what features it learned, even high level features. You can do it right now (by examining a pretrained network).

People don't bother to because:

1) it's a very boring problem (we already have a high-level view of what networks learn through various visualizations, and what you'd learn would be specific to one network learned for one dataset)

and 2) it's very tedious and not repeatable (have to do it all over for each new dataset and each new model).

<comment><USER6> We might be thinking of different scopes of machine learning.

You could look at AlphaGo's weights for the entire neural network for ten thousand years. But you would become no better at Go. The only way AlphaGo can help us improve at Go is by showing us what it has learned in the games it plays.

<comment><USER7> You're dancing around, and haven't really defined, what it means to "learn Go."

Sure, humans wouldn't become better at Go. But that's a limitation of the human brain (we're not good at mathematical memorization and computation).

For all we know, what the network has learned about Go (a highly complex and interconnected set of statistical dependencies) _is_ what there is to learn about Go. _You 're implicitly making the assumption that what the network learns about Go is guaranteed to be translatable to something humans can learn._

On the contrary, what the network learns is merely _reducible, with loss of accuracy_ to what humans can understand. And that _is_ an active area of research (feature visualizations and explanations), but that is tangential to your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another McCarthy summer project was to build a robot to assemble a Heathkit color TV kit. That went nowhere, but the TV kit was purchased. After a few years, someone assembled it by hand, and for years afterward it was in the student lounge in Margret Jacks Hall at Stanford.

They were so optimistic in the early days. And they had so little compute power.

<comment><USER9> And are we the opposite these days? So much computing power and pessimism.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say there is much pessimism in AI today. There should be a lot more pessimism to prevent a funding vacuum. I'd like for the early 90s to be the last AI winter, but I doubt it will be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love this classic document. My favorite part is how easy they all thought the problems were going to be. It was the early days, there were breakthroughs everywhere, and in 14 years they were going to land a man on the moon.

It also feels a little like reading Andy Warhol's diary and realizing all the famous people knew each other. Never realized they were so close.

I hope they got their funding.

<comment><USER11> Another document from this bubbly time is this NYT article from July 1958, on a demo of Rosenblatt's perceptron ("NEW NAVY DEVICE LEARNS BY DOING") -- [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D01E4D8173DE...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D01E4D8173DE53BBC4053DFB1668383649EDE)

"Perceptrons might be fired to the planets as mechanical space explorers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> An interesting but not widely known fact is that the Dartmouth conference was also attended by Ray Solomonoff. Contrary to his colleagues he focused on questions of machine learning before learning became perceived as a worthwhile research direction by the AI community.

This has led Solomonoff to investigation of a question of universal sequence prediction. A couple of years later Solomonoff wrote a paper about such a system for prediction that used algorithmic probability (he is cited later as the original developer of algorithmic information theory which was later independently discovered by Kolmogorov who later acknowledged that the Solomonoff was the first). This method, Solomonoff's induction, is proven to be the most optimal (though incomputable) machine learning method possible.

He has never abandoned this project and for the rest of his life he focused on making more sophisticated system designs that are computable while still being proven to be optimal.

His latest system is called "Alpha", and it is designed as a machine for solving a sequence of function inversion and time limited optimization problems (a majority of science/engineering problems can be formulated this way) in a way that exploits experience gathered while solving these problems. This system, again, is proven to be optimal in a certain sense. He also tried to implement this system with various practical optimizations, but it didn't converge fast enough on his training sequences and on the hardware of that time.

Still, with modern hardware it is a possibility that it could work. And the whole design is described in the papers, so people can (and actually do, though privately and perhaps without much success) implement this system.

Here are the relevant papers: [http://world.std.com/~rjs/publications/IncLrn89.pdf](http://world.std.com/~rjs/publications/IncLrn89.pdf) [http://world.std.com/~rjs/nips02.pdf](http://world.std.com/~rjs/nips02.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> If all these efforts were successful, where would we be now? The singularity might have come by 1966, the year I was born. Actually, that move's (almost) already been made Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970).

I've long had a bias against minsky because I thought he said some very silly things about AI back in the day, but I think I was probably wrong, or at least that he deserved more attention than I gave him. I watched some interviews with him in the Youtube channel 'Closer To Truth' and he's by far my favourite interviewee. Very incisive.

<comment><USER14> It's just such a shame that Minksy came out so harshly against perceptrons. He really was an inspiring figure, and at the time really did seem to have good reasons for preferring symbolic logic over neural networks, but the more success NNs have, the more it looks like one of the pillars of 20th century AI got this one colossally wrong. If further improvements in AI follow the same lines, he may wind up an Edison-like figure, hugely influential but with major drawbacks.

EDIT: Like I said, he did have good reasons! That's why Perceptrons was so influential; it's just the weird unfortunate luck of history that he ended up diverting effort from what's now become a much more promising field.

<comment><USER15> Mind you the "successes of NNs" didn't start to show up until 2010 or so, despite active research in multi-layer ANNs going from early 1980s. Just the past decade ANN classifier performance wasn't particularly remarkable compared to other methods. And given the 20th century technology, the deep learning architectures of today were computationally unfeasible.

<comment><USER16> It does seem rather harsh to hold Minsky to account for a conclusion which is only true with access to the massive computing resources of the 21st century. Not only was the future power of computation unknown in 1955, the quality of neural networks remains nonobvious even _with_ that prediction - you have to actually run the things and see if they work.

None of that makes Minsky right, but it's hard to see how much could even have been achieved on neural nets back in '55\. Our architecture design today descends from experimental results that were not going to be available for many decades.

<comment><USER15> True, things often seem simple with advantage of hindsight. However Minsky's original criticism was to linear separability of original perceptron, the only known ANN at the time, and as such as technically sound now as it was then. Even when people got some spare cycles on their computers and started to throw extra layers to increase dimensionality the results weren't too encouraging for a long time.

EDIT: well I basically made the same point as you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is true.

There are two ways that Minsky could have (mathematically) looked past the linear separability issue:

1\. If you add another layer to the perceptron, it can solve the XOR problem.

2\. If you add a non-monotonic threshold function, it can solve the XOR problem.

So these are two rather simple solutions to the issue he brought up.

<comment><USER7> To be clear, those solutions were well known at the time. It was known at the time that multiple layers could compute any boolean fucntion ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptrons_\(book\))).

The role of Minsky in killing perceptrons is seriously overblown.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is news to me. I had been steeped in a different lore. I have read the original article (or perhaps it was an excerpt?). I don't recall this reference.

I see from the wikipedia article you linked to, that they did know about the multiple layers. I thought it was suspicious that they had somehow missed it since it is so simple (at least to us now), and these guys are so very smart.

I wonder if they also knew (or realized, rather), that a single layer neuron with a non-monotonic function could have also "solved" XOR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> would love to hear what exactly came of this.

according to [1]: "The project was approved and brought together a group of researchers which included pioneers such as Newell, Simon, McCarthy, Solomonoff, Shannon, Minsky, and Selfridge, all of whom made seminal contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence in later years. "

[1] [http://www.asiapacific- mathnews.com/04/0403/0015_0020.pdf](http://www.asiapacific- mathnews.com/04/0403/0015_0020.pdf)

<comment><USER18> And then there was the Summer Vision Project! [1]

"After fifteen minutes of searching with Google, the majority of web pages give a citation that the person who said this was Marvin Minsky and the student was Gerald Sussman. According to the majority of these quotes, in 1966 Minsky asked Sussman to "connect a camera to a computer and do something with it".

They may indeed have had that conversation but in actual fact, the original Computer Vision project referred to above was set up by Seymour Papert at MIT and given to Sussman who was to co-ordinate a group of 10 students including himself. [2]

The original document outlined a plan to do some kind of basic foreground/background segmentation, followed by a subgoal of analysing scenes with simple non-overlapping objects, with distinct uniform colour and texture and homogeneous backgrounds. A further subgoal was to extend the system to more complex objects.

So it would seem that Computer Vision was never a summer project for a single student, nor did it aim to make a complete working vision system. Maybe it was too ambitious for its time, but it's unlikely that the researchers involved thought that it would be completely solved at the end. Finally, Computer Vision as we know it today is vastly different to what it was thought to be in 1966. Today we have many topics derived from CV such as inpainting, novel view generation, gesture recognition, deep learning, etc."

[1] [http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion- cvlegends.html](http://www.lyndonhill.com/opinion-cvlegends.html) [2] [https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6125)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They succeeded, the singularity happened in secret, and we've been controlled by skynet ever since. How else do you think the world survived the cold war?

</comment><comment><USER20> I particularly like this quote:

"[T]he major obstacle is not lack of machine capacity, but our inability to write programs taking full advantage of what we have."

Which is more relevant now than ever. It's interesting that at the time they still didn't consider themselves to be taking full advantage of what they had—which was positively primitive—and I wonder how they planned to squeeze more power out.

</comment><comment><USER21> And it's pretty affordable too: $13,500 total budget (in 1955 dollars though of course...). :P

<comment><USER22> Only... $120,000!

[http://www.in2013dollars.com/1955-dollars- in-2016?amount=135...](http://www.in2013dollars.com/1955-dollars- in-2016?amount=13500)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good thing they did.

</comment><comment><USER24> The submitted title ("Minsky, McCarthy and Shannon: solve all major AI problems over the summer") broke the HN guidelines by editorializing. Submitters: Please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't realize that was a guideline.

Q: What if the original title is too long to fit in the space allotted?

<comment><USER24> A: Then you have no choice but to change the original title enough to fit 80 chars. But please preserve as much of it as you can. In nearly every case you can get there by finding a less important word or two to drop.</comment></comment></comment>


GNU Guix 0.8 released - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2014-11/msg00379.html <comment><USER3> Cross-post from Reddit to clarify what exactly Guix is:

GNU Guix is a Guile-using Nix-derivative purely functional package manager and at the same time package recipe database. (Shipped in one so the recipe language doesn't need to be frozen for compatibility.) Development of the Guile-based init system DMD is closely tied with it.

Its last few releases include stuff to install a stand-alone GNU/Linux-libre system which might be sanctioned as the GNU Operating System if RMS approves. Since it builds heavily on GNU software like Guile (GNU's official scripting/extension language) for its init system and package manager / deployment tool, prioritizes GNU packages in its database, and remains ostensibly kernel-agnostic with the hopes of running on the Hurd in the future, it can be seen literally as the GNU OS. (GRUB, GCC, Autotools, Glibc, Bash, coreutils, etc. all go without saying.)

(Until approval of the name GNU, the OS simply has the same name as the package manager: Guix.)

And homepage: [http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/](http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Package management is probably, today, a very well defined problem. Isn't it time to solve this once and for all? Or are we forever doomed to have multiple package managers for the dot product of [operating system]X[development platform]?

It itches me that php has pear and composer, node has npm, ruby has gems and python has pip. It itches that deb and rpm solve the exact same problem, not to mention all the other smaller package formats/managers like pacman, yaourt or portage. It looks as pretty obvious that it is the same problem, albeit attacked via some different angles (source build versus binary distribution notably).

It even looks like it could be cross-platform, solving in one simple swoop at least unix systems (namely linux along with the BSDs) and, in a dream world, non-unix systems (windows, notably).

Daydreaming, yes. The status quo is too well established. But it justifies my jaded look regarding Guix: Late comer to a party that is already stale and over.

<comment><USER5> Nix is attempting to be the solution you're looking for. Look at the nixpkgs repository: [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs)

You will see packages for tons of stuff, including:

        * Python packages from PyPi: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/python-packages.nix
        * Haskell packages from Hackage: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/haskell-packages.nix
        * Perl packages from CPAN: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/perl-packages.nix
        * NodeJS packages: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/node-packages.nix
        * Lua Packages https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/top-level/lua-packages.nix

All these packages in one place, all installed through the same system and automatically built and tested on the Hydra build farm. Nix users have developed tools which automate (as much as possible) the creation of these packages.

I really believe NixOS is the future of the Linux distro, and it's tragic that it's still relatively obscure. It revolutionizes the OS in a myriad of ways, getting everything into the same package repository is just the beginning. For instance, it's fully configuration managed out of the box, using the Nix package manager as its configuration mangement system. Puppet, ansible, saltstack, chef, etc. are all made obsolete. Sure, it still has some rough edges, but it's a great community to contribute to and is improving at a impressive clip. If you're interested in the other ways NixOS is better than whatever you're currently using, I refer you to the website: [https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/)

<comment><USER6> > curl [https://nixos.org/nix/install](https://nixos.org/nix/install) | sh

Installation instructions for nix. Although I'm not sure that arbitrarily running shell scripts from the internet is a good thing. When I install an OS X app from the internet, at least it's signed.

<comment><USER7> That script does a lot of work that boils down to "go to [https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-1.7](https://nixos.org/releases/nix/nix-1.7) and do the obvious"

Of course if thats not signed you still have a problem. Eternal chicken and egg issues. How do you install gpg to verify a gpg signature while verifying the gpg signature of gpg

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly enough, the adoption of a new technology standard is very similar problem to that of the adoption of a new product. There is a learning/switching cost involved, and for someone to make the move the pain has to be absolutely unbearable, the new solution has to be 10x better, and the cost has to be as low as possible. We often end up in local minimums and paradoxically the only way to overcome those is to run competing searches (aka, multiple products/standards) or simply to restart the search. Then there is also the problem of existing solutions being already "good enough" (think python27, IE8, IPV4, dpkg, cars that run on oil, and electricity that comes from coal).

<comment><USER3> Purely functional package management (PFPM) gives us reproducible builds; other package management systems don't. 1/0 = ∞. Therefore PFPM is infinitely better than non-PF PM. ;-P

And my reasons for choosing Guix over Nix would be: fully-free GNU system, doesn't use systemd (no hate, just a preference), uses Scheme/Guile for everything from init system to PM.

(Add possible future Guile/Emacs integration to the mix, and that Guile might enter even more GNU software (e.g. it's in GCC, GDB, and Make already), and we get an interesting picture of a pseudo-Lisp Machine... I'm thrilled, personally.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone that ran nixos for a time I wonder if this might allow me to proceed further - with nix(os) I had some issues grasping the recipes/the language. Scheme looks much more accessible to me.

Offputting is the strong focus on libre in the announcement. While I actually like that I often find that projects that emphasize their relation to free/libre software are .. failing in the real world. Need to figure out if I could actually install useful media codecs, flash if needed, heck - <USER2> decss or whatever I deem necessary.

<comment><USER3> Adobe Flash is an outright offense if you ask me. A distro providing a separate repo for non-free software is one thing, forcing me to run uninspectable code, which is known to have a horrible security record, under my user's privileges, is another thing. As OpenBSD people say, it's a feature that it's missing. :-P

I don't know what problem with media codecs there are. FFmpeg, as free software, implements H.264 just fine, even though it's a patented format. I don't know how exactly the legal aspects of that work, but I'm happy it somehow works, because otherwise I couldn't watch all my [spoiler]Chinese cartoons[/spoiler].

Now WiFi cards are a problem from what I know. You can buy a WiFi dongle with free software drivers though to get around that issue, or replace your laptop's WiFi card with one that has free drivers. I suspect that will be the one major issue with the GNU OS, and the only thing we can do is ask manufacturers of WiFi hardware to be more cooperative.

The other big problem tends to be the BIOS, but GRUB/Linux-libre at least boot just fine on proprietary BIOS, so it's no issue for those who don't care. Those who want to take the further step for software freedom may want to look into LibreBoot: [http://www.libreboot.org/](http://www.libreboot.org/)

<comment><USER9> Well, let's put flash aside. I'm not a fan and Shumway works for most stuff that I need.

Dropbox? BTSync? (I .. don't care about the latter, and try to replace the former with SyncThing atm, but I'm trying to make a point: It's more than just a single binary blob to watch cat movies or porn in a browser)

What I really like to install is Steam.

What I'm trying to say here is: If there's no middle ground, no way to fulfill my needs, the system just isn't for me. I might support the idealistic idea, but I cannot (or, more precise: I don't want to) work with a number of limitations.

I didn't even think about wifi or anything hardware related. If that doesn't "just work" it's again impossible for me to use the project and I need to bury the idea of trying Guix right next to my failed attempt to run nixos as my host system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the idea a lot. However what's lacking is good package repositories to go with it. Nix has exactly the same issue.

A question I have is why don't they use the Debian / Fedora repositories? Is there some crucial meta-data missing? Are the build script for .deb / .rpm made in such a way that it is not possible to add multi-version support on top?

To clarify, I'm not asking them to interoperate with apt-get/yum, just to use the package repositories as a source.

<comment><AUTHOR> >why don't they use the Debian / Fedora repositories?

They are fundamentally incompatible.

Among other reasons, Debian and Fedora package builds are not reproducible. That is, given the corresponding source code to the package, you're not likely to get the same binary if you build it yourself. Sometimes maintainer uploaded packages may not build at all for someone else, because the binary built on the maintainer's machine relied on some extra software not specified in the build recipe.

Nix/Guix are source-based distributions. They build packages in an isolated chroot, in which only the explicit dependencies of a package are available. This means that no user must rely on a server to give them binaries. Any user can opt to build any package on their own system instead, and the result will be nearly bit-identical to what's on the build farm.

Hope this helps.

<comment><USER11> _" Nix/Guix are source-based distributions. They build packages in an isolated chroot, in which only the explicit dependencies of a package are available. This means that no user must rely on a server to give them binaries. Any user can opt to build any package on their own system instead, and the result will be nearly bit-identical to what's on the build farm."_

While the package format RPM lacks insurance of this process, the culture of Fedora/RHEL is that packages are built using mock (as part of the koji build system), which _does_ build everything in a chroot. And, if a package would build differently (such as pulling in different libraries, for instance) for someone using the same tools it is considered a bug and will be fixed by the maintainer.

I don't know how specific guix/nix get in this regard: Do they specify the build dependencies down to some sort of file-based checksum level? Or will they build against any compatible version of a library? If the latter, how is that different from RPM when using mock? One could just as readily end up with a very different build of a package, based on which library version is available in the repo against which the package is being built.

One could lock down the remote repository to create predictable builds (i.e. only use the Fedora version 20 repo, with no updates; or the Guix version whatever repo with no updates), and presumably either would produce very predictable builds (I know the Fedora case would).

So, what do you mean when you say "reproducible"? Is it really specific and unforgiving of new versions of things? Or, does it allow for newer versions easily? RPM allows one to specify things with extreme specificity (down to the exact version and package revision), but one rarely does that if the package will build successfully with a range of versions.

I'm not sure I'm convinced this is a unique feature of Guix/Nix, is what I'm trying to say.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Do they specify the build dependencies down to some sort of file-based checksum level?

Yes, Emacs 24.4 built with X support has a different hash than Emacs 24.4 built without X support. They are completey different in the eyes on Nix/Guix.

>So, what do you mean when you say "reproducible"? Is it really specific and unforgiving of new versions of things? Or, does it allow for newer versions easily?

In Nix/Guix, you _have to_ specify the _exact_ dependencies, nothing is implicit. Packages are built as a pure function. A package's identity is the hash of all its build inputs: source code, build system, and other dependencies. Bumping the version of a dependency triggers rebuilds of packages that depend on it.

I know of no other package management systems that treat package builds in this manner.

<comment><USER11> This doesn't really sound like a feature. Or, at least, not a feature I've ever wished I had.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, it means huge swaths of software have to be rebuilt any time anything gets updated. And, it's become clear now to me that every user is building all their own software (as with ports or Gentoo ebuild, both of which I consider unacceptable package managers for servers for that very reason)...given that, and given that rebuilds now must often span huge piles of software, occasionally with exploding dependency chains, I'm feeling a little queasy imagining trying to administer such a system.

I understand the appeal, from a security perspective (and particularly in a world in which the NSA and other highly capable attackers are willing to exert resources to compromise software at the vendor level), of being able to duplicate a package from source. That's cool. But, why force every user to do so every time they update their software? Am I missing something? Are there also binary packages and being able to verify package builds is optional?

<comment><AUTHOR> Users do not need to build everything for themselves. They can download binaries from the build farm, just as if they were using a binary-based distro. The system is transparent: If a binary is available from an authorized remote machine, Guix will pull from it. If not, Guix will build it locally.

To respond to security updates to core packages a lot faster, we are using a technique called 'grafting' that doesn't involve full rebuilds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Boot to Guile FTW!

</comment><comment><USER13> So it's a Scheme layer on top of Nix?

<comment><AUTHOR> To some degree, yes. Guix is compatible with the low-level Nix package format, and it currently uses the upstream Nix daemon. Everything else has been replaced. Guix uses its own client-side and build-side code. The Nix language is replaced entirely with Guile Scheme, build scripts are Guile programs instead of shell scripts, the UI is different, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank goodness, I was concerned that we didn't have enough package management options!</comment>


Former Uber Backup Driver: 'We Saw This Coming' - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/03/former-uber-backup-driver-we-saw-this-coming/556427/ <comment><USER4> This isn't just about Uber -- all semi-autonomous cars are going to have this problem. The people behind the wheel will become distracted, increasingly so as the technology becomes better and they need to intervene less and less often. Even people who are trained to pay attention while testing self-driving cars become distracted, so we can assume the general public will become distracted too.

The only viable autonomous cars are ones that will never require human intervention, because humans aren't able to intervene effectively and may make situations worse as they snap out of a distracted state. But we can't get to full autonomy without first testing the technology, and no artificial test conditions could replicate the complexity of the real world. Society will either learn to accept some avoidable deaths during the testing phase or will ban the technology. I suspect a few more incidents will result in a ban, and we will not have fully autonomous cars for a very long time.

<comment><USER5> > But we can't get to full autonomy without first testing the technology, and > no artificial test conditions could replicate the complexity of the real > world.

Actually, I think a test environment could be a lot more complex.

It's mind blowing to me that there doesn't seem to be some big track somewhere with automated crash test dummies riding their bikes across the street in the dark. Automated cars running red lights and stop signs. Automated accidents in front of self driving cars. Automated kids chasing a football across the road.

It's mind blowing to me that governments do not require self driving cars do well on all these test before they allow the cars on the road. Governments should prepare these test, and car technology should complete the tests before they are allowed on the road.

And when a car fails any real world situation, we can step back and create new tests.

Really: We can test to any complexity we want. A plan lading on the road? A flood? A heard of sheep or flock of birds? A dust storm or other weather than might prevent the cars sensors working.

<comment><USER6> There are test tracks. Both Waymo and Uber have publicly said that they have fake cities to test the code [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside- waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-fake-city-pittsburgh- se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-fake-city-pittsburgh-self-driving- cars-2017-10)

<comment><USER5> I guess there are no cyclists crossing the road unexpectedly in Ubers fake city.

Do they have crash test dummy kids running out on the road? To they have road work with giant potholes?

<comment><USER7> Not that I know too much about machine learning but even in my very limited experience with homework we came across the problem of over fitting: where our model fits the noise of the training data too well but will not perform well against other real world data.

I can't even imagine the amount of data being generated by the fleets at waymo and others but compared to all the infinite possibilities I must assume their data set is tiny.

<comment><USER6> I can't imagine test tracks data being in the training set, so overfitting is irrelevant here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If it'd been a Waymo or Tesla car I'd have been more likely to give some benefit of the doubt. Driving is hard and most of these systems already make fewer mistakes than human drivers.

But Uber never has been and never will be trustworthy. It's a toxic organization that will continue moving fast and breaking things - <USER2> intentionally - until it's stopped by either the market or the government.

<comment><USER9> Interesing to see how little customers can do to stop them. As they are always in the red they never attracted enough customers for their business case. Nevertheless they always are able to get fresh money. The customer is irrelevant and left out of the equation. It is the shareholders that bet on the future no matter how dire the present is. That really speaks volumes about how capitalism works and is depressing as there is nothing you can do to boykott this company.

<comment><USER10> Capitalism has resulted in us drowning in capital. This seems to me to be a statement about its success, not its failure(s). Would the alternative (scarce, expensive capital) be better?

<comment><USER9> I am pretty sure you are not talking about the majority here when referring to "us".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "noncompliant actors" is the Uber term for pedestrians in the road.

I understand the computer science concept to abstract the term but when you're talking to the drivers of the cars this is in retrospect an awful term.

Rather depressingly all I can think of is the ED 2000 from Robocop that shoots citizens who don't comply.

<comment><USER12> Where did you hear this?

The Caltrain calls incidents where it hits a pedestrian "tresspasser strikes". Always thought this was awful.

<comment><USER11> From the article:

> In it, they are trained to keep hands hovering near the wheel at all times > so that they can quickly take control when the car does not safely respond > to dangerous road conditions or "noncompliant actors," such as people > walking in the roadway

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Japanese rail, conductors and drivers periodically point with their hand [1][2] to indicate awareness of the task. Reading the article, perhaps these distracted test drivers could use a similar approach.

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LmdUz3rOQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LmdUz3rOQU)

<comment><USER14> Huh, I had a bus driver in Seattle (not Japanese) that did something similar. He would point at and call out all the major intersections, speed limit signs, etc. I honestly thought it was some kind of neurosis/obsessive compulsive disorder, but seeing this exact same behavior makes me wonder if he actually picked it up as a trick to increase is awareness on driving.

<comment><USER15> This is one of the strategies they use on some of the drivers in the TV show "Canada's Worst Driver", to get the ones scared of driving to regain control, convince the distracted ones to watch the road, and teach the ones who don't know where to look how to look at everything.

(They don't do any pointing though, because that would require taking their hands off the wheel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Autonomous cars are not coming.

A certain amount of over familiarity with western driving conditions blinds these attempts to the reality that there are two worlds on the roads - <USER3> legal and socially manufactured layer and reality.

Which is why looking at the _actual_ problem space, like nations where road rules tend to be ignored, makes it clear that what you actually have to solve for.

It has been highlighted before - but the autonomous car can only work if the road itself is active / aware

<comment><USER17> Societies (and therefore roadsystems) will adapt, because speed and safety. Roads will be changed to cater to the needs of self-driving cars; smart traffic lights, clear lining, clear signage, less leveled intersections, dedicated lanes, I can think of dozens more changes which make it easier and safer and more deterministic for computers to drive cars.

Development of these changes will be spurred once self-driving cars can make more efficient use of the road; the immense pressure of society to get rid of traffic jams will make sure of that.

Maybe some nations won't implement these things nationwide with 100% coverage, but they certainly will implement changes for certain roads. Highway roads first, then collector roads, and lastly neighborhood roads.

<comment><USER18> In America, at least, many (most?) roads and highways are already neglected and getting worse. This is, so we hear, due to a lack of money to keep our roads properly maintained. If we don't have the money to do that, where is the money to retro-fit every road in the country to accomodate autonomous vehicles going to come from?

<comment><USER19> It's a good question since most of those cars are electric.

Taxes typically taken in at the gas pump are being skirted around by having electric cars. Do we just start charging MUCH more for registration? Especially cause these cars have the potential to operate most of the day (except when charging) so they will be causing more wear than a normal car.

<comment><USER20> Passenger vehicles (ICE or electric) cause negligible wear on roads. The vast majority of road wear is caused by heavy trucks and other large vehicles like buses. There's a non-linear relationship between vehicle weight and road damage.

<comment><USER21> Proportional to the fourth power, actually

[http://www.pavementinteractive.org/equivalent-single-axle- lo...](http://www.pavementinteractive.org/equivalent-single-axle-load/)

An 18-wheeler causes 10,000 times the wear of a car, approximately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If incidents only occur when the driver is distracted then it will always look like the cause was driver distraction even if they were diligent for 99.99% of the trip.

There will likely be a bias in the future for incidents like this to show some level of driver distraction. This makes it easy to blame the driver when the idea of a human as a supervisor is fundimentaly flawed.

</comment><comment><USER22> The two people interviewed were fired for cause from this same program, of course they will have a negative opinion. One even fired for the same thing this safety driver failed to do.

>Both Kelley and the former driver in Tempe were dismissed from their jobs with Uber earlier this year for safety infractions: Kelley said he was let go after rolling through a stop sign while he was operating the car, which he disputes; the individual in Tempe said he was dismissed for using his phone while the vehicle was in motion.

The bit about level 3 considered harmful makes a lot of sense and isn't something that I would have intuitively thought of

<comment><USER23> I guess you missed the point of TFA. It is impossible for humans to perform the tasks these two persons were hired to do. 100% of people who attempt to do that job will eventually fail, likely sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER24> Wrong. At least 95% of the people who made the cut and didn't get fired after a few weeks handled being the only operator of the vehicle with ease.

<comment><USER25> And they will continue to handle it with ease right up to the moment when they hit another cyclist.

What makes you so confident that the mere two years of running the program is enough to reliably calculate that number, when drivers like the one in the article managed to last more than a year until they got fired?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It would seem reasonable to me that once someone stepped off the curb that the human driver should get notified that there was someone in the street on their left. It would heighten their awareness and make it more likely they'd react if the car did not. Something as simple as right and left buzzers. Course if the lidar didn't detect the person at all then Uber's problems are much worse.

<comment><USER27> Heck that sounds pretty useful even for current cars today.

I imagine it isn't cheap though to add and even if it was reasonably priced I imagine they would make it optional in case people didn't want to add it to their car price in which case many would simply say "Nah I don't need that. I'm a great driver!"

<comment><USER28> These kinds of things have existed for a while now [https://newatlas.com/volvo-s60-pedestrian-safety- system/1358...](https://newatlas.com/volvo-s60-pedestrian-safety- system/13589/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Shouldn't test vehicles have at least the same level of attention monitors as current auto pilot/assist vehicles do?

For these specific vehicles shouldn't they have some hand placement sensors or wifi strength detectors or mobile signal detectors or eyeball monitoring at a minimum?

Or use a custom app to "lock" the phone while driving, exit app and the car pulls over.

Not that the driver would have prevented this incident, but seems like a logical requirement.

</comment><comment><USER30> In my opinion, automation is a way better use case for mass transit than 2-5 passenger consumer vehicles. These companies ought to be focusing on cities where population is growing but density is low (one example would be Jacksonville, FL). Start automating buses that run predictable routes and fire all those city employee bus drivers who are driving up property taxes because they need a pension.

</comment><comment><USER31> Seems like they need another system to monitor the backup driver to make sure their eyes are on the road.

</comment><comment><USER32> These people are basically giving driving lessons, just to cars instead of people. Regular driving instructors can do their job fulltime in a safe way without getting distracted. They don't control the car most of the time, yet they still are able to stop it in case of a student error.

So to me the question is: What is making this difference? Is it the level of training for the instructor? Human interaction? Is it the sign on their car that shows it's a lesson car to the other drivers? Or is it something else?

PS, this post is based on the way driving lessons happen in the Netherlands. I'm not sure if it's completely comparable to the US.

<comment><USER33>
      What is making this difference?

Driving instructors are constantly graduating their most experienced students and recruiting zero-experience students.

These zero-experience students need the instructor to intervene from time to time, thus justifying and reinforcing the instructor's habit of vigilance.

On the other hand, if an autonomous car has one near-accident every 100,000 miles, it's not often enough to maintain and keep strong a habit of vigilance.

<comment><USER34> Though impractical to implement, this is an interesting thought experiment. What if the autonomous driving system has a "chaos monkey" that required intervention by the trainer every so often?

Note that we already do this to keep people vigilant in rote tasks, e.g. for airport x-ray scanner operators or train drivers.

<comment><USER35> Self-driving car companies are "newbies" who could learn from railway companies, which have decades of experience with keeping drivers alert in vehicles that keep moving without driver action. For example, locomotives have "dead man" switches to make sure the driver is still on the job. Japanese drivers are trained to point and vocalise. Why shouldn't the car drivers be required to call and point out every hazard whilst in autonomous mode?

Maybe part of the problem is that the self-driving companies view their drivers as temporary measures, so choose to invest their resources into the machine component rather than the human component?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Rather than audit dashcam footage after the fact for infractions related to attention and phone use, these companies need realtime remote monitoring of the drivers (and realtime AI driven monitoring for areas without signal and attention lapses by the remote monitor employees).

<comment><USER23> Lmao, so now you need two people to drive a car.

<comment><USER36> While developing immature technology, yes. Maybe three people total (driver, and someone monitoring the driver, and someone else monitoring the scene from a camera up on a small boom pole).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What I don't understand: if Uber was firing people for using their mobiles in the car, which did they allow them to have a mobile phone while on the job?

<comment><USER37> \- News reports have mentioned that Uber was using some of their driverless cars to pick up passengers, for which the driver would need access to the Uber app.

\- You want the driver to be able to call 911 if they're involved in an accident, or are the victim of a crime, or have a medical emergency.

Presumably, they'd only be firing people for using their phones while the car was driving itself, and they were supposed to be supervising it. It would be OK to use a phone while the car wasn't moving.

<comment><USER38> It's pretty ironic though that Uber's driver app almost/does require you to use it in motion though, eg when you are driving and another fare comes up. Nearly every uber drive I see goes over to the phone and slides to accept the fare.</comment></comment></comment>


A Clone of the Classic Mac OS Finder in Modern Cocoa and Objective-C - <AUTHOR> https://bszyman.com/blog/classic-finder <comment><USER2> It's crazy how deeply embedded the old Finder is in my subconscious. I opened the app and _instantly_ noticed several differences from the original, even though I haven't run the old System 7 Finder in, what, twenty years?

Things I noticed:

\- Command-W doesn't close a window.

\- No animation when opening windows.

\- Dragging outside of the close button while still holding the mouse button (uh, trackpad button) down should revert it to the non-pushed state until the cursor re-enters it.

\- Obviously, the fonts shouldn't be anti-aliased. The metrics on Chicago look weird too.

I am so filled with nostalgia right now I don't know what to do with myself. I _loved_ the System 7 Finder. It's one of the things that got me into UI design and pixel art.

<comment><USER3> I really miss the System 7 Finder, the 'spatial' nature[1] really clicked with me and other file browsers still sort of bug me because of that.

[1] [http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm](http://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-3.htm)

<comment><USER4> Nautilus (GNOME Files) used to have a spatial mode, I was rather perturbed when they didn't bring it forward for GNOME 3. Obviously Apple killed the spatial finder with OS X, though it's always had the quasi-spatial mode with the pill button (remember that? I'm a little miffed about that one too, especially now that they've gotten rid of the dedicated full screen button that gave it the boot to make me hold Option every time I want to zoom a window instead of full screening it).

<comment><USER5> You can still enable the spatial mode by hiding the toolbar via the "View" menu

<comment><USER6> But unfortunately you then lose the actually-somewhat-useful sidebar.

<comment><USER7> It makes sense to me that the sidebar is incompatible with spatial browsing. It changes the size/shape of the window, and the items there are a list of aliases that don't exist in that space.

<comment><USER6> You make a good point, and I don't disagree. But it does come in handy occasionally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> inspector-g > A smaller, more secondary reason for creating this was to sort of observe > how a Classic-era app might run on today's hardware. As our hardware gets > beefier, it seems like our software gets chunkier. If we could port > yesterday's software to run natively on today's hardware, how might it > perform? Very fast, I'd imagine.

This reminds me of a small personal project I decided to take on a couple years ago. I did it both as an experiment in performance and for nostalgia's sake.

I bought as pristine an example as possible of Apple's last machine that could run Mac OS 9 natively, a PowerMac G4 (the 2003 MDD vintage). I upgraded the CPU and RAM as much as possible (dual 1.25 GHz G4, 2GB RAM), and replaced the hard drive with as fast an SSD as the system could handle (don't recall which SSD model at the moment).

In short, I was astonished at the "snappiness" of the system. Boot time took no more than 15 seconds. Shutting down took only about one second. The system entered sleep mode near-instantly. Opening and closing windows within an app happened as fast (or faster) than I could react to it. Opening and closing classic apps themselves was at least an order of magnitude faster than what I would consider reasonable analogs from today.

I already had a decent amount of disdain for how much time I spend on a modern Mac/iOS device waiting for the system to catch up to my inputs, but it got worse after having done this experiment. A simple example, but which pains me near-daily, is the creation of folders in the modern Finder. After typing cmd+shift+N, I often must wait an amount of time that must be on the order of several hundred milliseconds before typing the name of the folder (if I don't wait, the first couple characters I type will be missing from the folder's name, which is yet another time-sink to go back and fix the missing characters). And this is on an iMac Pro! I tried this exact test on my old- but-quick PowerMac G4, and I _never_ had to wait nor lost any chars no matter how quickly I attempted to type the command and the subsequent folder name.

<comment><USER8> > A simple example, but which pains me near-daily, is the creation of folders > in the modern Finder. After typing cmd+shift+N, I often must wait an amount > of time that must be on the order of several hundred milliseconds before > typing the name of the folder (if I don't wait, the first couple characters > I type will be missing from the folder's name, which is yet another time- > sink to go back and fix the missing characters). And this is on an iMac Pro!

That is very odd. I tried this a few times now on my 4 year old MacBook Pro and it was instantaneous each time. No delay. I wonder what may be causing the delay on your side. iMac Pro is after all absolutely state of the art.

<comment><USER9> Which version of macOS is on your 4 year old MacBook Pro?

I noticed a difference between Mavericks and El Capitan.

SSD upgrades require a newer OS though, and I'm weighing up the inconveniences of older versions of Mac OS compared to Linux.

<comment><USER8> Currently on High Sierra 10.13.5 (17F77)

I only upgraded to High Sierra a month ago, and it was probably good that I waited, as I've seen no negative consequences so far. It's lightning fast, even with APFS and the other changes it brought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _I've learned many things throughout this journey. One of them is that modern user interfaces are absolutely gigantic compared to the user interfaces of the earlier days.

I mean, I guess it kind of has to be that way, in the age of high DPI monitors and bad eye sight, but WOW. Run Classic Finder just once and you'll see what I mean._

Classic mac os ran at 72 dpi, compared to the modern 1x dpi of 96 to 110, so those controls were actually much bigger on screens of the day.

</comment><comment><USER11> It looks like the link is undergoing some problems:

RuntimeException (500) Failed to read /var/www/bszyman- dc/user/pages/07.feed/listing.md: Unexpected characters near ": '/blog'" at line 3 (near "items: 'page.descendants': '/blog'").

<comment><USER12> Seems weird to run a React app for a static content blog. (I think this is React?) and also to run it in development mode in production.

<comment><USER13> > _Seems weird to run a React app for a static content blog._

> _(I think this is React?) and also to run it in development mode in > production._

They are using PHP — [https://i.imgur.com/vy5Q2bq.png](https://i.imgur.com/vy5Q2bq.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What I would _love_ to see on a Mac (or Linux, I don't mind) would be Eric Traut's "Out of Context Menus" extension for MacOS 9.

[https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack- contest-1999...](https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack- contest-1999/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I really miss the top-right button in classic Finder windows, the one that resizes the window to just the right size to show all it's contents.

<comment><USER16> The zoom button (option-click the green traffic light button, or double-click the title bar) in the (current) macOS finder is still _supposed_ to do that, if Finder's in its "spatial" mode (turn off the toolbar and, optionally, switch to view "as Icons"\-- back in the day, there was a window control that did this in one step).

It's actually broken in current macOS, though-- using the zoom button on a Finder window ends up forcing some of the content underneath the title bar where you can't reach it. Guess that shows how much attention Apple's putting into the "little details" of their operating systems these days (very little, it seems).

<comment><USER17> i find that fascinating... this is the kind of thing certain builder philosophy would say "no user would ever notice", but users do notice and it bugs them.

meanwhile, we can also get an insight into the internal social dynamics of a corporation by looking at it's products. the people who cared about this type of 'little detail' have lost influence inside the organization - they are not being hired, not being promoted, not being retained, and not being listened to. but those kind of people did used to be there. so what happened to them?

its kind of fascinating, like some kind of corporate sociology based solely on research of artefacts left behind by the corporate culture.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I absolutely love the idea (fitting more data on the screen, ala Tufte), the execution (brings back memories of trying MacOS on an emulator) and the design (flat!! yes!!)

I don't understand why flat design gets such a bad press.

One of the best thing I have ever used was a classic windows phone. Efficient, organized, straight to the point.

Maybe it is just part of a retrocomputing trend, but I really like that.

<comment><USER19> > I don't understand why flat design gets such a bad press.

Classic MacOS isn't flat design, there are hard borders all over the place and (by today's standards) subtle cues of dimension throughout.

Flat design gets bad press because when it is done poorly, usability suffers greatly. I love the iPhone—and I like many aspects of its current UI aesthetic—but the UX design is woeful in many places, with countless problems that arose when the dumped the "classic iOS" appearance.

Most critically is that unless you're an experienced user of iOS, it is no longer obvious what (or where) is tappable. Buttons used to be obvious through design, now they are just text on the screen, sometimes in a different colour. Sometimes they're on the bottom, sometimes they're top-left, sometimes top- right. This all used to make sense when there were title bars and arrow-shaped back buttons that visually reacted when touched; now it is an ambiguous mess.

<comment><USER18> I fully agree on how UI have become "harder to guess"

Most of the current interfaces require too much learning. It seems to come with a cognitive load.

Fun thought: I can still use a windows phone after a few drinks. With an android device, not so, while I have used androids for a longer time.

I don't know what causes it, but usability seems to suffer inded.

<comment><USER20> I wonder if they do it on purpose to create a "moat". The more time you've invested learning what's clickable, where to force-touch, etc., the more resistant you'll be to leaving the platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awesome. The author should make it such a great general purpose file manager that we all switch to it. That would be awesome :)

<comment><USER22> Especially if it let you change the sort order of files. Apple's goofy nonstandard ordering drives me nuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of the things that I missed for quite some time from the classic Finder was the ability to drag Finder windows to the edge of the screen where they would shrink down to a tab you could click to instantly access that folder or hover over while dragging objects so the folder would expand and allow you to drop objects into that folder.

However, the sidebar and spring loaded folders now offer functionality that is largely the same.

</comment><comment><USER24> This appears to be a link to the source: [https://bitbucket.org/bszyman/classic-finder- app/](https://bitbucket.org/bszyman/classic-finder-app/)

And a link to the "main site" which has a download: [https://classicmacfinder.com](https://classicmacfinder.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> Cached link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://bszyman.com/blog/classic- finder)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is really cool. I'd love to contribute, but it doesn't seem that easy with the way he has BitBucket setup.

</comment><comment><USER27> Meh...if it doesn't involve constantly swapping floppy disks while you're launching an app then it's not a true emulation.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a great project!

<comment><USER29> Made me wish for my trusty Atari ST GEM TOS again. And the excellent SM124 monitor.

Probably pure nostalgia, but I did like the simpler and more monochrome UI back in the days...

<comment><USER29> Alas, does not play nice with the tiling window manager I use ([https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)) - highly recommended to those who seek tiling WMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Your site is down

</comment><comment><USER31> > It will really (probably poorly) perform Finder operations on your > computer's file system.

Ha! Given how horrifically bad the OSX Finder has always been at file management (not to mention its numerous unfixed bugs), I can't imagine how it could be much worse.

</comment><comment><USER32> I believe that the abandonment of the Finder interface by Apple (both old and new) is having a devolutionary effect on computing. Generations of people are learning to use computers without understanding the differences between a folder and a file system, with little skill in maintaining a hierarchical system for organising their material, and so on.

Also, the fact that, today, you can't open a folder full of files and have the Finder window auto-size to fit the content (in list view, for example) is an indicator that Apple just doesn't seem to care about keeping this paradigm.

And thats a pity, in my opinion, because it makes stupid users. Being able to fundamentally organize ones cache of documents on filesystem is a key first step in gaining computer literacy, since very few computer systems out there achieve anything without a folder and a few files in it.

So, I'm quite encouraged by the effort to rebuild Finder - if we had an open source Finder alternative out there, which works to exceed the features of the built-in Finder, I'm quite sure I'd contribute to it. The devolution of Finder, and of filesystems in general, is personally a pet peeve of mine - there is nothing more frustrating than having to explain the concept of organising ones data to a user who really should know these things already - but don't, because Apple (and others) have decided the user doesn't need to have control over the fundamental building blocks of their system.

This deleterious effect, devolutionary in nature, of 'technologically refined simplicity for the sake of the user' is a real issue. I expect to see more examples of its negative effect in the coming decade ..</comment>


ASK HN: How to program a quadrotor? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN!
I am here to pick your brains and ask if any of you has experience programming a quad rotor. We(a team of undergraduate students) want to make our own autopilot and we would like people to tell us how to get off the ground. The resources on the internet are not in one place(or even two) and it would save us a lot of time if someone could pinpoint us to some sites to read.
Thanks a lot! <comment><USER2> Checkout the ArduPilot source code: [http://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot](http://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot)

</comment><comment><USER3> A Galois project:

[http://smaccmpilot.org/](http://smaccmpilot.org/)

[http://corp.galois.com/blog/2013/10/2/smaccmpilot-open- sourc...](http://corp.galois.com/blog/2013/10/2/smaccmpilot-open-source- autopilot-software-for-uavs.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://ardupilot.com/](http://ardupilot.com/)

[http://www.diydrones.com/notes/ArduPilot](http://www.diydrones.com/notes/ArduPilot)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://code.google.com/p/simple-flight- controller/](https://code.google.com/p/simple-flight-controller/)

Any use?

The build log link could also be useful

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! will definitely take a look at it

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you don't already know about it, take a look at what the NodeCopter guys are doing.

[http://nodecopter.com](http://nodecopter.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php](http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php)</comment>


Add the Jimmy Wales "donation bar" to EVERY website - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/idkjdjficifbfjjkdkiimioljbloddpl

<comment><USER2> They should have added an option to customize the text.</comment>


An example of preparatory refactoring - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/preparatory-refactoring-example.html

<comment><USER2> This article is long and confusing for me. However, the sidebar emphasized his important point here about "adding function" vs "refactoring" \-- _The adding function hat is more stressful and riskier, so it 's nice to wear the refactoring hat as much as possible._

What I take away is that if you refactor before adding new functionality, the refactoring is a lot easier because you can test that the functionality doesn't change at all. If you refactor after you add new functionality, you have to test all at once that there are no regressions and that the new functionality works, so the refactoring becomes as stressful as adding new functionality.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: Plan what you're going to do.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's the main point. The main point is to use the approach "make it easy to make the change you want to make, then make the change" and this article is a concrete example of how Martin did that in one instance.</comment></comment>


General Electric Develops a 500GB Optical Disc - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news160061435.html

<comment><USER2> By the time this gets to market, won't I carry a one TB thumb drive in my pocket? They apparently haven't heard the Gretsky quote about "skating to where the puck is going to be."

More generally, it seems that the "USB disk" abstraction layer allows innovation in storage without the pain of hardware standards adoption. I understand using this disk for consumer-ish stuff as a means of enforcing copyright via hardware, but why would commercial users care?

<comment><USER3> Well, GE is certainly interested in the copyright enforcement ideas behind this media, but there are still commercial uses.

I suspect that a fairly common use for commercial users would be medical imaging storage -- huge amounts of data, but rarely accessed. A few other pluses for medical applications: hospitals care about volumetric density so that they don't have to store giant piles of USB keys; they don't want to have to maintain electronics on a per-disc basis so harddrives aren't the best solution.

Just a thought, but GE usually markets towards industries with technological applications rather than computer technologies themselves.

<comment><USER2> Is flash memory a good long-term backup medium? I have no idea if it degrades over time. It seems that one could design a flash-based "modular media system" (sorry, I have no better words) that would be as dense today as this GE optical disk but have the advantage of sizing up in the future. Say, 500 gigs per unit today, 1 TB a year from now, etc. So, density could improve without changing out media readers. Think about any camera flash card and the density/price improvements.

Also, what if the requirement of 1Mx+ re-writability was removed? It's not like the hospital will re-use the media that many times if its purpose is long-term storage. What other requirements could be removed to improve density, cost, etc. ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nothing against GE or any other vendor doing R&D work here, but call me back when the format reaches mass market numbers and traction, and when the media longevity and reliability and pricing are all better known.

The numbers of optical and magneto-optical and tape other (now) dead-end drives and drive formats are legion.

Even once-popular formats can get into trouble here. There are organizations that make their living rolling their critical data from one of these now-weird and now-archaic formats to another and more current format. And there's the occasional success with a particularly unusual format that gets publicized:

[http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- lunar22...](http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na- lunar22-2009mar22,0,1783495,full.story)

</comment><comment><USER5> If it takes 5-6 years for these to be productized, magnetic hard drives may be to 10TB/$100 by then. So these could be DOA.</comment>


Sources: Google Is Planning a Game Platform That Could Take on Xbox and PlayStat - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/sources-google-is-planning-a-game-platform-that-could-1827217387 <comment><USER2> Much like Google+ killed Facebook and Twitter?</comment>


Healthcare workers protest at Microsoft Seattle offices over Nevada tax dodge - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2014/healthcare-workers-protest-microsoft-tax-loopholes-streets-seattle/

<comment><USER2> Well, there must be something seriously wrong with healthcare funding if the workers need to protest at a seemingly unrelated office, that is, the one of Microsoft. What if they decided to relocate?</comment>


Ask HN: Developer Laptops - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN. I'm looking for a light, powerful developer laptop which I can use for android, robotics (FRC), java, and web development. I'm mainly a windows user so I naturally looked at some ultra books. The one laptop which really attracted me was the Thinkpad X1 Carbon. After looking into it, I went to place my order and found out that even if I ordered today, it would only ship out of their offices on the 27th of this month. I need a laptop before the 20th so I can use it in the robotics competition I am attending.
Looking around I found that the Mac Book Air had exactly the same specs as the thinkpad and cost slightly less.
My question is this: Should I get the MBA and make the switch to apple products (I've sparingly used them and have been a windows/android user my whole life), or should I look at alternatives in the windows ultra book area?
Any advice is greatly appreciated, Thank you. <comment><USER2> I ordered the top end 13" MBA on Friday with 2-3 day shipping (an extra $13). It shipped last night with a scheduled delivery of this Wednesdaym two days away.

But it sounds like you want to look at the X1 Carbon as I don't see the need or benefit of you converting to Mac at this point, given your information.

Lenovo is always a slow ordering shipping process. It's never quick. Whenever I buy a Lenovo, I buy it off of eBay after carefully examining a seller's feedback and reputation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've never bought anything off ebay because i've been uncertain about trusting the sellers there. I think I may go with something off of ebay though. Thanks for your help :]

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want to stick with Windows, go for the X1 Carbon, but if you can't find a way to purchase it in time, I would highly recommend the MacBook Air. I switched to Mac last year and don't have many regrets. If you find you dislike working in OSX, you can always install Windows 7 in bootcamp. Android, Java and web develop work great on OSX (though I have no idea about robotics). The only thing I would recommend is go for the upgraded RAM and SSD, as the MBA's hardware can't be upgraded at a later date, and from my experience, OSX kinda sucks at memory management (if you do a lot of multitasking).

</comment><comment><USER4> Carbon X1 is a great laptop, I would recommend it over an air, mainly because of the 14inch vs 13inch screen. If urgency is an issue I guess thats something else. But I recently purchased one, its rock solid and well built. cheers

</comment><comment><USER5> I bought Dell Inspiron 14z for half that price ($574) last month: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081YPUT8> My experience has been good so far.</comment>