Ask HN: What was the post about thinking you're a failure? - <AUTHOR>

There was a post in the past couple of weeks about constantly thinking that you're failing, even though it's not true. The comments were mostly full of shock that everyone else experienced the same thing.<p>I forgot to bookmark it, and I'm constantly wanting to show it to friends of mine. Any help? <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1906558>

<http://searchyc.com/submissions/feel+like+a+fraud></comment>


When did porn become sex ed? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/when-did-porn-become-sex-ed.html <comment><USER2> Lest this discussion devolve into "lel, US so prude": Outdated sex ed exists or at least existed in Germany as well. Which is why over the past years several federal states have updated theirs (sometimes much to the chagrin of reactionaries who don't like that e.g. homosexuality is included in the curriculum).

When I went to school in the 90s, sex ed at my school was "penis in vagina, then pregnancy" plus contraception. No mention of consent, erogenous zones, social pressure, different sex positions, homosexuality etc. or even the simple fact that sex, when done correctly, feels good.

A few years later though there was a lecture by a doctor of a local hospital about AIDS, which was much more in-depth: I recall us listening, rapt in our attention, when he showed us various sex position on the overhead projector and then asked about the risk of infection with HIV (we were wrong most of the time). He was laid back, knowledgeable and funny.

<comment><USER3> Too late

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a European, I find it strange and amusing that Americans are so afraid of sex.

Here (in Italy, in Spain, in Netherlands, in Sweden) sex is good, normal and nothing of much interest, just a regular part of life.

<comment><USER5> sex != porn

EDIT: downvoting me for saying that porn is different than sex is like downvoting me if i'd said Hollywood movies are different than reality...

<comment><USER4> Except that this is the case when reality is so much better and sensual than Hollywood movies.

<comment><USER5> Porn is sensual? Yeah ok... better visiting motherless.com than reading this kind of bullshit.

// @TODO: fix this downvotable comment, might result in bad karma

<comment><USER6> His comparison implied that actual sex is 'better' than pornography. It's more sensual. Draws harder on the emotions, and involves more drama and mess than is depicted in pornography.

If anything pornography is a whitewash of the rich tapestry of sex to make it into something bland, banal, and utterly mechanical wherein you can slot the entire act into single categories and stick them on a website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good article, but this curriculum needs mentioned: Our Whole lives - [http://www.uua.org/re/owl](http://www.uua.org/re/owl) .

<comment><USER8> Having recently completed my first facilitation of the Adult OWL curriculum and seen the impact it had on participants, I highly agree with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it true that Victorian era made pornography a thing ? it seems such an absurdity (pornography that is, not the Victorian theory).

<comment><USER10> Not at all. There were changes in public perception of sexual activity for the upper class during the Victorian era, but much of "pornography" dates back to earlier and a much more religious context—western pornography has been evolving since the printing press, more or less.

Source: [http://www.annalspornographie.com/](http://www.annalspornographie.com/)

EDIT: the word "pornography" itself may date to the time period (mid nineteenth century).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be funny if it wasn't so sadly predictable. If you don't teach kids about it, they'll learn from unrealistic depictions in the media.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fuck, I too have the same situation. Is there some online sex ed material?

<comment><USER13> I can't recommend this channel enough. Dr. Doe is knowledgable and fun to watch. [https://www.youtube.com/user/sexplanations](https://www.youtube.com/user/sexplanations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't understand how a liberal person can defend criticising how other people chose to have sex.

Young American couples are choosing more frequently to have anal sex. Unless it's rape, what business is that of yours?

This article presents the rise of some sexual practices such as anal and oral, as somehow fundamentally problematic.

You have sex how you want to have sex, I'll have sex how I want to have sex, and as long as nobody is being raped it's none of our business what the other person is doing.

<comment><USER15> That's a complete misrepresentation of the article's argument. It presents the rise of those practices as problematic when they are performed under duress, when the act is painful, or when there is a lack of reciprocity in sexual relationships. All of those things are problematic, and the author draws a link between those problems and the prevalence of porn-as-sex-ed. I don't think there's anything wrong with porn, but I do think there's a problem with this:

 _> Yet according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than half of high schools and only a fifth of middle schools teach all 16 components the agency recommends as essential to sex education. Only 23 states mandate sex ed at all; 13 require it to be medically accurate._

That says to me that the problem isn't porn, it's a ridiculous refusal to educate kids about sex, which leaves them to scrape together that education from porn, internet sources, and peer knowledge, which is a recipe for disaster.</comment></comment>


Chinese intelligence agencies penetrate Australia's parliament - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/chinese-spies-may-have-read-all-mps-emails-for-a-year-20140428-zr0kz.html <comment><USER2> "One participant said they were 'surprised at the extent of the compromise and did not immediately comprehend why information on personal relationships and domestic politics would have been so useful to the Chinese'."

Apparently this "participant" was born yesterday.

Bribery, blackmail, coercion - just to name three reasons.

This story does not surprise me in the least. I once worked for an Australian federal agency and discovered that another federal agency's external facing web-server(s) had been compromised. I notified their IT department immediately but heard nothing back. It was running a PHP CMS (of course).

</comment><comment><USER3> There really should be consequences like, for Australia, severing all shipments of raw materials to China or cancelling all imports from China and compensating any losses with any Chinese assets as a matter of national security. Or when the USA does it, pulling out all military troops in whichever war we are in at the moment or banning all American music, TV, and Movies....stuff that, although not painless to ones self, things that are far more painful for the offending party. Not doing so only encourages such acts.

<comment><USER4> As if anyone really cares what Australia has to say in the grander political scale of things .. its population is weak, easily controlled by agitprop, lifestyle-addicted (i.e. will be resistive to anything that will force them to give up their current 'lifestyle' as it is considered to be a 'right' to have a good life in Australia), and a majority of the country's resources are managed by external foreign powers.

Anyone who thinks that Australia is anything less than a puppet state being ruled by imperial mechanics for decades now hasn't been paying attention to the writing on the wall ..</comment></comment>


Show HN: All SF Scooters on One Map - <AUTHOR> https://anyscoot.com <comment><USER2> The site is down now so I can't really try it (oh no!), but I'd love something like this. I have no brand loyalty, and I hate switching between apps.

Some feature requests:

        * Better mobile support
        * Filtering (for example, I don't want bikes.. just scooters)
        * Maybe I'm alone on this, but I'd rather color coding show the company rather than the battery
        * Is there a way to deep-link to the specific app's "Ride" screen?

Clever way to get referrals!

<comment><USER3> Based on these features you might like Migo ([https://www.getmigo.com/](https://www.getmigo.com/)). Not affiliated with them in any way, just a user of the app.

Cool Show HN though! Can now check scooter locations in the browser, as well as on mobile.

<comment><USER4> Migo doesn't seem to have Bird. Transit has all three: [https://medium.com/@transitapp/welcome-to-scootopia-we- now-a...](https://medium.com/@transitapp/welcome-to-scootopia-we-now- aggregate-all-electric-scooters-c31c7337d5e6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are you getting this information?

</comment><comment><USER6> Have you found any (crazy / funny) outliers?

<comment><USER7> The limes in sausalito and vista point are pretty good IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice. How much delay is there on the scooter/bike location?

<comment><AUTHOR> Data is currently refreshed every 3 minutes, and I'm working to increase the frequency further.

<comment><USER9> @FriedPickles - Where/how are you getting the data? Anything you would be willing to share?

<comment><USER10> my assumption would be private APIs he's figuring out by MITM'ing mobile network traffic

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's how I get the data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the numbers everyone should know in 2019? - <AUTHOR> https://everythingisdata.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/numbers-everyone-should-know/ <comment><USER2> How come a meaningless question, which is probably just a click-bait for promoting a web site, is the first result on HN?

I'm worried about HN. This is totally subjective, but I feel that technical content related to computers is now sparse in the top pages, while it was preponderant. And the culture of ads and lucrative visits is damaging the site, like everywhere online.

Maybe this is false and the change is within myself, anyway I should keep away from HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. So, I was preparing for technical interviews I came across that post from 2009. And the values in the tables seemed relevant but potentially dated. And so the question to HN is directed toward whether those values are still valid, and whether other values are relevant now. The title of the post is a reference to the title of the OP.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I think I completely missed that it was a question. Having this comment in the original question probably would have helped. So, to answer the question, there are definitely some numbers in that chart that are closely related to the speed of light, so they can't ever change. Most other numbers are still reasonably close due to the end of Moore's law. But, the list itself feels a little dated since it references spinning disks and doesn't mention SSDs. These days, I'd maybe include something about modern GPUs, number of flops & typical memory/bus bandwidth. It's also fun to extend your posted chart with longer times like around the world, or out to geosynchronous orbit or the moon and back. I do sometimes ask an interview question about what is the fastest way to get a terabyte of data from LA or NY with specific assumptions, or something along those lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 21: largest number factored by quantum computer (including only algorithms that can scale into cryptographic levels)

<comment><USER5> "Here we experimentally demonstrate the factorization of two bi-primes, 4088459 and 966887 using IBM's 5- and 16-qubit quantum processors, hence making those the largest numbers that have been factorized on a quantum device."[1]

It looks like some real progress has been made with qbit quality and stability in the last few years! I think that 21 figure held for quite a while. Maybe it still does hold and I'm misunderstanding some of the nuance.

1 - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10478](https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10478)

<comment><USER4> Yes, those are the examples of quantum methods that don't scale to cryptographic levels. The only one that can scale is shor's and the answer is still 21. [https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/59795/largest- int...](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/59795/largest-integer- factored-by-shors-algorithm)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for clarifying! TIL

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Since the original source doesn't seem to be attributed, I believe this chart came from Peter Norvig. [http://norvig.com/21-days.html#answers](http://norvig.com/21-days.html#answers)

In case anyone wants to read any of the many previous discussions: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=latency%20numbers%20every%20pr...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=latency%20numbers%20every%20programmer%20should%20know&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic. This is exactly what I was looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> the title would be improved by specifying that this is about computing performance - not, say, global economics, nutrition, or cosmology.

maybe "What are the computing performance numbers developers should know in 2019?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I cannot update the title, apparently. Would if I could.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Standard reminder for younger devs when this stuff is posted that almost no one needs to know these numbers let alone 'everyone'.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. In retrospect I could have picked a better title. My bad!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 71 - approx number of domains this webpage connects to

53 - approx number of those known to be associated with advertising and tracking

Sorry to post something negative, I think the idea in the post is cool, but in 2019 everyone should know this...

</comment><comment><USER9> I was in a meeting with other developers and we were discussing pros/cons for a module that needs to be rewritten. The discussion came to the point where the team has different opinions on network overhead. That was the time actually I remember using concrete numbers/values can help you win debates/discussions easily. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bingo. Helps in job interviews, too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An of course, the nice interactive plot: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_l...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. That's what I was looking for!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great content - awful ads

</comment><comment><USER12> Off topic but that top banner ad is annoying to say the least. (I'm on mobile.)

</comment><comment><USER13> *Programmers/developers should know.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. Should have been more precise and not mimicked the title of the OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-worlds-most-important- graph/](http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-worlds-most-important-graph/)</comment>


India's $35 tablet is dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigwhat.com/india-to-give-up-on-35-tablet-297/

<comment><USER2> Not surprised - my daughter brought herself an excellent Android 7" tablet for £40.00 a month or so ago. Fantastic bargain that has given her a lot of pleasure. If it was not pink I might buy one for myself.

If someone can sell these at a profit in the UK (20% VAT) then they must be pretty cheap to make.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good riddance. There are plenty of Android 4.0 tablets out there that are as cheap and are powerful enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Smells of another scam</comment></comment>


Someone left old TVs outside 50 homes in Virginia while wearing a TV on his head - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/08/14/someone-left-old-tvs-outside-homes-virginia-while-wearing-tv-his-head-no-one-knows-why/ <comment><USER2> I always wondered what Max Headroom was up to these days.</comment>


Netflix Shares Up 13% After CEO's Facebook Status Update - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/07/05/netflix-shares-surge-13-after-ceos-boast/

<comment><USER2> _But, as Greenfield points out, Netflix is a seasonal business that tends to benefit during the summer and winter, traditional offseasons for TV._

Why's winter 'offseason' for TV in the US? Here in the UK it's when you get all the best programmes because, I always assumed, people stay in on evenings and so watch TV.

<comment><USER3> Americans probably don't go out in the evenings as much as Britons because they don't live in real communities. If you're young and single, and it's the weekend, there's the bar scene, but there's no good TV on weekends: most shows see their ratings plummet when they're put in the "Friday Night death slot". Once you've outgrown that, "going out" entails hauling your family of four out to a restaurant, which is an expensive and annoying proposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who writes these articles? The author quotes from the 40-word facebook update which is right above the text...

</comment><comment><USER5> Given Netflix's current market capital, that status update is worth approximately $800 million in market value. Most valuable status update ever?

($4.55 billion current market cap, at 18.06% price increase)

</comment><comment><USER6> 1B hours / 30 days / 24 hours = 1.4m viewers per hour all day and night for a month. I wonder how they compare to Comcast, Verizon, Dish, DirectTV, and other TV providers.</comment>


Cub Linux: Chromium and Ubuntu = Cub - <AUTHOR> https://cublinux.com/ <comment><USER2> This looks fantastic. One of my favorite aspects of Chromium OS is its user interface. I am excited to get something like that with the power of Ubuntu behind it!

<comment><USER3> Try neverware's cloudready. Far better and looks exactly like chromeOS but with wider hardware support.

[http://www.neverware.com/](http://www.neverware.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a reason this must be an ISO? or can it be repackaged as an "apt-get install cublinux" and be available on an existing Ubuntu system (perhaps as just another session)?

There's a debian repository at [https://bintray.com/cublinux/deb](https://bintray.com/cublinux/deb) but I didn't find a master/virtual package.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like for now it's very much a theme over a classic xfce desktop with a custom launcher. Here's a few screenshots:

[https://i.imgur.com/o6inmTj.png](https://i.imgur.com/o6inmTj.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/blZ4un2.png](https://i.imgur.com/blZ4un2.png)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the screenshots. I could not find any even on the homepage of cublinux!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks quite nice! I've always found Chrome/Chromium OS a pain as a developer due to the amount of effort required to get a suitable development environment working.

How are you handling updates though?

Ubuntu is very much a release based distribution, and Chrome OS is rolling release.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seems a little similar to galliumOS [https://www.galliumos.org/](https://www.galliumos.org/)

<comment><USER8> I think the difference is that this isn't only targeted at existing ChromeOS devices. However, both make me want to try a ChromeBook.

<comment><USER9> Especially now that they are moving into full HD screens and 4/32 configs instead of 2/16\. That was a horrible idea. Oh, and away from those Atom processors. This most recent gen and next gen should (IMO), be significant upgrades.</comment></comment></comment>


William Shockley: The Steve Jobs Counter-Example - <AUTHOR> http://nbashaw.com/post/14888020573/william-shockley-the-steve-jobs-counter-example

<comment><USER2> +1 to this documentary about the Traitorous Eight - although it's not the fastest-paced thing in the world, it's fun to watch these folks tell the story diplomatically and in person.

But what on earth is Steve Jobs doing here, other than providing linkbait? He's got nothing to do with this story.

I guess we're supposed to pretend that we can learn something about Steve Jobs by studying a legendarily bad manager like Shockley. But that's like trying to understand Bach by watching a kindergartener drum randomly on the strings of a harp with some pencils.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I watched the documentary the only thing I could think about was how similar Shockley and Steve Jobs's personalities seemed, except things worked out all wrong for Shockley because he pushed his people over the brink to quit.

That's the whole point I was trying to make here.

<comment><USER2> Obviously, I've never met William Shockley or Steve Jobs. Which is as good a reason as any to avoid claiming that I really know anything about the personality of either one. History books and journalism have their limitations.

But the available data suggest that they were very different people, especially considering that the one trait they unambiguously shared – a big ego – doesn't exactly distinguish them from the bulk of successful tech CEOs.

Shockley was a Nobel-winning physical scientist with impeccable academic credentials (CalTech, MIT, Bell Labs) who was, quite literally, obsessed with the magnitude of his own IQ. He wrote a justly famous textbook.

Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College. He studied calligraphy once. I don't believe he published any technical writing of significance, though he gave many great talks. He was, despite his enormous stage presence, actually quite artful about keeping himself out of the spotlight: His obsession was with the products. The _products_ were "insanely great", and he wanted you to be obsessed with _them_ , more so than with himself.

Shockley alienated some of the most talented people in industry history, driving them away. Jobs found talented people who were already alienated, like Jonny Ive, and talked them into building entire companies for him.

Shockley's employees are famous for the things they created at other companies. Jobs' employees are famous for the things they created while working for him.

According to this documentary, Shockley tanked his company because he insisted on pursuing a brilliant and original idea, the Shockley PNPN diode, even though it was unmanufacturable at the time. Steve Jobs, despite his reputation as some sort of spacey visionary, proclaimed that "real artists ship". Though he took a long view of the industry and was willing to tinker for years on pet projects until they met his standards, he also built teams that _shipped_ real products like the Mac and the iPod. Indeed, shipping was Jobs' real skill: He didn't invent the Apple I or the mouse or the GUI or the MP3, and he didn't even personally build Apple's versions of any of these things, but he figured out ways to get them into customers' hands. And the modern Apple revival is largely predicated on a relentlessly pragmatic focus on operational detail.

Shockley was, infamously, an outspoken eugenicist and racist who stated that his theories on intelligence would be his most important legacy. In public, Steve Jobs was apolitical and talked only about his work, doing so only rarely, and mostly on stage.

Shockley died an elderly but lonely man, estranged from all but his second wife. Steve Jobs worked almost until his last day, yet died surrounded by his family, and inspired an enormous flood of mourning and memorials.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's no such thing as a "steve jobs schol of management". Apart from him (and possibly Zynga's founder), entrepreneurs with that kind of attitude rarely succeed (and are definitely not encouraged anywhere)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it wrong I misread that as "The Steve Jobs Counter-Maneuver"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what you mean - can you explain?

<comment><USER4> Playing too much Portal 2.</comment></comment></comment>


How Spring Drive Works - <AUTHOR> https://www.timelessluxwatches.com/reviews/how-spring-drive-works

<comment><USER2> I found a couple high-framerate videos showing the sweeping motion:

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA18YtiSNyQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA18YtiSNyQ)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZmyWO- QU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ZmyWO-QU8)

The movement is very nice to watch, the jerkiness is just barely perceptible at high speed. On the other hand 28,800bph mechanicals jitter visibly without slow motion capture. Since the spring drive is on some level imperceptibly smooth, I'd say it's a _Retina_ -style improvement over the jitters.

<comment><USER3> I own one, and here's my own slow motion video: [http://youtu.be/tQUMl9NMb8Q](http://youtu.be/tQUMl9NMb8Q)

There shouldn't be much or any perceptible jerk. The glide wheel never actually stops, it's just slowed down a little bit eight times per second.

Accuracy is superb compared to a mechanical watch; mine has lost 3 seconds in the past ten months.

I also own a vintage accutron tuning fork movement. The second hand on that ticks 300 times per second, and is visually identical to the sweep of a spring drive movement. A very cool movement, too.</comment></comment>


A new AMP update shows how it can infiltrate every corner of the internet - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/google-is-tightening-its-iron-grip-on-your-website-27e06b3150e0 <comment><USER2> I think that the mobile trend was blown way out of proportion. I very often find myself clicking on the 'Browse desktop version' button when browsing a so-called 'mobile-friendly' version of a site. Is the look of the website really more important than the content and functionality? For me, it's not. This is just another example of a big tech monopoly imposing their highly opinionated ideas on billions of people.

Also, I hate it when a mobile site keeps reminding me to install the app. This is extremely mobile-unfriendly. Google ought to punish those sites.

<comment><USER3> Yet another HN user talking about their use case. 99% of people are not your typical HN user.

<comment><USER4> So, 99% of people care more about aesthetics than about than content? Got anything to back that up?

<comment><USER5> I'm surely still not in the 99% but honestly there's hardly any content that individually actually matters to me, it's almost all info-tainment. If it's hard to read then I won't bother at all.

There's exceptions like restaurant menus at specific places that I'm considering, but certainly there's no mainstream news article that's worth me staining my eyes over: if it loads a desktop site on my mobile phone I'll definitely just hit back and move on regardless of the content.

<comment><USER6> It's sort of like saying 99% of cattle prefer the chute that brings them most efficiently to the killing grate. It isn't really about what they want, just about how they behave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google intentionally gimps Firefox on Android, by serving an old-school page. Using an addon (which you can on mobile Fx, and not on Chrome), fixes this by editing the UA string when visiting Google.

Getting the "nice experience", however, gives me amp links. And when I click on them, I'm unable to scroll?! It doesn't matter if it loads fast, when I cannot read beyond the fold.

It also breaks the "open in app" I normally have. If the link is a reddit link, for instance, I can press an icon in Firefox to have it open in "Reddit is fun".

<comment><USER8> Believe it or not but the web is literally unusable if I use any other browser not based on chrome because:

\- The search is degraded (it hides the advanced search menu in Google and most dropdowns in ff)

\- Most of the sites use Recaptcha or cloudflare (also an extension of recaptcha) which gives you a low bot score if you're using anything other than chrome and then begins the never ending exercise of identifying cars and traffic lights

\- I think web devs are also only testing for chrome nowadays and a lot of big and small sites just won't render properly with FF (the PH menu won't open on ff android for me unless I change the ua). It's not always chrome's fault though as many sites (like dictation.io) insist I use chrome because ff still won't support some web apis.

<comment><USER9> None of those are true in my experience using Firefox or Safari. I don't know if you are using extensions or something like Tor but it might be worth trying again in a clean install.

<comment><USER8> Idk, but this has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time now and I've posted about it before also with screenshots [1] and lot of people have agreed they have faced the same problems and we had a long discussion about it.

So there is definitely truth in it.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295333)

<comment><USER9> I'm definitely not saying that you aren't experiencing it, only that it's uncommon and usually seems to be triggered by using a VPN or other shared connections.

<comment><USER8> Using neither. No addons or vpn or anything. Can't really say about shared connections if that is something my ISP is doing but the point is shouldn't vpn or shared connections affect chrome browser equally? Yet this only happens when using ff.

If you read the thread above a lot many people face this too, so at least this Recaptcha bs is quite true and prevalent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've published AMP only sites and regular optimized sites. My niche is usually large informational sites. Minifying and removing unused CSS and inlining everything has resulted in better indexing than similarly positioned AMP sites.

The resulting pages are smaller than their AMP equivalents and load with less requests.

On my non-news sites I can say that I get more traffic without AMP.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to give it to Google for such brilliant scheme to make use the current web clutter to its advantage, but we all know the dangers of this if left unchecked.

The web doesn't need AMP to be fast, it needs common sense which has left the building once ads and tracking became the goal.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have no trouble getting websites with good web performance to rank above AMP results. I like to think I have beaten them even when I'm slightly below them, because they trap their visitors in the AMP silo, while I am offering them a full site with probably better performance overall.

The only reason to offer AMP is to get into the news caroussel.

<comment><USER13> Just wait until they dial up the preference for AMP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm going to make a rare exception to my usual hating on Google, and say that AMP is great for users.

I'd like to see a move back to a document-based web rather than a web- application-based web: CSS and JavaScript have not been good for users. A document-based web allows users to pull down content and render it on their machines using programs users control. Coupling content with CSS and JavaScript means that users must use a website's CSS and JavaScript to render the content, which means that users must give up control of how the content is rendered. The results are predictable: most websites have crap accessibility, run a bunch of malware[1] that has nothing to do with rendering, and have user interfaces are all over the place (every website is different so you have to learn a new interface every time you visit a new website, even if they're presenting the same kinds of content).

Why should we let websites determine how content is rendered? I can pull down an AMP page and view the content the way I want to view it, so this gives me as a user a lot more power.

Sure, the most common case right now is that Google renders it on their page, and that gives power to Google. But that's just trading one evil (Google) for another (content providers who package content with malware)--as a user that's not really a net gain or loss. But having content shipped in a more document- based format is a big gain for users.

[1] Code which runs on my computer to show me ads is adware. Code which runs on my computer to send data about me to companies is spyware. If these were written in Python and packaged with a desktop program everyone would call them adware and spyware, but if they're written in JavaScript and packaged with a web application they're ubiquitous and accepted.

</comment><comment><USER15> So google chrome hides www and m in the domain, will Google replace AMP domains as well?

<comment><USER16> Yes. [https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real- url/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/)

<comment><USER17> > That signature is all a modern browser (currently just Chrome on Android)

That's a very interesting definition of modern browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm confused. The title of this article isn't at all supported by its content. The entire thing can be summarized as:

> Google rolled out a new feature that allows AMP to use server-side rendering > (SSR), boosting performance for sites that adopt the technology across their > entire domain.

Followed by a dozen paragraphs arguing why AMP is bad, with no further mention of server side rendering or why it "shows how [AMP] can infiltrate every corner of the internet". Is there anything new here, or is this just another rehash of the same arguments we've been having about AMP since the day it was released?

<comment><USER10> Is there any irony in this? SPAs are often the pages which are excessively heavy. Not saying it can't be done well. Just that these pages are frequent offenders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What would it take to get the internet community to really see the danger of AMP?

Some kind of social media campaign?

AMP will rot away a free and open internet. The internet will be turned into a walled garden for Google/Alphabet's sole benefit. (or at least a large enough chunk of it to make avoiding Google/Alphabet nearly impossible)

Edit: clarity.

</comment><comment><USER20> The sad truth is, the 'modern' web is rotting. AMP is just a symptom of a growing problem.

<comment><USER21> The thing is AMP can be it's own problem regardless what the "modern web" does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What is the AMP update this article was speaking of?

<comment><USER23> It's literally mentioned and linked to in the first paragraph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> ah that's nothing. Wait until google launches accelerated desktop pages

<comment><USER24> And then accelerated shopping results. And then accelerated signups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I really do wonder how long it will take everybody to realize that Google is the ultimate computer virus.

</comment><comment><USER26> >server-side rendering

Oh, that's shiny new technology. Call me when we have 3d buttons back.

</comment><comment><USER27> Talking about a crappy web technology using Medium

<comment><USER28> Just thinking that... I find medium worse than amp... at least amp doesn't show pop ups to join or subscribe...

<comment><USER29> But AMP sites pretty much require you to get out of the AMP site to work properly. Closing a pop up is no harder than that.

<comment><USER30> I'm all for bashing AMP but I can't remember a single time I've had to get out of AMP to get it working. Do you have any examples?

<comment><USER31> Literally every page on the Guardian, as the AMP pages don't include comments?

<comment><USER28> i wouldn't exactly consider comments not loading to be a "broken" site... Granted, its handy on some sites, but meh on most...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> AMP isn't all bad. SXG from AMP will enable advanced P2P CDN tech to flourish. Unfortunately Mozilla has decided to not support it.

<comment><USER33> I'd honestly love to see domain-signed pages being distributed over IPFS.</comment></comment>


As Airbnb Grows, So Do Claims of Discrimination - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/travel/airbnb-discrimination-lawsuit.html?ref=business <comment><USER2> > In May, Gregory Selden, a black Airbnb user, turned to Twitter to share his > experience of being turned down by a Philadelphia host. He posted that he > then "made a fake profile as a white guy and was accepted immediately." He > has since filed a lawsuit against Airbnb, saying that it violated his civil > rights.

Having access to somebody else's private home is a civil right now? I get that the host is a terrible person, and if airbnb wants to write a rule saying "only non-discriminatory hosts can use our service" that'd be cool, but making discrimination on a personal level _illegal_ seems pretty dangerous (Would somebody also get sued for swiping left on all black people on Tinder?)</comment>


Misconceptions about Space Warfare - <AUTHOR> https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/misconceptions-about-space-warfare/ <comment><USER2> It looks like this concerns some game, and not space warfare as it might actually occur? For example, here's a quote:

> But most importantly, orbital mechanics are king in Children of a Dead > Earth. Indeed, orbital mechanics are the core mechanic of the game, even, > counterintuitively, in combat.</comment>


Functional Programming in C++ - phatak-dev http://blog.madhukaraphatak.com/functional-programming-in-c++/

<comment><AUTHOR> The main thing missing in C++ to do functional programming, as mentioned by John Carmack in [http://gamasutra.com/view/news/169296/Indepth_Functional_pro...](http://gamasutra.com/view/news/169296/Indepth_Functional_programming_in_C.php) is lack of a 'pure' keyword to enforce it.

Experience with the 'pure' keyword in D has been overwhelmingly positive.

<comment><USER2> Well,why isnt D that popular? I wonder.

edit: genuine question.

<comment><AUTHOR> C++ is steadily adopting D features :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of functional programming in C++, but unfortunately, you would have to write an entirely different (non-standard) library for that to work. For example, from the article:

      template <typename Collection,typename unop>
      void for_each(Collection col, unop op){
        std::for_each(col.begin(),col.end(),op);
      }

...I like the pass-by-value syntax here, but it just won't work with the standard library, at least not the one in C++14. If you pass a vector into this function, you'll be creating a copy of the vector (!), then operating on the copy of the vector (!!). Then there is the question of what for_each does if it isn't manipulating state or performing I/O. In either case, you would not want an 'unop', you would want some sort of monad.

For a more complete perspective on this sort of thing, I recommend Eric Neibler's blog and Bartosz Milewski's blog. Here's somewhere to start. You'll find Neibler's blog linked from there:

[http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/17/c-ranges-are-pure- mona...](http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/17/c-ranges-are-pure-monadic- goodness/)

<comment><USER4> Actually the up side to value semantics is that it can take full advantage of move operations, so that if operating on an l-value your code only need copy the data the first time, then move kicks in for the rest of the chain... (i.e., mydata | filter(f) | reverse() | take(10) - only the filter() call will create the copy). And if you are operating on an rvalue no copies will be made at all.

Have a look at this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJIaGRDIyEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJIaGRDIyEE)

Eric Neibler's approach (which I am really looking forward to!) is to state that range operations should never take ownership of the original data and therefore operations should be performed lazily. This prevents the rvalue optimisation, but enables lazy evaluation.

Its just a trade-off, but the value semantics approach isnt as bad as you might think...

edit: on further inspection the last paragraph of the article mentions this but doesnt go into detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > With modern C++ you can use value semantics with move semantics to get same > performance as pass by reference.

That's overly simplistic. To enjoy the benefits of move semantics you need something to move _from_. If you call for_each from the article with an lvalue, you will end up making a copy (and it'll be up to the compiler to do something about that).

</comment><comment><USER6> > Also you can use smart pointers to do automatic garbage collection.

Not quite. Smart pointers do automatic reference counting, which doesn't use a garbage collector.

<comment><USER7> Well, reference counting _is a form of garbage collection,_ just not a very good one.

It is incomplete in the sense cycles are not collected, one would need extra machinery for those. It is also not great about throughput, a part of the problem is that it dirties the cache too much. Locking the count (or avoiding it somehow) is another issue. On the other hand for many use cases better latencies are achieved with reference counting than with alternative forms of garbage collection, (but this depends on use cases).

If runtime data cannot have have cycles, garbage is not created at a phenomenal rate and you are quite worried about GC pauses, then reference counting is often a cheap and effective solution.

Regardless, it sure is garbage collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh god, why.</comment>


Maker of In-Wheel Electric Car Motors Goes to China - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/efficiency/maker-of-inwheel-electric-car-motors-goes-to-china <comment><USER3> This article is from 2014 so I thought it would be interesting to see how things are going.

It's hard to tell whether the subject of the article, Protean, is having success with the in-wheel motor. Their website is vague about who their customers are: [http://www.proteanelectric.com/about- us/](http://www.proteanelectric.com/about-us/)

At the end of the article they mention that China set a goal of 500,000 non- fossil fuel cars on the road by 2015, it looks like they probably got there: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country#/media/File:Top_PEV_global_markets_stock_Dec_2016.png)

They also stated the goal is to have 5M on the road by 2020, which also looks like they'll get close since there were 352,000 sold in 2016: [https://qz.com/972897/china-is-selling-more-electric- vehicle...](https://qz.com/972897/china-is-selling-more-electric-vehicles- than-the-us-and-its-not-even-close/) and what looks like a 72% growth rate over 2015. That would mean (if the 72% growth holds, it could even increase):

Current: ~600K 2017: 600K sold 2018: 1M sold 2019: 1.72M sold

Total: ~4M

</comment><comment><USER4> Surely they wouldn't move the motors into the wheels for actual full-size cars, right? In addition to the poor handling aspects of so much more unsprung weight, it would have to deal with much more vibration. Seems like a tough sell.

<comment><USER5> >> In addition to the poor handling aspects of so much more unsprung weight, it would have to deal with much more vibration. Seems like a tough sell.

I did some work with hub motors a while back. The unsprung mass is still under debate, but moving all that mass to the corners of the vehicle is actually a good thing. I would think putting the inverter in the hub would make for terrible durability problems, but who knows.

Anecdote: The hub motors I wrote code for had integrated planetary gear, so they ran 6000rpm at the motor. The rotor was on a rather large bearing and we had all sorts of runout and alignment issues. It's was really hard to package in that space. We had peak power of 40KW per wheel, but you only got that for about 30 seconds before needing to cool off for 5 minutes (it was also water cooled, but not well - packaging again). Because of the heating and alignment issues, nobody could make much progress on doing the software calibration (motor mapping) on it. It was the only motor we had that _required_ my new algorithm to get it up and running. It made light work of the calibration, compensated for the alignment and eccentricity issues, and ran the hell out of that thing. Sometimes I miss working on that stuff ;-)

<comment><USER6> Whenever I read car magazines they are always talking about the need to reduce unsprung weight. Supposedly, high unsprung weight causes a harsher ride - <USER2> this is not a given?

<comment><USER5> Depends. If you hit a bump or a pothole, you need the wheel to move vertically very quickly. But on smooth roads it's not a problem and having the mass at the corners increases the vehicles rotational (pitch, roll, and yaw) stability. I have not formed a personal opinion on it yet, so I listen to both sides. My suspicion is that the unsprung mass is bad and the arguments to the contrary are partly wishful thinking by hub-wheel advocates ;-)

<comment><USER7> I always wonder whether it is really inspiring weight, or the ratio of sprung va unsprung?

In an application I have lots of experience with, mountain biking suspension, the overall sprung weight relative to the frame/rideris so low that even doubling the wheel weight or cassette weight doesn't really effect suspension performance. (Pedaling rotating mass is a different story)

In a car or truck, where the overall mass of the car is very large, adding more unsprung mass might not matter so much. The car still has a lot more inertia than the wheels. You should be able to make up for the heavier wheels with better suspension valving and improved shims. Problem being that most factory standard suspension is really bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not a bad idea for heavy trucks. LeTourneau heavy equipment used in-wheel motors from 1958. They built some monster earthmoving machines with that technology. It was Diesel-electric all-wheel drive, like a locomotive. Works fine at big scale, driving very slowly.

LeTourneau built some huge off-road "land trains" for the U.S. Army. The biggest used multiple gas turbine engines and had 58 powered wheels.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrt6pVJO468](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mrt6pVJO468)

</comment><comment><USER9> Michelin have been tinkering away at this for a long time, they have two motors, one for the drive and one for the active suspension:

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

Their rival Continental have something a lot more interesting:

[https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/14/continental-new- wheel-c...](https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/14/continental-new-wheel- concept-turns-conventional-wheel-inside/)

They have an aluminium disc with the rotor on the inside, not the outside, plus the 'spokes' of the wheel hold this oversized disc. The disc does not rust so it suits EVs where the brakes really should not be needed outside of emergencies, and when that happens you don't want the wheels to go round a few times clearing off rust before actual braking kicks in.

I am sure that this can also be combined with better aero so that the hub cap is designed to radiate heat rather than direct air in to the brake.

I imagine a future where vehicles have an extremely flat and low floor with the wheels pushed to the corner and definitely 'cab-over' to some extent as no bonnet needed. This will be great for users of wheelchairs, pushchairs and hand carts. Particularly if the vehicle drives itself and knows where all the potholes are and has the active suspension to deal with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm also dubious. My first impression of the render is, where do the brakes go?

A car can go without brakes in the rear, but front brakes are crucial in the front. This is specially true in emergency situations. I doubt an electric motor can provide enough braking power to stop any car at highway speeds in the distance required by most countries

<comment><USER11> > I doubt an electric motor can provide enough braking power to stop any car > at highway speeds in the distance required by most countries

This really isn't a problem. A hub motor should have no problem providing more stopping force than the tire/road interface can manage.

Heat is no problem either. Either dump the excess energy into a battery or just design a motor housing that can cool itself well enough. You have way more area and mass in a hub motor than in a brake rotor. You'd almost have to try to screw it up.

Maximum stopping distance laws are a complete joke. Anything can stop fast the first time. It's the 5th, 6th, 7th time that's a problem. Electric motors actually have the advantage in that situation because they fade more linearly than a hydraulic system.

<comment><USER12> Hitting the brakes in a 2500 kg car at 100 mph generates a megawatt of braking energy (100 * 1607/3600 * 2500 * 9.8 * 0.9 = 984 kW). Plausibly sized hub motors can't handle this even momentarily.

Brake rotors have less thermal mass, but can get red-hot without damage.

<comment><USER10> Another comment in this thread mentioned that the limiting factor is the MOSFET/Switch in the controller, instead of the motor itself

<comment><USER7> How many actuations is the motor good for? The mosfets? Brakes are great, work for a very long time, and have lots of redundancy, they are also easy to fix without diagnosing issues with mosfets, windings, switches, and wires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 23 years ago in Québec, this happened: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moteur- roue_d%27Hydro-Qu%C3%A9...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moteur- roue_d%27Hydro-Qu%C3%A9bec) (in French only). It never went anywhere unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've never been to china but what's their city road quality like?

An extra 70lb at the wheel is going to make the already terrible durability of low profile tires worse (and you can't design for a smaller rim because you need space for the motor).

<comment><USER14> Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why would 70lbs in the wheel be any different from that same weight resting above the wheels, as in a normal car?

<comment> TD-Linux On the wheel, it's unsprung mass. That extra mass hurts the ability to the wheel & suspension to quickly respond to bumps, and causes energy to be lost into the suspension and tire.

It's even a problem on trains - early electric trains had connecting rods between the motors and wheels just like steam trains. Later ones have the motors in the bogeys, but the motors are sprung and can swivel on the same axis as the drive gear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Afaik Magna designed a similar car concept 8 years ago already, but nobody picked it up. German car makers prototyped similar designs but they had to move to Chinese companies to get them actually built.

Technically it's easy, much easier to control, much cheaper, but you need the loading infrastructure (no hybrid, limited range) and strong political support. Since Israel cancelled their nationwide e-car project, nothing much happened since, but Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER16> Engineering at this level would require a somewhat intelligent engineering team and so I'm assuming this is their starting point and that they are expecting to significantly lower the weight.

Having the engine there if these weaknesses are managed effectively would be quite disruptive to the industry. Maybe they won't make it work, but they obviously think they can.

</comment><comment><USER17> Between resistance from the chemical, oil and auto industries, their bought government, and the more favorable conditions in China, this might be another core tech we lose forever if we don't pay attention now.

<comment><USER18> Not to worry. Pretty soon the Trump administration will have all our cars running on coal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe use these for trucks and CAT vehicles

</comment><comment><USER20> So no physical brake?</comment>


Geoff Hinton Wants Computers to Think More Like Brains - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-guru-computers-think-more-like-brains/ <comment><USER2> _> With self-driving cars, I think people kind of accept that now. That even if you don't quite know how a self-driving car does it all, if it has a lot fewer accidents than a person-driven car then it's a good thing._

Unless there is a condition in the environment that causes a systemic failure involving large number of self-driving cars at the same time. This happens all the time with other types of software. People shouldn't assume that machine- learned models are magically different and ignore all common-sense rules we apply to safety-critical applications. In your daily job, would you be willing to bet your entire car on a black box piece of code that seems reliable, because it worked most of the time in the past?

Also, recall that flash crash of the stock market. Imagine something like that, but with lots of cars on a highway. If you don't understand "how a self- driving car does it", you are unlikely to install appropriate safeguards.

PS: Please don't insult your intelligence by replying that we don't understand how people drive either, so it makes any opaque self-driving software okay.

<comment><USER3> _systemic failure involving large number of self-driving cars at the same time_

This happens to human drivers every year. Snow, freezing rain, fog; these adverse weather conditions can lead to large numbers of collisions at the same time. Expecting self driving cars to never have a problem during rare environmental corner cases is to expect them to be vastly superior to human drivers all the time. If you're waiting for that day before you consent to self-driving cars sharing the road with you, you'll be waiting a long time.

<comment><USER2> _> these adverse weather conditions can lead to large numbers of collisions at the same time._

Cars sliding out of control on a snowy road is not a _systemic_ failure.

If you have an entire fleet of self-driving cars using the same (or similar) technology, the exact same condition could cause all of them to misbehave in the exact the same way. This could happen simultaneously with a large number of cars. Or could be something that propagates in a cascading manner. (A car breaks, turns and spins out of control. The next car detects that, breaks, turns and spins out of control, etc.)

If you have no clear idea how your driving software works, how are you going to make sure this doesn't happen?

People have common sense, variability and adaptive learning to prevent things like that. Moreover, our traffic system, our cars and our driver education have been co-evolving prioritizing safety for the last 100 years. (Heck, some of it started with horses and carriages.) The complexity and size of the system have been gradually scaled up for just as long, and it was designed and refined to be used by humans.

It's astounding how many of AI enthusiasts fail to see these issues and differences. Traffic system isn't a board game.

<comment><USER4> > If you have no clear idea how your driving software works, how are you going > to make sure this doesn't happen?

A lot of people don't know how typing "www.google.com" into their browser works but DNS "just works" for them. There is software in nearly every part of our lives that could systemically go wrong in catastrophic ways - we do our best to plan and prevent them.

> People have common sense, variability and adaptive learning to prevent > things like that. Moreover, our traffic system, our cars and our driver > education have been co-evolving for safety for the last 100 years. (Heck, > some of it started with horses and carriages.) The complexity and size of > the system have been gradually scaled up for just as long, and it's designed > and refined to be used by humans.

Isn't that incredible? The complexity goes up: we adapt. As self-driving cars are introduced we _adapt_ and _evolve_ and incorporate these changes in technology, the driving "environment", security, safety measures, and laws and regulations.

> Traffic system isn't a board game.

I didn't see any efforts at self-driving vehicles just say "ahhhh! this driving stuff is so easy!" Of course it comes with huge difficulties, an enormous amount of complexity, a baffling amount of data, a ton of edge cases, and now a wealth of tribal knowledge on the subject.

When considering these things think of the systemic benefits as well. There was a story on the Google self-driving cars in Mountain View not taking a turn when the passengers of the car expected it would. Turns out that the IR sensors on the vehicle saw that a jogger behind a wall of hedges was about to enter the intersection to cross while jogging. Systemically implementing that change across a fleet of cars would then save untold numbers of injuries or lives.

We adapt.

<comment><USER5> > Turns out that the IR sensors on the vehicle saw that a jogger behind a wall > of hedges was about to enter the intersection to cross while jogging.

Some cars today already have IR sensors (night vision systems) installed in them, and include pedestrian detection monitors as well. Cars don't have to be full on self-driving to have a large increase in safety and accident prevention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> People can't explain how they work, for most of the things they do. When you hire somebody, the decision is based on all sorts of things you can quantify, and then all sorts of gut feelings. People have no idea how they do that. If you ask them to explain their decision, you are forcing them to make up a story.

Manager: Why did you delete the production database in the middle of a work- day, no less?

DBA: My decision was based on all sorts of things you can quantify, and then all sorts of gut feeling. I have no idea how I do that. Do not ask me to explain my decision, or you are forcing me to make up a story.

Manager: But, you crashed our client's entire business for a whole day!

DBA: I can't explain how I work.

(Somehow, I don't see that flying.)

<comment><USER7> Nobody has perfect self knowledge, and yet in society we demand people explain and justify themselves, so some level of confabulation is unavoidable.

I guess pointing that out while explaining yourself is a bad idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "You should regulate them based on how they perform. You run the experiments to see if the thing's biased, or if it is likely to kill fewer people than a person. With self-driving cars, I think people kind of accept that now"

I don't. In my opinion, we are all getting carried away with ourselves.

Google or not, I challenge anyone who makes a statement including the phrase "...more like brains", to define that statement accurately. In response, you will likely hear all sorts of things that _sound_ like we know what we are doing and are very clever, but.

If we can't even ask the questions properly, I doubt we will get deliberately valuable answers. Sure, we may luck out, with AI researchers stumbling across random combinations (layered AI) that do produce useful results hap-hazardly, but I would never rely on it.

Eg. I rely on software running in an aircraft, because:

a) it works, by design, not trial and error. b) it is verified. c) we know how it works.

unless you have (c) you cannot achieve (b), with any degree of certainty. Experimenting until confident is _not_ good enough for me for anything important.

Brains fail at times. Computers should not make mistakes.

Even if you knew how a brain works, and even if its possible to replicate it, please don't make computers like this. Software fails enough on its own without any help, even when we supposedly understand it.

With this AI stuff, even if we knew where we are going, we don't know how to get there. And even if we did get there (wherever that is), in the long run, AI is not going to be used for the good.

As always with humanity, we will find ways to use AI to extract value out of _other people_. This is what drives business.

No thanks, but it is interesting for fluff. A bit too voodoo for me.

<comment><USER9> > Brains fail at times. Computers should not make mistakes.

I don't think this is a reasonable position to take. We are going to have to accept that if we want computers to do the things brains can do, they will also make mistakes like brains do sometimes. It's not reasonable to insist that the error rate is exactly zero. Besides, if you consider the computer as a complete system including the hardware and human-computer interface, it's clear that no complete system can ever be error-free, even if the CPU executes its instructions faultlessly.

As long as it's as good or better than a human, it's good enough to be useful. Even with "fallible" AI techniques, we should be able to make systems that are much more reliable than humans.

<comment><USER8> "...if we want computers to do the things brains can do..."

That's my point though. I don't want computers to do what my brain does, mainly because I have no idea what my brain does, nor does anyone. Sure, some people think we do, but we don't.

It also seems silly to try to engineer something that we know may fail (by design), on the probability that it may haphazardly produce better results (even if this is most of the time). That may be useful for things like search results, where the outcome is not critically important.

Please excuse the example, but I would be happier passing away in an aircraft accident knowing it was because although the system was designed not to fail, we did our best in terms of understanding the systems in place. That would be my definition of "sh&t happens".

If I passed away because the aircraft "AI" took an untested path of execution (there are too many to verify, unlike most regular "dumb" software), I would be less happy.

Maybe there is a balance, Eg verifiable software for the important stuff, AI fluffery for the less so. But in that case, we should not get carried away (eg. self driving cars). Remember, planes could fly themselves completely for a long time, and we still have 2 pilots for a reason.

Computers are a human's tool, not replacement.

<comment><USER9> > I don't want computers to do what my brain does

OK, that's a valid position to take, and I'm sure some people agree, but I and many other people do want computers to do what our brains do. And it is pretty likely to happen.

> I would be happier passing away in an aircraft accident knowing it was [not > AI]

If I was in an aircraft accident caused by human pilot error while pilot AIs with 1/100 the error rate of humans were blocked from deployment because they don't meet your "zero errors" requirement, I would not be happy.

<comment><USER8> "...I and many other people do want computers to do _what our brains do_ " (emphasis, mine).

I hear you, but my point is "what do our brains do?"

In the case of driving, if the answer is "drive a car", then that is a bit like "brexit means brexit" :) The definition of the thing is the outcome of the thing.

Instead, if you try to can decompose the question into a more useful form, one that can drive a specification of software, then progress can be made. However, all that has done, in that case, is a description of the outcome, not the process. (And incomplete, due to the complexity).

It is at this point where my problem with all this AI stuff starts :)

The lack of understanding of the process, rather than the outcome is why I call it voodoo, and anyone talking different is trying to impress, in my opinion.

<comment><USER10> Generally our brain is composed of a bunch of different subsystems and networks that accomplish varying tasks or objectives, and communicate the results with each other. There's a lot of data sharing going on, as well as reinforcement of known successes thanks to one subsystem known as the reward center.

While we don't understand how our brain works to the bits and bytes, our knowledge and understanding of how our brain functions is Growing. A fuller understanding of how our neurotransmitters work on a chemical/biological level, and an effective way to model it, will likely result in interesting advances in the field of AI

I chat with my neuroscience friend a lot, and the overlap I see between how he describes how the brain works, and general computer science concepts is surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a logical inconsistency here:

Statement 1:I've always been worried about potential misuses in lethal autonomous weapons. I think there should be something like a Geneva Convention banning them, like there is for chemical weapons.

Statement 2: You should regulate them (AI) based on how they perform. You run the experiments to see if the thing's biased, or if it is likely to kill fewer people than a person.

The intention of utilizing AI in weapons systems is to reduce human error in their application. So is it unethical to implement an "AI" in a weapons system that kills fewer people than a person would?

Seperately, I am curious why Hinton is not talking more about state representation and prediction, as almost uniformly across DL/RL researchers this is agreed upon as the next step forward. Hinton certainly is working with Richard Sutton on his RL programs at U Alberta. Sutton believes that the next step in AI systems is state representation and prediction and gave a quick talk on it recently [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Uiq8-wKrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Uiq8-wKrg)

<comment><USER12> Statement 2 is not in regards to weapons systems. It is referencing things like self-driving cars. You can see that if you include the next sentence.

"ou should regulate them based on how they perform. You run the experiments to see if the thing's biased, or if it is likely to kill fewer people than a person. With self-driving cars, I think people kind of accept that now."

<comment><USER11> I realize that, however it's a logical claim on the determinants of implementing an automated system.

If the logic can be applied to one system it should be able to be applied to all systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Side comment: hacker news is known for having the 'author here' moments in threads.

Has Professor Hinton ever made a known appearance on HN?

<comment><USER14> I know Hinton participated in a few AMA sessions on reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The big question here is: How brains think?

<comment><USER16> Active Inference is one possible hypothesis unifying different ideas on how brains think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> We do have some kind of shared understanding when it comes to humans though, especially within a culture and even more so within a limited context like driving a car.

We don't generally expect someone to freak out and start treating a car in sunlight as a house because they've seen a lot of houses in sunlight lately.

The difference between a human and ML is that a human has a clue, demanding perfect introspection is missing the point.

This borders on dishonesty if you ask me, he should know better.

</comment><comment><USER18> > The brain is solving a very different problem from most of our neural nets. > You've got roughly 100 trillion synapses.

Hinton doesn't mention microtubules at all. Do any of the neural net or other connected neuron models incorporate the quantum vibration effects inside the neuron's microtubules?

<comment><USER19> I thought quantum microtubules are still considered crackpottery.

<comment><USER20> There are definitely a few non-crackpots interested in quantum microtubules, but it seems very far from mainstream.

It's conceivable that quantum effects could matter in some way on very small scales, and that doesn't really have anything to do with quantum mysticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > GH: No, there's not going to be an AI winter, because it drives your > cellphone. In the old AI winters, AI wasn't actually part of your everyday > life. Now it is.

Oh good; although, that predicament about publishing AI papers seems pretty bad.

<comment><USER22> There's something interesting about AI winters: they begin with researchers claiming incremental science (say, heuristic tree search) as Whoa Artificial Intelligence and end up with some pretty complex technology totally taken for granted (car routing apps). In this cycle, we're in love with Computer Vision -- at the other end of the tunnel we might be stuck with omnipresent facial recognition and nada-de-nada of Jeff Hawkins and Ray Kurzweil's dreams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> We place too much emphasis on learning and not enough on designing AI network topology. No matter how hard you try you're not going to get a chimpanzee to write novels. They have different brain architectures.

</comment><comment><USER24> One symbol: computational neuroscience

</comment><comment><USER25> As a programmer, I find you faith in computers amusing

</comment><comment><USER26> So .. like human brains that chose a particular president?

</comment><comment><USER27> brains don't think, minds do.

<comment><USER28> What does this even mean?

<comment><USER29> Presumably he's a dualist.</comment></comment></comment>


The Chinese military's collaboration with foreign universities - <AUTHOR> https://www.aspi.org.au/report/picking-flowers-making-honey <comment><USER2> Please somebody with some back history, discuss the old NATO summer schools held all across Europe even in comecon economies (from memory) not for whataboutism, but to clarify the differences.

I recall reading about stuff in online learning, other fields. It was the army, engagement in education, inside notional future enemies, sharing ideas.</comment>


Causal Inference with pandas.DataFrames - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@akelleh/causal-inference-with-pandas-dataframes-fc3e64fce5d <comment><USER2> Really excited to see this - my field is moving more towards a causal inference framework, but there's a pretty desperate need for easy-to-use implementations of various g-computation approaches not written in SAS.</comment>


Zombie Products - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikebz.com/2015/05/zombie-products.html

<comment><AUTHOR> In the world of software there are a lot of blockbuster products and there are many more products that go belly up. A lot of people think that product or company that got terminated is the worst thing that can happen, that actually is not the case. The worst thing that can happen to a product is a "Zombie state" - not successful and not totally terminated – lingering in the world of the "undead".

</comment><comment><USER2> Kill zombie products... before they kill you!</comment>


Scammers signed up, scammed us of $870 in 15 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/spike/scammers-signed-up-scammed-us-of-870-in-15-minutes-4gjf <comment><USER2> For the curious - this is toll fraud [https://www.twilio.com/learn/voice-and- video/toll-fraud](https://www.twilio.com/learn/voice-and-video/toll-fraud)

Scammers make money from receiving phone calls. Apparently, it is super difficult to tackle this problem - right from twilio to phone network carriers

<comment><USER3> Regulators simply need to either forbid paying out the tolls or forbid collecting fraudulent tolls from users. These are scams.

The carriers try to hide behind old agreements that state all calls, fraudulent or not must be paid. If they want to keep these agreements they can just pay for them themselves. If not, they should change them. The end users aren't in a position to enforce this so regulatory pressure is clearly required.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We got scammed out of 200$ on www.mailgun.com Someone managed to get access to our mailgun account and/or mailgun access key and send 200$ worth of emails in Ukrainian about a crypto IPO (likely a scam).

<comment><AUTHOR> Daimn. We are being super careful with the tokens.

In our case, we were making phone calls to verify phone numbers. That was a crucial mistake.

Did they get access via tokens or email/password?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious, why did you have a phone verification feature to begin with; what would've been the impact of unused accounts being created? To me it seems like the verification feature did more harm than good in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Phone verification is NOT mandatory. However, Spike.sh is a simpler alternative to PagerDuty which means we make calls when there are important incidents. Not calling might have serious consequences.

Knowing that Phone call is important, we needed to verify it. However, making phone call to verify is NOT a good idea.

We should have sent an SMS but getting an Alphanumeric sender ID took some time and we wanted to ship quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Crazy stuff! And really like the blow-by-blow account.

</comment><comment><USER7> How did you find out about needle.sh? They do not have any form of advertising. Is this cross marketing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I discovered on the demo day at this founders community I am part of - [https://www.superfounderhub.com](https://www.superfounderhub.com). We are part of the same community. Not cross-marketing :)

The attack happened and since I had spoken with their team once I decided to integrate quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good read.

Why not use hcaptcha?

<comment><AUTHOR> I only went with what is popular. At the time of doing this, getting captcha up and running was the top priority.

Having used Google reCaptcha before I immediately set it up.

Would you recommend hcaptcha over reCaptcha?

<comment><USER9> Yes, HN generally seems against reCaptcha, mainly because of (understandable) Google paranoia and the fact that reCaptcha is significantly worse UX if you have privacy-centric extensions or browsers (overrepresented in HN compared to the average).

<comment><AUTHOR> During my quick research, I remember stumbling upon comparisons. The only thing hcaptcha wins over reCaptcha is the fact that it's not owned by google.

<comment><USER9> it's also better UX for firefox. I have to go through multiple questions in reCaptcha every time I get the "not a robot" button. hCaptcha, from what I've seen, hasn't needed multiple sets of image solves to allow me through.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NEC Selling Facial Tracking for Store Checkouts - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/12/nec-outs-880-facial-recognition-system/

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be child's play for a store to tie faces to credit card checkouts and thereby get full ID information. I can't see how that information doesn't then get packaged and sold.</comment>