Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/18/brin-wikipedia-grant/ <comment><USER2> I personally would love to see Wikipedia sell ads. Nothing crazy, just one subtle and tasteful text ad per page, sold by auction. (The ads would be much smaller and more relevant than "a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales".)

The revenue could allow Wikipedia to take on ambitious projects to further its mission statement, similar to the Mozilla Foundation or NPR.

Unlike most publishers, Wikipedia doesn't need to worry about maintaining a firewall between sales and editorial -- so I think it's a natural fit.

<comment><USER3> As someone who very much values the clarity of content without the insidious distraction of advertisements, I would not like to see Wikipedia sell ads.

I would rather that they either continue to work through donations, or figure out how to sell their content directly.

Ultimately, I think the use of advertising as a proxy mechanism for charging customers is an inefficient historical fall-out of the constraints of magazines, television, and the web. Any use of advertisement to fund modern digital distribution is indicative of one of two things:

\- A failure find a less round-about, more efficient, and more profitable mechanism for _directly_ charging consumers for what they consume

OR

\- A lack of respect for the customer and an attempt to maximize profit at the expense of their enjoyment of your product. I do not subscribe to Hulu for this reason.

<comment><USER4> You're an outlier. Most people don't mind ads.

<comment><USER5> The fate of MySpace suggests otherwise. The existence of radio stations exuberantly announcing "commercial free this hour!" suggests otherwise. The prevalence of adblock suggests otherwise.

Ads are inherently disruptive, most people DO mind them under many circumstances. And sometimes, even people who wouldn't mind them still have their experience disrupted by their presence. The other day I was trying to read an article, and some programming glitch caused a nearby ad to expand over the article text and I wasn't able to get rid of it without reloading the entire page. It's true there is some threshold of advertising under which people genuinely appreciate and show interest in the content. That threshold is certainly lower than you think.

Most people hate ads, they're merely willing to put up with them in exchange for the content. The question isn't whether someone who minds ads is an "outlier" or not, the question is how many "outliers" are there. My guess: you don't actually know the answer to that.

<comment><USER6> > The fate of MySpace suggests otherwise. The existence of radio stations > exuberantly announcing "commercial free this hour!" suggests otherwise. The > prevalence of adblock suggests otherwise.

MySpace failed because a better competitor came along. It had a history of predators, spammers, and viruses, and was hard to use well. (Did you _see_ the pages people made?). Ads were one cause among many, and it's doubtful how much they contributed. For comparison, Facebook has ads, but people aren't flocking in droves to G+, and I haven't heard the lack of ads cited as the reason for any of those that are.

Radio stations certainly have ads, and those that claim "x songs without commercials!" usually put self-advertisements in instead, which they count separately. It's still advertising, just a different sort. Overall the whole process is pretty duplicitous (imho).

AdBlock has minimal market share [1], so the prevalence of AdBlock isn't an argument in your favour.

You may be correct that people hate ads, but the evidence you've given does not support your conclusion.

[1] first hit guesstimates 2%: [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage- of-Internet-user...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet- users-that-employ-AdBlock-Plus-or-similar-ad-blocking-plugins)

<comment><USER7> The closest thing to a guess at ad blocking rate at linked page says "I did some research on this a while back, and discovered that 14% of all visitors to MediaUK.com used ad-blockers". The only 2% figure there is a guess as what portion of all web users use Firefox and AdBlock.

<comment><USER4> My own measurements put it at <2% (Based on visitors to my website).

<comment><USER8> What ads do you have though? Are they from the ad networks? I have for example Google blocked across the board, but I do let Deck ads to sip through.

<comment><USER4> That was a check for google adsense blocking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how many times he saw Jimmy Wales' face at the top of an article.

<comment><USER10> It is an effective face... to wit:

>It was an excellent year for the Wikimedia Foundation from a financial perspective. The 2010-11 plan called for us to increase revenue 28% from 2009-10, to $20.4 million, and to increase spending 124% from 2009-10, to $20.4 million. In fact, we significantly over-achieved from a revenue perspective, and we also under spent, resulting in a larger reserve than planned. We closed the year with a reserve of $12 million, up from $7 million the prior year. This over-achievement is primarily due to the success of the 2010 WMF fundraiser. In 2010-11, the Wikimedia Foundation refocused from a mixed revenue model to a strong primary focus on the annual campaign: this resulted in our shortest and most successful campaign to date, raising $15 million (up 72% from 2009's $8.7 million) in 50 days (25% fewer than 2009's 67 days). If you include the $6.5 million received by 12 chapters which acted as payment processors in 2010, the total raised by the movement in the 2010 campaign was $21.5 million.[1]

[1][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/7/72/Audit_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/7/72/Audit_FAQ_2011_Final.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I think he looks kind of like Larry Ellison but I'm not great at recognizing faces and I haven't put them side-by-side yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Serious question: is Sergey Brin Google's version of Steve Wozniak? He certainly seems to be chasing the less-commercial, more-interesting ideas.

<comment><USER12> No. Beyond technical stuff and Apple, Wozniak is a simple man with a good heart but still a rather simple man who apparently doesn't appreciate money all that much. Beyond math, science and Google, Brin is an idealist with grand ideas about the world. Expect much more from him in the future since he does indeed have a lot of money, understands money's potential very well and is careful about investing in anything now knowing that later he'll be even more mature and will make much wiser investments.

<comment><USER13> Sounds like a description of Gates.

<comment><USER14> I am not so sure about that. MS has had significant contributions in research that is not directly relevant to Microsoft's current revenue streams - but I haven't heard if Gates was directly involved in any of them. Brin, on the other hand, appears to be spearheading that stream of research and development.

<comment><USER15> Brin and Page have compared themselves to gates and have mentioned they'd like to follow his example as far as philanthropy goes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As one of the unfortunate who has had to attempt to hack at mediawiki... I hope some of that cash goes towards improving their code base. It's gotta be costing them in maintenance (to say nothing of the ability to add new features).

<comment><USER17> Mediawiki is indeed a very poor substitute for a VCS, and things could probably be improved. For example, there once was a project to store Wikipedia articles using git as a backend: <[https://github.com/scy/levitation>](https://github.com/scy/levitation>).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The hundreds of millions of visitors from Google isn't enough? : )

Just joking, that's a nice donation. My wife was totally freaked out this week though...she had never seen the donation banner before.

<comment><USER19> What made her freak out? Just the existence of the banner, or that she didn't realize Wikipedia needs funding from the public? How did she respond afterwards?

<comment><USER20> She was probably creeped out by Jimmy's mug staring her down, eerily grinning at her. "Hi there. I'm watching you."

<comment><USER21> Because of the positioning it also looks like article titles are captions to the image... which has led to "much amusement" in certain circles.

<comment><USER22> Yes. Yes it has.

<http://theoatmeal.com/blog/jimmy_wales>

Note: Though I would normally not post these kinds of links, it's somewhat relevant to the topic at hand.

<comment> iso8859-1 Funny how you can't post a link to The Oatmeal without a note like that. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sergey's wife, Anne Wojcicki, is mentioned.

This is interesting because Anne's mother, Esther Wojcicki, is on the board of Creative Commons [1], which is what Wikipedia uses.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Wojcicki>

<comment> iso8859-1 It is a very popular license. Content on Wikipedia used to be GFDL-only, but the CC is obviously better suited. I doubt this connection has anything to do with the donation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think Wikipedia should get into printing & selling beautiful books from some of their content.

Maybe that will be my weekend project!

<comment><USER25> Have you seen <http://pediapress.com/>? It seems to do exactly that, although you need to compile the book yourself.

<comment><USER24> Yeh, something similar except beautiful, not just printing the content. Beautiful cover, font, design, maybe even vintage looking. It might not be "scalable" tho but I think people would dig it and willing to pay $100 for something like that. I would buy a vintage looking book about cars.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I'd be interested in _well_ -edited individual books, by someone knowledgeable in the subject who took care with both the physical presentation, and ideally some editing of the content, at least to make the articles flow coherently and not have too much redundancy between chapters (and make sure total crap sections didn't slip in).

In some ways that's the whole point of it being open-content, that you can reuse/repackage it in various ways, but there hasn't been a lot of creative third-party reuse yet.

<comment><USER21> I think part of the problem is that WP is still mostly incomplete (which is a horrifying thought :D).

By which I mean; if you pick a topic to turn into a book your likely to have articles of a wide range of quality (from featured status, the top, to stub, the bare minimum).

Couple that with potentially disparate styles of writing and it can become difficult to stitch several articles into a book form.

Not that people don't do it; the volunteer email support service regularly gets people complaining about the $50 "text book" they bought of Amazon simply being Wikipedia articles.

It's always been in the back of my mind to try and do something like it though; perhaps an "obscure topics" book with some of the more interesting articles put into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Unlike NPR (et al), Wikipedia could actually ask for donations and then not show the appeals for donations to people who have donated (e.g. by providing simple logins). Similarly, Wikipedia could show ads or not depending on whether someone paid a small fee. I wouldn't mind either.

<comment><USER28> I would prefer this. I'd gladly pay for a pro account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It probably went down like this:

Sergey: "hey Jimmy, how much do I have to pay you NOT to see your creepy face on every wikipedia article?"

Jimmy: "Well...."

<comment><USER17> Jimmy: "Just click on the little cross to close the ad."

Seriously, why are so many people complaining about this?

<comment><USER30> I don't allow cookies. That way of removing the ad does not work for me.

<comment><USER31> You can enable cookies to get the viewing experience that you prefer.

Or, you can download the content freely and see it any way you prefer.

Those seem like a couple reasonable options, to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some small areas of Wikipedia are so toxic that no-one would want to have anything to do with them.

Some areas are probably not suitable for advertising. Would an ad on "Holocaust" or "Lynchings" really be acceptable?

And so the problem then would be the megabytes of meta "discussion" about why some page should or shouldn't have ads.

</comment><comment><USER33> One time I applied for a software engineer position at Wikipedia. The first phone interview was with a non technical director of people or whatnot, and after a drawn out conversation of "tell me a time when..." she informed me there would 2 others to speak with.

Feels like a nonprofit.

</comment><comment><USER34> I believe, a joint venture should be formed between Redhat, Canonical, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and Facebook to fund wikipedia and this kinds of open source and very much needed projects with some of their yearly revenues. I named those companies because much or they are making money over free and open source projects. And this kind of venture is a way of showing good will. This could make wikipedia to survive, build more kinds of projects that could lead to more innovation and this new created innovation and brain would turn into profits for this companies. A long shot maybe, but this organisations contributors would not be harmed.

</comment><comment><USER35> No love for Knol? I guess Sergey would like to forget that that venture ever existed.

<comment> iso8859-1 Why deny the existence of Knol? Google has tons of failed projects. Like many others, I don't see Knol as a competitor; and I don't think it was even supposed to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wrote about this in my little article a few days ago. Wikipedia needs to raise money for the next 20 years, not for one year at a time. And then amaze their visitors with more interactive and engaging stuff when they take the money matters off their minds. [http://www.adnanymous.com/2011/11/why-jimmy- wales-wikipedia-...](http://www.adnanymous.com/2011/11/why-jimmy-wales- wikipedia-collect-donations-every-year/)

<comment><USER37> Hi, I work at the WMF. I'll address your points here.

> Why can't we have Stypi recording all changes made to Wikipedia articles?

Because Stypi didn't exist until a few months ago?

Ok, more seriously: I and my colleagues have talked to everybody else that ever did collaborative editing tools. We know the Wave guys, the Etherpad guys, and others, over the past year. I myself did a little analysis of Stypi a little while ago to try to learn some things from them.

We are working on this problem. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the results shortly. The new editing "surface" is making progress by leaps and bounds lately.

See <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Future> and others.

There are reasons why we can't just grab anything off the shelf like Etherpad, Wave, Etherpad-lite, or Stypi. MediaWiki already has a huge infrastructure of tools behind it and the entire community model is organized around chronologically ordered single-user discrete taggable edits of a very specialized format. Wikipedia wouldn't work well without all the bots and scripts that our community has written, and then we'd have to rewrite all of _them_ too.

Etherpad has plain text with bold and italic. Stypi has even less, as far as I know. It is possible to use these editors to create a collaborative way to edit wikitext (I did an experiment this summer to do just that). But that doesn't get us any closer to a GUI editor, which most people think is a sine qua non.

Given the resources we have devoted to this -- basically _some_ of the time of four or five engineers since March or so -- progress has actually been pretty good. Anyway, that's a slice of life at the WMF. Just so you know, in my corner of the world at least, we really are trying to make things awesome and it isn't costing the world a whole lot.

> Why can't we create more engaging Wikipedia articles using > something like > Popcorn.js for videos?

Again it comes down to the wikitext format. We do not have the liberty of banging out a new JS library and content model and then slowly adding features.

Because the Foundation is adamant about never deploying any technology that's not 100% open source, we missed the whole wave of Flash-based video. Only in the past few years has it become possible to seriously do open source video in the browser. Michael Dale from Kaltura has written some great HTML5 video libraries for MediaWiki; watch for them on Wikipedia in the near future. In the meantime we're also upgrading our APIs and storage infrastructure to support uploading longer format videos and so on.

This brings us into parity with maybe Youtube circa 2007 or so, with some more advanced editing and annotating tools due to the wiki-nature of everything we do. But better late than never.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> That is a very nice thing he did. Thank you Sergey Brin.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wealthy people giving money to Wikipedia is a great idea; I wish more would do it.

</comment><comment><USER40> "Sergey Brin gives $500,000 to help Wikipedia"

Anything to keep Jimmy Wales off of my screen is good.

</comment><comment><USER4> wikipedia only needs "help" because it spends so much money.

<comment><USER41> I'm not sure how that's relevant. Every other organization operates the same way.

<comment><USER4> Look at their budget. They spend shedloads. On things they don't need.

If wikipedia wanted to survive, it'd trim back it's massive spending.

<comment><USER42> For example? I guess they could save a lot by cutting out hosting.

<comment><USER4> Last time I looked, only a tiny % of their expenses were on hosting. The vast majority was on research,salaries, business crap, idk what else.

Take a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> And he wants to make sure everyone knows about it.

<comment><USER44> The desire for recognition is a major driver of philanthropy. Let's not attack the reason for Wikipedia getting half a million dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> rad

</comment><comment> hello-trolls muscle

</comment><comment><USER46> Well that is very nice of him.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think true donation should be anonymous, otherwise it becomes a promotion.

<comment><USER48> As long as you realize that it would severely reduce the amount of money donated to non-profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Good for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia should consider experimenting with different business models to generate money. Mozilla makes most of it's money from Google. By placing Google.com as their start page, they split the revenue generated from ad clicks - it's around 80% of their revenue (I looked at their financial statements long ago but can't remember specifics).

$500k to Sergey Brin is pocket change.

</comment><comment><USER50> Basically he paid to stop seeing Jimmy's dessicated, mildly derpish face page after page after page...

</comment><comment><USER51> _[EDIT: could those downvoting this please reply and tell me why? I wouldn't have thought this would be controversial, but I'm looking at this post sitting at -4 just minutes after posting and am genuinely confused as to what the issue is.]_

Hrm. Obviously this is a good thing, but...

Wikipedia tells me that Brin's net worth is $16.7B. Very roughly, my "net worth" (in the sense of assets required to duplicate my income) is $2M. So that's the equivalent of my dropping $59 on them.

Obviously all gifts are good (as long as you, like me, value wikipedia). And this is a big one. But it hardly qualifies as earth-shaking philanthropy. It's the gift amount Brin would be expected to give, I'd say. Obviously there's a lot of apples and oranges here; both of the numbers above represent "tied down" assets and not disposable cash, etc...

But shouldn't the extremely wealthy be held to _higher_ standards about what they're expected to do with their charity? Why must it be news when someone like Brin does the equivalent of clicking on "Donate via PayPal".

I guess one good thing came of this though: lest I feel like a hypocrite, I went to Wikipedia and clicked on "Donate $100". So that makes me a better person than Brin, I guess?

<comment><USER52> Okay. I'll try and explain why you're being downvoted.

Every time someone wealthy donates a whole lot of money to a philanthropic cause, people like you pop up in the comment section. "Oh it doesn't matter, it's only X% of his net worth, that's the same as me only donating Y". Seriously, you followed this template almost to the letter.

First, charity isn't a competition over who can sacrifice the most. At the end of the day, that $500,000 helps Wikipedia five thousand times more than your $100. More, probably, because his donation raises the profile and will convince others to donate. Second, people aren't "expected" to give anything, regardless of how much money they have.

I think the thing that annoys me the most is how obvious it is you came in here with preconceived anti-rich notions and then did mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you're "a better person" than this incredibly generous man. If you want to spread that kind of negativity around, go back to Slashdot.

I'm sure someone can articulate this better than I can, but seriously. These sorts of posts just piss me off.

<comment><USER53> >Charity isn't a competition

Ask a Christian that. A rich man giving a lot doesn't mean anything if it isn't a sacrifice. Just like doing good things for the humanly recognition isn't the way to give. So says Matthew).

Just sayin'.

<comment><USER53> Point to the part where I'm wrong.

<comment><USER54> Religion is true</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comic Sans Criminal - <AUTHOR> http://www.comicsanscriminal.com/

<comment><USER2> Comic Sans also comes from a pre anti-aliasing era in personal computing. If you viewed it on a 640x480 display with no aliasing, it's actually slightly more readable than other fonts like Times New Roman. See about 3:50 into this presentation:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X4f83C8ANg></comment>


How to Get Old Brains to Think Like Young Ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-get-old-brains-to-think-like-young-ones-1499438225?mod=e2fb <comment><USER2> Mirror: [http://www.cetusnews.com/life/How-to-Get-Old-Brains-to- Think...](http://www.cetusnews.com/life/How-to-Get-Old-Brains-to-Think-Like- Young-Ones.Hy8N6v7lB-.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> So sick of seeing these paywall links.

<comment><USER4> > So sick of seeing these paywall links.

What's wrong with paywalls?</comment></comment>


From 0 to 1 Million in 6 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://bendyworks.com/news/from-0-to-1-million-in-6-hours

<comment><USER2> VoiceRally has been my goto app to see what is happening between brain cycles on work. Thanks for adding the pause button. I can't read that fast!

That pause button is a great example of iterative development. You guys got the first cut out there, saw that the next step was the pause button, and added it. Nice work. Bendyworks FTW.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great job...really interesting and timely project and an example of, to borrow a phrase, "just-in-time" apps that help document an event in a meaningful way.

Love the MongoHQ shout-out as well. Glad that we could be a part of the solution!

</comment><comment><USER4> Great work guys!

</comment><comment><USER5> That is a _very_ cool and well-done app for 6 hours.

I'm not a big twitterer (sp? lol) but this makes me wonder if there are similar apps that do pretty much the same thing but allow you to specify your focus (e.g., #wiunion)... I mean I'm sure there are but how well-done are they? And what's the proper terminology?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.twitterfall.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I really dig a lot of the ideas in this app but find the UI to be a bit confusing.

I'll take a step back and say that many of the ideas in twitterfall are ideas we've considered adding to VoiceRally.

Twitterfall is a great app and I'm elated to see what other people are doing in this area, but I wish the commenter would have added more to the discussion than a link. (Please add some context if you get the opportunity!)

The main reason we're putting a post out there about this app is three-fold: We're looking to give back to the community by sharing our experience with these technologies, draw out feedback from potential users, and if necessary, pivot to meet those needs.

On that note I'd like to suggest that anyone who has read through the article and has seen the resulting app to give us some feedback on what they would improve about the existing functionality, and what they envision being a logical and realistic end for an application like this one.

Thanks in advance, Devin

<comment><USER6> I don't really use it, but the parent mentioned "other apps" so I linked to one that was similar. I think Twitterfall is a few years old though, and probably hasn't been touched in quite a while.

<comment><USER7> Hi, I made Twitterfall :)

I keep an eye on it and add features now and then, but I admit I don't make massive changes or add huge new features. I'd love to migrate to Site Streams one day at least.

If anyone has some useful feedback about Twitterfall though, I'm always interested.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bad month for the main thread - <AUTHOR> https://daverupert.com/2018/01/bad-month-for-the-main-thread/ <comment><USER2> What is it exactly the added bonus _users_ get with the modern way of web development that wasn't there in, say 2011? I remember using Android 2.x with 800 MHz SOC back in the day and web browsing worked fine, really. What modern web sites can offer to justify the increased CPU usage?

<comment><USER3> I suppose now you can play 3d games? Watch videos without flash?

I don't think you can claim that the way we use the internet in 2018 is the same as how it was in 2001, we assume "web apps" for things like mail, editing documents and other things will work.

Now, I absolutely detest the insane complexity of a browser and that I can't have a 'lite' browsing experience today without sacrificing access to a large portion of the internet. (which I blame on the prevalence of javascript)

But do enjoy the 'no download', 'run anywhere' nature of web-applications, and, often, I'm willing to trade a bit more power for them, because as a heavily BSD/Linux user the alternative is not having anything at all.

The question is, how can we penalise those that abuse the power of a browser without offering value?

<comment><USER4> > The question is, how can we penalise those that abuse the power of a browser > without offering value?

"Do you want to enable Javascript for this website?"

<comment><USER3> I really /really/ like that idea, but it will be an annoyance for 99% of people with how frequently it will trigger. People will expect a crappy experience until they click "OK" and the button will be blamed for getting in the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _It isn't far fetched that a device would reduce power consumption when on > battery, it makes the device last longer, makes users happier._

Does it? If I reduce the amount of power available to complete a task, but proceed to complete the task _anyways_ , doesn't the phone now need to potentially have the peripherals (particularly, the screen) on for longer as the user waits for a task that has been slowed down to complete, consuming _more_ energy than had it completed the task using 100% CPU?

(Unless using 80% of the CPU can accomplish the same task using less energy (not power) and recoup enough to make up for the losses incurred by needing extra time.)

It isn't intuitive to me at all that what we're doing isn't making phones useless so that their battery lasts all day.

<comment><USER6> "It depends": [https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6611/bc084fbaf1845b1bf54cc7...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6611/bc084fbaf1845b1bf54cc72d1c143d25083d.pdf) From the abstract: "We evaluate three systems - a clock throttled Pentium laptop, a frequency scaled PowerPC platform, and a voltage scaled system.... on the Pentium-based system, it is energy efficient to run only at the highest frequency, while on the PowerPC-based system, it is energy efficient to run at the lowest frequency point."

So it can go either way, depending on a lot of the local factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author presents a problem in the lack of device model and battery level information. A website/web application may disable functionality due to browser feature availablity, but if you disable functionality based on the device model, you're doing something wrong.

If you have a scenario where you can disable _some_ thing to make the experience better while maintaining functionality, then why in the _world_ would you ever enable those things? This is simply beyond me.

Any suggestions that improve the situation are simply generic performance optimizations that benefit everyone.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, if the idea of sending mobile devices with low batteries simplified versions of web sites catches on, we could have our desktop browsers spoof to be four-year-old iPhones with 10% battery life and perhaps have a much better and faster desktop experience…

<comment><USER7> What a world we live in...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Given that components are going to need to contain Javascript, what's the value in having them contain separate HTML? "Browsers are good at handling documents" isn't really true any more; at least, browsers don't seem appreciably better at handling documents than Javascript is.

<comment><USER10> > browsers don't seem appreciably better at handling documents than Javascript > is

If you disregard memory consumption, CPU load, battery life, then sure.

<comment><USER9> Even then. I was surprised to see doing a given thing in Javascript perform better than doing it in CSS, but that seems to be the reality of browser implementations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just discovered the slider. What a huge performance boost.

</comment><comment><USER12> What can we blame on JavaScript next?</comment>


Why Tech Startups Should Look at Go - ardan-bkennedy http://startupedmonton.tumblr.com/post/107921476571/why-tech-startups-should-look-at-go <comment><USER2> Essentially all of the quoted usecases switched from a slow dynamically typed language to Go. Of course that's an improvement.

But I still don't see why you would choose Go over Java (or Scala) for serious backend development. Java has more libraries, is faster, has generics (for the love of god), has better IDE support, and has a larger hiring pool. In summary, the ecosystem is more mature.

Java's checked exceptions are less painful then Go's C-style error handling. They could have gone with something sane like Rust/Haskell style error handling (using the type system), but they instead regressed to return value checking.

The complaints about Java's overwhelming verbosity are mostly dated both on the language-level and the ecosystem-level. Java 8 has lambdas, streams, and more. Spring Boot and Dropwizard are 2 modern, lightweight frameworks that do away with the XML configuration nonsense.

I'm actually genuinely asking why anyone would choose Go over Java and not trying to start a flame war. An API I'm working on is due for a rewrite and it's currently written in PHP. I'd like to give Go a chance but it just seems like a poor choice compared to Java.

<comment><USER3> >But I still don't see why you would choose Go over Java (or Scala) for serious backend development.

      1. Less verbose code
      2. Platform Ind. + native binaries, no runtime dependency
      3. Built in unit testing/benching
      4. Fast compile time
      5. Better tooling, no Ant etc needed
      6. Better core language support for multithreading/concurrency
      7. A memory model that makes it easier to read the code and understand how the resulting data will be layed out in memory
      8. Related to 7, better stack vs heap allocation control

>Java has more libraries

Many of which are of low quality / filled with code-rot, I used to play in the Java ecosystem the Go stdlib is cleaner and the Go 3rd party libraries tend to be better, more single function.

>is faster

This is not always the case and is changing for Go's better fast. To paint Go as non-competitive would be unfair as its in the same league as Java and it usually faster than C# Mono.

>has generics (for the love of god)

I used to miss this, but I find I don't anymore... I wrote proxies, databases, systems applications.

>has better IDE support

True. This used to pain me until I found LiteIDE and I started writing unit tests more and using the debugger less. Go's profiler is awesome though...

>and has a larger hiring pool.

Not really, any smart C/C++/C#/Java developer can be highly productive in Go in weeks.

>In summary, the ecosystem is more mature.

A double edged sword mind you, not to mention Go is maturing at faster rate then Java did.

>Java's checked exceptions are less painful then Go's C-style error handling.

No. C++/Java got it wrong, ignoring error paths lead or letting random low level errors bubble up are some of the horrible results of the Java way to handle exceptions.

Forcing programmers to consider which operations may fail- how to handle those failures is one of the best decisions Go made. Multiple returns make this much less painful than C.

<comment><USER4> > 2\. Platform Ind. + native binaries, no runtime dependency

Also available in Java. It is just a matter of choosing the right compiler.

Java like many other languages, enjoys a standard, certification process and multiple implementations to choose from.

<comment><USER3> GCJ is dead. Are you referring to proprietary implementations?

<comment><USER4> Yes, who still bothers with GCJ? I really don't understand why GCC still ships it.

However there are also open source implementations like RoboVM and JikesRVM, among a few others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> AWS is cheap enough that "throw more hardware at the problem" is a viable option for most startups. So long as you're not being completely stupid with the way you've coded the first version, pretty much any language is going to work, and the cost of people who can code well in more esoteric languages that _might_ be better suited to the problem domain are going to be increasingly expensive. Obviously there _is_ a time to rebuild with technologies that scale better than what you started out with, but I doubt all that many startups ever actually get to that point.

<comment><USER6> I don't think you've ever calculated just how much that cost is.

Lets say that you have a web service that is serving 30,000 requests per second, with a 1 Kb request size and a 4 Kb response size and you're setting up an elastic load-balancer setup that on average keeps 300 c3.xlarge instances open.

Do the math and you'll find that the cost on AWS, considering the instances used and the bandwidth, is over $80,000 per month. And that's a conservative example, since by my calculations that's about $1,000,000 per year and I know companies paying much more than that.

Don't know what startups you're thinking about, but from where I'm standing, for startups that's a recipe for burning cash.

<comment><USER5> 30,000 requests per second is 2,592,000,000 per day... That's quite a lot. Obviously we're not talking page views (because that'd be _crazy successful_ and well beyond 'startup' territory), so we're presumably in the domain of data logging, analytics, social networking etc. Sure, AWS might not be appropriate for those. But then, the level of traffic you're talking about represents maybe 0.1% of startups. People doing "a CRUD app for a niche", which is most SaaS startups TBH, could run their software on 1 AWS medium instance for the first year or two quite happily.

<comment><USER6> You're right, we aren't talking about page views or CRUD, but it can happen in a B2B application.

I ended up working for a startup like that, so this was a real anecdotal example. Our stuff was built to run on the JVM and we managed to get away with a variable number of instances between 15 and 30 (at the time we used c1.medium, which are now deprecated) - AWS's ELB is great in such a scenario as it can be configured to bring up new instances in case of traffic spikes, or kill them in case they were unused. So for us, AWS was saving us money, however that's because we were very efficient.

My opinion is that if you're expecting your startup to grow soon (and I'm not talking about wishful thinking, but about requirements that have to happen for survival - i.e. you either get the desired contracts or you don't), then you have to prepare for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While go has some nice features-- standalone executables and fast execution are two. I don't really see a compelling reason to switch to it from Elixir/Erlang.

Biggest downside seems there's no real easy way to handle errors being returned from function calls.

Easier deployment would be good, but once you solve it for elixir it's not a big issue. On the other hand Erlang is very well tested and established and pretty complete-- though go's libraries and open source support is growing by leaps and bounds.

So really, it's that error issue. Oh, and pipe. I really love elixir's pipe ( |> ) operator.

<comment><USER8> Let be honest here, who really use Erlang? How do you find people that knows this language?

<comment><USER7> I've recruited and built a team which was writing code in Elixir, even more obscure than Erlang. It wasn't really a problem finding people who knew it or were strong programmers who were interested in it.

Good languages attract good programmers.

The idea that we need to stick to popular languages is, I think, driven by business guys who want commodity programmers.

If you want 100 engineers added to your team in a year, then sure, use Java. But you will still be less effective, I bet, than 10 engineers doing erlang in that same year.

<comment><USER9> I would argue that you can pick any new'ish (last 5 years) language that is suitable for development and find the same results. Anyone who knows the language well taught themselves how to use it without the guarantee of being able to use it at a job.

This will be a fairly small subset of developers, the ones that have motivation and time to put into growing themselves. So this probably means that the devs that know new language X are just more interested in software development (compared to devs that just know the language(s) they learned in school, and whatever they were taught on their jobs). So they have a much higher chance of being good developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I watched the Rob Pike Concurrency is Not Parallelism video ([http://vimeo.com/49718712](http://vimeo.com/49718712)) a few days ago and thought that "maybe I should be using Go instead of Python." Then I thought about all of the work that would have to be redone, all of the learning that I'd have to do, all of the retooling, all of the etc., just to get back to where I'm at now. If I were starting again Id probably start with Go, probably.

<comment><USER11> 2/3rds of our devs working on juju hadn't written a line of Go before they were hired. Getting up to speed on Go is very far (like a week to get productive). Many of them have very Python heavy backgrounds. Just dive in, it's easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tech startups who hit this phase (or "wall," as it's described here), should look at _all_ options. Even if Go is the best technical option, it may not be the best business decision. That's an unfortunate reality for startups - <AUTHOR> you can't bring in the staff you want / need, the best tool for the job might not be the right one.

This ends up being another pro for the distributed microservice model, allowing some experimentation and internal learning in new languages without impacting an entire product.

<comment><USER3> > Even if Go is the best technical option, it may not be the best business > decision

Why might Go not be the best business option? I see technical case for or against Go as very much religious and shaped by personal preference. But what could be a business reason not to use Go for a new startup that is independent of the technical side?

<comment><USER13> You could assume that Go, although popular, isn't at the level of Python and Ruby in terms of available developers. The ones that would know Go are most likely very good and also expensive compared to just finding that one Ruby/Node/Python programmer of the many out there which will go low enough and suddenly Go doesn't make sense anymore for startups without the cash.

<comment><USER3> >You could assume that Go, although popular, isn't at the level of Python and Ruby in terms of available developers.

Not really, any smart C/C++/C#/Java developer can be highly productive in Go in weeks.

Side thought: If your startup isn't on the west coast, C/C++/C#/Java developers are far MORE common than Python/Ruby devs. Although C/C++/C#/Java developers are not rare anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> at the end of the day, on the first days of (most) startups you focus on showing results as fast as you can. Prototyping languages (Pyhon / Ruby etc) are the right choice.

Nice stories about how iron.io reduced 30 ruby servers to 2 go servers became relevant only after they proven good market fit and working growth engine.

So GO? maybe yes but probably only when the prototyping languages, can't carry weight.

<comment><USER15> I have found Go to be high level enough to make prototyping very straightforward.

<comment><USER14> Define "high level enough" python / ruby are much faster...

<comment><USER15> Exactly what I said. Just like Python/Ruby can be "fast enough" to do many things, Go is "high level enough" that I don't have to spend too much time thinking about the lower level details.

The few seconds of difference is small enough that it effectively does not matter.

For example, I don't have to worry about maps (dicts, hashes, etc); they're in place, but require one additional statement before they use them. I don't have to worry about array lengths; I can just use append(). I don't have to worry about finding a third party library to do network requests, it's part of the standard library (and doesn't require too many convolutions to use).

I do have to think a bit more about pointers when writing function signatures in Go than in Python or Ruby (not that those two languages really free me from that concern: some structures when modified in a function modify the underlying data from the callee as well).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not at all surprising that those startups solved their problems with Go: if you switch from a language that doesn't address your problems to one that does, you're going to see a big benefit. But there are lots of languages that address the problems mentioned by those startups, and I think that Go is possibly the worst of the options.

It's telling that none of the startups in question switched out of a language which provides good compile-time type and thread-safety guarantees:

1\. iron.io: ruby -> go 2\. SendGrid: perl -> python -> go 3\. TJ Holowaychuck: node.js -> go

Go would have a reasonable compile-time type system, except that without generics you end up having to cast a lot, which renders your compile-time type system almost irrelevant.

It's also telling that none of the authors mentioned experience with functional programming. Go supports some functional programming, but it doesn't seem to be a very big part of the language. The only one who mentions that they even considered any functional languages is the iron.io guy, and it seems like a big part of his choice was not technical: he mentions that he had to sell the idea of Go to his team by mentioning that Google supports it. A language that was a more serious paradigm shift (OO -> functional) would have been an even harder sell.

(EDIT: Okay, the SendGrid guy did mention considering Scala.)

The fact is, there are a bunch of languages that would have solved their problems, in addition to a few they didn't know they had. Julia has coroutines similar to Go, but is much more expressive, Rust has a more traditional threading model but a type system and focus on immutability that provides better safety guarantees. There are other choices, but those two stand out as the major ones that could have solved their problems better than go.

<comment><USER17> > Go would have a reasonable compile-time type system, except that without > > generics you end up having to cast a lot, which renders your compile-time > > type system almost irrelevant.

In my experience of Go, this is not actually true. For example, in the latest project I've been working on, there are 8487 lines of non-test code. In that code, there are a total of 16 dynamic casts, more than half of which are checked (mostly checking for particular error types). There are a total of 4 occurrences which might possibly be amenable to generics.

The type system is totally relevant, and checks 99.9% of our code.

<comment><USER16> How do you deal with container-type classes? The only way I can see to do this without casts is to duplicate the same container class for each contained type, which is fraught with its own problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If your team has a common skillset that can be used to rapidly and efficiently deliver a thing and you don't yet have the same confidence in your collective Go abilities: do not use Go.

Otherwise, feel free. Not sure why this is such a huge point of contention.

</comment><comment><USER19> The Iron.io blogpost was what got me looking into Go. As a Rubyist it was quite eye-opening!

<comment><USER20> You'd probably enjoy Haskell more than Go as a Rubyist imo. Most Rubyist I've known seem to really like Haskell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's my take on this as someone who loves both Go and PHP (yeah, I know!). I agree that startups can get entrenched in their legacy code, but I also think there is a false choice here:

1\. Write with a system language from the start. Yikes!

2\. Do a total rewrite of your application later when you hit scale issues. Yikes!

In my opinion, though, Go is not well-suited (today) for rapid prototyping or web application development, even with some of the frameworks. This shouldn't be a surprise. Go is a systems language.

I think languages like PHP, Ruby, and the lot are much better suited early stage startups. When you hit problems of scale, it's very straight-forward to isolate parts of your application that do not scale well and translate those components to Go.

Introducing Go for only the components that require high availability and guarantee a level of performance / memory safety as an _iteration_ to your original application code is probably a much saner choice.

</comment><comment><USER22> tl;dr:

* Stratups don't have time to rewrite the prototype the right way, and then hit the performance wall.

* A few startups explain how Go is faster and more reliable than Ruby/Rails, Python, and JS/Node.

<comment><USER3> Some thoughts on those points.

>Startups don't have time to rewrite the prototype the right way, and then hit the performance wall.

I would guess that for experienced C/C++ programmers (and probably C#/Java) Go isn't going to be slower to build in than Python/Node etc. I actually build things the fastest right off the bad in Go... I've ported node.js applications to Go, and let me tell you it was not fun. Even if the first throw away prototype was in Go, it would have made the rewrite much easier.

>A few startups explain how Go is faster and more reliable than Ruby/Rails, Python, and JS/Node.

Considering Go was built to compete with Python/C/C++/Java at Google I would hope so. I think a key metric that often is left out is maintainability. I think Go's very straight forward code (which some people call boring) is an asset here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Node.js is way better than Go! It's more expressive, more flexible and more portable.

... Thanks for the downvotes. Well worth the bad karma :)

</comment><comment><USER24> its hard enough to hire decent developers never mind decent go developers

</comment><comment><USER23> Gophers love to quote TJ Holowaychuk to justify choosing Go over Node.js. In my eyes, TJ is a traitor - If he preferred Go, that's fine - He could just go ahead and use it as he likes, but he wrote a post completely debasing Node.js without pointing to any real, concrete issue.

I bet he is still using Node.js from time to time - The 'Goodbye' article is obviously just a stunt.

He probably cashed out! I read somewhere that he got a decent sum for his Express framework. I would be interested to know who else is behind this.

<comment><USER25> Speaking only for myself, I've found the following to be broadly true with Node.js and Go:

If I'm building a strictly server-side app using Express, it's a joy to use Node.js (especially for a prototype) - everything more or less works, and the NPM ecosystem is rich and broad. Very easy way of getting a RESTful JSON API up-and-running from FooDB.

If I'm building a client (web scraper, getting stuff out of an API to load into R, etc.) then I really quickly run into "Too Much Concurrency" TM with Node. I quickly find myself building something with Go (or Ruby) to do the following:

\- Limited Number of workers

\- Automatically re-try request N number of times if fails, depending on response code

\- Log all successes/failures

\- Throttle total # of requests/second based on site-specific rate limiting

To make the above work in Node, I have to use caolan's async + Q promises + other libraries (or write in Icedcoffeescript, which I like but is very weakly typed and has inferior tooling) and find myself refactoring most of the small script just to fit into the async libraries. With Go, I can use mutexes or simple channels to control throttling, and do whatever I want with errors. There's a lot of boilerplate to get the above up-and-running robustly for Node, or at least that's been my impression the last few times that I've used it. Node has solutions for advanced concurrency (Generators, promises, CSP libraries), but why reinvent the wheel when Go has that out of the box?</comment></comment>


Yes, Designers and Engineers Can Play Nice - <AUTHOR> http://blog.derrickko.com/designers-and-engineers-can-play-nice

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Learn more, argue less. Both sides of the coin will be better off.</comment>


If PRISM is Good Policy, Why Stop with Terrorism? - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/if-prism-is-good-policy-why-stop-with-terrorism/277531/? <comment><AUTHOR> _The danger of a surveillance state is not the obscure chance of a truly evil person abusing the system; rather, the actual threat, the real danger, is a person with good intentions who believes that their draconian actions are morally justified and prudent. It is such a leader, perhaps with the best of intentions, who can make the most heinous of mistakes with eyes wide open and belief that the ends justify the means. Those ends never justify eviscerating the Fourth Amendment._

If the American people do not understand this, then they will abandon their freedoms and liberty voluntarily, without any outside foreign invasion or attack.

They will fall because of apathy, just like the Romans did.

<comment><USER2> Then they will fall. The protests were an abysmal failure. I've seen plenty of "I don't care" opinions regarding it, and that's not even factoring the 50+% of people who don't even follow such things.

People get what they deserve, and the world apparently deserves the US monitoring all of its communications. My only hope is a complete collapse of their government.

<comment><USER3> If the United States is becoming more repressive, where can one go? Other English speaking countries such as Australia, England, and Singapore have problems with freedom of expression.

<comment><USER4> This sounds ridiculous, but lately I've been of the opinion that this planet is borked. I hold out serious hope for Elon Musk and his Mars colony. I seriously believe that we as a species need a fresh start in a new place. We need a new planet so we can try new things, create new ideas, and generally liberate ourselves of traditional conventions. It sounds pie-in-the-sky, but people are actively working on it and I hope to one day count myself among them.

America used to be the place where things like this could happen, but that's not so much anymore. There's still innovation, but the trend doesn't look good and most of the world just doesn't care.

<comment><USER5> Fleeing earth doesn't instantly change human nature. The risks to liberty will remain no matter where you go.

The George Washington willing-to-cede-his-throne type will be just as rare on Mars in 2095 as it is today, as it was throughout history.

<comment><USER4> True, but it might allow the freedom to implement alternative methods that clamp down on such things. Just as the New World allowed for the political innovations that has lead to modern democracy (however flawed), Mars would be a new frontier that could be used to create a better government with all the lessons the past 400 years has taught us. It would be an even better frontier, as Mars doesn't have the pesky problem of people already living there with all the historical baggage that accompany it. It doesn't have the terrible legacy of slavery and the social problems that that implies. It is a fresher start than we as a species have ever had, and we now how the proper perspective to avoid the pitfalls that we're currently saddled with. In time, much as democracy filtered its way back to Europe, a better system of governance could find its way back to Earth.

In any case, it would be a bold experiment. To go in with the intention of building a better social contract, or to rethink what that even means, is something that we should keep in mind. Mars shouldn't just be a joyride in 0.4 g, but an intentional effort to rethink society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If humans were angels there would be no need for government to begin with, and if elected leaders were angels there would be less need for protection of our privacy -- but humans are not angels and we have experience with elected leaders that are partisan, opportunist, short-sighted and, sometimes, even corrupt. Government's natural inclination is to abuse its power, one critical reason why our Founders limited it. "

Sounds like direct plagarism of this:

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

-Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address

<comment><USER7> No need for accusations of plagiarism. Your post reads the same without the words "direct plagiarism of".

<comment><USER6> I agree. Not sure why I worded it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think most Americans truly understand what's at risk here. All they can think about is "oh, they'll just monitor my useless chats - no big deal". The author does a pretty good job defining how far they could go, and I don't think most Americans even consider those scenarios, which is why they don't care. Or they do, but "they trust Obama", or they don't believe anything bad from it will happen to _them_ , as if it wouldn't be bad enough if the power was abused against many other people or leaders.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps Information should become a separate branch of government.

That way, at least we could construct a clean interface with the other branches and prevent the executive branch from having direct, unfettered access.

Information is vitally important and I can see the benefits of concentrating information into one place for security and even efficiency reasons but I think that sector needs some kind of overarching framework for access and dissemination to other branches of government and to the People. But, basically, without cooperation of the other branches, Information would be neutered. They would be incapable of acting on the information they possess. We probably don't want it totally controlled by career politicians so it would need a different structure than Congress and we don't want it run by the same people forever so we need a different structure than the Judiciary. And we need a way to look into the black box in a controlled and reliable manner as the People.

I am not sure how to structure it. It is just the seed of an idea, but it may be worth some real thought and debate.

<comment><USER7> You're assuming the executive branch actually controls the "intelligence branch". I would say that's a big assumption.

With the press having largely abandoned its role as Fourth Estate it seems like we need to find a replacement. Clearly, the intelligence establishment has more influence than the press does these days, so it gets my vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Roughly, this statement does wonders for people who believe in state surveillance: _If the society you are supporting is a society in which committing a crime is not reasonably possible, then the society you are describing is totalitarian_. Forget source. Works wonders.

<comment><USER11> But politicians are telling people they are trying to prevent crime... and people seem to support that idea. Why wouldn't they ? Preventing crimes before it happens is good.

Of course no politician tell them (or know) how ugly the surveillance is really going to be. People may not realize they are wishing for a dictatorship but complete control, or attempt to get complete control, leads to that kind of political system.

My point is: few know what totalitarinism is and how to recognize it.

<comment><USER12> Most people in true totalitarian states manage to normalize the situation and go about their lives. They just accept that you vote for Saddam Hussein, present your documents upon "papierein, bitte", report your neighbors to the KGB, and hand over half your income to the IRS. Those who don't tend to just disappear - quietly, with politically correct mumbling about "good riddance".

Few are willing to fight for their right to live at risk. Their neighbors see to it (if indirectly) the consequences are swift and severe, quiet and veiled.

<comment><USER13> Vote for Obama or Romney? Both indistinguishable when it comes to the question of surveillance and basic constitutional freedoms.

We routinely hand over our "papers" when traveling, or even when just buying beer.

"If you see something, say something" hardly needs additional comment.

They're not nearly as extreme as they are or have been in some places, but the US certainly seems to qualify for all the basics you outlined. And we have indeed normalized the situation to go about our lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Of course terrorism is the way to get the foot in the door. Once total surveillance is cemented and the possibilities for public outrage have diminished enough, it will be broadened to murderers, pedophiles and so forth.

For pointers of where it'll stop, I think we can look at society today. Where the people in power are very careful not to threaten their privileges. Milking the people as much as they can while not to cause the public to seriously demand change. (of course the milking equipment gets more and more sophisticated)

So in the end those surveillance tools won't be used for petty crimes (except where it concerns the least powerful) but everything that could send you to jail for half a year or more.

<comment><USER15> Let's talk about public outrage. In the last decade the US has officially invaded countries, tortured prisoner (and still continue), lied and spied its citizen, blatantly ignored the responsible for the biggest crisis in a century.

All of that happened, and well, there is still no real public and media outrage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good point, but why did you proposed speed limits or illegal downloading instead of insider trading or other financial crimes? Why not proposing some special eavesdropping on wall street operators?

<comment><USER17> The author picked crimes that would be perpetrated by the majority of population, as examples.

In another article, someone said there are so many laws and statutes (around 3000) that a person could potentially violate, that there is no sure way to maintain yourself legit.

For the government it's just a matter of finding something to pin on any person.

<comment><USER16> Are you implying that child pornography is more diffused than financial crimes? Or that there is a weird top chart of crimes where terrorism > child pornography > speed limits > financial crimes?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It occurred to me that with only traffic analysis of US mail, NSA could probably stop the drug trade in a matter of weeks.

What they don't do is almost as telling as what they do.

<comment><USER19> Why do you think they do not do that?

<comment><USER18> 1) it would draw attention to their collection activities

2) it would draw attention to their data analysis abilities

3) they don't care if people get high

4) they would prefer to have the leverage against everyone involved for use on an individual basis should they ever need it in the future should the need/mission/assignment arise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ...because PRISM is not about protecting Americans it is about protecting politicians and rich people. Sound simplistic but Empires fall abruptly and their arc downward is not like a rainbow - it's a car crash off a cliff:

Harvard professor Neil Ferguson has an article about how economics drives rapid empire collapse.

[http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/07/28/sun_could_...](http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/07/28/sun_could_set_suddenly_on_superpower_as_debt_bites_99088.html)

Rome fell in 30-years. The French Revolution took just three years after France became insolvent. Russia fell in about a decade. Egypt in a few short weeks. Is Greece next? Severe economic disparity is what they all have in common.

USA politicians must utterly fear the people they govern and with mounting USA debt, robots & software crushing jobs, it may be unlikely that the US would collapse but economic travail are the seeds that would make it happen and PRISM is the watchdog in my opinion.

If the US collapsed imagine the court trials politicians would be subjected to: War crimes, financial crimes, congressional and senatorial insider trading scams exposed, selective enforcement of laws so as to hurt specific individuals and political competitors...

</comment><comment><USER21> All phones traveling below 20 mph would be excluded on the assumption that they're not driving. All phones traveling faster than 20 mph would be plotted to discern what road they are traveling on and what the speed limit is for that road. ...

I just turn off the phone..

<comment><USER22> With quite a few phones coming with sealed batteries, is it even a reasonable assumption that you've truly turned off the phone?

<comment><USER23> So stick it in a metal box as well. Every escalation can have a counter. If it can't communicate or pick up signal, its as good as off.

<comment><USER24> Do dead reckoning with the accelerometer, phone home with your speed later. Or just look at the endpoints of the trip when you take it out of the Faraday bag and calculate average velocity. Or don't try to enforce speed limits through phones, because that doesn't make any sense anyway. Require GPS-enabled governors in all car computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good piece. But why no attribution on the blatant paraphrase of another Madison quote? "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

</comment><comment><USER26> Written by a member of the Internet Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School.

If you are interested in these topics, follow it and its members. They are all over this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER27> That wasn't a very well-written article. First off, the anachronism of quoting James Madison to discuss internet privacy. Did you know that James Madison also owned slaves? Is the author condoning slavery?

Second off, the intrusions he discuss already happen in the private sector. Having your credit card transaction? Wake up, that already happens. Child pornography; I'm fine with the state creating a system to find child pornographers.

His point about the cold war is also inaccurate. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union didn't happen because each side was basically assured destruction. Our surveillance there was to figure out what they were capable of (satellites, U2 / SR71s) not local communication as is the case with terrorism.

So a bunch of vague talk about our privacy with bad comparisons. The fear of terrorism? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELamUnF0EU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELamUnF0EU)

Society has already moved beyond what this guy is talking about. Look at the Anthony Wiener case; he could very well be the next mayor of New York.

We have more freedom and more ways to talk than ever before.

There are other points he should have made better, specifically whether the archive could be manipulated. Snowden also mentioned this but this could easily be handled by simple hashing. Maybe they should propose it but I'd bet it's already being done.

<comment><USER28> Once you own slaves you are rotten to the core and nothing that comes out of your mouth is worth paying attention to?

One of the points of the article was that humans are fallible, that is our nature. Best to prepare for that fact in advance (like assuming someone will steal your data stored with the government).

<comment><USER27> You don't get the irony of the Madison quote?

Re 'your' data, the problem is that it all exists in the private sector already and IS GROWING in the private sector much more quickly. What do you the big data bandwagon is? I'm much more concerned about a breach of my SSN from Equifax than the US Govt.

<comment><USER29> Why? Equifax can't put you in jail indefinitely, or use everything you said in the last few years to build a case against you, just because you have a funny name. I get (and share) your concerns about corporations having so much sensitive data, but for now a company's ability to inflict harm (even when they don't mean to) is far less than a government's.

<comment><USER27> Major can of worms lol. Are you arguing that your concern is that the gov is going to change the record if it decides it doesn't like you and then imprison you?

How about a bank creating fictitious > 10k deposits that they'd have to report to government? Now, the FBI is on your tail (see Eliot Spitzer).

<comment><USER30> Privacy is not even necessarily the issue per se. Data is going to be out there in increasing quantities, and it's naive to think that we can force it all to be private. Obviously some legal controls should be in place to prevent corporate entities from abusing the data they collect, but that's really a secondary issue.

The primary issue is that the government is our representative, and we have never given them the authority to spy on us in this way. _Even if all the data were public_ the government should not be doing mass surveillance to ferret out terrorism. If terrorism were 1000 times worse than it is in the US it would not justify this activity, but given the tiny problem that terrorism actually is in the US, it's shameful how quickly some people are willing to sell out our principles for the false promise of absolute security. These are the stepping stones towards tyranny which are being built in the face of an apathetic public behind the smokescreen of the legend of America's exceptional liberty.

So many people believe "it can't happen here" and just nod along when Obama declares the necessity and level headedness under which this is all occurring, but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt that everyone's intentions are pure and no abuses are occurring at this moment, the apparatus will not be dismantled, and it will only be a matter of time until someone comes into power that _does_ abuse it. It must not be allowed to exist; certainly not in our names and with our tax dollars.

<comment><USER27> If terrorism were 1000 times worse than it is in the US it would not justify this activity

In light of the fact that the Patriot Act allows this, you are a naive person - it's no big deal but just acknowledge the reality. The comparison to tyranny is absurd. This has been going on for 15 years [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_\(software\)) The fact that you don't know that isn't my fault. Get with the times. The question is why are you so naive to act surprised to hear about this? You really think Auschwitz or the Gulag is the next step from where we are now?

<comment><USER30> The Patriot Act is a reactionary cowardly piece of legislation. The fact that it is law in no way makes it equally definitive of the nation as the constitution.

I'm not sure why you equate my outrage to ignorance. I can set you up as a complementary straw man by asking why long-term human rights abuses by your government cause you to automatically approve of their actions?

As to Auschwitz, well, that's why I said "stepping stones" not, "next thing you know Obama's going to grow a toothbrush mustache and send the jews off to labor camps". The point is that this kind of unbridled power of global surveillance, supposedly checked through secret courts but which are accountable to no one outside the innermost circles of power is _guaranteed_ to corrupt in the long run. Furthermore, when the tyranny starts, you won't even know about it because it will be done in secret with explicit legal approval. Give your "it can't happen here" attitude I find it incredibly ironic that you would call me naive.

<comment><USER27> My point is that, if you perceive that the capabilities of PRISM are new and that the behavior that the NSA has engaged in for 10 years are new and you are outraged by it (which was the point of the original article and I assume is the point of your stepping stone argument), then I think you are naive. This behavior, the FISA courts, etc... are part of the Patriot Act and Carnivore has been known about for > 10 years and is IE3 type technology. I actually probably see the world much more sinisterly than you do (hence the contradiction of the Madison quote). Snowden probably can't get asylum not because of what he has said but the can of worms of what is in his laptop. Oh well....

The fact that you are trying to cast me as an apologist for ' long-term human rights abuses by your government cause you to automatically approve of their actions'; I think the stupidest thing America has ever done is invoke the traditional war-machine (esp drones and block sites) against the Middle East.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Open-source community for software testing data - <AUTHOR> http://opentestdata.org <comment><USER2> I think this is a good idea - didn't see any samples of data (or even lists available) on page, may to do that to get people interested.</comment>


Openly is latest startup to secure funds from Google's AI fund - <AUTHOR> https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/openly-secures-7-65-million-to-empower-insurance-agents-and-simplify-home-insurance-1028717544 <comment><USER2> Our backend is 100% go, and we're happy to answer any questions about tech or insurance.</comment>


Cyberattack Steals PC Data Through Its Power Supply - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberattack-steals-pc-data-through-its-power-supply <comment><AUTHOR> Linked paper -> [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00395](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00395)</comment>


The myth of Nazi efficiency - <AUTHOR> http://coffeecuphistory.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/the-myth-of-nazi-efficiency/ <comment><USER2> Probably the best primary account of the inefficiencies of the National Socialists was by Albert Speer, Hitler's foremost technocrat. In "Inside the Third Reich" Speer gives an account of just how much the Germans struggled to mobilize during the war. Though Speer was able to introduce streamlined methods of mass production and remove some excessive bureaucracy, what strikes me most was the admission that Germany never hit production levels seen during WWI.

The Second World War, by John Keegan

Inside the Third Reich, by Albert Speer

<comment><USER3> Speer was hardly a disinterested commentator on this, and I seem to remember his book has more than a few problems, and isn't Keegan's book rather general in its scope?

My current source is the relatively new economic history of Nazi Germany, _The Wages of Destruction_ by Adam Tooze ([http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages- Destruction-Breaking-Economy...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Wages-Destruction- Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208/)). It's very good, and shows how economics were vitally important from beginning to end.

E.g. part of the motivation in invading the Soviet Union was to address the crippling loss of productivity in their "Greater Western European Co- Prosperity Sphere" from the end of British coal imports. They needed to get enough food to the miners of the Lowlands etc., and the scheme was to starve the USSR cities and redirect the agricultural surplus east. Of course it didn't work out, but they did have a plan that wasn't entirely irrational.

<comment><USER2> No, certainly not. The context of who Speer was -- despite escaping the hangman at Nuremberg -- should absolutely be kept in mind. I felt his memoirs were written, at least in part, to improve his own legacy, at one point remarking: "one seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder." I'm not sure I buy that but his unique view of the moving parts and gears of the economy were probably mostly accurate.

Yes, I recommend Keegan's book as my favorite "big picture" book regarding the second world war. For an inside look at the third reich in general, I enjoyed Richard J Evan's trilogy.

I have not read The Wages of Destruction, thank you for the recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The formidable industrial and military power of Nazi Germany had little to do with the Nazi Party and more with the brilliant politics of Otto von Bismarck and the skilled balancing politics of Gustav Stresemann.

Hitler just (prematurely) cashed on historical inertia.

<comment><USER5> Sources?

<comment><USER6> I downvoted you. I'm really tired of the single-word, zero-effort "sources" or "citation" meme. It's not wikipedia here, and it creates a hostile environment to demand every two-line comment to be sourced like an academic paper.

Please engage with the comment and ask for clarification if there's something you think is unclear. If you find something hard to believe, say so, and _why_. If you're just genuinely interested, ask for a book recommendation. But please write a full sentence.

<comment><USER7> I downvoted you. I think the request for a full sentence is unnecessary because the one-word comment "sources?" effectively communicates an understandable message in a compact form. A full sentence would be a more standard (and, some would say, perhaps a more polite?) form of doing the same, for sure. But I don't think more syntax automatically adds more value in this particular case.

What is being asked for is a source for the parent comment. You say you're tired of the single-word, zero-effort "sources" or "citation" meme. I can't follow that reasoning. Minimally, as I work in academia, I find the request for a citation normal. But also, I cannot agree with your opinion that only those comments can be valid that require from the author an effort that is greater than what you define as zero. I would think that your parent is actually interested in engaging in a discussion, but would like to do some background checks first - hence the request for sources.

I don't find that asking for a source is creating a hostile environment, either. You've summed up possible reasons why someone might ask for sources in your second paragraph, so I have no doubts you understood the motivations of your parent.

It's not quite clear to me, whether you're complaining about the content of your parent's post (that they are asking for sources) or the form of the post (that it's just a one-word post). In any event, I don't think it's fair to downvote someone because they ask for sources, just because that request was not written in a way that pleases you.

EDIT: On second thought, I feel my comment is a bit wanky. I wish I could re- upvote you, I think I acted prematurely. I'm sorry. :-/

<comment><USER6> Don't worry. My comment got more upvotes than it deserves.

First point, HN is not academia, it's (mostly) intelligent people discussing interesting subjects. In such discussions, it's perfectly fine to make contributions that you can't immediately source. It's, of course, also fine to contest those, and if someone says you're wrong, and has sources, well, you should be prepared to concede the point. But even in academia, I strongly doubt that you've ever received a request for sources from a perfect stranger that didn't explain exactly which point they were interested in.

Second point, form and style _is_ important. Politeness is important. They are cornerstones of civil discourse. If we don't maintain a civil environment, intelligent people leave, and HN turns into the regular echo chamber that are par for the course on the Internet. Intelligent people interested in real discourse can and should explain their request when asking someone else to elaborate.

Third point - yes, I could guess at a range of possible motivations, but I don't actually know which one it is. The range goes from "I think you're wrong and probably an idiot, but I'm not going to bother explaining why" to "wow, that's a fascinating thought, where I can learn more". Those are vastly different responses - one obviously has no place in civil discourse. My gut feeling is that one word requests for sources are more often towards the former than the latter, but obviously I can't know. Even if my gut feeling is wrong, it still creates grating uncertainly: Is this person a troll who's out to undermine my credibility on the cheap, or is it a genuinely interested person who just want to learn more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos to this very, very good article. Let me add a couple of facets.

\- Walter Euckens 'ordoliberalism' which laid the foundation for the postwar German 'economic miracle' was a direct response to the chaos and ineptitude of Hitler's bureaucracy. I believe Eucken worked within Hitlers economic planning bureaucracy.

\- Albert Speer, Hitler's 'Minister of Armaments', removed the tangle of agencies and ministries by centralizing power over economic planning and by giving factories 'self responsiblity' allowing the german war economy to reach peak output in 1944. (see wikipedia)

\- The production of the V2 'wunderwaffe' actually cost more lives of forced labor (see Speer) than its deployment.

\- After the end of the war, german productivity leapfroged with the introduction of american machinery, like producing a Beatle car got faster by the order of ten times (I believe, if readers have precises figures, please share them).

What is the moral of all this? Ethics and hard-nosed productivity are really not separate at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> smart person, writing a long article full of facts completely missing the point.

the nazi efficiency is _defined_ by the holocaust and is measured against the performance of the nazis against other organizations attempting the same. the article points out that it is inefficient to kill all these skilled workers - as if the author came from an alien planet not understanding that the extermination of the jewish race (and later the complete untermensch) was at the core of the nazi ideology. as for their other actions - any country can go to war, nothing special there.

other nations have killed more, more quickly (in percentage to overall inhabitants), but mostly within their own borders. nazi germany annexed territories and then went on to systematically exterminate a race. figuring out family trees, measuring pureness (ariernachweis) then either sending you off to the camps or the ostfront (my granddad was a beutedeutscher aka loot german, enough german to be sent to stalingrad).

visit some of the camps, mauthausen, treblinka, whatever - the fact that they went from shooting to exhaust fumes to zyklon B. the fact that they systematically went trough the possessions of the arriving victims, even harvesting gold teeth and hair from corpses. the fact that they wiped out approx. 25% of poland, uprooting a large population from europe, forever.

this and other facts make the nazis the most efficient genocide machine so far and hopefully forever. could they been more efficient? of course, modern nerds with no social consciousness could come up with even better ways, or to put it that way, imagine the nerd-energy behind google/facebook/amazon/HN moved from ad-click generation to a peoples extermination.

"Fellow students remembered him as studious, and awkward in social situations." - a quote about Heinrich Himmler. "We know that these clashes with Asia and Jewry are necessary for evolution." and that is Himmler laying it out, scientifically, clear.

<comment><USER10> Eh. You are the one missing the point.

"That Holocaust's real awful, but the Nazi economic policies kicked ass!" is a common refrain you can hear from many, many people. Those people are not talking about the Holocaust, they are talking about the economy and jobs. It's an argument that, I would argue, even made it into the mainstream. You won't just hear Nazis regurgitating it. I would even argue that this, more than any other thing they could say, is the number one argument Nazis use to reel people in.

It isn't true, of course. The linked article retells some fairly standard stuff which everyone who visited a (a bit more in-depth) class or seminar about German history during the Third Reich will know. Of course, only very few people visit those classes. (I know all this because during my last two years of school I was in a advanced history class in Germany – five hours a week – but even in Germany very few people will go that much into depth and considering how little I learned about, say, US history in school, the rest of the world has probably even less hope of ever learning this.)

<comment><USER11> There's reasons to think that a Keynesian program (even one which focused on war, not building useful infrastructure) could have ended up fixing a truly out-of-kilter economy.

But it only fixes medium term (~10 year horizon) problems. Once the monetary / investment system is fixed, Germany would have stalled. It suffered from massive brain drain (if you literally have Einstein, making him flee isn't a great idea). And totalitarianism isn't great for creating an innovative workforce, even if you can keep your population from fleeing.

<comment><USER12> If you are embarking on such a Keynesian program in a climate of general depression and lack of investment in other countries then you will enjoy generally low interest rates but you lose the ability to make short term investments and must make longer term ones.

In the case of Nazi Germany Hitler purposely took on massive amounts of debt to rearm the country. Any economic success was temporary and entirely dependent on the massive arms program. Not only was the Nazi state inefficient arms investment couldn't possibly have ever paid back the investment in borrowed money that created the Nazi military.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I won't go into the war in general since I'm no expert on world war 2 but I can tell you that I've heard enough stories of Nazi brutality in the camps to know that, at least in exterminating undesirables, they were good. Real good. The gas chambers and crematoriums at Auschwitz worked like clockwork. There was, at all times, a line, a group in preparation for entry, a group in the gas chambers themselves and the crematoriums were working 24/7. It was, for all intents and purposes, a death factory. That's the real point to make about Nazi efficiency - they weren't more efficient than, say, the average factory but what they were doing (murdering people) was never done in such a factory- like manner, hence the semblance of efficiency.

<comment><USER14> > [...] but what they were doing (murdering people) was never done in such a > factory-like manner, [...]

I'd like to believe that, but I am afraid you are underestimating human brutality in general.

<comment><USER13> I have yet to see another example. Can you provide one?

<comment><USER14> I had mostly the Soviet Union, Communist China and North Korea in mind. Of these, the Soviet Union started there atrocities earlier than Nazi Germany. Some quick web searching gave e.g. this somewhat tasteless list ([http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-horrific-genocides-in- his...](http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-horrific-genocides-in- history.php)). (The treatment itself is bearable, but just the idea of a top ten of genocides makes me cringe.)

Wikipedia has an article as well: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history> The USA was pretty determined in killing off the natives. Even though they never seemed to have industrialized the process.

<comment><USER15> It's actually hard to get humans to kill other humans with intent and close- up, as can be seen in various examples over history. To kill a few million Humans in short time, shooting was no option. The gas chambers were not much more efficient, but the murderers didn't have to look their victims in the eyes. They were not forced to recognize them as Humans.

The story about US and native Americans was completely different. Most deaths occurred from disease and circumstances brought on by settlers and colonists. Many other native Americans were killed while raiding white settlers, or in retribution for raids. It's easier to kill a human being when he is trying to kill you.

A lot of harm has been done to native Americans, but the scale, motives and methods were completely different.

<comment><USER16> > The gas chambers were not much more efficient, but the murderers didn't have > to look their victims in the eyes. They were not forced to recognize them as > Humans.

But couldn't they still hear them scream, and had to clean up the corpses? I am German and I have never understood why they used Cyclon B. Maybe I just suck at understanding chemical weapons, but it took up to 20 minutes to kill a room full of people, is that even faster then letting them suffocate?

Not safe for sanity, but source - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B#Use_on_humans>

<comment><USER13> Could they hear them scream? Depends on the gas chamber in question. In Majdanek, the gas chamber had a viewing port for the operators. In Auschwitz, it was an underground bunker.

Did they have to clean up the corpses? Nope, that's what the Sonderkommando were for. Jewish prisoners who cleaned up the corpses and operated the crematoriums.

Why they used Zyklon B - god only knows, but they didn't use just Zyklon B. They also used carbon monoxide and car exhaust gas quite frequently (mainly on the eastern front and early on in the war)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whatever about WW2, Germany's performance in WW1 was incredibly efficient. They had a complete plan for the western front, along with the logistics to back it up, including up-to-the-minute train schedules.

It's been a while since I read the Guns of August, but Tuchman contrasts France and Germany's preparedness, and Germany seems the absolute pinnacle of efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER18> "At the height of the Autobahn building phase, in 1935, for every sixty people in Germany there was just one automobile, compared to one for every twenty in France, or one for every twenty-five in Denmark; in the United States, one person out of every five owned a car of their own."

Impossible to believe. If you simply factor in age and sex it seems near impossible that in 1935 1 out of every 5 people owned a car at that time.

</comment><comment><USER15> A common thought I hear from fellow Germans is the Autobahn is an outstanding achievement of Hitler's. I can manage to curb my anger at this, barely. It's like saying "He started a war with more than 30 million deaths, but hey, at least he built some Motorways!

<comment><USER19> > He started a war with more than 30 million deaths, but hey, at least he > built some Motorways!

That isn't the same thing as merely pointing out he built motorways. Specifically the "but hey, at least" is making the intent of most Germans to be awful when it probably isn't.</comment></comment>


Tesla is working with AMD to develop its own A.I. chip for self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/20/tesla-building-an-ai-chip-for-its-cars-with-amd-globalfoundries.html <comment><USER2> It is interesting that Tesla still maintains that cars sold today will eventually be self driving. That implies the remaining problems are mostly software related. Meanwhile there are still heavily investing in developing new replacement hardware. That continued investment is obviously the right move from a long term business perspective. However if I was a customer it would have me questioning the capability of and their commitment to the current hardware.

<comment><USER3> If self-driving turns out to need a new CPU/GPU/XYZPU to run the software, that's a pretty easy retrofit: take out one board and replace it with a new board of the same physical size. It's the sensors that can't be replaced, because they involve mounting and wiring in a lot of different places.

<comment><USER4> Assuming power draw, cooling and connectivity are the same. That's a big assumption.

<comment><USER5> That's a good point, but given the current general trend I would expect a newer gen board to be probably more power efficient, of course that's just speculation since I don't have insider knowledge about this specific project.

<comment><USER6> Power per operation is certainly decreasing, not as rapidly as in the old days though. However, it is completely not clear how much compute power is necessary for sufficient level of cognition that would allow L4 autonomy. Experimental cars (such as Waymo or Uber) have literally a data center in their trunk that takes up many Kilowatts of power. Whether Tesla can do it in at most a few hundred watts without LIDAR is _highly_ questionable.

<comment><USER4> Do you have a source for that?

I've seen in the trunk of working research cars with less resources than a high-end gaming PC.

Multiple KW is more than normal car air conditioning can deal with, since a resting human outputs about 100W. Do these cars vent to the outside? Otherwise, if outputting multiple KW, your Calfornia-based research car is gonna get nasty very quickly.

<comment><USER6> My source is a chat with several engineers at companies I cannot disclose. I also used to work for a company that develops autonomous navigation solution. If you have on the order of 10 LIDARS on your vehicle and same number of cameras and other sensors, I can assure you a single Drive PX will not be enough for even basic processing of that data.

Also note, that a high end gaming computer can easily exceed peak usage of 1kW, and if it is packed with say 4GPU's it very quickly approaches 2kW. The computers have custom cooling loops and vent outside, exact solutions vary between companies.

And even with all that compute, nobody out there is any close to level 4, better yet level 5. And Tesla promises to solve level 5 with drive PX, few cameras and a radar (not a single LIDAR) and magical software. I'd really like to see this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So after Tesla hiring Jim Keller -brilliant engineer- from Apple (DEC Alpha 2116421264, AMD K7/x86-64/HypertransportK8/K12/Zen, Apple A4/A5), the cards are on the table: they will play hard for winning the AI race on cars.

<comment><USER8> How much can a great CPU designer help a fundamentally (non-deterministic) AI process?

<comment><USER9> Assuming that they want to print TPUs:

Optimistically, Tesla could run more elaborate networks. AI being AI means that rarely equates to better decision-making - still, it's an option for the rare cases.

Pragmatically, there may be no benefit to the quality of the decisions that the AI makes. It will simply drain less energy and make those decisions faster. Tesla could use the chip themselves to save time and energy on training the AI.

Both scenarios depend quite strongly on the quality of the CPU/TPU and don't strongly depend on determinism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a correction:

> Correction: GlobalFoundries CEO Sanjay Jha mentioned Tesla as an example of > a company working with chip fabricators, but did not specifically say that > it was a GlobalFoundries customer.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised that they went with AMD and not an ARM vendor. ARM is pushing into the ML space big time with ARM GPU with even a Caffe fork CaffeALC on the ARM GPU. These GPUs are built with mobility and energy conservation, so these processors are somewhat of a natural fit for TSLA.

[https://github.com/OAID/caffeOnACL](https://github.com/OAID/caffeOnACL)

</comment><comment><USER12> Think this bodes well for AMD's datacenter aspirations with next gen cloud being heavily AI focused (and GPU)? Also what about Musk's Neuralink? Https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain- computer-interface-ai-cyborgs

</comment><comment><USER13> Audi and Mercedes have been in partnership with NVIDIA for a year or so now, interesting to see Tesla join up with AMD at this point.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting considering all Teslas currently come with Nvidia cards (AFAIK)

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting parallel with Intel working with Waymo.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lisa Lisa Lisa....</comment>


Chapter 22 (Nondeterminism) of Paul Graham's _On Lisp_ -- in C - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/jimwise/shared/tree/master/nondeterminism/

<comment><AUTHOR> For what it's worth, this is a quick hack done in two train rides, but it does try to be correct, and relatively general. Let me know what you think...</comment>