Training GPT-2 to Play Chess - <AUTHOR> https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/06/a-very-unlikely-chess-game/ <comment><USER2> An amusing point from the comments

> It's not even trying to be competitive, it's just guessing how the game will > continue. If you blunder, it might guess that this must be a game between > two blundering fools, and play accordingly.

In a certain sense, GPT-2 is optimized to "look good to people interested in AI." Above all else it tries to generate plausibly-human-looking things, while completely oblivious of any other goal. This makes it an interesting fit for scenarios with objective scoring criteria. It may never be "good" at the scenario, only entertaining to human observers.

<comment><USER3> It's a pity that the common annotation for a "surprising" move is to follow the move code with an examination mark (or two) rather than preceding it; otherwise we would have a simple way of making the model generate surprising moves on command. :)

<comment><USER4> You could always train another model off reversed move notation and wrap it with something that reverses the output again. ;)

<comment><USER5> Then you probably make a rookie mistake and assume every opponent counters your actions with a fully functioning system 2 in Kahneman speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of an old project of mine: n-gram chess. Similarly ok in openings, awful in endgames, and generally bad at chess.

[https://github.com/ElliotPenson/n-gram- chess](https://github.com/ElliotPenson/n-gram-chess)

<comment><USER7> I bet if you benchmark your n-gram vs GPT-2, it will perform the same.

<comment><USER7> For chess application i mean

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I made similar chess engine using FastText: [https://github.com/thomasahle/fastchess](https://github.com/thomasahle/fastchess)

It is surprising to me that you can predict optimal/strong engine moves with 27% accuracy using a completely trivial linear model, that is by a single matrix multiplication.

I wonder how well it would compete with this GPT-2 engine.

</comment><comment><USER9> GPT-2 is byte pair encoding and transformer. Is there any indication that BPE plays any role here, because the vocabulary is fixed? If not, then it is only the transformer that is interesting and this post is just trying to use the name of the model, because it sounds cool. And actually giving moves directly to transformer may improve the results.

<comment><USER10> It's unknown what role if any BPE plays. I was surprised to discover that the final probability of a move is equal to the probability of each token from the root prompt, i.e. even though "1.Nf3 e5" is encoded as ['1', '.', 'N', 'f', '3', ' e', '5'] the probability of e5 seems unaffected by the fact that Nf3 is 3 tokens as opposed to one.

You're right that coming up with a token mapping could help things. It's a bit tricky to do that right now. Your options for fitting a custom vocab seems to be "use sentencepiece to fit a vocab, then modify the gpt-2 codebase to use the sentencepiece library for decoding".

I am honestly not sure if the output of sentencepiece is compatible with traditional encoders. What I mean is, it doesn't seem to generate an encoder.json + vocab.bpe file. It seemed to be some other kind of format. So I'm not sure if the tooling that has evolved around OpenAI's encoder format would be applicable there. I really don't know, though.

According to this slatestarcodex comment, someone got superior results on solely algebraic notation (which looks like g1f3 instead of Nf3): [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_ve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_very_unlikely_chess_game/fdh0vqd/)

Another extension that might help is to periodically inject the full FEN board state. This was the format we were going to try next, which injects the full FEN after every move: [https://gist.github.com/shawwn/318606c112774ad070f94de9c8288...](https://gist.github.com/shawwn/318606c112774ad070f94de9c8288e0a)

I'm so happy to get to work with GPT-2 1.5B. It's been a lot of fun to train.

By the way, if you like this kind of thing, you'll love Elo World. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the chess version of all those "type these two words into your phone and keep clicking the next word" memes

it's not going to generate anything meaningful, it's meant to get close enough to realistic to be either funny or interesting

I was very tickled.

<comment><USER12> Similar, but GPT-2 is better at text prediction than the Markov chains used on your phone.

<comment><USER13> Do phones use Markov chains at this point? It feels like they've gotten better recently, and I wonder if maybe they're using something fancier?

<comment><USER14> Markov chains are pretty smart - you've probably just trained yours more

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is amusing but doesn't really prove anything special about GPT-2 or general intelligence. You can probably get similar results with an n-gram model.

<comment><USER16> Though this is not particularly strong, I don't think you would get similar strength from an n-gram model. You need longer-term correlations, which is generally where transformers do well.

<comment><USER10> Someone apparently did it with n-grams in 2015, and it reaches move 13 or so: [https://twitter.com/kcimc/status/1214713412963291136](https://twitter.com/kcimc/status/1214713412963291136)

Someone else tried this with GPT-2 a few months ago on algebraic notation and their engine seems to get to move 40 without blundering: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_ve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_very_unlikely_chess_game/fdh0vqd/)

Board state + algebraic notation might be the trick to make a strong engine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> How impressed should we be that the same AI can write poems, compose music, and play chess, without having been designed for any of those tasks? I still don't know.

For the record, you can do the same things with a Hidden Markov Model (or hand-crafted rules) and the results won't be very different. Except that they won't elicit breatheless articles about being a "step towards general intelligence".

<comment><USER18> The text generated by GPT-2 is far superior to HMMs. GPT-2 was able to perform unsupervised machine translation and answered more than 5x as many questions correct on the SQUAD Q&A dataset than the previous best pure neural model.

Not to mention that the text generated by GPT-2 can often fool an online reader whereas HMMs have the problem of being long-term incoherent and don't reference back to subjects of the sentence like GPT-2 often does.

I'm not staying you should believe the AI hype in news media. But the paper does contain a lot of thorough analysis and comparison to the previous state of the art.

[https://cdn.openai.com/better-language- models/language_model...](https://cdn.openai.com/better-language- models/language_models_are_unsupervised_multitask_learners.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Leaving the question of machine translation etc aside for the moment, this is about playing chess from textual examples of play. There is no reason to assume that, even if GPT-2 was really any good at machine translation, that it would be any good at chess.

I guess people think "it's a powerful model so it should do well in any task" but that's typically not the case for neural nets. I know what OpenAI claims about how it can do a little bit of everything, machine translation benchmarks are borked and I bet so are question answering ones (which I confess I don't know much about).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hello everybody. I made this notebook. If you like this kind of thing, please subscribe to gwern's patreon. [https://patreon.com/gwern](https://patreon.com/gwern)

It's a GPT-2 1.5B model trained on the kingbase 2019 dataset. (>3M games of >2000 ELO rating.) It was trained for 400k steps with batch size 6 using 140 TPUs in 24h using a technique known as swarm training. Here's an incomplete whitepaper on swarm training: [https://www.docdroid.net/faDq8Bu/swarm- training-v01a.pdf](https://www.docdroid.net/faDq8Bu/swarm-training-v01a.pdf)

The dataset is available here:

      gsutil cp gs://gpt-2-poetry/data/kingbase-ftfy.txt .

Each line is of the form [Result "0-1"] [WhiteElo "2715"] [BlackElo "2793"] 1. e4 ...

Result 0-1 means black won; 1-0 means white won; 1/2-1/2 means a draw.

At runtime I prompt it with [Result "0-1"] and a high elo for white and black to make it more likely to generate higher level moves.

Our next project will be a GPT-2 IRC bot where you can talk with simulated people. We currently have one that wasn't trained for very long, yet the preliminary results are interesting enough to warrant a more serious time investment. [https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1208667331230089216](https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1208667331230089216)

Many people have asked for a thorough technical writeup which I hope to make available soon. In the meantime, you an read some of our GPT-2 1.5B adventures here: [https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2#gpt-2-1.5b](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-2#gpt-2-1.5b)

Lastly, someone on /r/slatestarcodex apparently did this exact same thing a few months ago. They trained on algebraic notation instead of PGN format, which is basically x1y1x2y2 coordinate form with no mention of the type of piece. It was also trained on 1B moves. The engine is superior to ours and can apparently reach move 40 without blundering, according to the replay. [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_ve...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/el87vo/a_very_unlikely_chess_game/fdh0vqd/)

I have also been porting the stylegan2 codebase to TPUs to facilitate swarm training. We hope to train on a very large dataset like the entirety of danbooru2018. No promises, but results are interesting so far. [https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1214245145664802817](https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1214245145664802817)

I hope you all found this enjoyable. The GCE bill is currently $50, which I'm keeping an eye on. (Go subscribe to gwern's patreon to see more projects like this!)

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems like it just memorized openings.

<comment><USER20> Like all good human players do

<comment><USER21> It memorizes openings like an expert level player, then plays the rest of the game like a six year old who just learned the rules.

<comment><USER22> changing softmax to something else might fix that when there is a limited number of good moves softmax is far from optimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2 Nc6 3.Kf3 g6 4.Kg4 Bg7 5.Nf3 h6 6.Nxe5 Bxe5 7.d4 Bg7 8. e5 at this point the notebook started allocating more memory and after it became irresponsive.

<comment><USER10> Odd. If you click the stop button on the cell, it'll turn into a play button. If you click that, it should resume where it left off.

If you happen to reproduce this, let me know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > GPT2 Chess update: I wrote some code to calculate the probability of all > valid chess moves. It can reach endgame now.[0]

Shocking. Our AI overlords will soon stumble into power, if we only point out where they're slipping up.

[0] [https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1213559429293060099](https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1213559429293060099)

</comment><comment><USER25> Funny attempt! Challenge: win by minimizing the number of moves. My record so far is mate in 8 moves: [https://lichess.org/pG4S7RcF](https://lichess.org/pG4S7RcF)

</comment><comment><USER26> this is hilarious and also a great idea. i dont see any reason why you can't play a few million games against itself and other engines and see where it takes you. less efficient than alpha zero probably, but how much so?

<comment><USER10> It should be similarly efficient. AlphaZero used 1,000 TPUv1's to generate self-play games, and a much smaller number of TPUs to train the model on the previous self-play results. Whenever it generated a model that was >= 55% better, that became the new model.

The same algorithm could be applied here.

<comment><USER27> It would not be close to similarly efficient. They have completely different loss functions.

<comment><USER10> You're right, "efficient" should be substituted with "possible". We're certainly not claiming that this is a smart way to do it, just that you can.

Still, I think that there's a chance it could work well. Each move could be prefixed with the final outcome of the game, which is the technique either alphazero or muzero uses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Physics, History and Haskell – Interview with Rinat Stryungis - <AUTHOR> https://serokell.io/blog/physics-history-haskell-interview <comment><USER2> why does content marketing get upvoted here? i would wager that 50%-70% of the stuff upvoted is either content marketing or personal brand building.

edit: this account does nothing but submit blog posts from this domain. they work for the consulting firm[1]. isn't there a rule against shilling?

[1][https://gist.github.com/NaeosPsy/155f76a25e0c93eb067a0f4d86d...](https://gist.github.com/NaeosPsy/155f76a25e0c93eb067a0f4d86dd8cfc)

<comment><USER3> What's the difference between personal brand building and talking? I mean, come on, I'm even building the whatshisface brand by posting this comment. (whatshisface: America's most trusted source of comments disagreeing with the parent comment).

<comment><USER2> >What's the difference between personal brand building and talking?

Brand building is a genre not an action. Brand building writing has almost zero researched, rigorous, useful content.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I would want my person brand to be a reputation for "almost zero researched, rigorous, useful content." Do people really consider that self-marketing?

<comment><USER2> >brand to be a reputation for "almost zero researched, rigorous, useful content.

You think "9 out of 10 dentists recommend Colgate" is researched?

literally every kind of marketing to ever succeed in the last ~100 years is like this. Brand building is no different; You drastically underestimate the power of well-written copy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dr. Konstantin Metlov ( [https://dr-klm.livejournal.com/](https://dr- klm.livejournal.com/) ) could likely give a speech on modern physics as well as on J language. [http://www.vector.org.uk/art10005770](http://www.vector.org.uk/art10005770)

Late Roman Karshiev ( [http://forums.airbase.ru/](http://forums.airbase.ru/) ) was also Haskell enthusiast more than ten years ago...

</comment><comment> mcgroin-holden Come on, Haskell is not that complicated. C++ is way more difficult

<comment><USER5> Is it really? Got no exposure to C++ but the rabbit hole goes pretty deep with Haskell.

<comment><USER6> Computation is a rabbit hole, there is no end to its depth.

Comparing the definition of C++ to Haskell, one will see that there's orders of magnitude more incidental complexity in the former than the latter. Every professional Haskeller I've spoken to who previously did professional C++ has emphatically agreed.</comment></comment></comment>


"Targeted posts" -- how I wish Posterous worked - <AUTHOR> http://davi.posterous.com/targeted-posts-how-i-wish-post

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I guess I'm the only one with this particular bee in my bonnet.... :)</comment>


Ask HN: Social Media Developer Skills - <AUTHOR>

I am a web developer in ASP.NET from last 6 years, but new to social media.
1. What all skills, technology should have a developer to develop the applications on social media sites.
2. What is the role of developer in social media.
3. Any book, RSS feeds, twitter, blog etc for further reference. <comment><USER2> Short n' Snarky

1) Technical skills are all the same as web dev in general.

2) Building product.

3) You are at the right place.

Seriously, from a pure dev perspective, it is just web dev. The biggest difference comes in on the product design side -- breaking from 1:M to M:N as a central aspect of the product is surprisingly difficult mental shift to make if you are used to a more traditional "here is an app or some info for you."</comment>


Ask HN: How Do You Build A Startup Team? - <AUTHOR>

How did you/do you build a startup team? I left my job at at a Fortune 10 company in October to start my own company but 6 month later it's still "just me". I have not actively gone looking for people to join me because the project is in stealth mode - thus I have zero funds to acquire talent. I'm considering approaching VCs even though the only real need I have for their $$$ would be for building a team. Is this the right approach? <comment><USER2> I think most people join with people they already know and trust. A business partner is just like a spouse except that there are way more challenges to a startup than a marriage.

You can avoid paying big $ by giving equity and selling the dream. Some of the initial founders dont have to quit their day jobs. If you do give equity make sure you can take it back if they arent able to really commit. read founders at work to get a bunch of examples of how people formed teams from some of the biggest name tech startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Equity seems like the right approach for me. Either way (VC or no VC), it looks like I'll have to fork away the dream.

On the other hand, I do want to read this book. I read some reviews for it just now and got the gist. Thanks for the note.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just launched an app to make that just a little easier: <http://gethirely.com> :)

Mostly, it tends to be people you've worked with before. Approaching VC's to build a team is fine, although they will (understandably) question your ability to build a team since you haven't gotten anyone on board yet. Building a team is part of building a startup, and it's not easy. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter. The most telling part of your statement was that VCs would question my ability to build a team. I take blame but it has more to do with the fact that I've placed building a team behind developing the product. As a result, the product is almost ready for Beta release but I'm left to tackle all the issues alone. As soon as it's Beta ready, I plan on reaching out to whomever I can.

Furthermore, there are two people that I rely on for advisory purposes. They provide me with insight and advice when needed but don't work with me 24/7 since they have their own lives/careers. I hesitate to call them part of my "team". I wonder if others would consider that as part of their company's employees.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help, after 10 years on the lam, I'm starting to want to use Firefox - <AUTHOR> The new FF quantum just looks so cool. I know I shouldn't. I know I really shouldn't, but I'm reaching for it often, before having to stop myself. I think I'm in danger of breaking my chrome-sober streak. Please help. How do I avoid getting sucked in by the new completely rewritten from the ground up Firefox? <comment><USER2> I just switched my wife to the new FF beta, as Chrome on Windows was slow for her ebook reader (required by her graduate students). The Firefox beta was super fast and the ebook reader worked flawlessly compared to Chrome. We quickly made it the default browser. So go give it a try for a few weeks!</comment>


Designing better choices: Libertarian paternalism gives you options while achieving society's goals - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-thalerandsunstein2apr02,0,3730262.story

<comment><USER2> This is more political than I'd like to see here, but I guess you could relate this concept to product design. If you have an idea of what's "best" for your users, you could arrange your UI so that that's how they use it.

<comment><USER3> In that case, why not relate it directly to product design instead of dragging politics into it? It's a concept that's expressed well in books like "The Paradox of Choice".</comment></comment>


Dabblers and Blowhards - A Criticism of PG - <AUTHOR> http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm <comment><USER2> I've always felt the painters connection was too tightly focused, though I think this essay (which is ancient, and would either be more true of pg's work today or less depending on how much you agree with it) goes overboard and manages to miss the point.

The bone that I do think can be picked with Hackers and Painters is that there just aren't very many hackers who are also painters. In fact, I only know one: pg. I know literally dozens of hackers who are musicians and four who are writers (oh, wait...pg makes it five). It seems to me that if the two categories of people were so alike, there would be significant overlap, but there is very little that I'm aware of. If you take "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuits" as a whole, however, you begin to see a lot more overlap (and again, musicians overlap a _lot_ with hackers, moreso than any other "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuit").

Maybe because I'm a musician and a hacker (by some definition of "musician" and "hacker") I'm seeing all of these connections in the same way that pg, who is a painter and a hacker, sees connections between his two loves. It all makes sense when you're looking at your own likes and dislikes, but nobody else will really understand exactly what you see in your hobbies.

<comment><USER3> Interesting question. Probably one reason there are a lot more hacker/musicians than hacker/painters is that there are a lot more musicians than painters. Painting is not exactly a flourishing field at the moment. But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design.

The thing I was saying hackers and painters had in common was that they're both makers. As opposed to the idea prevalent when I was in college, that programming was applied math. I believe it was in protest against this idea that Knuth called his books _The Art of Computer Programming._

<comment><USER2> _But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design._

Righteous argument. If painting, as an art form, has been replaced by graphic design, then clearly there is significant overlap, and probably on the same order as musicians. I don't know how much I believe "painters", as a class, have become "designers", since almost none of the painters I knew in high school (I went to a school for fine arts, so I knew a lot of painters) have since become digital artists, but that may be just a sign of my age...I was among the last generation of kids that didn't grow up using computers daily.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I think the primary problem is that "painters" is too specific...though it makes for a better title than "Hackers and People Who Make Art of Some Kind". When you open it up to include designers and other visual artists, musicians (like Knuth, who has a massive pipe organ in his house and plays it beautifully), and writers, the overlap becomes very nearly 100%. Every hacker of note that I can think of off the top of my head has at least one of these as a hobby, particularly if you allow "visual arts" to include things like robotics, DIY electronics with an artistic purpose, 3D modeling, etc. As you've said, hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production.

<comment><USER3> _hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production_

Yes, definitely. I think hackers may be more like architects than painters, for example. The reason I wrote about the connection between hacking and painting is that I understand painting fairly well. I haven't studied architecture.

The core of this Dabblers & Blowhards thing is a strawman argument. He claims I say the connection between hacking and painting is much stronger than I do, then "proves" it isn't. When in fact all I say is:

      of all the different types of people I've known,
      hackers and painters are among the most alike.

(<http://paulgraham.com/hp.html>)

<comment><USER4> He claims you say the connection between hacking and painting is strong, in an essay titled "Hackers and Painters", in which you say, "of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike". I think you're begging the question.

Moreover, you yourself are constructing a straw man. His point isn't simply that your comparison is broken, but that it's hopelessly filtered through your own experience. He knows you see similar connections with architects. He's saying, the only reason you picked "painters" was that your art education taught you to admire painters and their lifestyle.

The word "fatuous", repeated in his essay, is the core of his argument: that your insight about the relation between Hackers and Painters is superficial, and where it applies at all, it's built on knowledge of painting that is itself superficial.

I neither agree nor disagree, but it's graceless to dismiss him like that. I'd be flattered to have someone refute me as carefully as he did you.

<comment><USER3> _the core of his argument: that your insight about the relation between Hackers and Painters is superficial, and where it applies at all, it's built on knowledge of painting that is itself superficial._

Can you give an example where you feel he has successfully refuted something specific I said about painting?

<comment><USER4> Sure. I've taken his thesis and applied it, substituting "pastry chef" for "painter" into the text of each of the topic sentences in the lead graf of each section of your essay. The essay continues to work. Your critic's point seems valid.

 _You learn to bake mostly by doing it. Ditto for hacking._

 _Because pastry chefs leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing._

 _For a pastry chef, a cookbook is a reference library of techniques._

 _Another example we can take from pastry is the way that dishes are created by gradual refinement. New dishes usually begin with a sketch._

 _In hacking, like pastry, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about some new project and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothing seems interesting._

 _A lot of the great cooking of the past is the work of multiple hands, though there may only be one name on the wall of the restaurant_.

 _Like pastry, most software is intended for a human audience._

<comment><USER3> That's not a refutation. Find something specific I said about painting that he has shown to be _false_ , not merely also true of some other field.

For example, pick one of the list of statements I made about painting that he quotes in that list in the middle, and explain how you feel he has refuted it. Or any other statement about painting he quotes.

<comment><USER4> Your argument was that painting has an interesting connection to hacking.

"No it doesn't," your critic argues, "because in fact you can make the same argument about many other professions --- for an absurd example, take pastry chefs".

Unless we're secretly on Usenet, he's refuted your argument. He used evidence to deny the premise of your essay.

Draw his argument out further, and you can make the same statements about law, insurance, and surgery. For instance, "because constitutional lawyers leave a trail of work behind them, you can watch them learn by doing." Or, "a lot of the great innovations in corporate reinsurance are the work of multiple hands, though there may only be only a few names in the list of partners at the firm".

Also: it took time to re-read your essay, read his essay, jog my memory about your book, and write that response. I'm not sure I feel like your response to me dignified that work. Can you respond this time without redefining the word "refute" to suit your argument?

<comment><USER3> The challenge I gave you was to find any specific statement I made about painting that he has shown to be false. It's a disingenous trick to claim that the thesis of the essay is implicitly a statement about painting. Not that he has even refuted that. But put that point aside for the time being, and let's return to my original challenge, which I hope is clear now. Find one specific sentence or series of sentences I wrote about painting that he has shown to be false.

If my understanding of painting is "superficial," I should have made lots of mistakes, right? So let's have one.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, Paul. I read your essay and his as essays, not as series of independent sentences to be reviewed like lines of C in a group code review. I therefore reject the premise that I am somehow obligated to find an individual statement in it that is provably false.

Next, since you wrote the essay and not me, you're clearly in a position to dictate what the essay "is about". Clearly, both me and your critic read it as being "about" the connection between hackers and painters. I muster as evidence the facts that:

* The essay was titled "Hackers and Painters"

* The essay said there was an interesting connection between hackers and painters in the topic sentence of the lead graf.

* Of the 89 grafs in the essay, 26 have as their topic the connection between programming and painting.

* Of the 17 sections in the essay, 10 of them have as their thesis statement either a specific connection between programming and painting, or an explanation of why that connection is important.

If you want to argue that your essay is "about" something other than painting, there's not much I can about that other than to complain about unfairness. I'd rather not.

As to whether your understanding of painting is superficial, I certainly wouldn't know. But your critic repeatedly and explicitly says it is, again with evidence. Which of his arguments ring false to you? You might start with his footnotes.

<comment><USER3> I've seen quite a lot of evasions when I asked people to get specific, but this is definitely the longest.

I didn't ask you to find a passage that's provably false, just any specific statement I made that you feel he's refuted. It's a red herring to suggest that simply because I ask you for evidence, I'm somehow claiming that essays work like math.

You're not of course _obligated_ to provide evidence, when asked for it, but most people on forums do so voluntarily in order to preserve their credibility.

<comment><USER4> You said:

"Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike."

Your critic refuted that hacking and painting have much in common, and probably (but obviously speculatively) that hackers and painters are among the "most alike" of all the people you know.

And again, this appeared to me to be the central argument of your essay; it would not have been so widely noted had it argued instead that "hackers are like everyone who does constructive work", because by enlisting gardeners, grade school teachers, and psychologists, that argument reduces to "hackers are like many of the people you know". A barista at Intelligentsia Cafe downstairs from me invented an excellent drink --- horchata with a shot of espresso. Hackers are apparently also like him.

At this point, because you are calling me names instead of rebutting any point I make, I can only guess that you think none of these points are valid, and that hackers and painters share a unique bond, one that you feel your art education and work history allowed you to reveal in an essay (were it not so, the topic wouldn't merit the work you put into it). If you're seriously asking me the questions you're asking because you want to know the answer, and not because you want to win an argument, I'll say that when I read "Hackers and Painters" originally, I agreed with you. When I read your critic, I believe him more: there's there's little interesting to say about the relation between hacking and painting as practiced by modern professional artists.

<comment><USER3> "Hacking and painting have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike."

Well, he certainly didn't refute the first sentence. Arguing that other things have a lot in common with hacking doesn't prove that painting doesn't. And I don't see how either you or he could say anything about the second. You don't know who I know. And I didn't even say they were the most alike of people I'd known, only among the most alike.

You both pretend I'd written "Hacking has more in common with painting than any other field." But if I'd meant that, I would have said it.

In fact, I say explicitly that what hackers have in common with painters is that they're both makers, and I mention other types of makers (writers and architects) who are also like hackers. The kinds of work I claim hacking is unlike are math and science, which I think is an important point, because lots of people have tried to push it into the mold of one or the other.

Now that's settled, will you answer my original question? Can you give me an example of a specific statement about painting that he's refuted? Not (what he claims is) the thesis of my essay, but one of the statements I make specifically about painting. As you point out, he attacks these "repeatedly and explicitly," with footnotes. I'm asking you to produce just one you feel is convincing, to support your claim that he has "carefully refuted" me.

The reason I'm asking is because I think you'll find, when you look more closely, that you've been convinced by the form of his arguments (the emphatic tone, the citations) without actually understanding them. But go ahead, prove me wrong.

<comment><USER4> I see your point, Paul. But if all you're saying is that hackers are like "makers", your essay is really boring. There is nothing special about being a "maker". And because you've applied no rigor to defining the term, you haven't even set up a comparison: you can substitute "mathematician" as easily as "painter" or "bicycle builder".

Meanwhile, your critic has provided several examples of ways hackers are specifically unlike painters. For instance, you felt painters needed to know about paint chemistry, like hackers need to know about big-O notation. No, your critic says, most painters don't know anything about paint chemistry, just "fat over lean". Painters, the critic very credibly notes, also get laid more than hackers.

I've answered your original question several times over now. You seized on the word "refute" and demanded that I provide a specific statement that the critique refutes. I caved and said, "ok, you said hackers are more like painters than most other people you know". You've now backed off that statement, which I still read as the core of your argument. You've now mooted the argument. I'm fine with that.

I agree, the critique is stylish and fun to read, and more convincing for it. Maybe that's not fair. But your essay got more attention, so I wouldn't worry.

<comment><USER3> Where did I back off any statement? I still think hackers are more like painters than most other types of people I know.

I notice now that you've finally produced a specific statement about painting that you claim he's refuted, though. And you are mistaken, as I think even you will have to agree. What I wrote was:

      All the time I was in graduate school I had an
      uncomfortable feeling in the back of my mind
      that I ought to know more theory...

      Now I realize I was mistaken. Hackers need to
      understand the theory of computation about as
      much as painters need to understand paint chemistry.

In other words, I am in fact saying that painters _don't_ need to know a lot about paint chemistry, and using that as an analogy in statement that hackers, similarly, don't need to know much about the theory of computation.

Is this finally starting to give you second thoughts about the idea that he's "carefully refuted" me?

<comment><USER4> I think he _wrote_ carefully --- his critique is funny, a fast read, and works on multiple levels (as a parody of your writing style, as a reasoned criticism of your argument, and as a takedown of the cult of personality that surrounds you). I don't think either of your arguments are particularly careful anymore.

But you're right, if one chooses to be harshly analytical about your essay, it is indeed hard to pin you down to something that can be refuted directly.

Again: he wrote something clever and funny about you. You should be flattered. Right now, you really just seem petulant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aha...I _knew_ I'd read this before! It's linked in the article from this post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143148>

which spawned a large comment thread that's probably worth referencing here.

</comment><comment><USER6> I draw a little bit, and I couldn't see anything wrong with pg stating the following:

"Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it."

Unless the author or some other great painter manages to get it perfectly right from the very first stroke? I only draw, I don't paint, but I can definitely see similarities between going through iterations and drafts in programming and art.

<comment><USER7> That's indeed the way current painters work. I think what the author says is that it wasn't when oil paint was invented.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but the only refutation I think he has is this little footnote saying that underneath the layer of paint is a super-precise line drawing. I would be incredulous to hear that super-precise line drawing was not a refinement of a blurrier one that just set out the basic idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I immediately assumed the analogy was meant to portray hackers as 'makers', artisans etc. in order to broaden the readers perception of what a hacker was or could be. I was immediately interested in finding out where the author was going to take the idea and was pleasantly surprised. An analogy is used to quickly open up the reader's mind and prepare them to think about something in a new way. Was this one perfect? None are. Did it work? Yes.

This article, on the other hand, is merely one in a long line of internet articles that purposely refuse to get the point of what they are criticizing.

On a personal note. I read H&P while taking breaks from driving on a cross- Canada trip. My original driving partner is a painter. He had to drop out and a hacker friend took his place and brought along the book. I thought it was amusing at the time and told him the title would have been more appropriate before the change.

</comment><comment><USER4> Did any of you catch the Minnaert recommendation, for "Light and Color In The Outdoors", the author's notion of a strong work about the connection between programming and art? I bought a used copy for Erin, and it was pretty awesome. Did any of you read it? What did you think?

</comment><comment><USER9> From the article - you can't say hackers figure out both "what" and "how" in most cases. Usually there is a designer and/or usability expert who figures out what.

<comment><USER10> I don't think he did say that -- rather that in the _best_ case, they do both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it hard to believe this isn't a bit of participatory narcissism considering he goes to great lengths to point out how often artists get laid. Which also couldn't possibly be an overly-broad generalization. Although he gets a point for the use of "weenis."

Pot: Kettle, you are black, sir!

<comment><USER4> It's parody. He's simultaneously pointing out the grandiosity of Graham's allusions, taking the piss out of them by comparison, and mirroring Graham's style to do it.

It's a really nice piece of writing, and it's even more fun if you read it with a copy of Hackers and Painters next to it to spot the references.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is the author of that "criticism" trying to parody what they see in PG's writing? It could just as easily be self-referential.

</comment><comment><USER13> The author misses the point that PG's essays are not intended to be understood literally, but as literature, to be appreciated on an aesthetic level only.</comment>


Show HN: CV Compiler 2.0 – Instant Resume Suggestions for Techies - <AUTHOR> https://cvcompiler.com/?hackernews <comment><USER2> First off, where did it get its hands on 1M resumes to train their analytics? Looks like yet another underhanded way of getting hold of personal information on a massive scale.

If it isn't the case, then address this upfront on the top of your landing page. No time to dig further for it.

Looking for a job is hard enough work - don't make me loose precious time having to research your service.</comment>


Twitter Turns 5 & Produces Star Studded Video - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/21/twitter-celebrates-its-fifth-birthday-with-a-star-studded-promotional-video/

<comment><AUTHOR> Snoop = Priceless in this video. Eyes are nearly closed.</comment>


New Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless Launching Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://gearopen.com/gears/raspberry-pi-zero-w-review-50970/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also was on the inquirer but got removed, still showing on Google top stories though:

[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005436/raspberry-p...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005436/raspberry- pi-zero-has-been-updated-with-wireless-connectivity)

<comment><USER2> Same here: [http://www.trustedreviews.com/raspberry-pi-zero-w- review](http://www.trustedreviews.com/raspberry-pi-zero-w-review)

<comment><AUTHOR> Must be coming tomorrow! No FCC docs curiously...

<comment><AUTHOR> Cached version - [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wjfI6iX...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wjfI6iXik6IJ:www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3005436/raspberry- pi-zero-has-been-updated-with-wireless-connectivity+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So why would I buy this instead of an OrangePi PC ($15) or an OrangePi Zero ($8.99)? With the latter, I can actually use an M.2 SSD with the HATs available for it, and I'll get 40MB/s unlike the Raspi's 4 to 5MB/s, plus both are fully libre hardware and have much more CPU grunt than this Raspi (4x Cortex A7 @ 1.2Ghz vs one ancient ARMv6 core at 1Ghz).

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea. Was just trying to spread the news as it's been leaked and the pi foundation mafiosos are trying to squash the leak.

Guess pi is better supported than orange pi though and better software support

<comment><USER3> Not really, you can run unmodified Debian on either of those boards, same for Arch & most other distros. The chip in the Zero will never be able to do that since its ARMv6, plus your paying a premium for it.

My last experience with a Raspi 3 and all the broken packages in Raspbian just killed the idea of buying anything requiring I use closed, broken stuff, as its a nightmare to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! Are they as fast? And reliable from hardware point of view?

<comment><USER3> Much faster than a Raspberry Pi 3, I can tell the difference between the two running the same software attached to a large touchscreen. I've got a few dozen OrangePi PC boards going on over a year of being deployed, no issues with any of them yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. Got a link to some good vendors?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'd just buy it from Xunlong off Aliexpress: [https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1553371](https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1553371)

The OrangePi PC Plus is pretty good with the onboard eMMC and Wifi, its worth the extra $7.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why cant I simply buy a book in Audible's app? - <AUTHOR> i mean if we can go to the moon...surely we can achieve this? <comment><USER2> In the iOS version of the Audible app, Apple would get approximately 30% of the purchase price if it was bought in-app.

For digital content like audiobooks where Audible earns approximately 30% per title (they pay the publisher 70% of retail) there's no real profit margin.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because they make more money like this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ( face-palm ) I thought this loophole was 'fixed' among app makers.. I guess not.</comment>


Open Access is not a Panacea, even if it's Radical - <AUTHOR> https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3628326 <comment><USER2> Panacea or not, open access should be table stakes for the entire academic publishing system. Especially for the result of work that's funded with public money.

<comment><USER3> Open access isn't a panacea, it's a baseline. The more cool stuff you can build on top of it, the better. Open access brings the opportunity for everyone to take a shot at annotating, organizing, and filtering knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sensing some sort of agenda here possibly? Also the irony of only showing the abstract made me laugh a little.

<comment><USER5> This is SSRN - arXiv for social sciences. You can download the full text of the paper if you click.

The paper, I think, makes a more interesting claim than you give it credit for: those areas that can afford scholarly work tend to make use of free resources the most. Based on this work, it is possible that open access alone is not enough to give poorer universities, etc. the access to scholarly work.

It's not clear what "agenda" you think the paper has. It seems like an interesting piece of work.

<comment><USER6> > those areas that can afford scholarly work tend to make use of/ABUSE free > resources the most ??

oohhh, this is ringing some bells right now

<comment><USER5> How is it abuse? These resources have no marginal cost to produce and their creators generally want as much use as possible (think pre-prints, open access course material, ...). However, less well researched individuals (commonly found in poorer areas) are simply not aware of these resources.

If a data scientist at Google uses R instead of SAS (or some other proprietary statistical computing language) while a data scientist at a non-profit is forced to use SAS because of organizational constraints there is no abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It always struck me as odd this three-sided arrangement where academics give away their copyright to journal publishers and their employers turn around and license the journals in bulk. Who thought this was a good idea to begin with? I see no easy way to unwind this mess now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Knowledge should be free.</comment>


FBI serves warrant on Apple to access Senator's iCloud data - <AUTHOR> https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/05/14/fbi-issues-warrant-to-apple-to-gain-senators-icloud-data <comment><USER2> > "Four years after he co-wrote a bill meant to make companies like Apple > provide confidential data about customers under investigation, Senate > Intelligence Committee Chairman Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has become the > subject of an investigation."

Oh, the delicious irony!

<comment><USER3> Is this the key? Will lawmakers start realising that anti-privacy laws will eventually be used against them? Will they start supporting privacy laws?

One can only hope...

<comment><USER4> Probably they'll start carving out bespoke protections for themselves

<comment><USER5> Yes. Like with the Patriot act. They are attempting now to add additional oversight if used to investigate an elected official or candidate.

<comment><USER6> Which exceptions for US senators were written into the patriot act?

<comment><USER7> > attempting now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This serves as an important reminder: Apple's terrible decisions about security and encryption in iCloud (for backups (which contain your messages) and photos and notes) means that Apple can always access your messages via iCloud backup, and thus can always decrypt them for the government (whether the government has probable cause and a warrant, like with a court order, or when they don't and are just fishing, like FISA/702's illegal spying). They use 702 often enough that there's the PRISM program that permits them direct download access to Apple's (and others') servers.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud- exclusiv...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud- exclusive/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-for-encrypting-backups-after-fbi- complained-sources-idUSKBN1ZK1CT)

You should not be trusting iMessage or iCloud encryption to keep your data safe or private.

Always use Signal! (And also tell your friends, associates, and relatives; Apple's marketing hype around privacy is a lot louder than these reminders can ever be.)

<comment><USER9> AFAIK, Apple claims that iMessage is E2E encrypted. Meaning as long as you don't use iCloud backups you are "safe"

<comment><USER8> Yes, but other important parts of iCloud are not, like all your Photos (which almost always includes EXIF GPS data, which can approximate a track log), Notes, Safari history and bookmarks, Contacts, Find My (locations for both devices and people), iCloud Drive files, reminders, voice memos, and wallet passes (which can include flight or ticket information, and loyalty cards, et c). If you don't have 2FA turned on (most people), your Health data (such as timestamped heart rate history) is available to Apple (and by extension the FBI/military/et c) as well.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT202303)

If you're using iCloud (which happens automatically), they can see your nudes and read your private notes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's my understanding that iCloud data will be handed over, because it's not encrypted. Is that correct?

<comment><USER11> iCloud data is "encrypted" but Apple has the keys and can decrypt it. Apple has been wishy-washy and has actually backed away from announced plans to implement E2E encryption for iCloud with the DOJ whining about wanting backdoors every couple of years.

Burr's previous support of encryption bans is ironic here; maybe now he wishes he hadn't made it politically impossible for Apple to protect his own data: [https://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption- bill-...](https://www.wired.com/2016/04/senates-draft-encryption-bill-privacy- nightmare/)

<comment><USER2> I don't think this is accurate at all.

Edit: You can find details here: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT202303](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303)

<comment><USER12> That's pretty accurate. Some stuff is encrypted with the device passcode like Health data and Keychain data. Around iOS 9 [1], Apple implemented some functionality to encrypt backups through a similar mechanism. This never panned out.

1) [https://wccftech.com/ios-93-prompt-passcode-restoring- encryp...](https://wccftech.com/ios-93-prompt-passcode-restoring-encrypted- icloud-backup/)

Edit: as others have pointed out, looks like this never happened because the FBI said no.

<comment><USER13> An alternate explanation is that this never occurred because if people lose their passwords they would be completely out of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Finally a FBI warrant for Apple data that we can get behind.

<comment><USER15> That's the thin end of the wedge happening. Once you're ok with this, then they scope creep.

<comment><USER16> Wait what? I wish people would make up their minds on this. _They have gotten a warrant._ That's how law enforcement is supposed to work.

Being against _warrantless_ tapping is not the same thing.

<comment><USER17> There are a lot of mixed up discussions going on here. Some people are generally anti-law enforcement, some are against warrantless wiretapping, others are concerned about backdoors from a technical perspective. I'm with you though I'm not sure being against warrants is a sensible position.

<comment><AUTHOR> most folks are ok with warrants if used judiciously and sparingly when the evidence is compelling and the potential (societal) good overwhelmingly outweighs the (individual) harms. but we've been sliding down that slippery slope for decades now, and it's unclear that many (most?) warrants meet any sensible criteria, instead treading into paranoid, corrupt, and vindictive territories.

like most things, it's not a black & white issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this technically considered insider trading? It's not like he found out a specific company was about to be acquired or something. He's probably going to argue it was publicly available information.

<comment><USER19> _...[Burr claimed] that he "relied solely on public news reports" when making a decision on the trades._

quote of him from another article:

[https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-apple-warrant-richard-burr- iclo...](https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-apple-warrant-richard-burr-icloud- stocks-1503931)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about Loefflers as well.

<comment><USER21> She isn't the chair of the Intelligence Committee who was about to release a fourth report affirming the findings of the Mueller report but can now be replaced by Mitch McConnell with a Trump loyalist.

<comment><USER22> 100% this. Loeffler is team Trump. According to [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump- score/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/) she is the only sitting senator that 100% voted in line with Trump's positions

<comment><USER23> FWIW, while your assertion is still true, it's most likely due primarily to the fact that she only assumed office in January.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPads replacing restaurant menus & staff  - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-02-16-ipadcafe16_ST_N.htm

<comment><USER2> Summary: A restaurant that doesn't exist will use iPads thereby replacing menus which don't exist and staff that hasn't been hired thereby establishing a trend which does not exist. I am not sure that a touch screen on the table really such a great idea when serving greasy foods hand held foods such as burgers,fries and pizza.</comment>


Neural networks as non-leaky mathematical abstraction - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cerebralab.com/Neural_networks_as_non-leaky_mathematical_abstraction <comment><USER2> > I find it rather weird that mathematics is usually taught to people on a > historical basis.

It very much is not. If you tried to learn calculus the way Newton learned it (with fluxions, or worse, awkwardly stated in the style of Euclid's elements) or the way Leibniz learned it (ill-defined infinitesimals), you're gonna be in for a bad time. We synthesise, reformulate, and reteach all the time. There's a lot more that has changed since Euclid's time than merely the notation.

I skimmed the rest of the article, but the philosophical mathematical preface is questionable.

<comment><USER3> I'd like you to elaborate a bit more on the ill-defined inifinitesimals, because that sounds a bit like the way I was taught calculus in 2006. But maybe it's just that I studied engineering and we got the "light" part and not too rigurous. Or maybe we were taught in a horrid way and didn't know better.

<comment><USER4> They are well-defined, but the usual framework that explains them ("non- standard analysis") is extremely abstract.

If you are dealing with polynomials/algebraic geometry only then there is a very simple, totally rigorous approach using nilpotents. And there is a newer approach called "alpha calculus" that I know nothing about but here is an example: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.3477.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.3477.pdf)

<comment><USER2> They are well-defined _now_ , but when Leibniz and Cauchy were working with them, they were not, and used carelessly could lead to errors. Their "solution" was to just pretend those errors didn't happen ("don't do that, then") instead of trying to come up with a consistent system of rules for infinitesimals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This entire concept seems backwards to me.

The reasoning for author's premise that sigma summation and integrals are leaky abstractions is unclear.

The two are their own independent abstractions; while perhaps complicated to fully understand, they will work exactly as designed and, provably so, from a logical standpoint. If they were leaky, they would display some kind of shortcoming that didn't allow them to convey parts of the core idea they were created to represent.

On the other hand, an NN implementation of any sufficiently complex concept is almost guaranteed to be leaky as it is too complicated to be provably correct, and will have too great a test surface to verify exhaustively. There are likely to exist edge cases where the NN fails outright that will be never discovered until used in a specific scenario. That seems leaky.

Can someone set me straight on what the author was trying to convey?

<comment><USER6> The neural network counterpoint feels odd, but with respect to summations and integrals as leaky abstractions I think the author's point is that deploying them effectively as tools typically depends on a mountain of hierarchical knowledge on top of which elementary calculus is built. I don't know that this is necessarily a requirement -- one could conceive of a world where integrals are taught purely in terms of methods for moving in and out of that concept domain (analogous to the train/predict interface common in ML), and where people are simply taught algebraic rules for manipulating integrals entirely in the realm of integrals without relying on their pedagogical grounding in limits (sort of like how we have high-level descriptions of layers, drop-out, and other concepts that are at the same level of abstraction as neural networks themselves). I think the author claims that this latter approach is rare in mathematics, and it seems they make the stronger claim that mathematical concepts aren't generally amenable to that kind of strategy with integrals and summations as specific examples of where it's impossible. FWIW, I disagree with that assertion, but nevertheless it seems to be what the author is trying to say.

<comment><USER7> _one could conceive of a world where integrals are taught purely in terms of ... algebraic rules for manipulating integrals entirely in the realm of integrals without relying on their pedagogical grounding in limits_

This is absolutely how I was first taught integral calculus.

      ∫x^n = x^{n+1}/(n+1) + C
      ∫e^x = e^x + C
      ∫(f+g) = ∫f + ∫g

etc. Only later did I really learn the details of limits and the rigorous epsilon-delta underpinnings in real analysis.

I used to think this was a bad thing, but now I'm not so sure. The word "calculus" does mean a system for calculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Putting aside the weird preface about observation and mathematics, which misses the point that science builds a theory, which is a formal system that recapitulates the relations among observations, the neural network stuff shows very deep lack of understanding. For example:

> an autoencoder (AE) is basically one of the easiest ones me to explain, > implement and understand

Then a list describing it. But that list does not constitute an explanation unless you have a pretty good intuitive understanding of linear algebra and function composition.

> So essentially, neural networks become a sort of mathematical abstraction > that isn't very leaky.

I think what the author really means by "leaky" is "not opaque." Mathematical structures that you can analyze in a well defined way (not opaque/"leaky") like integrals vs mathematical structures that the tools to dig into in a deep way don't exist yet (opaque/"not leaky").

Except that such understanding of neural nets is a major current research program.

So to all the youngsters who might be looking at this, this article is the ravings of a crank who doesn't know what he's talking about.

<comment><USER9> I took this more to mean the author liked NNs because they were not transparent. To model something with an NN you don't need to know all of the mathematical constructs that go into the NN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> Tell a well educated ancient Greek: " 95233345745213 times 4353614555235239 is always equal to 414609280180109235394973160907, this must be fundamentally true within our system of mathematics"… and he will look at you like you're a complete nut._

What is this supposed to mean? I honestly don't understand. They most certainly realized that although tedious to compute it is just as well-defined as 2*3=6. What is he implying here?

<comment><USER11> Archimedes dealt with much bigger numbers in The Sand Reckoner (he worked through his numbering system up to 10^(8*10^16)). He certainly wouldn't flinch at those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a load of nonsense.

When I prove, say, Cauchy's theorem about groups, it doesn't matter which concrete group I'm operating on to prove it. If I write a sigma to sum some vectors, it doesn't matter if the vectors are coordinates in 3D space, functions defined on an interval, or just numbers. Mathematical abstractions are pretty much the only ones that _don 't_ leak.

What, that you have to understand summation to understand what the sigma refers to? Well, duh. That doesn't make the sigma a leaky abstraction, because the sigma is not an abstraction at all! Not even a trivial one. The sigma is _notation_. And it's hardly news that you have to understand the concepts behind a notation to understand notation itself.

The author seems to misunderstand what an abstraction actually is.

<comment><USER13> This comment is counter-intelligence.

All signs refer directly to abstractions in the mind that can be compiled into a variety of useful forms. Yours does not take precedent in this case, as it is plain to see that sigma is under specified due to the huge range of concepts it's practical usage covers. Your attempt to prescribe that which should be prescribed is nothing but authoritarianism.

<comment><USER14> What on Earth are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A lot of fields in math expose a kind of API that abstracts away details quite well.

You can use SVMs without fully understanding the specific QP optimization algorithm underneath, you can understand the kernel trick without all RKHS math etc.

Or in classical vision, you can use keypoint extraction without caring about the details.

Or in linear algebra you can understand what SVD is and does without knowing the detailed steps of computing it.

I don't see neural nets as very special in this.

</comment><comment><USER16> So abstract mathematics are leaky, and applied mathematics are not (you don't have to know how they work to apply them, e.g. regression).

</comment><comment><USER17> Gödels incompleteness theorem guarantees all abstractions are leaky.

Try explaining the intrinsic meaning of written language in written language. You can't close the loop without making the result trivial.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there space for new BI software startups? - <AUTHOR> A lot of companies exist in the space, some of them  successful. Most of their market is usually unsatisfied! Is this a technology problem, is it an adoption problem or is there space for new companies? <comment><USER2> The question is: why is it people are unsatisfied?

It's generally agreed that 80% of the effort in data projects goes into things that "data scientists" don't want to do.

It seems like everybody and his sister has products and services that address the 20% of the work that people want to do, but even if you can automate and accelerate that work way it can at best have a small impact on the cost and capabilities of data projects.

That of course means following a "path less followed" and I can just say it is a lot of work just to educate people that something can be done about it. I am trying here

[http://ontology2.com/](http://ontology2.com/)

</comment><comment> o0-0o I would say yes. The market has been so consolidated that the opportunity should be horizontal. Most recent firms are specialized.</comment>


On Snowden and the Enduring Need for Civil Disobedience - <AUTHOR> http://bobwaycott.com/blog/snowden-civil-disobedience/ <comment><USER2> Waycott says

> However, Slate fails to even take on the challenge of disabusing people of > their expectations that one must submit to egregiously harsh punishment to > be validly considered a civil disobedient.

and spends much of the rest of the article arguing that Snowden's actions pass the _other_ requirements that thinkers have claimed is necessary for justifying civil disobedience. So I'm pretty sure the Waycott is trying to claim Snowden's actions are justified even if he doesn't submit to punishment.

But I can't find anywhere that the Waycott distinguishes between Snowden and the historical cases of civil disobedience where thinkers _have_ agreed that submission to punishment was necessary for justification. Surely those past examples didn't submit to punishment for no reason. So what's different here?

The Slate article, for what it's worth, makes a distinction: the magnitude of the punishment.

<comment><USER3> I found this from wikipedia about civil disobedience interesting:

 _ACT-UP 's Civil Disobedience Training handbook states that a civil disobedient who pleads guilty is essentially stating, "Yes, I committed the act of which you accuse me. I don't deny it; in fact, I am proud of it. I feel I did the right thing by violating this particular law; I am guilty as charged," but that pleading not guilty sends a message of, "Guilt implies wrong-doing. I feel I have done no wrong. I may have violated some specific laws, but I am guilty of doing no wrong. I therefore plead not guilty." A plea of no contest is sometimes regarded as a compromise between the two._

And then there is always Sophie Scholl. But exactly because of that I think sometimes that can be a waste of perfectly good life... so in the end, I don't know what to think exactly.

<comment><USER2> Interesting. For what it's worth, Alford pleas exist in the US that explicitly accept punishment while still actively asserting innocence.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do we have to abuse terminology so much? Snowden's actions and sacrifices stand on their own without having to apply the label of "Civil Disobedience". It does not diminish or tarnish his actions to omit that label; but it does diminish them to apply it incorrectly.

Fundamentally, he did not protest an unjust law by publicly and openly defying it, thus showing to the world the injustice of enforcing it. Rather, he brought unjust actions to light by violating a law, namely that of government secrecy, that is not really central to the issues raised.

If he were protesting government secrecy in an of itself, then without standing up to face the punishment of the offence his protest would be ineffectual. But violating that secrecy is not what he is protesting, so staying to confront the legal consequences buys him nothing.

<comment><USER2> You don't need to get bogged down in semantics if you just address the core issue: were Snowden's actions justified? Previous practitioners of civil disobedience clearly thought that submission to punishment was necessary for their actions to be justified.

You seem to be arguing that submission to punishment is not necessary if the disobedience is indirect rather than direct (i.e. if the injustice which is to be exposed is not the actual law broken). But I don't see why that's important. If MLK decided to break a traffic law in order to speak out against segregation, he surely would accepted the punishment for this violation of the law. If anything, submition to the punishment is even _more_ important for indirect civil disobedience, since the punishment itself is just.

<comment><USER5> The masochistic "disobedience = submission to punishment from those you're disobeying" idea is not only bizarre, it's a blatant distraction. The point of punishment is to scare people from further disobedience, and project an image of overwhelming dominance.

It's an interesting case study on how terms like "civil disobedience" get coopted by those in power, to convince people that disobeying them should be hilariously self-defeating. (Imagine the US government submitting to punishment and reparations when it breaks international law.)

As with all things, you choose actions based on their predictable consequences. ("Let myself get destroyed? Hmm, what could go wrong..?")

<comment><USER2> The importance of the acceptance of punishment for such disobedience was stressed by the original practitioners, e.g. MLK and Gandhi (not by those in power). Do you expect people to take your argument seriously if you dismiss the reasoning of these famous minds out-of-hand?

<comment><USER5> Just on general considerations, it's amusing to subordinate our thinking to "famous minds" on a topic like "disobedience". Any ahistorical misunderstandings about these Famous Minds aside, you evaluate a tactic on its effectiveness. If a particular masochistic, submissive tactic furthers your goals, it's worth considering. (Though so are the costs.) Otherwise, it's plainly absurd.

As MLK himself would've no doubt pointed out, there were others participating in the Civil Rights movement. These movements aren't reduceable to the famous minds of Great Leaders, though of course those in power (who want people to obey leaders) try to frame history that peculiar way.

<comment><USER2> I am not assuming these famous minds are correct, I am saying you won't get people to listen to you if you dismiss these famous minds as obviously wrong with a 4 sentence comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 99% of the time we all successfully exercise disobedience in our personal life. We meet with people we like and then do not meet when we don't like them. It includes relatives, friends, coworkers, small shops, big shops etc. 99% of the time you _voluntarily_ decide when to devote your time, money and attention to someone and when to stop doing it. 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy.

Now there is state. You cannot decide not to provide funds to the state when it behaves the way you dislike. Even if you hide your taxes, the state controls all your currency and prints it for itself without asking you. You cannot simply choose another currency. You can move out — to another state just like yours or worse. You are only allowed to make a humble limited input every 4 years in a form of choosing who will tax you.

There is nothing strange or bad in disobedience. You do it everyday in your life. It's only state propaganda which starts from the early age at school that keeps people terrified at the idea that they are simply bullied to give money for wars, police, spying and terrorising people around them. Under the premise of "social good", of course.

<comment><USER7> > 99% of your life is a wonderful peaceful anarchy.

Even the time I spend in traffic has already exceeded your timeframe of "wonderful anarchy". Not to mention all the other personal matters that I could theoretically choose to do, _if I were a douchebag_.

What if I choose not to spend time with my children? Or to say 'Hello' to my wife? Am I sticking it to The Man with my rugged individualism?

> You cannot simply choose another currency

Sure you can. Just make sure to convert enough of it to legal tender when it comes time to pay the taxes that paid for your schooling (and the schooling of those idiots you interact with everyday), the environmental inspectors and regulators, medical researchers, Peace Corps works, USAID, etc.

<comment><USER6> Do you want to say that you say "hello" to your wife because of some law enforcement? I think, no amount of enforcement will make your children or wife happy if you decide to leave them. Voluntarism and peace does not mean everyone must be happy. It means everyone has ability to seek happiness without violent barricades.

And there is a difference between "we take your money, then educate you" vs. "you pay voluntarily and then we educate you". If my parents were forced to pay for my school, I'm not obliged to be thankful for my education. Otherwise, how can I then be really thankful when I learned voluntarily with people I chose?

<comment><USER7> > And there is a difference between "we take your money, then educate you" vs. > "you pay voluntarily and then we educate you".

By remaining a citizen and staying in the country you agree to do these things though. The "social safety net" does not pay for itself, whether you're a liberal or a libertarian or an anarchist.

i.e. by being here you have caused the state to have to provide for you in some regard, whether it's delivering mail to you, accounting for you in a census, medical emergency services, protection from the other citizens, military defense, safe transit from one spot to the next, and far, _far_ more.

The exchange to that is that you contribute some fair share to pay that back. If you end up paying more today then that's OK, because the state paid more when you were a child and will likely pay much more when you're elderly.

If that's something you personally don't like then I would recommend renouncing your citizenship and moving somewhere where taxes cannot be enforced. That or working to fix the government you're in to magically provide no services and therefore require no taxes.

> If my parents were forced to pay for my school, I'm not obliged to be > thankful for my education.

I might at least thank my parents, but perhaps that's just me.

<comment><USER6> You are describing a relationship with the state as a contractual agreement. Then I guess you have some theory of property rights (btw, I myself don't have any such theory, I only advocate not using violence while resolving issues). That is, according to your theory, state has made something useful belonging to it and then provided it to me on condition that I play by its rules. Am I right?

Now the question to you is how do you define property rights and how exactly state legitimately acquires property? You cannot use the same argument shifted one generation back ("it was paid by previous users of the state") because it'll be circular argument. There must be some valid legitimate source of good produced by the state (who exactly, btw?) before anyone was taxed.

I believe there never was any legitimate source of state income which then can be "traded" with you for taxes. It was always violent extraction first, then questionable "service" after that. Because logically, if there were no violence in the first place, it would _never_ be called "tax", but "payment". No one would ever talk about "giving fair share" and "contributing to society". If there was a private gathering of individuals who voluntarily raised money and made some service, they wouldn't need to make any propaganda about how good it is to pay. Because there wouldn't be any violence to justify with moral commandments.

<comment><USER7> So basically you say that the children must pay for the crimes of their ancestors far back in the past?

History is far too undocumented to go back for millenia and settle old scores.

What I'm saying is, here's the status quo, here's the rules and structure we inherited from the "shoulders of giants" that came before us.

If this is what we like then we keep it. If this is not what we like then we change it. But I'm not going to reframe society as if everything that was ever created is illegitimate because Hammurabi was mean to other people before he created his Code.

<comment><USER6> > So basically you say that the children must pay for the crimes of their > ancestors far back in the past?

How do you derive this from my words? Children are created by adults who may use peaceful methods to raise them, or use violent methods.

If you support "status quo" you should equally support any status quo in any point in history. Be it slavery in 19th century, or catholic tortures in medieval times. Was slavery "OK" in your view because many people thought it was OK back then? It's just a double standard. If it was morally okay before, it should be morally okay in every time in the history (from the point of view of the same observer, that is you or me).

About status quo: there are two ways to change any status quo. Voluntarily (via mutual agreement) or violently (the strongest wins). Every time you go to work you are changing status quo. You create wealth that did not exist yesterday. Or you fix things that got broken and would remain broken until you fix them. Typically you do it peacefully: by agreeing with everyone whom it might concern that they don't mind doing what you do (and may even pay you for that). Now, imagine we agreed together that I do something useful to you for a payment. Everyone who is really concerned about such change in the universe is participating voluntarily and has no objection. But then comes a guy who calls himself a "government" and brings a thing called "income tax". He now wants to change the status quo violently. Instead of providing us something of value and negotiating, he simply states "since you produced something of value to each other, both of you now must pay me". And shows his gun.

In other words, if you use "status quo" as a moral principle, you create many more problems. You either have no moral stance whatsoever, so your argument self-destructs (e.g. if slavery was okay in 19th century and not okay in 21st, then you have no opinion on slavery per se). Or you have some moral stance, but then you need to come up with a theory why certain status quo is okay and some other is not.

My position: "Why don't we bring down weapons and discuss on equal grounds". Your position: "No, lets keep those weapons as they seemingly solve my problems, and if you have objections you are probably being immoral and against children."

As you can see, if you are pointing government's gun at me, it could never be _me_ who is immoral because I have no power of objection. But it could be that the immoral guy is the one who proclaims what is good and forces people to follow him.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Playing video games mental health, cognitive and social skills in young children - <AUTHOR> http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00127-016-1179-6 <comment><AUTHOR> Title modded bc of char limit: "Is time spent playing video games associated with mental health, cognitive and social skills in young children?"

Here is the paper for those who do not have academic access: [http://sci- hub.cc/10.1007/s00127-016-1179-6](http://sci-hub.cc/10.1007/s00127-016-1179-6)</comment>


QuakeCon 2012 - John Carmack Keynote - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk&hd=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a comment to add.. John Carmack's keynotes aren't the usual fluff you get from most CEOs... he gets technical and doesn't hold your hand.</comment>


Ask HN: Could you recreate Facebook?  Would you want to? - <AUTHOR>

Let's say, the second you start reading this, you got warped back to your younger self in the year 2003.  You keep your memory.  Everything is the same except this time, Mark Zuckerberg was never born.
Could you, knowing what you know today, recreate Facebook?  If so, how would you do it?  If not, why not?
Also, knowing what you know about Facebook today, would you want to? <comment><USER2> Missing a question - Did something like Facebook exist to take inspiration from?

If so - Yes, and I am - not for the general public but for a small niche, and not an exact replica. The idea of groups and walls comes from FB, but nothing more. In fact, inspiration comes from Twitter, FB and G+ combined.

And I'm doing it with AngularJS, firebase.com, cloudinary.com and some AWS services such as Elastic Transcoder and S3.</comment>