Singularity Is Near Full Documentary Michio Kaku – Ray Kurzweil - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CSNmrunCnA <comment><USER2> Ah, the new form of conspiracy theory: the scientific/technologist tinfoil hat group.

The thing that makes what these different people are talking about seem so absurd is they pose theoretical situations, and ask "What If?", and then just stop right there and don't critically examine the situation at all. All the "What If?"s then drive a sort of nagging horror at all the possible negative outcomes, and then you become Ray Kurzweil.

The biggest fallacy of the Singularity is the accelerating change hypothesis. In order for accelerating change to work, you not only have to invent new things, you have to adopt & apply them. Recently there was a story posted about how it took hundreds of years after the discovery of stainless steel for it to begin to be adopted by companies and individuals. And the reasons for the lack of adoption are almost always due to one thing: limitation of the human brain.

We still don't know much about the brain. As long as everyone's brain remains stuck in this meatsack and evolves at a very slow rate, so will the social adaptation of technological change and the investment therein. And that will limit not only our ability to develop AI, but how and where we use it.

To me it's far more likely that a true AI will first be used to manufacture cheerios than control a military weapons system, even though the military weapons system is where the biggest dollar investment in AI will be. The cheerios manufacturing plant will have a practical problem that only AI can solve, meanwhile the weapons system will probably only use AI for a single task and it'll be phased out in favor of a less buggy, cheaper, more effective weapons system.

<comment><USER3> Accelerating change is well supported.

With regard to human intelligence, Augmented Intelligence has already extended human minds beyond the confines of squishy flesh bags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> fire and wheel as an example of technological progress (that came after biological). hmmm... Wheel came only 5-10 ths yeas ago and quickly propogated among Afro-Eurasia. ok. But fire? it came 1.5 mln years and fire were the reason of latest biological evolution of our species, with body able to support larger brain. not best example of fast technological progress.

<comment><USER5> The wheel barely penetrated Africa, parts not seeing it even as recently as a few hundred years.

<comment><USER4> Probably different part of Africa we are talking about: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_technology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Flagged for hypesterism.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can a moderator add '[video]' to the end of the title?</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with Facebook friends liking virus sites? - <AUTHOR>

In past few days I have noticed a ton of my friends posting links .info sites.  Their headlines are sensational and catchy, as well each has a photo of something pertaining to story or photo of youtube video.  Im certain these are virus sites as those posting would never post something about miley cyrus and the other sensational junk these bad actors are creating.<p>Anyone else notice this and is there a weak point in Facebook? <comment><USER2> Man, been wondering the same thing! However, I believe these sites employ some kind of like-hijack as you reach the page. I kind of clicked on one of them. Or not even that, I saw some friend liking this crap, it said the website in the post so I copy-pasted it in the address bar. Saw crap. Left. Safe-checked my profile. Nothing. But like 15 mins later I checked my profile again, bam, there it was. I had liked this friggin crap by directly visiting this site! Now I can't remember which one as I camped out on the newsfeed and marked all that crap as spam..

</comment><comment><USER3> And the myspacification of Facebook begins.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hijack apps.

Click on harmless looking "Login with Facebook" link to comment or access extra content on a harmless looking blog or trojan app, speed through standard dialog, sign away permission for them to update statuses, post on walls and send messages on your behalf through the Facebook API.

I've noticed Facebook getting quicker at deleting this garbage though.

</comment><comment><USER5> I usually ignore these type of things until yesterday when I noticed that a very intelligent, technical friend of my had a post like this.

</comment><comment><USER6> i've gotten a few of these, and I believe they are hijack apps that send the same message to all of your friends. Interesting too is how they're coming up with messages that make you wonder if it's real or not. In this day and age, you can't even trust a friend in a world that sells access to your information</comment>


Folding Home Reaches Exascale: 1,500B,000,000 Operations Per Second for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/15661/folding-at-home-reaches-exascale-1000000000000000000-operations-per-second-for-covid-19 <comment><USER2> Does this effort provide incremental, meaningful value? Or is it a hail mary, kind of like SETI@Home?

</comment><comment><USER3> And it's not even using most of its capacity at the moment. I have made a dozen GPUs available to it, and at most 3 are doing any work. CPUs are idle most of the time also.

</comment><comment><USER4> Has a project like this achieved anything over the past 20 years they've existed.

</comment><comment><USER5> The world is getting so strange. Imagine you were talking with a bright person from, say, 1920, and you wanted to explain this to them. Think of all the things you would have to explain, and how odd and impossible it would likely sound to them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Typo in the title..have a B rather than a zero

<comment><USER7> I think they are trying to shorten the number to "one thousand five hundred billion million"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> how easy is it to setup ?

I thought I'd print a little ad for kids in my neighborhood to use contribute their gpu

<comment><USER3> If you're using Linux, it can be launched with a single command line under Docker.

<comment><USER9> For CPU, that is. Trying to make it work on my GPU took me to driver hell -- OpenCL support seems to be an entirely separate driver from normal graphics, and the newest packages that might support my GPU (Intel) are not even available for Ubuntu, let alone Mint.

<comment><USER10> I've just given up trying to make it work with Radeon RX 580 under linux (and I'm unlikely to waste any more electricity by running it on my windows box). I tried amdgpu-pro - opencl was there but folding@home refused to even detect it. I tried rocm - same nonsense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> All the non profitable and benevolent crypto miners.</comment>


Homeless Americans qualify for stimulus checks even if they haven't filed taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/GigWorks/comments/fwn319/updated_homeless_americans_do_qualify_for/ <comment><USER2> This is awful; it's a way for TurboTax to collect more information about people. They need an address and banking information and conveniently they mention for-profit services to "help" with this.

The actual IRS and Treasury Dept are working to make as many of these informational returns as unnecessary as possible, and actual homeless services in various cities are going to be able to pick up where that leaves off, giving homeless people the FULL amount of their stimulus check.

<comment><USER3> Although having banking details means you'll get the money faster, it's not required since the IRS will issue a paper check. This is important for people who are unable to open a bank account. Many homeless people will be in that boat.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you an entrepreneur or just like to build things? - <AUTHOR>

During the last years I've been developing web sites as a hobby, I really enjoy doing the development, improving performance, and always looking for new ideas to build. But I don't feel like an entrepreneur, I'm still working for a company and basically don't want to leave as I prefer to build sites as a hobby without the pressure to making them profitable.<p>Is any of you in the same situation? <comment><USER2> Respectfully, I think this is a false choice. A rephrasing:

"Are you a developer or just like to write code? During the last few years I've been making functions. I really like writing the code and choosing good sets of functions but I don't really feel like a developer. I don't want to make the jump because I like writing code without the pressure of making those functions into an actual application."

To explain:

If you're doing side projects, you _are_ an entrepreneur. You might not be a very good one (yet), but an entrepreneur is just someone who takes risks for an uncertain payoff. The risk in this case is your time, and the uncertainty is that a project might take off.

It is worth realising that the difference between "someone who builds things" and an entrepreneur is largely about focus. Why are you making these things? If you're building them in the hope that people will use them, then you should think about users. How might they find your thing and what would they like about it? If you're making things in the hope that they might make money, then you owe it to yourself to learn a bit about why people pay for things and keep it in mind. If you hope to work with others, then any effort you put into meeting people and figuring out if you should work with them is well spent.

I don't want to discount here the possibility that you genuinely don't want your projects to get users or make money. If you're building things just to learn and would be mortified if they got into the hands of real people, this probably doesn't apply to you, but I suspect that's not the case.

Otherwise, it's merely a question of how much are you doing to make your hope (project takes off) into a reality?

It doesn't have to be scary. Admitting that you're an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to quit your job tomorrow. Many entrepreneurs wait before jumping ship, because they want to take a calculated risk. Nothing wrong with that. The point is that if you're starting side projects and you hope they succeed, you're doing entrepreneurial things. There's no harm in accepting that and learning how to do it better.

<comment><USER3> > If you're doing side projects, you are an entrepreneur.

I disagree. If you rely on your day job for income, you're not an entrepreneur.

But, that's not all. You could quit your job and do your own business, and still be quite different from what an entrepreneur is.

I'm personally not in it for the "getting rich" stuff. I'd rather take the 37signal approach than PG's approach. Meaning, I'd rather not take any venture or angel investment. I don't plan to sell (aka exit). In fact I'm quite scared by the prospect of taking large sums of outside investments (like twitter and facebook).

So, I'm not an entrepreneur and I don't want to be one.

> The point is that if you're starting side projects and you hope they > succeed, you're doing entrepreneurial things.

This, I agree with. It's somewhat entrepreneurial to quit your job and try to pursue your own projects.

I think the difference comes down to why you'd do it. My impression of entrepreneur types is that they get a kick of taking risks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a hacker who has a small hope that maybe something I do will help others and make me a little money on the side.

Short Answer: Yes.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am in a similar situation.

I started working full time after completing undergrad a year ago, and am working on side projects more to learn than for entrepreneurship. They have been a great low cost way to continue my undergraduate math + cs education.

I certainly wouldn't mind if a project really took off and allowed me to work on it full time, but I understand that I would have to make a significant commitment (time + money) to really have any of them gain traction. Just look at <http://signal.am> . It is absolutely begging for someone with more UI/UX skill than I personally have -- but it has been priceless in advancing my personal skill set (outside UI/UX).

<comment><USER6> I don't have any UX training (Econ major, myself), but I recommend making bigger stories take up more space, like TechMeme does. I do like how you de- emphasized related stories, because they make TechMeme kind of noisy. I also miss the pictures TechMeme puts next to most stories. In general, it is a little bland, as you seem to realize. Then again, HN is bland and I don't have a problem with it.

The story ranking and discovery is good, though. Seems on par with TechMeme, which is impressive.

I found it with a Facebook ad. Are you advertising it a little just to see if it takes off, or what?

Anyways, good job and good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the past I've simply built fun things. A few have even been pretty popular (front page of digg for one (back when that meant something), and one of my OSS projects was used by mozilla and apple, which was neat). Others, like steganography in PHP[1], were simply random ideas I built for a laugh.

Now I'm trying to move into building things _that have a market_ , and keeping the 'cool but useless' or 'cool but not profitable' stuff to a minimum, or for blog-fodder.

[1] - <http://www.puremango.co.uk/2005/03/steganography_112/>

</comment><comment><USER8> At the moment I just like to build things. If I'm lucky and keep it up, hopefully there might be some opportunities in the future to do more with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> carlos interested in talking on side jobs? I'm into the business side of things, maybe we should talk?</comment>


Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/jimmy_wales/status/150287579642740736 <comment><USER2> I think it's interesting how it's taken a mass event to spur people to stop using GoDaddy. They certainly weren't well respected before the SOPA saga. But it seems that we needed a big event to get people moving.</comment>


Proclaimed Dead, Web Is Showing New Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/technology/01webwalls.html

<comment><USER2> _"Reports of the death of the Web have been greatly exaggerated," Mr. Beckstrom said. "It's going to be alive and kicking for a long time."_

Of course reports are greatly exaggerated. For something like 'the web is dead', which is essentially punditry, reports will naturally trend towards being premature as the incentives for publishing are biased towards publishing early.

You don't get page views on opinion pieces if they aren't controversial. Things are rarely controversial unless they're exaggerated.

The more interesting question is not if the web browser will eventually diminish in importance, but rather if the web will eventually be eclipsed by custom fat clients.

<comment><USER3> "... but rather if the web will eventually be eclipsed by custom fat clients."

Or they can both coexists without one eclipsing the other. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really starting to cultivate a hatred of anyone who makes their living by saying attention-grabby things.

Yak yak yak yak yak look at me look at me

</comment><comment><USER5> An again they mention that watching a YouTube video is not a web experience... This is like not accepting that Web evolved, as if Web could only be what we can see with Mosaic 1.0.

<comment><USER6> Similarly they claim that Facebook is beyond the reach of web browsers. Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wired reports that something is dead? Surprise!

<comment><USER8> Wired wrote about the so-called death of Apple back in the 90s. History, it seems, sure did show Wired. In all respect, I have only seen iOS and Droid apps supplement or complement the actual Web apps. Facebook for iPhone hasn't really been a replacement for the Web app.

If anything, nobody likes dealing with the logistics of pushing client-side updates to users, especially with Web-based apps that to deal with multiple versions of REST/SOAP APIs (most hated is graceful degradation for older apps). My App Store icon already shows that 8 apps need updating. Goodness.

So I think the Web is safe. Because then you only need to update the browser, from the user perspective to take advantage of most functionality updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Eh, nobody with a clue takes Chris Anderson seriously anyway.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Proclaimed Dead, NYT reports that Wired article has skinny on what has expired" (web.com)</comment>


Science May Soon Give Us Pills That Make Us Exercise - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/06/science-may-soon-give-us-pills-that-make-us-exercise/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the result is the same feeling that I have if I don't do any sports for too many days. I really look forward to that bike trip then, or to the gym. If that can be put into a pill, why not.

But I also believe that the key to fight mass obesity is a change of mindset in society. Not sure how this is achieved, but education on certain topics might help. Or role models that say the right things. Even if those things are not politically correct sometimes. But then again, would that sell the product those role models are selling?

<comment><USER3> Agree with the change in mindset sentiment. Using a pill to fight obesity is sort of like fighting consumerism with more consumerism.

<comment><USER4> Isn't it more like fighting consumerism with replicators? It doesn't solve the root issue of people having desires based on material things, and it's not necessarily going to make them happier, but at least it solves the immediate symptom of people dying.

<comment><USER5> Right, sO if it works what does a person's mindset matter?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aren't we overmedicated enough already?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for asking: We are not.

Even in the United States, undiagnosed and untreated illness, especially mental illness, is a far more prevalent and far costlier problem than the inverse.

Data shows this conclusively. Anecdotal experience, whether your own or that which you may have read in an email forward somewhere, has no bearing on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this called cocaine?

<comment><USER8> Nah, ephedra.

<comment><USER9> amphetamines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What makes the author think that the new drug wouldn't be illegal?

Behavior-altering medication like this isn't common or available now, why would it be in a few years?

</comment><comment><USER11> Everything has to be solved with pills.</comment>


Economics in One Lesson: "The Curse of Machinery" - <AUTHOR> http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html

<comment><USER2> "While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn't used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host's logic

Then instead of shovels, why don't you give them spoons and create even more jobs?" Friedman inquired."

\-- Milton Friedman

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how the rest of it will pan out, but we are right on the cusp of a pretty significant job takeover by robots. Truck drivers.

Consider that we already have vehicles (in prototype) that can outperform a human behind the wheel. Hell, Stanford is sending an Audi TT up Pike's Peak at 100+ mph (<http://bit.ly/9akGU1>).

And consider that truck drivers are basically meat-based robots anyway inasmuch as they are all practically interchangeable.

Once the first trucking company gets the idea to start replacing drivers, that's going to put them at such an insane competitive advantage that the rest of the industry will have no choice but to follow suit. No downtime, no accidents, far cheaper, no irresponsible behavior.

Once the process is started, the entire delivery driver industry is going to be obsoleted within 12 years.

 _That_ will be the first time a massive number of people perk up their eyebrows and start wondering if their job is far behind...

<comment><USER4> This assumes the Teamsters have no power, which they do. The power of the Longshoremen to prevent substantial automation (compared to other major ports) in the Port of Los Angeles and the resulting productivity deficit vs the Port of Rotterdam for example appears to be realtively durable.

<comment><USER5> Once the entire logistical chain is fully automated the teamsters will have much less power. After all, if you don't need workers it doesn't matter if they strike.

<comment><USER6> A strike seems like the perfect time to introduce automation.

<comment><USER7> The only thing you're not including in this equation is votes. Union leaders simply need to convince lawmakers that it's in their best interests to pass favorable legislation limiting the adoption of new technologies. It's certainly been done before.

<comment><USER5> This is where America's organization as a collection of states is helpful. At least one or two states will be willing to let automation take over once it's developed, and it's effectiveness there can become leverage to spread it to other states.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This goes through historical examples of when machinery that automated jobs did not actually, over the long term, create job loss.

His position is that that will be the case forever... but he doesn't actually prove it.

I think his assumption is that since it's happened with steam engines and industrial looms, it'll happen again with robots and the internet?

<comment><USER9> Well, who will the create robots that maintain the robots?

AIs? Cyborgs?

Now, robots can create all that stuff and maintain it all. Who will it sell it to?

Even if robots can create all the stuff and then sell it, who is responsible for the entrepreneural function?

AIs? Cyborgs?

If robots take over every single jobs in the world? What will really happen?

Moreover, who will own these robots? Maybe robots become cheap enough that everyone own bots?

If we become machines, than what are robots?

Robots and machinery aren't free lunch! The automation thread is just getting started, and we have not figured out how to automate entrepreneurship yet! And even if we do, we might already become machines!

<comment><USER10> Note: parent edited while i was replying. This is in response to the first 2 lines. (who will maintain the robots)

Well, first it can probably be assumed that there will be a few standard robot types. These will be cheaper to replace than to repair. One of the standard robots will be a replacer robot which can swap out all the standard robot types (including other replacer robots).

I presume that the few standard type robots can themselves be assembled by robots. Then it is simply a matter of having two (or more) robotic factories with the necessary stuff to create a robotic factory. Should one factory fail, a robotic robot will become the number 1 manufacturing priority.

Now since the robotic robot factories would become ideal targets for sabatuers and terrorists and the like, a better step would be for each robot to know how to create a robotic robot facotory built in. Then even if both robotic robot factories fail, they can team up with the nearest robots to create a new robotic robot factory.

<comment><USER11> Robot of the future == the ghost of java programs past? :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FWIW, here's a 1983 National Academy of Engineering report on the topic: [http://books.google.com/books?id=hS0rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1](http://books.google.com/books?id=hS0rAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR1)

</comment><comment><USER10> So, number of jobs is the only variable that matters? Compare the lifestyles of the 7900 old-style weavers to those of the textile factory workers. Who lived longer on average? Who ate better? Who had time for family? Strictly in terms of money: what was the wage of a spinner and what was the wage of a textile worker?

I'm not saying that machines are bad, I'm saying this argument leaves out an awful lot of info -- unless you take on faith that more jobs == better.

<comment><USER13> The "argument" is about jobs. You may want to talk about something else, but that is not what the article is about. It is an answer to the claim that automation created unemployment, not that automation is better.

<comment><USER10> The article pretty obviously is written under the assumption that more jobs is better. I am challenging that assumption. I am not suggesting that the article does not show how more jobs are created.

The fact remains unchanged that a bunch of people got the crap end of the automation stick. It is not unreasonable to think that maybe there was a better way to got about the automation that was both good for the people being displaced, and created a bunch of jobs? My previous questions were sort of aimed here, but when I wrote them I had not yet coherently formed this most recent question.

<comment><USER13> This is like when someone calls in to call in radio show about how the new way of qualifying for the rugby world cup asking "should we really be encouraging our kids to play such a violent game?" OK. Good Question. We can talk about that next week. Today we're talking about qualifying matches. Most people who listen to this show like rugby, so we probably will keep relying on the assumption that rugby is fun and we should keep doing it.

Yes. There is an assumption that employment is better then unemployment, indirectly. The point being challenged (automation causes unemployment) assumes that unemployment is bad and the counterargument goes on assuming that. It doesn't (as you suggest) assume that employment is the only possibly important thing in the world.

If you would like to make the case that employment is not good or that automation is bad for some reason not related to employment, go ahead. It is perfectly reasonable to write that article with the assumptions that it made.

<comment><USER10> If you read carefully, the more jobs situation was 40 years later. This means that at least for some time, unemployment was higher as a result of the automation. The thing to remember is that you can't mothball workers, you cant say "hey dont eat or live untill the job creation curve from this new tech catches back up, you'll be in demand again". So while the net effect of automation is more jobs, it still doesn't make the immediate (within a workers lifetime) impact necessarily better.

Another thing the article mentions is a 4400% increase in the number of jobs. This is not population growth, (it is only 3 generations assuming child labor), so where did those people come from? Were they more skilled workers earning good wages replaced by automation? Were they unskilled workers whose previous jobs had been automated away (ditch diggers and the like)?

In one case you have a net loss in liquidity in the hands of people, this is the net equivelant of lost jobs. In the other case you have a potential gain in liquidity. Once again, not making a case for or agains the automation, just discussing if the employment is equivelant.

To use your analogy its not like me asking if we should continue with the rugby at all. It's more like me saying "Hey guys, I know that the mechanism is different, but can we also look at the fact that 100 more teams in the cup might dilute the quality of play?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it may be more interesting in many ways to consider not only the _amount_ of work that machines might create or destroy but the _nature_ of that work. John Ruskin had some very interesting things to say about this in the early industrial era: [http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruskin- work-and-na...](http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2008/02/ruskin-work-and- nature-of-gothic.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> There is an even more common _fallacy_ that is even harder, probably impossible to kill: trade create unemployment.

I find the argument very convincing that trade, from the perspective of one partner is exactly like technology. Found a way to produce grapes in a building cheaply; Found a way produce grapes in a shoe factory.

</comment><comment><USER15> Higher average productivity is great, but the problem America has at the moment is an ever-widening gap in income, and very little political will to do anything about it. An important passage in the article:

 _William Felkin, in his History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery Manufactures (1867), tells us (though the statement seems implausible) that the larger part of the 50,000 English stocking knitters and their families did not fully emerge from the hunger and misery entailed by the introduction of the machine for the next forty years._

If this is true it is a big deal. Suppose you invent a device that will double economic output while putting half the population out of work. There's no question the device needs to be put to use, but something needs to be done about all these displaced people as well. Much of the surplus in productivity borne of your invention will need to be used to help those people switch to other work, allow them to retire early, etc. In other words you will be taxed heavily, something which is very hard to do these days in the States. So the American worker seems especially vulnerable to displacement by automation, and you get this scapegoating of machinery. If you don't like it, next time you hear some jerk on the radio bleating about high taxes and socialism, think about where that money might be going, and vote accordingly.</comment>


An invitation to category theory - <AUTHOR> http://chalkdustmagazine.com/features/an-invitation-to-category-theory/ <comment><USER2> For anyone that may want a deeper look into Category Theory from the perspective of a programmer I highly recommend - [https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory- for-p...](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- programmers-the-preface/)

He also covers it all in few youtube series - [https://www.youtube.com/user/DrBartosz/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/DrBartosz/playlists)

<comment><USER3> Since yesterday, his blog posts are also available as a hardcover book: [http://www.blurb.com/b/9008339-category-theory-for- programme...](http://www.blurb.com/b/9008339-category-theory-for-programmers)

<comment><USER4> I wish it could be shipped from Europe too. Shipping makes it prohibitively expensive.

<comment><USER5> It seems to me that you can select some of the largest EU countries by clicking the US flag in the top right corner.

<comment><USER6> The shipping is still a bit expensive if you are not in one of those... 11euro to Belgium if you select the German option, for example.

<comment><USER7> There seems to be a 25% discount for today which removes about 10 USD from the price.

Hopefully this book could get picked up by a publishing company so it becomes easier to find in book stores.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this makes shipping cost a couple € at most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tai-Danae Bradley, the author of this post, has also written an illustrated booklet (freely available) about Category Theory: [https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/what-is- appl...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/what-is-applied- category-theory/)

<comment><USER9> And, additionally, was a host on the YouTube series PBS Infinite Series, shortly before it was cancelled.

<comment><USER10> I'm still sad that it was cancelled. She's a great presenter and I was really excited about the series they were planning on category theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My team at work has been studying CT. Every week we read one chapter of Category Theory for Programmers. Then every Thursday we discuss the chapter and our problem solutions together.

It's been very fun. Our discussions help forge links between the category world and our day-to-day programming. We're only 3 chapters in, so I can't say it's given me some huge insight into programming. But as we move from Go to Rust/Typescript, it gives us a useful way to think about the correctness of our programs and a useful shared vocabulary for talking about types in a language-agnostic way.

<comment><USER12> My workplace is the exact opposite. They scoff at types let alone categories. One guy literally told me, and I kid you not, that he doesn't need type checking, all he needs is to be "careful."

We don't learn things together, instead what happens is if I present something new, another person stays silent looks it up at home on google and comes to work the next day pretending he's an expert on the topic. It's toxic.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that's must be some real uncompetitional place. Nobody likes to be called out on anything!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Truth to be told, learning Category Theory will make you a better software engineer in the same sense and to the same degree as learning Quantum Field Theory would make one a better electical engineer. It might get you more excited about your profession, but at the practical level it will be more of a distraction than an aid.

<comment><USER15> YMMV massively depending on what exactly you're working in.

I've found when I'm writing libraries that will be leveraged by other programmers, _especially_ in a modern/high level language, insights I've derived from my understanding of category theory have been incredibly valuable.

If you're working very close to the metal (eg, embedded), very close to non- technical users (UI stuff, edge layer business logic), or in less featureful languages, then you'll get much less value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As someone interested in functional programming, but works almost entirely in imperative languages, is category theory worth learning?

Function programming heavily impacted how I write imperative code. Would I have similar revelations with category theory – maybe write better abstractions?

<comment><USER17> > Would I have similar revelations with category theory – maybe write better > abstractions?

Maybe, but it's not a given. (Haskell folks might have a different view due to their language being a closer match to the theory)

My sense is Category Theory is one of those things that is useful for explaining things in retrospect, rather than used as a constructive tool. It exposes inconsistencies in your current model, and helps clear up your thinking. John D. Cook wrote a piece on Applied Category Theory which makes the point that theory itself is perhaps less useful than the discipline of thinking categorically [1].

I think Category Theory can guide the design of certain types of tools that deal with relationships. LINQ (in C#) for instance was guided by category theory. If you wanted to come up with a new kind of SQL, category theory could be helpful in designing abstractions that are orthogonal and clean.

But the design of these types of tools remain a small, specialized domain within programming. It's somewhat analogous in my mind to metaclasses in Python: classes are sufficient for the most part, only framework developers will likely ever need metaclasses (to generate classes).

In most day-to-day programming, it seems unlikely that category theory will have as much an impact on practice as does, say, simple principles derived from functional programming. In fact, there may even be negative consequences from over-abstracting your code.

[1] [https://www.johndcook.com/blog/applied-category- theory/](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/applied-category-theory/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I found this really useful. I've had multiple, unsuccessful attempts at grokking category theory, and never really felt I got it. The closest was John Baez's online course [0].

I don't have a particular aptitude for maths (as an engineer by training, maths makes sense to me as a tool for solving problems - not as a source of study in and of itself).

Most all the introductions to CT I've read get into the maths very early. That's entirely understandable. I personally find I need a more intuitive description of the concepts first, using non-mathematical exemplars. OP is, thus far, the introduction that best articulates things for me in those intuitive terms.

That's in no way a criticism of more formal/abstract treatments: I've great admiration for those who naturally create and assimilate things that way. I wish I was one.

[0][https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/1717/welcome- to-...](https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/1717/welcome-to-the- applied-category-theory-course)

</comment><comment><USER19> This is the first explanation of Category Theory that I could relate to. I'd tried reading into it before, but quickly lost ground with all the theoremizing going on. As is typical with mathematics, once you understand it, it seems trivial. But getting there is not. So thanks for the map.

</comment><comment><USER20> In the trend of showing other people introductions to category theory, I recommend Peter Smith's "Category Theory: A Gentle Introduction", available online: [https://www.logicmatters.net/resources/pdfs/GentleIntro.pdf](https://www.logicmatters.net/resources/pdfs/GentleIntro.pdf)

It assumes a bit more knowledge coming in, but it's really what made the entire thing stick for me.

<comment><USER21> I'd add to that a complementary text by Barr and Wells:

 _Category Theory for Computing Science_ (Revised 2013)

[http://www.math.mcgill.ca/triples/Barr-Wells- ctcs.pdf](http://www.math.mcgill.ca/triples/Barr-Wells-ctcs.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Also nice:

Erik Meijer Explains it well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMP6gI5mLHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMP6gI5mLHc) (check out FP101 on edx) Statebox guys doing stuff with category theory, blockchain and petrinets: [https://www.youtube.com/user/wires0](https://www.youtube.com/user/wires0) [https://statebox.org/](https://statebox.org/) Graphical linear algebra: [https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/](https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/) Jules Hedges working on game theory : [https://julesh.com/](https://julesh.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> For those in the SF area, a group[1] recently started working through Bartosz Milewski's Category Theory for Programmers [2].

[1] [https://www.meetup.com/SF-Types-Theorems-and-Programming- Lan...](https://www.meetup.com/SF-Types-Theorems-and-Programming- Languages/events/255385123/) [2] [https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory- for-p...](https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for- programmers-the-preface/)

</comment><comment><USER24> What a wonderful introduction of category theory. I didn't know about it before reading this, but I must say I am intrigued.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you're in Amsterdam, FP-AMS is organizing a CT study group:

[https://www.meetup.com/nl-NL/fp-ams/](https://www.meetup.com/nl-NL/fp-ams/)

</comment><comment><USER26> So, category theory is the abstraction of abstractions? Is that what it's saying?

<comment><USER27> Set theory is a foundation for modeling abstract structures. Category theory is a foundation for modeling abstract structures together with structure preserving relationships between them.

(Once one has identity relationships then in fact the structures themselves can be disregarded and one is left with a study of simply structure preserving relationships.)</comment></comment>


A White iPhone 4 Is Confronted Regarding Its Inability to Be Shipped - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/10/anthropomorphized_white_iphone_4

<comment><USER2> I think Apple are avoiding shipping a white iPhone so they don't fragment the iPhone market like Android is ;)

<comment><USER3> Thank god. Fragmented phones are so hard to dial on, what with the keys all going off into different directions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From what I've heard it's because the buttons and the case are made by different companies and they can't get the colours to match. <http://www.reghardware.com/2010/10/15/white_iphone_spied/>

<comment><USER5> That's just hearsay. It's pretty hard to believe in the days of Pantone that two high-scale vendors cannot match colors.

There were also rumors that it had something to do with light and the camera (iow, white doesnt absorb light as well). Who knows?

Although I use their gear, I'm not known to say a lot of nice things about Apple, but I think this "fiasco" isn't. I applaud them for their apparent eye for QA in the matter.

These sorts of QA blunders are virtually routine for competitors like HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.

It sounds like Jobs announced the white iPhone 4 a bit too prematurely. Lesson learned, let's ditch the White i4 and move onto the next thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is such a legendary article. I love John's creativity.

<comment><USER7> Whatever you think of Gruber, his "anthropomorphized" articles are good for a laugh.

The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme: <http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/anthropomorphized>

iLife '06 From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal Interface: <http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/brushed_metal>

An Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal Interface Theme Shows Up for the WWDC Preview Build of Mac OS X Leopard: <http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/brushed_metal_leopard>

<comment><USER8> Wow, it's been years. These have always been, in my opinion, Gruber's greatest strength, even beyond readably plainspoken Apple analysis and a certain kindredness to Steve Jobs' perfectionist spirit. It's obvious how much he enjoys writing these; I have to wonder why he doesn't do them more often.

<comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of his "Translation from PR-Speak to English" articles. I wish he'd translate everything Ballmer says so I could understand what Microsoft is actually doing.

[http://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:daringfireball.net+translation...](http://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:daringfireball.net+translation+%22to+English%22)

<comment><USER10> The problem is that Ballmer, like Yang, doesn't actually know what he's trying to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Could they be deliberately holding back the white iPhone because there's nothing else due for 2011? Seems they could afford to skip an iteration and keep the same model for a while longer - it's now got most of the features that people thought were 'lacking' in earlier iPhones. I remember Nintendo or Sony shifting a ridiculous number of units just by releasing a white DS or PSP, a big release that was purely cosmetic.

<comment><USER12> Announcing a new color would be on thing, but deliberately holding back a product that was supposed to be available months ago sounds like a horrible idea to me and I don't think anyone would fall for it.

<comment><USER13> If Steve Jobs was selling it, I do think people would fall for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm neutral on getting a white iPhone but I would love to see an iPhone model that:

* had a Back button in Mobile Safari that consistently redisplayed a cached version of the previous web page, by default. use a portion of the flash space if needed for this cache

* had a way to temporarily disable device auto-rotate -- the bane of users who are moving or fidgeting or laying down

* Photo collection synching -- why is the only way I can get them off by selecting up to 4 at a time and emailing them to myself? They're just files. Copy them to your host desktop just like all those other files they've been synching for years.

...the color white? purty, but, not a substantive improvement like the above would be.

<comment><USER15> I used to jailbreak my iPhone solely to get a rotation lock — now in iOS 4 you can double-tap the home button to bring up the task list, swipe from left to right, and lock the current orientation with the button on the left.

<comment><USER14> thanks for tip. i've just tried it and it seems to only lock it into Portrait mode, regardless of which mode you really want. So you can't lock into Landscape orientation, for example. Frustrating. Baby step progress, at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure about other markets but in Canada I've been trying to get an iphone 4 since launch. I've been put on a waiting list that they say is 6+ months long. I hope Apple responds to its existing demand before trying to introduce new variations.

<comment><USER17> Wow, on my last visit to the UK I just walked into an Apple store and bought an unlocked one there and then for a friend. They had stacks of them in stock. (they _were_ selling one every 2 minutes or so though) The website says 1 week:

[http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...](http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=OTY2ODA2OQ)

Actually, the Canadian website says 2 weeks:

[http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iph...](http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=OTY2ODA2OQ)

So whoever you're trying to buy one from - they're messing you around.

<comment><USER18> That's the waiting time for an unlocked phone though. You can't order subsidized phones direct from Apple in Canada. You have to visit an Apple Retail Store or a store that carries phones from your carrier of choice.

If you're in a contract with a carrier, I'd suggest phoning them up and asking to speak with their retentions department. Talk to them about how you're thinking about leaving if you can't get an iPhone 4 soon. Most of the big carriers -- Rogers, Telus, Bell, and even Fido -- have taken orders through their retentions department. It really seems to depend on the day though, whether or not they can sell any. But it's worth a shot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Jacob confronted by the Man in Black

<comment><USER19> man, I really had no idea how unpopular that comment was going to be! Last time I mention that show ever again.

<comment><USER20> The problem is that it's completely off-topic, and, to people unfamiliar with the show, makes absolutely no sense.

<comment><USER19> I shall re-work my previous comment then... that's the last time I mention something off topic and vague here again. I shall save my nonsense for other forums.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Javascript mode for Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/js2-mode-new-javascript-mode-for-emacs.html

<comment><USER2> remotely related, but I've always wondered how hard it would be to do the opposite (for those who haven't read the article he mentions in the beginning that the round about goal of javascript mode is to eventually write emacs extensions in javascript); Would/could/should it be possible to use Lisp in a browser in place of javascript? you know, script type="text/lisp". Just totally replacing javascript for dom interaction etc. with lisp. Is that insanity or have other people thought similar things?

<comment><USER3> I'd love to be able to script in a browser in multiple different languages. I've been thinking about this lately. If we had some sort of lightweight VM embedded in the browser which took bytecode rather than interpreted source then many languages could successfully manipulate the DOM.

As much as I like this idea, I don't think it will gain very much traction. Since no browser currently implements such a thing, and there's not any standard which includes a VM for DOM manipulation, it is extremely difficult to reach critical mass to the point that you can depend on your audience to have access to execute any bytecode you embed in your web page.

Flash, Silverlight, and Air are VMs (I think?) which could be considered for this sort of project, and Flash at least has very high market penetration. But it's still a proprietary environment and I don't think I've ever seen it used for actual DOM manipulation, rather than as a self-contained "Walled Garden" of animations. Silverlight and Air are shooting for being platforms for rich client-side applications but they are not designed to be first-class citizens on the web, as part of the HTML / Javascript / CSS collection of standards.

The Google Web Toolkit takes an interesting tack on running multiple languages in a browser. They compile their language (in this case, Java) with the Javascript interpreter being the target platform. It's a neat idea but it feels kind of odd to me to compile down to an interpreted language. As the next generation of JIT Javascript interpreters come to prominence this will be less of a performance issue and more of an aesthetic one. The advantage here is that you can piggy-back on all of the Javascript advances as they come along.

Interpreting lisp, or any other language, from Javascript inside the browser feels klugey to me. It's just another layer of indirection which my gut instinct tells me will be very leaky, with a high performance overhead. I suppose you could write a VM in Javascript which executes compiled bytecode of your favored language. You'd then need to write a bytecode compiler for your language. At least you wouldn't need a separate interpreter for each language you wish to use in your page. But if you're going to have to write a compiler for your language (or at least a new compilation target for an existing compiler) why don't we compile down to Javascript rather than a new bytecode interpreter written in Javascript?

If we could get the standards bodies to bless one particular VM specification then developers could use whichever language they like to do DOM scripting. They could include their compiled scripts directly in the page. Javascript would probably be the default, and the browsers would including compilers down to this bytecode representation. That's actually not too far from what the browsers are doing with Javascript today. There's just not a standard for what the VM looks like.

Anyway, sorry for rambling on like that. It's Monday morning. I'd love to be able to have the capability to use whatever language I like for scripting a page, but I don't think it's very practical right now. Javascript is mostly Good Enough and has a lot of momentum in the browsers. In the long run I think that an open and standardized browser VM specification is the way to go but who knows when that will happen? In the short term if it's very important that you be able to use some nonstandard language for DOM scripting I think your best bet is to compile your language down to Javascript like the GWT does. That's an awful lot of effort though. I don't know how much advantage you will gain from doing that as opposed to just using Javascript in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think steve forgot the rest of his post. Short and to the point !

</comment><comment><USER5> Intriguing - I love to hear about hard programming challenges.

</comment><comment><USER6> People who wonder what's so great about Lisp's s-expression syntax should read the bit about indentation. _27k_ lines of code to do a good job of indenting C-like languages!</comment>


Behold the power of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/11/01/jesse-kline-behold-the-power-of-bitcoin

<comment><AUTHOR> Cogent article explaining bitcoin in layman's terms, in a balanced fashion.</comment>


How new data-collection technology might change office culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/how-new-data-collection-technology-might-change-office-culture-1.3196065 <comment><USER2> >>> Participation in the pilot project was optional and those who opted in were given contracts that made them owners of their own data.

"optional" like you have the choice in this free society : or you wear the damn badge or well, you find another job. But hey, you have choice, you have freedom.

ahahahaha !

>>> workers were given personalized dashboards that benchmarked their performance against that of the group.

rotfl:-) so you can reduce a human to a few metrics ?

>>> "The minute that you get the report that you're not speaking enough and that you don't show leadership, immediately, the next day, you change your behaviour,"

Hiring sheeps at Deloitte ? If they behave like that, they're not far away from Pavlov's dogs !

>>> "It's powerful to see how people want to display better behaviours or the behaviours that you're moving them towards."

Oh that little powerless, fragile geek now has a sense of POWER ! ah he's going to RULE the word. I'm sure he had got that little org4zm

>>> Generally, though, most companies are using these tools for positive ends

Ah, "generally" like 5.00001 out of 10 ?

Ah, it's for real ?

ouch

real like real ?

double hand palm :-(

damn... I really do have to find another planet, is there still room in the next human-without-return Mars mission ?

stF

</comment><comment><USER3> That sounds horrific.

All they need is the white boards to talk slogans at you and we are there.

Still I guess we've always been in a corporate war with Eurasian Tech Inc.</comment>


New 13" MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=11970455&postcount=941

<comment><USER2> The 13" Macbook Air has a 1440x900, the new Macbook Pro has a 1200x800 screen. The Air has a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 320M video card, the Pro has an integrated Intel card. Besides the CPU, why would I buy the Pro over the Air?

<comment><USER3> The 320M is usually considered an IGP and it's roughly the same performance as the Sandy Bridge IGP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If real, & the Thunderbolt I/O is indeed LightPeak, why would Apple consolidate the port into a Mini Display Port? Seems like an odd fit..

<comment><USER5> _why would Apple consolidate the port into a Mini Display Port?_

Plug. Plug. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does it have a DVD drive? (Hoping no.)

EDIT: Darn! (Yes, it does.)

</comment><comment><USER6> Faaaaaake. That's the mini display port. I call bs on this.</comment>


Not All Blue Noise Is Created Equal - <AUTHOR> https://blog.demofox.org/2018/08/12/not-all-blue-noise-is-created-equal/ <comment><USER2> Demofox is a jerk!</comment>


Ask HN: UI/UX Feedback on Our Localization Solution Please? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

Would really appreciate it if you can take a minute to test out [https://www.Bablic.com](https://www.Bablic.com) \- just enter any URL you'd like to translate (preferably your own website) and select the language you want to add.

You can then manually edit all of the elements you see (text, images, css, error msgs, forms, etc) just by right-clicking on them in the user-friendly, visual, editor.

Once you're happy with the results just click ACTIVATE NOW to get the one line of code which will translate your whole website.

Would really like to get some feedback from the community on the whole user experience.

I'll offer one month free on any of our paid plans to anyone from here who has any constructive feedback!

Thank you!</comment>


Using quantum memory to dodge Heisenberg uncertainty - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/quantum-memory-may-topple-heisenbergs-uncertainty-principle.ars

<comment><USER2> Next up: dodging thermodynamics, and our perpetual motion future.

From the article: "The research paper, thought a bit esoteric and lacking in detail, supports its argument with math involving Hilbert systems and entropy."

Right. Lacking in detail. Sprinkling in math that no one quite sees as relevant (yet, perhaps). And this is being taken seriously? Really, Ars, you guys are getting more tabloid every day. But if it's published in Nature...

<comment><USER3> well, no, the math involving Hilbert "systems" and entropy is not esoteric as such. See for example <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem>

I agree that Ars should have tempered the sensationalist headline.</comment></comment>


California lawmakers approve data-privacy bill opposed by Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-privacy/california-lawmakers-approve-data-privacy-bill-opposed-by-silicon-valley-idUSKBN1JO35Y <comment><AUTHOR> > Google senior vice president Sridhar Ramaswamy: "User privacy needs to be > thoughtfully balanced against legitimate business needs."

Sure, that's not wrong. It's just that the market cannot achieve that balance on its own.</comment>