Ask HN: What is the most socially positive startup/product of all time ever - <AUTHOR> Wondering your opinion on what you think the most socially positive startup or product is - one that is truly set to effect change (health, society, government etc)? <comment><USER2> The most positive product would be probably be the pill or the condom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of the current crop: Watsi.

</comment><comment><USER4> Open source software

</comment><comment><USER5> Penicillin</comment>


Honduras deal sets stage for investors to build 3 privately run cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/honduras-deal-sets-stage-for-investors-to-build-3-privately-run-cities-to-host-new-industries/2012/09/05/0f2da120-f7cc-11e1-a93b-7185e3f88849_story.html

<comment><USER2> Wow, Omni Consumer Products (<http://robocop.wikia.com/wiki/Omni_Consumer_Products>) is real!

</comment><comment><USER3> Ultra Modern Slave: What is the price for water?

Private Gov't: We see in our bank records that you can afford $500 a month. We already started taking that out of your account.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are they going to issue company scrip too?

<comment><USER3> Nah, just a web page showing how much in debt you are to the company.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SeekingVisa – USCIS Visa Bulletin Instant Alerts and Graphs - <AUTHOR> https://www.seekingvisa.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

This was originally a script running in my desktop and used only by me, but I made it into a site when I realized many of my friends wanted to keep an eye on the USCIS Visa bulletins every month as well. If you're one of us that keeps checking USCIS bulletins every month, then site is for you. You get an email as soon as the bulletin is released and you can see what changed this month instantly. No more refreshing the state department's site manually.

I'm very eager to see any feedback on what is / is not useful with the site.

<comment><USER2> I'm not your target user, but my intuition is that many people:

1\. Know what category of visa they've applied for

2\. Know their priority date

3\. Need just two pieces of information: (i) is my priority date being processed already?, (ii) if not, how many months are there between my priority date and the priority date of applications that are being processed.

So having just those two pieces of information in an email could be helpful.

As I said, I'm not your target user, so I could be way off!

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now when they land on the website, they can see which priority dates are current, although they don't get to see a customized view of how many days behind the dates are from _their_ priority dates. Thanks for the feedback, that would also be useful information in the email that goes out as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Awesome-Deep-Learning-Resources: Rough list of deep learning resources - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guillaume-chevalier/Awesome-Deep-Learning-Resources <comment><USER2> It will be nice to add list of pre-trained models.</comment>


Drug prices will fall sharply as patents expire - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/healthcare/articles/2011/07/25/drug_prices_will_fall_sharply_as_patents_expire/

<comment><USER2> Wait, wait... aren't patents supposed to _encourage_ R&D? The monopoly rent from a patent is supposedly the only way to encourage firms to do R&D, to innovate rather than copy.

And aren't patents getting stronger based on case law? The i4i vs Microsoft thing re-affirmed quite a strict standard as to patent validity. I know it's nothing compared to how copyrights are being made stronger and stronger, but still, patents are being made stronger.

Shouldn't we be seeing _more_ innovation on that basis? There's a general trend towards strong "intellectual property" protections, and Big Pharma has been the industry pushing that kind of thing pretty hard.

So where's the real problem? Big Pharma R&D not working, FDA getting irrational about approvals, Big Pharma coasting for the past N years? Biology research has hit the limits of what it can do?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Twenty drug approvals in the United States this year, and others in the next few years, will help replace the revenue"

They make that statement at the end of the article in an almost offhand way, but no analysis I have seen for _any_ of the big pharmas shows them anywhere near to replacing lost revenue from the near-term patent expirations. We are in a period of the fewest approvals for new drugs than almost any time since the beginning of the FDA (and similar regulatory agencies around the world). The industry is in bad shape, and there seems to be no relief for the lack of R&D productivity any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to hear somewhat-reasonable cynicism over this, that the drug companies could just make some minor change (add more sugar) and repatent it. Did this ever work, and does it no longer apply?

<comment><USER3> While the changes are often less trivial than "adding more sugar" the drug companies have been using their ability to modify drugs slightly to extend patent life. This essentially got them through the last 10 years in many cases. But for most of the big money making drugs, they're out of options. It's interesting to me (having worked for 8 years in pharma R&D) how little the general public and news media have been reporting on the slowly unfolding total meltdown of big pharma. They have been shedding jobs and down-sizing for quite some time. The whole drug business is in complete shambles with lousy R&D productivity and very little good news on the horizon. This is one of the main reasons I left the industry.</comment></comment>


Einstein's "The World as I See It" New Edition Missing Tons of Original Content - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/review/R3LUYM3Q7VF4D9/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=080650711X&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books#wasThisHelpful <comment><AUTHOR> My German friends had suggested that I read "Mein Weltbild" as it contains a lot of the worldview of Einstein. I tried to look up the English edition for it (now published by a major American publishing house) and it seems like a lot of content on "politics, fascism, Judaism, peace and science" is missing!

Anyone knows where to get an unabridged english version of the book?</comment>


Ask HN: Can I create an online verson of a trademarked card game? (UNO) - <AUTHOR>

I've created a few javascript card games [1] over the last few months. For my next project I'd like to create the game UNO. Mattel apparently owns the trademark and copyright for UNO, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. If I create an UNO game can they sue me, or send me a cease-and-desist, or something like that? I'm outside the US if that makes any difference.
I also know that there are dozens of UNO games out there already, I have a hard time believing that all of them cleared it with Mattel first. Are they just hoping that Mattel doesn't notice? Or is it enough to have a disclaimer saying something about "UNO is a registered trademark of Mattel, no affiliation etc."?
I have actually sent an email to Mattel, they have a special email address where people can request permission, but they say it might take 4-8 weeks for an answer, so I thought I'd ask here first :)
EDIT: UNO is played with a special deck of cards, just to be clear, so there is something there more than just the gameplay.
[1] http://www.spades-cardgame.com , there are links on there to all the others. <comment><USER2> As the Uno card game is played using a specially designed pack of cards then it is fairly clear that the game is covered by copyright as well as a Trademark. Copying without permission would definitely be a no-no.

Stick to games using the standard 52 card pack and you should be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> But is Copyright/Trademarks international? I live in Denmark, would that make any difference?

<comment><USER3> Yes - the Berne Convention is an international "we'll respect everyone else's copyrights" agreement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, guess that's not going to work then :/. Unless I move to some country that's not part of the convention...

<comment><USER2> Why not create something new instead of pirating someone else's work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With legal questions, you should ask a lawyer (based in your jurisdiction).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm starting by just asking Mattel if it's OK. If they just say no I'll find some other game to do. But I'm hoping they'll say it's fine with some disclaimer or something, because I'd really like to create the game :/

<comment><USER5> If they say no, I'd suggest Milles Bornes - a French card game from the 50s I used to play and love until I lost the cards back around the turn of the century :(</comment></comment></comment>


The OSI model is a lie - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/erratarob/status/1166451306183254016 <comment><USER2> > The OSI Model was created by an international standards organization

Except it wasn't, really. They held an open competition for proposals, and Honeywell was the only entity which submitted any thing. So Honeywell's proposal won. It was literally the only option given. _That_ 's how we got the OSI model.

</comment><comment><USER3> threadreader: [https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1166451306183254016.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1166451306183254016.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> ...in other current news, fire was discovered...

(Does the guy think his "revelation" is news, and his delivery edgy?)</comment>


American kids would much rather be YouTubers than astronauts - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/american-kids-would-much-rather-be-youtubers-than-astronauts/ <comment> m-i-l Children will only say they want to be things they are exposed to and understand. Looking at the list for nowadays, it still includes teachers, athletes and musicians, which they see in the media and might be able to imagine themselves doing. It doesn't include things like lawyers and computer programmers, which aren't careers children are particularly aware of, and even if they were they wouldn't fully appreciate. So the story here is simply that astronauts aren't in the media as much as they were during the Space Race and Cold War. Don't think it is anything to worry about - they'll probably change their minds by the time they grow up anyway. And who knows, by the time they grow up there might be new careers that we can't even imagine these days (I can pretty much guarantee that almost no-one would have imagined jobs like "social media influencer" and "machine learning data cleanser" when I was young).

<comment><USER2> " It doesn't include things like lawyers and computer programmers"

When my daughter was in 4th or 5th grade they had a "career day" in which students could meet parents who were in jobs they found interesting. I offered to talk with kids about being a software developer. The organizer contacted me the day before to let me know that nobody signed up to talk with me. I was a bit crestfallen. ;-)

<comment><USER3> I'm sure if you would have said you could make video games, you'd have a huge line of kids!

<comment><USER4> This was exactly the segue my colleague would use when speaking to school children about computer science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take this from a former airforce pilot: the more you learn about the reality of such jobs, the less you want to do them. Infighting, backstabbing, constant testing by people whose _job_ is to fail you, zero room for creativity, and near-zero input into how and where you live your life... it's not worth it.

Then when you finally get up at the controls of that cool plane your time is broken down into 5-minute increments. More tests. More senerios. More chances to fail. And if you do fail, all that effort means absolutely nothing in any other job or trade. There is a joke in TopGun about them going from f14s to driving trucks. That isnt too far from reality. Look into what entry-level commercial/civilian pilots make.

That said ... i did have a big smile on my face while doing my first aerobatics in a proper plane. 5 minutes of smile after 4+ years of testing.

<comment><USER6> An airforce pilot must have some pull at the bar though...

<comment><USER7> Sure, but you don't have to be an airforce pilot to say you're one at a bar. Why go to all that effort?

<comment><USER8> I like the way you think :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So do you want to have a creative carrier where you are your own boss, and you'll touch the lives of other people directly.

Or do you want to train you whole life to sit in LEO half a summer to push buttons.

Makes sense to me.

<comment><USER10> I'm hoping you have the minority opinion here!

"Youtuber" doesn't mean being your own boss at all. It means being a pretense for advertising, and having your sole source of income depends on the whims of a gigantic monopoly.

<comment><USER11> As opposed to a NASA astronaut, who must spend his or her days laboring under the regulations of the US Government, and whose sole income depends on the whims of its gigantic monopoly.

<comment><USER10> So you're comparing the income stability of a "government type" job to the high-volatility of advertising dollars coming from the quickly moving trends of online platforms?

<comment><USER11> In theory, all government employees could be fired tomorrow, if it pleases Congress, the President, and the Courts.

<comment><USER12> In theory all YouTubers could be "fired" tomorrow if it pleases Google (to shut down, demonitize, or otherwise alter YouTube).

I'd put that as significantly more likely, not that either one is very likely at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Post-Apollo they've always preferred whatever the contemporary version of "rock star" is to Astronaut. Non-story.

<comment><USER14> And during Apollo, the Astronauts kind of were a contemporary version of "rock star": they were chosen from a pool of daring test pilots, they drove fancy custom Corvettes, etc. As the initial problems with space flight were worked out, space flight increasingly become a specialization for science and engineering than something for highly qualified dare devils with "the right stuff".

I'm more intrigued by the disparity in China - they seem to be in a similar phase to Apollo, where there's massive national support for the program and it's attached to a sense of national pride. I wonder if it's also that culturally they've tended to more aggressively exhaust natural resources so colonization elsewhere feels like a more natural next step.

<comment><USER15> It's still very much something for highly qualified 'dare devils.' Around 4% of all astronauts have ended up dying 'on the job.' It's getting safer, but it's still one of the most risky jobs there is. For instance the Soyuz is the safest and most well tested launch system ever invented having flown some 1700 times - far surpassing any other rocket. Yet even there as recently as about 9 months ago there was a near catastrophe. This [1] is a video of the incident. Everything's going perfectly fine and nominal until one of the infinite number of things that can go wrong did go wrong, and the crew nearly lost their lives. Anecdotes such as this mean alot when we're only launching a handful of people to space per year.

This [2] is the American astronaut on the trip - Nick Hague. MIT masters in aerospace engineering, decorated colonel in the air force who acted as a test pilot for a wide array of different fighter craft, deployed for five months to Iraq where he enaged in experimental recon and flew combat missions, and so on. And that's a pretty typical resume.

I think a problem we have is that NASA administration have for years been just abysmal at getting the public interested in space. And this is a core requirement for their continued successful operation. Public interest drives funding. Without it, you get what NASA has turned into today -- huge chunks of their funding going to go-nowhere pork barrel projects and the youth of society preferring to post videos on the internet than go to space.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l5QBmqQoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0l5QBmqQoI)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hague](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hague)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Astronauts were hugely famous with massive amounts of media coverage in 1969. Who's to say this isn't just about wanting to be someone famous, whether that's an astronaut in 1969 or a YouTuber in 2019?

</comment><comment><USER17> Becoming a YouTuber is much more likely then being an astronaut ever was, so this may be a good thing.

<comment><USER18> You'd be surprised : there are more astronauts alive than YouTubers with >10M subscribers.

<comment><USER19> Wow, I think you are right. 422 youtubers with >10e6 subscribers [1], 536 people have been to space [2].

[1] [https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/500/mostsubscribed](https://socialblade.com/youtube/top/500/mostsubscribed) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nam...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_name)

<comment><USER20> The number of _active_ astronauts though is a lot lower than the number of _active_ YouTubers with a lot of subscribers. Also, 10M subscribers is a lot. One of my favorite YouTube channels has about 1M subscribers.

[https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQO...](https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCZdQjaSoLjIzFnWsDQOv4ww)

SocialBlade estimates their earnings as being _at a minimum_ $4k per month. But the range is up to $56k per month. They also have a patreon where they have almost 4k people donating at least $1 per video, although when they last had their donation amounts public the average was substantially higher. IIRC that was was close to $10k per video. At four videos a month, that's $40k per month. They also were basically given a $1M boat by a luxury boating company, and many of their videos are sponsored by Audible or Squarespace.

So, at least for this channel, $500k/y in revenue is a pretty conservative estimate, although I'd bet even money they make more than $1M per year. I think setting the bar of "famous and successful" at 10M subs is too high.

<comment><USER21> > SocialBlade estimates their earnings as being at a minimum $4k per month. > But the range is up to $56k per month.

By comparison, a "software engineer that works for YouTube" might have total gross compensation of about $35K/month, and there are > 1000 of them. Both your off-ramps and your reach goals are better too: if you don't get to be a software engineer that works for YouTube, you could get roughly equivalent compensation at any FAANG, a little bit less (but still six figures) at another software company, or if you're lucky and brave, found the next Twitch and sell it for a billion dollars. Your earnings on YouTube fall off much more dramatically if you don't get to the 1M subscriber mark.

You're almost always better off going into the unglamorous profession that enables (and controls the purse strings to) the glamorous profession than going into the glamorous profession itself.

<comment><USER20> There are ~12k YouTubers with >1M subs, though, so the math is a little more generous than those with 10M subs. Also, remember that this couple has more sources of income than just YouTube revenue. There are surely some YouTube engineers making >$1M/y, but not very many. And none of them have a job called "living on a boat and doing fun boat things," nor can most of them boast a basic cost of living south of $40k.

NOW, none of this should be taken as an endorsement of YouTuber as a viable career path for most people. You are, I think, correct that your expected value is much better if you pursue software engineering. Especially if you're not extremely attractive, multi-talented, adventurous, and highly risk- tolerant. It is also a lot of work to make these videos -- SLV had one video where they went over the actual process of making their videos, and it is a six day a week job. But I want to make sure we're being fair to the YouTuber lifestyle here. For the ones that make it, very decent or even insanely good money is possible -- more than most people realize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This says way more about the US, and NASA than the kids today.

The US doesn't have a shuttle fleet. We beg the Russians for a ride to space if we need one.

I grew up watching the shuttle flights, I'm 41, I watched every one I could when I was a kid, including Challenger and Columbia.

I was in the 2nd grade during the Challenger disaster, we watched the launch live in the classroom. It still upsets me to think about it. And after that disaster, we rebuilt ourselves, we did better, and we pressed on.

My children will never have an emotional attachment to space travel like that because the US does not have an effective space program.

So, of course, the kids don't want to be astronauts. They want to be whatever we the adults, model for them. And, collectively, we've been some shitty role models lately.

</comment><comment><USER23> I mean if the space industry/tourism takes off in the next couple decades like it's poised to, kids in this generation will have a better chance of getting to space as a private citizen than by becoming an astronaut.

The title of astronaut will likely start to change in meaning as well. Perhaps in the future it will just be a catch-all term for those who work directly in outer space as opposed to tourists or onboard staff.

<comment><USER24> Or it'll just become like "pilot"

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So they choose to play with videogames and makeup in their room, instead the super-dangerous activity that could freeze, burn, asphyxiate, mutilate or kill them with 99% of probability if something fails, and will temporarily destroy their muscles and health if all goes 100% ok?

Such smart kids. Their parents should be proud.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am really proud to see teacher at #2 it looks like in all 3 countries, a great profession we just need to comp more.

<comment><USER27> In the US teaching's in an interesting position, being one of the only salaried jobs with reasonable amounts of time off (once you take out the parts of Summer teachers are actually working—planning, late Summer meetings and such, plus the extra hours during the school year, it's still quite a bit better than most US jobs) that you don't have to fight or compromise to attain, and one of the only ones where taking lots of parental leave—even repeatedly—isn't likely to do serious harm to your career. The schedule also matches up pretty well with when one's kids are out of school, both during and outside the school year. It's probably the most family-friendly common job there is by a long shot, _and_ there are teaching jobs anywhere there are people so it's relocation-friendly.

<comment><USER28> The reason that taking parental leave doesn't hurt your career is because if you stay a classroom teacher, you have no opportunity for advancement. And although salary ranges vary widely by district, there are many districts where your salary doesn't change by more than 20% over 30 years. So it isn't really treated as a career in the sense you've used it as much as it is employment.

<comment><USER29> Teacher -> Principal -> Superintendent -> County Executive

Obviously, not everyone wants to go up the management chain, but engineers don't always go to middle-management or C-level either.

<comment><USER27> Also: consulting, curriculum design, instructional coaching and a bunch of other options, if you care to aim for them. Granted a lot of them are more likely to be parasitical than actual teaching is (though each of them _can_ be useful and good!), but status, pay, and autonomy failing to track _actually effective and useful work_ is hardly limited to the teaching field. It's kinda the norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Popular YouTubers will easily be able to afford a trip or two to space in their lifetime, so it kind of makes sense?

</comment><comment><USER31> Kids in the 80s wanted to be rock stars, it's just the trend

<comment><USER32> No we didn't.

We just wanted to party :)

90s wanted to be a rockstar

80s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk)

90s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmeUuoxyt_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmeUuoxyt_E)

<comment><USER33> Speak for yourself. I wanted to be an inventor. Mission accomplished.

Edit: I wonder if Back to the Future played a role in this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Back in my day, American kids would much rather be rock stars than astronauts

<comment><USER35> They would rather be/have been rock stars than be astronauts.

They would rather have "walked on the moon" than played a sold out MSG.

Surely none of the youtube kids of today could resist the selfie opportunities of a moonwalk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> In my head this sounds pretty bad. this sounds like kids won't be aspiring to be in a career that naturally involves some degree of curiosity and wonder and general coolness (astronaut), but rather some rando on YouTube with a pop filter and fast editing that already thinks he knows everything. And calls out people, and talks trash, and shows off and constantly tells people to buy them stuff on Amazon and support his content on Patreon or whatever.

...Fuck, our kids are gonna be assholes.

<comment><USER37> Or kids want to be kids. They want to do things that they like such as playing games, hanging out (podcast), or reviewing tech/games/fashion/beauty. They want to do them with people they like. They want to share the experience with other people. That's one form of a YouTuber.

There are bad actors in this space. There are bad actors in every space. Should we label children who want to start a business assholes since companies like Nestle and Uber exist? Should we label children who want to be politicians assholes since some politicians vote for whoever pays the most? Should we label children who want to be scientific researchers assholes since we know some researchers fudge their findings to keep funding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think this is just down to the modern media technology/trends and kids lifestyles these days. When kid media staples such as Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Bill Nye the science guy, etc. is replaced by pop-style/hyper-paced youtube stars, what can you expect?

Would an average 8 year old be drawn towards 'Neil Armstrong or Chris Hadfield' or towards a popular youtube star close to their own age group?

</comment><comment><USER39> Kids are smart, being an astronaut is a dangerous and pointless job, like doing motorcycle stunts or BASE jumping.

<comment><USER40> Is BASE jumping a job? I met a tower climber once. He loved his job, and I bet if he could he'd jump off some of the structures he works on.

"Tower climber" or "tower technician" seem to be the common terms according to Google. But the person I met used an unfamiliar, archaic term to describe himself, which I can't recall. Anyone know?

EDIT: Steeplejack! I think Jim Phelan was the guy I met: [http://www.uphigh.com/](http://www.uphigh.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It makes sense. Kids not too long ago wanted to be tv stars because that was all they watched. I think tv has been on its way out for years and youtube has mostly filled the void. Now they just watch youtube. 'Celebrities' to them are primarily youtube celebs.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm 31 and would certainly rather be a Youtuber than an astronaut.

</comment><comment><USER43> Kids used to want to be movie stars. Has anything changed?

</comment><comment><USER44> Why should kids become astronauts! It is low paid and is one of the most riskiest job with long term health issues. Kids these days are practical.

</comment><comment><USER45> Considering that some astronauts turned youtubers, or netflix documentary actors, the famous once at least. Can you blame them?

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm starting to think that some people believe that the kids are not all right. Oh no.

</comment><comment><USER47> You can be both a YouTuber _and_ an astronaut. They are not mutually exclusive.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Not without getting everything signed off by ten layers of risk-adverse media- conscious management. Imagine the hysteria if Buzz Aldrin spoke his mind on youtube!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> how much work you seeing Astronauts get in the last decade?

<comment><USER49> Yeah it's also not very fun to go into space. The food's alright but there's not much atmosphere

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> kids these days

</comment><comment><USER51> Perhaps this is because all the astronauts they see are 40+ years old and are simply not cool/popular. Whereas, all the YouTubers they see are 20 something and are incredibly popular?

Short answer, it's cool to be a YouTuber.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is why nobody under 30 should be allowed to vote because this poll wouldn't change much if it were conducted with 25 year olds..

<comment><USER53> Please post substantive comments instead. I would also assume that a majority of 50 year olds would rather work on their own time making good content than have a short lived, strenuous, and micromanaged career in lower earth orbit. Doesn't mean those 50 year olds have bad opinions or should be dismissed.

<comment><USER52> it's not intended to be dismissive of an individual's dream, but a 50 year old today is less likely to be a product of a failed education system than a 12 year old today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> We don't invest in Nasa like we did and it doesn't capture the heart of the nation like it once did. NASA cannot even gets its own astronauts to space. Little wonder children instead look the the rockstars of their generation.</comment>


State surveillance of personal data: what is the society we wish to protect? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/state-surveillance-data-tom-stoppard

<comment><USER2> The main problem with this question, and the article generally, is that it assumes the State acts with a single intent, as a single (bad) actor. It doesn't.

There are too many competing interests - political, bureacratic, targets, self-interest - at play for us to consider it as 'masters in a delusionary nightmare'. If you want to start unpicking the state assemblages of surveillance - those competing, overlapping conglomerations of self-interest and preservation - then you need to look at how we allowed them to come to be in the first place, and acknowledge that the reasons don't just apply in surveillance: state assemblages of surveillance are emanations of capital, and they serve (mainly) to protect capital, not people, so we should do away with any pretence of 'optimal security'.</comment>


Reduce that feeling of lonely coding (working) - <AUTHOR> https://hipstersound.co/?play <comment><USER2> What a horrible idea. I am sure it will appeal to some though.</comment>


Everything is a Remix - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/14912890

<comment><USER2> "There is nothing new under the sun" was first said before there was writing. It was wrong then and it's wrong now ... there will always be a fine line between copying and creating, and if you give a damn, your job is to stay on the right side of that line. The argument in the video is that the line doesn't exist.</comment>


Security researcher: I keep getting detained by feds - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20023341-245.html?tag=mncol;title

<comment><USER2> It appears that Mr. Appelbaum's cell phone _named names_.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist>

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men...

"We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

\--Edward R. Murrow, _See It Now_ , commenting on the McCarthy Witchhunts

<comment><USER3> I'm not convinced it's fair to compare the McCarthy black lists to the ongoing investigation of a spectacular crime.

I respect people's opinions regarding the _ethics_ of Wikileaks, but any US citizen who abetted the disclosure of classified military documents is _prima facie_ involved in a serious criminal incident. I don't think the ethics behind the documents leaked justify that crime. Others do. That's fine. But it's probably not reasonable to suggest that the government shouldn't investigate that crime aggressively.

I'm not in love with the doctrine that says you give up the 4th Amendment at the US Border (I buy the motivation behind it, but we appear to overtly abuse that motivation to conduct searches that have nothing to do with securing our borders or stopping contraband). So I wouldn't want to suggest that Moxie has no reason to be upset. Sure, he does. I feel bad for him.

But the abuse of the border search doctrine is not some new encroachment of the US shadow secret police. It's been a fact of life for many decades. Drive to Canada and back sometime to see how bad it gets just for normal people.

<comment><USER4> Notice the part where the TSA randomly pulls him off a plane to give him an extra pat-down. Even if the government believes Marlinspike is somehow involved in the Wikileaks controversy, and even if you think the government is fully justified in aggressively pursuing the Wikileakers, that doesn't justify the kind of petty harassment you see here. There's absolutely no reason to think Marlinspike or anyone else allegedly affiliated with Wikileaks would try to hijack or blow up an airplane. This is simply the government abusing its discretion to harass someone it doesn't like. And it's not limited to border security. American citizens on domestic flights are subject to the same sort of harassment, with no meaningful process to determine why you're being harassed or contest the basis for the harassment. It might not be as bad as McCarthyism, but it's flatly inconsistent with the Constitution.

<comment><USER3> This is a kaleidoscope of arguments, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. Should TSA be singling Moxie out? Of course not. TSA also shouldn't be handing people to the police for drug offenses. TSA is a debacle.

Should the country be abusing border integrity for domestic law enforcement? No, I don't think so, but, as a pragmatist, I recognize that this ship has _thoroughly_ sailed, it is long past the horizon, and the very fastest cigarette boat of an argument I can devise has no hope of catching up to it.

Is it "unconstitutional" for someone with a demonstrable connection to someone else who is the focus of a major criminal investigation to be questioned? I can't see how anyone could defend that argument. I feel bad for Moxie, and I wish it took a warrant to search people at the border, but I simply don't think this is harassment.

<comment><USER2> Your last paragraph has a nice focused point to discuss. The problem (as I see it from the comfort of my armchair) is not whether Moxie should be searched or questioned, it's _how_. For example, if the police appear at his home and bring him in for questioning, there are a nice series of legal rights and procedures in place to ensure that the investigation is performed properly.

Likewise, if the police wish to search his laptop or phone, there are again a nice series of procedures in place that Americans have already agreed are in society's best interests to enforce.

I would never suggest that the police do not do their job according to the rules in place. I am suggesting that using the border search rules to perform an investigation of an associate of a suspect gives the _appearance_ that the police are avoiding the proper procedures because they don't have the evidence and cause to question him or search his laptop and phone.

This, I argue, undermines the credibility of the investigation, which is of great harm to society as a whole.

<comment><USER3> I don't like what happened to Moxie.

But: there is a pair of subtexts in the gestalt of the discussion about his border drama that I have a hard time accepting.

The first subtext is the notion that the US government is now harassing security researchers. That notion attaches itself to the headlines being written: "security researcher stopped at border". No. "Security researcher" wasn't stopped. "Affiliate of Wikileaks volunteer" was stopped.

The second subtext is that questioning an affiliate of a Wikileaks volunteer would constitute harassment. Words mean things. Harassment describes government interventions whose sole purpose is to cause discomfort to targets. But an actual crime took place. It wasn't a small crime; it was a criminal event of fairly epic proportions. It may well be mitigated by the ethics of whistleblowing (I don't think so, but respect people who do, and count many of them as friends). Aggressive investigation of epic criminal events is not harassment; it's a central part of the government's charter.

(Did you make any of these claims? I don't care to find out. My issue is with the subtexts, not with any particular person's argument.)

The rest of this discussion, about the justice/injustice of border searches and whatnot... I have less strong opinions about. I've been searched aggressively at US borders. I didn't like it. I thought it was wrong. I researched it, read a bunch of court opinions on it, and came to the conclusion that much like the interpretation of our Second Amendment that guns should be minimally regulated, this is a settled bit of American law that I'm going to have to learn to dislike passively.

<comment><USER2> I agree with disputing both subtexts. The OP does not suggest that security researches are being targeted for searches. I certainly don't disagree with the notion of investigating a suspect's associates under certain circumstances.

Given your feelings about the subtexts, I think I understand your comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "There is someone somewhere who wants access to something on my laptop or my phone and they can't just come and ask me for it. And they can't get a warrant without suspicion. So, they wait for me to travel internationally because at the border they can do anything they want."

</comment><comment><USER6> The United States is quickly becoming a police state. It's downright shameful and it's propelled by a combination of over-zealous, vote-seeking politicians and, most frighteningly, citizen apathy.

<comment><USER7> Hasn't it always been that way?

(for some values of always)

<comment><USER8> No. That's just what they want you to believe. If "it's always been this way" then there's no point fighting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really feel sad for him. He must've worked hard to become a specialist in his area and to be able to pay his trips and meet potential business clients abroad in person (no, businesses are not run by sitting home, even if you are a programmer, meeting in person has a great role).

The US are pissed off by WikiLeaks, they treat it like a terrorist organization, so they have their right to act like they do, but not all people have to be damaged. As I see it this guy is pinned down because of something the other guy has done, maybe he doesn't even know what that is...

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems like an awesome reason to use a Dropbox-esque cloud service. Pull down encrypted files when you need them; don't keep anything on the machines you travel with, and then reimage the drive after the MiB have played with it.

Or would putting your files on a secured server somewhere actually leave them more open to snooping?

</comment><comment><USER11> "His laptop is encrypted and the text messages and call history on his phones are encrypted. He declined to provide his password when agents asked him for it."

Crypto for the win! I wish we'd hear about more cases of this happening.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some smart-ass made the comment on the article: "I feel bad for that animal on his head."

EDIT: Marlinspike's web-page ( <http://www.thoughtcrime.org/> ), for those interested in making non-smart-ass comments. :)</comment>


The 'Unfilmable' Ender's Game's 28 Years in Development Hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/91066/endgame-the-unfilmable-enders-games-28-years-in-development-hell <comment><USER2> At the end of the audiobook, Card talks at length about the difficulties getting an Ender's Game movie made.

One problem was that the studios always wanted to make Ender an older teenager and to give him a love interest.

Another was that the screenplay was always challenging because most of the book takes place inside Ender's head. Once he figured out that he could tell Ender's thought processes through Bean, it finally opened up the screenplay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok - now that we've had _Ender 's Game_ made into a pretty decent movie can we get _Use of Weapons_? :-)

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/11/sci_fi_poll/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/11/sci_fi_poll/)

<comment><USER4> I would throw money at anyone who made a Culture movie (as ironic as that action would be).

Also, what about a Vorkosigan movie? Though I think it'd actually work pretty well as a TV show, with either hour-long episodes (one per book) or even with 2-4 shorter episodes per book.

<comment><USER3> The scene where Zakalwe visits the Ethnarch Kerian could make a splendid "cold open" introducing the Culture and Zakalwe in a suitably dark fashion....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remarkable book.

I remember coming across the book as a teenager, having vaguely heard of it as 'good', and then staying up until 5 AM reading it.

I can think of no more than a couple other books that had this effect on me.

<comment><USER6> It's definitely a 1-sitting book. Don't pick it up if you have any responsibilities the next day.

<comment><USER7> Wow. How true. I started reading this book in college one night right before bed (~8 or 9). I finished it at 4am.

I had no idea this book had a similar effect on others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I strongly encourage everyone to abstain from buying the book or seeing the movie. You're lining Orson Scott Card's bigoted pockets to oppress sexual minorities.

<comment><USER9> People like you are far more dangerous, in our times, than Orson Scott Card could ever be.

<comment><USER10> Asking people not to contribute money to bigots is dangerous? What?

<comment><USER11> Well, in this case I can't speak of it being dangerous, but it can be a bad precedent and have unintended consequences.

Let's just go with the notion that Card is expressing his opinion on the matter. He has a right to this opinion, whether you agree with it or even if you consider it right or wrong.

But anytime someone is allowed to shut down an opposing viewpoint it will eventually lead to problems. Once someone has the ability to shut down one opposing viewpoint they disagree with, then they will have the power to shut down any viewpoint they disagree with. Possibly even shutting down a viewpoint they think is of the opposition when it's likely it's not, such as a misunderstanding or being inarticulate.

The difference being, a person actually has to commit actions against another human being to for a reaction need to take place. If someone says he doesn't like gays, fine, let the guy state his outdated rant and get on with your day. The moment the guy actually discriminates or commits an illegal act, then do something.

As for consequences, this movie is an excellent example. If you boycott the movie because of your disagreement with Card, then you are hurting far more people then you will ever hurt Card. Another example, the Chik-Fil-A boycott a while back. That hurt local businesses run by local owners who employ local people far more than the dude at the top that still got paid no matter how much chicken you refused to eat.

If anyone has the generic "you seem to defend what I don't like so I dislike you" reaction to this post, you are practically proving my point.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand. Card has the right to express his opinion but I don't have the right to express mine?

Deciding not to pay for a product is somehow dangerous? Expressing my opinion to other people and asking them to do the same is dangerous?

If Card is allowed to say hateful things, then I'm allowed to tell people about it and recommend that they not give him money. It is not logically possible for you to accept the former without also accepting the latter.

<comment><USER9> Are you being willfully obtuse, or deliberately misleading? No one said you weren't _allowed_ to express your opinion, recommend anything you want, that you _didn't have the right_ to say what you want, etc. Why do you pretend that anyone did?

<comment><USER10> The original comment up there said, "People like you are far more dangerous, in our times, than Orson Scott Card could ever be." Just because they said maybe you shouldn't give your money to Mr. Card. No, they didn't come out and say we weren't allowed to say it, but they did call it "dangerous".

<comment><USER11> You're deflecting. This discussion is about your response to my post. If you were referring to the original comment without regarding what I was saying, then you should have replied to the original comment and not mine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you haven't read the book first, DO SO, it is worth it.

<comment><USER13> I don't agree. I think if I'd read the book as a teenager, I would have loved it. As an adult reading the book for the first time, it's nothing special.

<comment><USER14> It is something special, though. If you read it, you realize where the Bush Administration's foreign policy came from. And by extension, the Obama Administration's foreign policy.

I likewise did not enjoy the book as an adult reader. I thought it was far to apologetic for ultraviolent, genocidal overreactions to be considered healthy reading for teenagers. The end of the book is not "genocide is bad". It's "isn't is a shame that poor Ender had to be tricked into committing genocide?" It's not that "governments shouldn't be given the sort of power capable of genocide", it's that "you can get away with it scott-free if your intentions were good."

Also, the whole "they hate me because I'm the best" wore really thin on me. It's just not a thing you see amongst real kids. In fact, being good at things is a good way to get other kids to like you. The kids didn't like Ender because he was a self-righteous prick, a spoil-sport punk with a Napoleon complex.

The dialog also sucked. Grade A shitty dialog. As a teenager, you might be intrigued by the idea of alternative slang (and that is probably why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was so popular, and by extension why Joss Whedon has such a following now, but can't seem to follow it up). But as an adult, it is really annoying.

<comment><USER15> For those who haven't read the book, you might consider editing out your second paragraph, or at least adding spoiler tags.

<comment><USER14> For a book that is nearly 30 years old? SPOILERS: King Kong dies at the end and the Titanic sinks at the end.

<comment><USER11> I agree, because new generations never watch old movies or read old books for the first time.

<comment><USER14> There is more to a book than the end. Just because you know what happens in general doesn't mean you can't enjoy reading the book at all. Why do people re-read books? Why do people watch movies based on books, or go back and read the book after they've seen the movie?

I'm not going to destroy my prose with legalistic gerrymandering just because you're too emotionally underdeveloped to enjoy a story after knowing details about it.

<comment><USER11> Wow, defensive much? By your logic you should be fine with reading a book backwards. That may be your bag but not everyone would agree.

I reread and rewatch stuff all the time. That doesn't mean I want to know how the story ends the very first time I'm exposed to it.

I think you're too emotionally underdeveloped to realize I didn't ask you to destroy your prose with legalistic gerrymandering in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You'd think the success of the Harry Potter franchise would've gotten that project fast-tracked. Kids love the story of a poor downbeaten kid turning out to be The Chosen One.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading this article made me impulsively buy the book again, except this time for Kindle (hard to pass up for $4). I think the last time I read it was as a young adult. Reading it now, it's still as gripping, but I wonder how much of our ageism - particularly in the tech industry - has to do with reading young- adult books not only in which the hero is very young, but that the ability to be "The One" is detected at an early age and in which anyone even in their teens is already past their prime (same goes for Star Wars)?

I say "tech industry" because many of us grew up loving sci-fi books more than the average kid. It's no fault of the authors, because of course to be appealing to young adults, the young adults have to be the saviors.

<comment><USER17> You NEED to read the "Shadow of Ender." It is the retelling of the whole story but through the eyes of a different character EXTREMELY well done.

<comment><USER18> Ender's Shadow, I think you mean

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Read the man's actual quotes in context prior to judging the man.

[http://www.hatrack.com/misc/Quotes_in_Context.shtml](http://www.hatrack.com/misc/Quotes_in_Context.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of the movie Watchmen, they said that was unfilmable as well. It was probably a tougher screenplay to write imo.

e: grammar

<comment><USER16> ... I think the movie that came out of Watchmen is pretty much proof of the conjecture that it was unfilmable. The director tried very hard to be faithful to the original - the changes were minor (some added ultra-violent fight scenes, and changing the nature of the SQUID) but the film that came out just wasn't very good. Some of the cast chewed the scenery a bit harder than was strictly necessary, but no film is going to have _perfect_ acting. And yet somehow it just was such a mess. A shame, since I loved Moore's book.

Watchmen is a book that's designed to be read over and over and your own pace, with more to notice each time through. I think everybody skims the Black Freighter stuff the first time. Comics are so short that a good re-reading experience is prettymuch intrinsic to separating a decent comic from an excellent one. That doesn't really translate to film, since all the details and layers of the story just make the movie feel too dense.

<comment><USER11> Although I respect your opinion, I highly disagree. In fact, many of your problems with the film are some of the things I actually liked about it.

<comment><USER16> You misunderstand my point. I'm saying that the actual specific divergencies and problems with the film that fans of the book can easily spot - the music, the small plot changes, and the acting - those aren't big problems. They're small problems that are easy to get past.

But as a whole, the movie is a mess even though there's nothing you can put your finger on as "see here? _this_ is where they ruined Moore's vision!".

That's what I mean. The movie is a great and faithful attempt, but it still had a weak outcome. The book is unfilmable.

<comment><USER11> Sorry, still disagree. I find the book quite filmable because I say it's already been done. It seems to me you say it cannot be done because you already have what you want, the original book.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't order the fish - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2015/07/26/dont-order-the-fish

<comment><USER2> classic Arment useless rant

<comment><USER3> I dunno, I prefer reading these sorts of blog posts over coffee / headphone reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm angry! Brggh! Controversy!

<comment><USER5> This article doesn't come across to me as angry, not at all. I would say Marco is more disappointed than anything, especially knowing how good some of Apple's other cloud services can be: contacts, calendars, push notifications, and photos. I would have vastly preferred a clean break from iTunes (i.e., a simpler "Music" app rather than cramming more into iTunes), similar to the way Apple deprecated iPhoto in favor of Photos. The latter has been rock-solid for me thus far, something I could never say about iPhoto.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Planternative – cruelty free browser extension - <AUTHOR> http://planternative.com/# <comment><USER2> Surprisingly does not make me less hungry at all.

Anyway, seems you exchange the Twitter & Instagram link on the bottom. Also i first thought its about new speak and got excited, but well :) Nice idea anyway.</comment>


StackOverflow co-founder has started a new company - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/codinghorror/status/241062423690346496

<comment><AUTHOR> Jeff Atwood has not publicly released any details yet. However, his recent interview on Mixergy (<http://mixergy.com/jeff-atwood-coding-horror- interview/>) indicates that it is an open-source project which can be run by anyone on EC2. In the same interview he indicated that he was targeting a neglected software category that he considers to be broken, in the same way that online technical Q&A was broken before StackOverflow.

Relevant Mixergy interview excerpts:

"Let's go back to the Podcast. Think about the way we started "Stack Overflow." We identified something on the web that needed to change. We viewed it as a strong villain figure that everybody vilified and hated. If you think about the software that you use on the web and the websites that you use, there's still a lot of software out there like this. It's kind of a forgotten software category in my opinion. But it won't be when we're done, I think. ... We're still building it. As I talked about at the start of the show, you get tired of explaining it after certain points, it's like "No, just go look at this thing." So we're building up enough of it so that I can stop explaining it and just show it to people and they'll see what it is. But I can say it's a fully open source thing meaning if you want it, you can just take it, run it, grab it, install it on Amazon EC2, install it on your PC at home, wherever. It's fully 100 percent open source."</comment>


Comprehensive collection of PG talks & interviews - <AUTHOR> http://chill.com/benjaminhbryant/collection/paul-graham-talks-interviews

<comment><USER2> Would be great to see PG do a TED Talk someday

</comment><comment><USER3> Graham knows what he's talking about and tells it like it is. Bombastic entrepreneur juggernaut.</comment>


Show HN: Super simple notifications for long-running command line tasks - <AUTHOR> https://nudge.sh <comment><USER2> I was looking for something just like this earlier this year when running a lot of DL jobs. Nice. Will give it a shot!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Glad that I wasn't the only one who needed this. Let me know if you have any feedback while using it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Source is available on GitHub for anybody who's interested [https://github.com/geocodio/nudge.sh](https://github.com/geocodio/nudge.sh)

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat idea, thanks. I normally just send a ping to my slackbot but texts would probably be even better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the idea of alternative notification targets.

The idea was to make the API curl as simple and short as possible, to the point where you could probably memorize it. Would be trivial to then add additional notification targets server-side, based on user preference.

I.e. sending a Slack message -- even in the simplest form requires a rather long URL with a JSON body that has a couple of fields.

<comment><USER3> This is definitely a better idea than mine, I was actually going to set up something similar for myself with AWS SNS + Lambda webhook- but the URL is infinitely more ugly than yours.</comment></comment></comment>


"Get a nice desk job kid" - <AUTHOR> http://jasonadriaan.com/post/79868562796/get-a-nice-desk-job-kid

<comment><USER2> the kid's dad was right. I've done construction, drywalling, welding, and even retail. It is HARD. Your whole body aches at the end of every day, you become prematurely aged with injuries to your knees, and your back, and your elbows. Yes, I've put on nearly 100lbs, and I sit in front of a computer all day, but I'd rather do that than wear out my body and dull my mind by putting together fiddly bits on an assembly line all day</comment>


OpenSocial Apps Invade MyYahoo: Mint, kaChing, WordPress, And More - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/05/more-opensocial-apps-invade-myyahoo-mint-kaching-wordpress/ <comment><AUTHOR> Submitted here because I'm interested in what the HN crowd thinks of our product. TechCrunch commenters are mostly morons.</comment>


Ask HN: What was the first open-source project you contribute? - <AUTHOR> Hello !<p>I'm looking for contribute on an open-source project seriously to improve my skills. What was your first project you worked on ? <comment><USER2> W3C Validator. I patched it to have red / green favicons indicating whether that page was valid or not :)

[https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2788](https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=2788)</comment>


HP Wins 3PAR Takeover Battle as Dell Drops Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/09/02/3par-hp-raises-to-33-tops-dell-bid-of-32/

<comment><USER2> We still have to understand how a 191 million $ company can be a bargain at 2 billions. Was preventing Dell from entering the datacenter worth that much?</comment>


CS 20SI: Tensorflow for Deep Learning Research - <AUTHOR> http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs20si/syllabus.html <comment><USER2> Side note, the instructor of that course, Chip Huyen, is nothing short of brilliant.

Born in Vietnam, at 18 she decided not to go to college, and went traveling with an empty pocket around the world and wrote books. I heard about her getting accepted in many tip-top schools and chose to go to Stanford 4-5 years ago at 22-23 year old.

So seems like she is still an undergrad/master student in Stanford or something right now, and she is already teaching a course. Definitely going to go far.

<comment><USER3> That's really cool. I wonder what the admission process looked like for her.

<comment><USER2> Still had to do the SAT and went through the admission process. She had a lot of publicity in Vietnam at that point, and the rumor was that she had some god-tier percentile on the SAT score, too.

I don't think that was very hard for Stanford to recognize that they have some good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anybody interested: i've been learning it and wrote some blog posts about it:

[https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-a- primer-4b3fa0978be3#.2...](https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-a- primer-4b3fa0978be3#.2e9zrq2py)

I hope it can be useful for future learners! (you can find the current list of articles at the end of the first one)

<comment><USER5> That is a very helpful primer. What resources did you use to learn that level of understanding in TensorFlow? Just the codebase? If you have any other articles or references to recommend, please do so. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Thanks for this feedback!

I've just spent some time learning TF on my own using the official doc and made a lot of projects on my Githubs.

If you're interested, here is the complete list of my articles so far:

How to handle shapes in TensorFlow: [https://blog.metaflow.fr/shapes-and- dynamic-dimensions-in-te...](https://blog.metaflow.fr/shapes-and-dynamic- dimensions-in-tensorflow-7b1fe79be363#.dcmxo9jf5)

TensorFlow saving/restoring and mixing multiple models: [https://medium.com/@morgangiraud/tensorflow-saving- restoring...](https://medium.com/@morgangiraud/tensorflow-saving-restoring- and-mixing-multiple-models-c4c94d5d7125#.tngvkni8k)

How to freeze a model and serve it with a python API: [https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-how-to-freeze-a-model- an...](https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-how-to-freeze-a-model-and-serve-it- with-a-python-api-d4f3596b3adc#.f8cininaw)

TensorFlow howto: a universal approximator inside a neural net: [https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-howto-a-universal- approx...](https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-howto-a-universal-approximator- inside-a-neural-net-bb034430b71e#.u6epmpcam)

How to optimise your input pipeline with queues and multi-threading: [https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-how-to-optimise-your- inp...](https://blog.metaflow.fr/tensorflow-how-to-optimise-your-input- pipeline-with-queues-and-multi-threading-e7c3874157e0#.n82a6uin4)

<comment><USER6> wow... Thanks for these links. I find the offical docs of TF are atrocious and I have a lot of trouble figuring it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also CS231n - [http://cs231n.stanford.edu/](http://cs231n.stanford.edu/) \- Convolutional Neural Networks for Visual Recognition

</comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, Udacity has had a Deep Learning with Tensorflow course for a while. (Note that I'm somewhat ambivalent about Udacity - a lot of it is copy-and- paste stuff, though it does help to get you started.)

[https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning-- ud730](https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning--ud730)

<comment><USER9> IMO the Udacity course is very poorly authored and taught. I would not recommend it to someone who has a primary goal of learning TensorFlow unless you have a pretty deep understanding of deep learning to begin with.

<comment><USER10> They have a nanodegree class that is much better. I have been taking it the past two months and I highly recommend it [https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning-nanodegree- foun...](https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning-nanodegree-foundation-- nd101)

<comment><USER9> What areas have they improved in?

I was really disappointed by multiple Udacity courses; not saying they can't pull it off, but I've been burned enough by Udacity that I wouldn't consider paying for any courses from them at this point.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I took most of the "AI for self driving cars" course taught by Sebastian Thrun himself, and was torn.

He's no doubt an extraordinarily competent researcher in his field, but he was clearly a beginner to Python (either that or he didn't care), and the Python code (while bringing the concepts across) was so poor as to be distracting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are the videos also somewhere or only slides and notes are shared?

<comment><USER12> Came here to ask the same question.

<comment><USER13> From the FAQ: Will lectures be recorded? Because this is a student initiated course, the lectures won't be recorded.

<comment><USER14> I hope that changes in the future! Looking for a really good course on TensorFlow. Udacity's Self-Driving Car nanodegree is also very hands-on in terms of learning TensorFlow. You build your own mini version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there any other university level courses for Tensorflow available?

<comment><USER16> MIT had a short, week-long 'Intro to Deep Learning' course that had some labs in Tensorflow.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just saw a youtube channel, which present the slides from this course as they available. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMq6IdbXar_KtYixMS_wHcQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMq6IdbXar_KtYixMS_wHcQ) . HTH

</comment><comment><USER18> Are the videos available for this course?

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for sharing, I've been looking for a resource like this for a while!

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks a lot! I've been looking for something like this.</comment>


New Top Score on AI2 Reasoning Challenge (ARC) Is 53.84% - <AUTHOR> https://leaderboard.allenai.org/arc/submissions/public <comment><USER2> The challenge appears to be to create an AI that can answer the most multiple choice questions correctly.

Here's some of the questions from the dataset:

• Which of these is inherited by a person from his or her parents? (A) short hair (B) long arms (C) pierced ears (D) scar on the leg

• Which object occupies the greatest amount of space? (A) a galaxy (B) a black hole (C) a neutron star (D) a solar system

• What is a similarity between sound waves and light waves? (A) Both carry energy. (B) Both travel in vacuums. (C) Both are caused by vibrations. (D) Both are traveling at the same speed.

There's an entry called "Guess All" that scored 25% as you might expect.

They provide a list of 14 million science-related sentences (presumably for training) but there's no requirement to rely solely on them to solve the challenge. The list has been scraped from web search results so looks quite noisy.

<comment><USER3> 4-choose-1 makes 53% a lot more impressive than when I assumed it was true/false. I had, like the other poster, assumed it was a sum of random chance, statistical deviation, and publication bias, but 53% suggests it's doing a little better than that.

<comment><USER4> I oversimplified in my previous post.

You're usually going to get to a result that's slightly better than random agreement by applying some really-not-all-that-impressive baseline strategy like looking for bag-of-words overlap between a question and a known factoid for which you have a stored answer. This strategy is easy to fool: If you have a factoid like "Dogs that chase cats are dangerous" and a question is asked like "Are cats that chase dogs dangerous?", then it might answer "Yes" because it matches the stored fact: But the answer will actually _be_ "Yes" in more than 50% of all cases. Since dogs tend to chase cats, and cats tend not to chase dogs, the concept of cats chasing dogs is less likely to come up in a question answering context than the concept of dogs chasing cats. There are obviously numerous other ways that this is going to fail, like "Trump believes the world is flat" might be a factoid and the question might be "Is the world flat?".

The result I previously oversimplified should more correctly be stated as follows: Anwers coming from the "artificial intelligence" systems submitted for the conference were analyzed to see if any answer they gave represented a deviation from the baseline that fixed an error in the baseline, versus introduced an error that the baseline wouldn't have made. The submissions were then analyzed to see if there was a pattern whereby more errors would be fixed than introduced. It was found that the statistical pattern was basically that random deviation was introduced into the baseline, and systems that, as a result of such random deviations scored very badly weren't submitted at the conference, thus generating a scores that were consistently more likely to be better than baseline rather than worse-than-baseline, but not in a meaningful way.

To reiterate the source: It can be found on page 43 here:

[http://richard.bergmair.eu/pub/thesis.pdf](http://richard.bergmair.eu/pub/thesis.pdf)

But that applies to the old RTE conference. So it would be interesting to see if the same holds true here.

<comment><USER5> This leaderboard tries to prevent that kind of problem:

> The dataset is partitioned into a Challenge Set and an Easy Set, where the > former contains only questions answered incorrectly by both a retrieval- > based algorithm and a word co-occurrence algorithm. This leaderboard is for > the Challenge Set.

Additionally, I don't think they let you try often enough to get a meaningful chance at significantly beating the baseline with just pure randomness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A bit reminiscent of the "Recognizing Textual Entailment Challenge (RTE)" which was run under the "Text Analysis Conference" umbrella and hosted by NIST until it was discontinued a few years back. An interesting insight from a qualitative analysis of the deviations of submitted answers versus gold standard answers is that it can be explained surprisingly well by: random choice minus publication bias. See here:

[http://richard.bergmair.eu/pub/thesis.pdf](http://richard.bergmair.eu/pub/thesis.pdf) [page 43]

That's what the number "53.84%" sounds like to me.</comment>


Get YC application advice from alumni over great food - <AUTHOR> http://www.grubwith.us/groups/hacker-news

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to grubbing with some people! Join me next Tuesday!

</comment><comment><USER3> great idea. i just signed up for the mountain view one. can't wait to find out who else is applying!

<comment><USER4> I signed up for Mountain View as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't wait to see you guys at Shabu! :) Anyone else flying down from Vegas?</comment>


Farbfeld image format - <AUTHOR> http://tools.suckless.org/farbfeld/ <comment><USER2> _" Current image formats have integrated compression, making it complicated to read the image data. One is forced to use complex libraries like libpng, libjpeg, libjpeg-turbo, giflib and others, read the documentation and write a lot of boilerplate in order to get started.

Farbfeld leaves this behind and is designed to be as simple as possible, leaving the task of compression to external tools. The simple design, which was the primary objective, implicitly leads to the very good compression characteristics, as it often happens when you go with the UNIX philosophy. Reading farbfeld images doesn't require any special libraries. The tools are just a toolbox to make it easy to convert between common image formats and farbfeld."_

Using standard external tools (e.g., bzip2) to compress an easy-to-process image format is such a simple and elegant idea that I'm surprised nobody has thought of it before. This allows you to easily write a bunch of filters (see "farbfeld utilities") that you can apply to images using a simple Unix pipeline.</comment>


Potato Chips were accidentally invented by a frustrated chef - <AUTHOR> https://brdct.app/AUjmy4EdqPFN <comment><USER2> But is it true? Various sources, like [https://books.google.com/books?id=ILbOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ILbOAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&dq=%22George+Speck%22+potato+chip&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjp0_u5zvzhAhUlmYsKHdkQBUMQ6AEIMDAA#v=onepage&q=%22George%20Speck%22%20potato%20chip&f=false) point out that earlier cookbooks included potato chip recipes, and that Crum's commissioned biography of himself doesn't include his invention.

</comment><comment><USER3> Something good coming out of anger...that's new.</comment>


Introduction to Functional Programming in JavaScript (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> https://asep.co/introduction-to-functional-programming-in-javascript-part-1/?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=direct-share&utm_campaign=fp-in-javascript <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a blog post (about currying specifically) from an ardent FP proponent that I picked up on HN not long ago, where he back-pedals (his own word) from a much-shared pro-currying in JS article:

[https://hughfdjackson.com/javascript/does-curry- help/?utm_so...](https://hughfdjackson.com/javascript/does-curry- help/?utm_source=ESnextNews.com&utm_medium=Weekly%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=Week%206)

On a personal note, immutability is fine, but doing it in Javascript comes at a cost and it always feels like I'm fighting the system (have to deep-copy objects and possibly even `Object.freeze()` objects, space-saving write-on- copy needs to be done by myself, no pattern-matching). So I only do it when I'm sure it is useful. Similar with some other FP concepts that feel natural in "real" FP languages.

Also, very few of the functions that cause me any headaches benefit from being pure (in a way that would help me), because my problem is with the consistency and state of the data in (shared) storage. I rarely have issues within the app itself, so "purity" there does not help me all that much in my very I/O heavy applications. It seems much more suited for data processing.

<comment><AUTHOR> My intention to write this article is for introducing FP concept to someone who never touch it. So, imho the best way to introduce FP to a beginner is by using the mainstream language, and for this case I use JS.

FP is not a silver bullet, so do imperative. By knowing those 2 paradigms you can get the right tool for the right job. I also don't want to do I/O heavy application with the "purity" thing. Hence in language like Clojure, we can still doing "the side-effect" thing.

<comment><USER2> The Scala course running (for free, if one ignores the IMHO useless certificate offerings) on Coursera and authored by the guy who also invented Scala in the first place seems to be a great pointer to send people new to FP to. Sure, teaching the parts that are useful (for that system) in Javascript is one more option, but maybe use several methods, and a "real" FP language and an actual FP course with exercises and course forum and all that stuff is probably one of the better options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The functional boss micromanages you too, just differently than the imperative boss. The functional boss depicted in the article should really be called the declarative boss.

Notice how strange his or her requests are:

"Schedule a meeting whenever you feel it is necessary" \- what if I feel that surfing facebook is more necessary?

"...after you get 3 sales leads by the end of the week" \- what if I won't be able to get 3 leads by the end of the week? What is more important, getting 3 leads or getting something by the end of the week? I don't know. Maybe a Sufficiently Smart Employee will be able to figure it out, but he or she is not yet hired.

In the meantime the imperative boss gets a steady stream of leads. And the declarative boss goes out of business after some time.

<comment><AUTHOR> "what if I won't be able to get 3 leads by the end of the week? What is more important, getting 3 leads or getting something by the end of the week? I don't know."

If you won't be able to get 3 leads by the end of the week, it means you get Nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Imperative programming is a programming paradigm that uses a sequence of > statements to reach a certain goal. It focuses on how to perform actions to > achieve the expected result.

But, but, but... I live my life like that. I focus on the next action to achieve my goal.

The two examples remind me a bad TV shop advert starting with the black and white trash old way of doing things.

The problem with these articles is that they are often biased towards one side which is often FP, because impreative programming is not sexy.

I'm not saying that FP is bad or inferior :) It just has its places and I still have to read an article which clearly states good use cases for FP rather then selling it me as a religion.

<comment><AUTHOR> But...but...my life is like that macromanager Lol. Don't worry, sometimes I'm also doing micromanaging. I'm not trying to tell imperative is bad, because I'm still using it when I feel FP is not efficient.

I wrote that article to introduce FP to anyone who wants broaden their knowledge. By knowing another paradigm, we will get the right tools for the right jobs, right?

<comment><USER4> The micro/macromanager analogy is flawed IMHO. I can write modular, component based code imperative style. It won't be worse than please().do().this().for(me)

> I'm not trying to tell imperative is bad

"In another word, the imperative one is an annoying micromanager" ;)

> By knowing another paradigm, we will get the right tools for the right jobs, > right?

Yes, if you not only introduce the paradigm, but tell them when it makes sense to use it. I haven't seen it in your article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm...I thought I had told them in the article.

> According to sample number 2 above, we will read the loop 4 times to track > the current value of sample. Imagine if you have an array with 1000 elements > inside it.

That is one of that.

> ...made our code more concise

and also in the summary. Well, I know maybe "concise" is a subjective thing :)

<comment><USER4> I've read that, but it really depends on the bug. A simple console.log would catch it easily. I think you need debugging skills in FP right?

I don't always prefer concise code. It means that I have to keep everything in my head, what the function does exactly.

So what I miss is real use cases. Would you write a video editor in FP? Would you make Quake 4 in FP? Is it good for Todo apps? CLI apps maybe? Or is it best for 50 line microservices?

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I did almost anything using FP. Mostly in Clojure and Clojurescript.

Btw, is using map, filter, reduce considered as using FP too? I always use it in my Swift and JS code.

One of the thing that I can't use FP is in embedded development (arduino and esp8266).

<comment><USER4> I don't know, you tell me :) I use FP in my imperative code ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the part 2 will talk about that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> maybe I'm wrong but the last example of pureFunction mutates and returns one of its arguments. That's not a pure function.

<comment><USER6> It can be considered pure when you only give it one or two arguments (the second argument can be allowed because numbers are passed by value and not reference in JavaScript).

Default arguments make the code harder to understand. It's often better to make two functions. If they are closely related then you can implement one in terms of the other. Even worse if the function behaves completely differently depending on how many arguments it takes (take the D3 setters/getters as an example).

      function pureFunction(data) {
        return pureFunctionWithIndexAndResult(data, 0, []);
      }
      function pureFunctionWithIndexAndResult(data, index, result) {
        ...
      }

<comment><USER5> It doesn't matter how many arguments there are. My point was that calling the function will mutate one of its arguments and in fact, in the example the returned value of the function is irrelevant because nothing is assigned to the return value of the function when it is invoked. So it's actually just plain wrong. The function is called and a side effect of calling the function is the mutation of the supplied 'result' argument. Call the function 4 times and you get a different result every time. Not a pure function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool</comment>


WSL File System Support (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-system-support/ <comment><USER2> There are some improvements listed here [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2017/04/18/file- system-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2017/04/18/file-system- improvements-to-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/) and I'm sure the April 2018 update (build 1803) changed this further, but the blog stopped updating last year.

Edit: USB drives are now supported [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bash...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/05/10/bashwsl- insiders-build-now-supports-usbserial-comms-and-mounting-removable-storage- network-shares/)

You can make special files now, and Windows Explorer understands WSL permissions [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/12/chmo...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/01/12/chmod- chown-wsl-improvements/)

Per-directory case sensitivity [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/02/28/per-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/02/28/per- directory-case-sensitivity-and-wsl/)

What's new in 1803 [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/03/07/wind...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/03/07/windows10v1803/)

<comment><USER3> It might be good for dang to please replace the link with at least the 2017 one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It still feels surreal to read these kinds of blog posts from Microsoft, after they refused to recognize Linux's existence/importance for so long, called it a "cancer", etc... I don't have words to describe what a different world it is.

EDIT: I know to some this kind of sentiment might seem cliché (is that where the downvotes came from?) but at least for years to come I'll be repeating it. Life was very hard for Microsoft dissenters 15 years ago. (I'm only 35, and I'm already going on about "back in my day" :) Now get off my lawn.)

I heartily welcome the change.

<comment><USER5> I for one love it. It's nice seeing Microsoft contributing to Linux and FreeBSD and other open source projects as well as open sourcing some of their own projects. Also their share price is way up since Satya took over as CEO. So maybe these changes will be around for awhile seeing as Microsoft shareholders are happy.

<comment><USER6> One should note though, that WSL is not exactly contributing to Linux. It's a clean-room reimplementation of the Linux kernel on Windows.

<comment><USER5> Yea sure, but Microsoft has contributed a bunch of work to make Linux a first class citizen on Hyper-V. Meaning specific drivers for Linux on Hyper-V that are now in Linus's tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A very long and involved explanation of why when Notepad saves a file in your WSL directory, bash can't see it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Worthwhile as the various Unix-in-Windows efforts are, I still haven't particularly enjoyed the day-to-day experience of using any of them. It's been death by a thousand cuts that accumulate.

<comment><USER9> I replaced putty on day one, it is part of my workflow ever since and I use it more and more each day. WSL is probably the most used "application" on my workstation.

What do you find it is lacking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> (2016)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I was just going to say I think I remember watching this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cygwin is kind of similar with it's limitations, except it's a bit more complicated. The files will show up but there is some "magic" happening to map the permissions and ownership between them.

<comment><USER13> Add noacl to /etc/fstab and you will be happy everafter ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple iOS App Turn Live Photo to GIF - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KrisYu/LivelyGIFs <comment><USER2> Is it in the app store?</comment>


Speed kills: are police chases out of control? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/02/deaths-uk-police-pursuits-chases <comment><USER2> You only need to watch one episode of cops to know people are willing to recklessly endanger the life of innocent people/bystanders just to catch a guy with half a gram of weed.</comment>


Samsung GS4 launch: Tone-deaf and shockingly sexist - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-57574466-256/samsung-gs4-launch-tone-deaf-and-shockingly-sexist/ <comment><USER2> I understand so little of what was offensive about this that I can only conclude that I make outlandish social gaffes every day. And I've never heard of "tow-headed".

</comment><comment><USER3> But not all of their potential customers are political correctness Nazis.

<comment><USER4> Hang on. The author went out of her way to say that it wasn't just because there were women in it, and made suggestions as to how it _could_ be acceptable.

Could you read this blogpost (<http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/09/06/shut-up- and-listen/>) by John Scalzi, and the linked comment ([http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/31/the-sort-of-crap-i- don...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/31/the-sort-of-crap-i-dont- get/#comment-272706))? It tries to explain how people have different reactions to different things, and it's unreasonable to say "everyone should react to things exactly how I do".

This presentation offended the author. Let's think about the reasons it might've been out of line, and not jump to calling people Nazis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, to be fair it was a musical. No comment on the phone itself.</comment>


Sinclair: The TV Movie - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jun/30/games-gameculture

<comment><USER2> I am really looking forward to this.. Sinclair ZX Spectrum was my first computer, and I taught myself programming on it. It had a great feature where every key was assigned a BASIC command, which made programming really easy for an 11 year old :-))

<comment><USER3> Sir Clive is one of my heroes, despite the Speccy being obviously inferior to the C64... Go and listen to 'Hey Hey 16k' if you haven't already: <http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/></comment></comment>