Robot Scientist Adam makes discovery that has eluded human scientists for years. - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/16/adam-the-robot-scientist-makes-its-first-discovery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SingularityHub+(Singularity+Hub)&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER3> The headline is sexy, but I think it gets the main point wrong. The first sentence in the article that, I think, is the proper lead is: _As artificial intelligence continues to evolve however, we are beginning to see the introduction of robotics in many "high-skill" fields such as research and medicine._

The point isn't that a robot was able to make a discovery that human researchers could not. The point is that biologists who do this kind of research will be able to work at a higher level of abstraction: something that used to require manual work on their part can now be automated. We don't replace the biology researchers, rather we've improved their tools.

<comment><USER4> If we assume the robots cost money , and research funds are limited , and the robot's research is important, there's no reason why it won't "replace" biologists.

<comment><USER3> I mean _replace_ in the sense that we will still need biologists to do the science. The robot can not do science on its own, it's only a tool that scientists will use. It might replace pure lab-workers who just do grunt work. So it's possible undergrad bio students won't be able to use that as an "in" into a research group.

Also, biology labs are already expensive to equip. This development doesn't change that.

<comment><USER5> It designed what experiments to commence to solve the problem. No biology undergrad was able to do it so far for "orphan" yeast enzymes.

I think this is significant and that such automated experiment design and execution might replace some researchers.

<comment><USER3> I have access to the full article, and they do phrase it that the robot "designed" the experiments it carried about. But it didn't conjure these designs out of thin air. The specific experiments it performed are a result of the general rules given to it by software created by the human biologists. (Some of which was coded in Prolog, which I think is pretty darn nifty.)

The amount of information they had to provide the robot was significant - <USER2> in terms of raw data and in terms of the software controlling it. All of that requires humans. I doubt tenured professors will be the ones writing the software for such robots.

edit: This is what they cite as the software they used for the model: Philip G.K. Reiser, et al., Developing a Logical Model of Yeast Metabolism, <http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/epa/cis/2001/024/tcover.html>

<comment><USER5> > But it didn't conjure these designs out of thin air.

And human scientist obviously do?

Of course you had to give the robot required knowledge on the plate because it couldn't pull what it needed to know from library. After all, books are written in some incomprehensible human language.

The moment that robots will begin to understand human language people no longer will be able to call them just tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I haven't read the paper, yet, but it seems as though the article really inflates the claims for the robot's cognitive achievement. There were a set of candidate genes to test as the cause of each enzyme. This was a matter of creating a set of deletion mutants and checking whether the mutants produced the enzymes, a laborious task which would be pretty easy to automate without artificial intelligence. It does seem to be a helpful automation, though.

<comment><USER7> Yeah from what the article describes it sounds like at is simplest form a nested for loop varing across a number of variables. I assume it is quite a bit more complex than that but artificial intelligence?

<comment><USER8> The perception of what is artificial intelligence is changing all the time. Playing chess is just looping (and not even quite a bit more complex), but it used to be artificial intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think the key point is this: "Dr. King and colleagues gave Adam a database containing information on the enzymes, the chemicals and reagents to do the experiments, and access to the yeast cultures."

I imagine it would have taken a really, really smart robot about 300 years to figure that stuff out on its own. And only IF it had a reason to figure it out.

Not AI ... just another Expert System. Doing _exactly_ what it's told to, efficiently.

<comment><USER10> Wrong. An expert system only draws conclusions from a knowledge base using deductive inference. This system also uses abductive inference and inductive inference. Read the paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Kudos to the team that properly defined the problem and employed the use of an expert system to solve it.

Not yet sentient as the title delicately alludes however. Were a Nobel Prize awarded it would still go to the team not the device.

Where are we on the Kurzweil timeline btw.

<comment><USER4> Where the nobel prize goes is an interesting question. let's say that some robot discovers an important discovery , that deserves the nobel. let's also say the methods of operation of the robot are standard practice at the time of building it. and the discovery came through luck and tons of robotic work. who should win the nobel? would the robot be considered by the nobel comity ?

<comment><USER11> That was the question posed by Hawking back in 2003(?). His assertion was that the device would have to be considered intelligent, albeit another form of intelligence, and possibly deserving of rights.

It does seem as though we're getting there.

<comment><USER12> The classic philosopher's version of this is the Chinese Room: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room>

My naive understanding is that the intelligence is not in the room or the book, but in the person who wrote the book.

<comment><USER13> What? No. This has nothing to do with the Chinese Room argument. The Chinese Room argument is about refuting the claim that reasoning according to rules can _ever_ be considered intelligence (i.e. refuting Strong AI).

<comment><USER12> My naive interpretation is that both of these situations involve assigning "intelligence" to a machine or system built by a human w/o said human's continued intervention.

I'm thinking about the systems, not the rules within the systems. If the "official" philosophy line is that it's all about those rules, well maybe that's why official philosophy is so damn confusing.

I just finished reading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, let me recommend that as a really well written and lucid explanation of the meaning of intelligence. If Numenta can build systems that can replicate what a 2 year old can do given a 2 year old's memory and sensory capabilities, I'll be ready to say that Jeff's explanation wins, and that philosophers better find something else that's impossible to prove or disprove (like the existence of God) to go argue about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Neat. Once you have a very clear problem statement, you can write a program that can perform experiments and analyze the results. It's a step.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very impressive, but as others have said: without AI at the helm, this is mostly a complex robot taking the place of a human technician. ( Which costs more? )

I suspect that much of the macro-scale manipulation performed by this robot (and humans) will be made obsolete in coming years by microfluidic analytic instruments.

</comment><comment><USER16> While the robot is definitely impressive, without substantial AI in it, I dont think it qualifies to be called a 'scientist' just yet. It clearly cannot appreciate what its doing -- it might just as well have been cleaning the dishes.

<comment><USER10> As a former member of this research group, I can tell you are spouting nonsense and I think you had better run along and read the paper before making derogatory comments. It's just that people and media are far more interested in seeing robots than in seeing software.

FYI: I have spent the last 10 years working on algorithmic scientific method.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "And though some may be hesitant to accept the ever-increasing roles of robots in our world, I, for one, " welcome our new robot overlords.

(Sorry, but I couldn't resist that perfect segue.)

</comment><comment><USER10> BTW The paper was published a year ago, so this is hardly news. And the previous significant article was in Nature in 2004.

</comment><comment><USER18> Am I the only one who was more excited to see the link to Tron Legacy?</comment>


Grooveshark.io - <AUTHOR> http://grooveshark.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what this is. I'm guessing a music sharing site, based on the fact that typing "owner of a lonely heart" into the search box results in a bunch of System of a Down, Beatles, and Lindsey Lohan songs (because apparently Yes is a figment of my imagination), but other than that, I'm at a loss.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did the old grooveshark have a direct link to the mp3 file of the song before? I missed that one.

Also, how is this running with that feature? Is this hosted on the moon?

<comment><USER4> 5$ they're just a proxy for some public ftp mp3 index, using grooveshark name and style to bootstrap visits.

<comment><USER5> According to this tweet[1] it's actually mp3juices.se with a different skin. That seems to be confirmed by the same habit of using dl.<domain> for media serving, the very similar layout, and the same (apparent) choice of hosting provider.

[1] [https://twitter.com/Mackaber/status/595744227084115969](https://twitter.com/Mackaber/status/595744227084115969)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      whois grooveshark.io

      Domain : grooveshark.io
      Status : Live
      Expiry : 2016-05-02

      NS 1   : ian.ns.cloudflare.com
      NS 2   : melissa.ns.cloudflare.com

      Owner  : Vita Tkach
      Owner  : Teatral'na st. 21/8
      Owner  : Vinnytsia
      Owner  : Ukraine
      Owner  : UA

</comment><comment><USER7> Well that was fast.

<comment><USER8> I don't know how fast that was, but my company already blocked it. So I don't think it could have been that fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on the name... It seems impossible that the people behind this site are not aware of what happened to the real Grooveshark. In fact, they probably have messages and communications about it.

That means when the RIAA and friends go after them, they will have a strong case to pursue _willful_ infringement. That's not something to mess around with.

<comment><USER10> And it won't take very long either seeing as the owner didn't bother to mask his whois....

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Next they need grooveshark's excellent queuing interface.

</comment><comment><USER12> Since all IP of Grooveshark including trademarks and visual assets have been transfered to the music industry this service will receive a CnD any minute now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Never used original, but this does not bode well for security: grooveshark.io/search/xss"<script>confirm()<script>

</comment><comment><USER14> This is not Grooveshark...

</comment><comment><USER15> A terrible imitation.

</comment><comment><USER16> lolololololololololololol

</comment><comment><USER16> i like dis name boyyy</comment>


Buddhism and Agriculture II: Hope and Despair on Fukuoka Farm, Iyo - <AUTHOR> http://trentbrown.in.s205663.gridserver.com/buddhism-and-agriculture-ii-hope-and-despair-on-fukuoka-farm-iyo/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you don't recognize the name Fukuoka, part one is one of the better relatively short introductions to the philosophy of Natural Farming that I've read: [http://trentbrown.in.s205663.gridserver.com/buddhism-and- agr...](http://trentbrown.in.s205663.gridserver.com/buddhism-and-agriculture- the-philosophy-of-masanobu-fukuoka/)</comment>


A bizarre "403 Forbidden" bug-hunting adventure - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hellocode.co/post/bug-hunting/ <comment><USER2> "NSURLSession oh so helpfully auto-fucking-matically decided I would probably—no, definitely—want to send those cookies in every single request my app did after that. Forever and always."

I imagine it honors the "expires" property of cookies, it just probably wasn't set. Also there's an "ephemeralSessionConfiguration" you can use if you don't want to store the cookies. I enjoyed the article, up until the author blamed the framework for their own ignorance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, the cookies expire (in two weeks I think, in this case) but that doesn't invalidate the issue that the wkwebview silently shares cookies with nsurlsession, nor does it negate the confusing journey of tracking down the bug. Sheesh.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly what users want and you are basically breaking it by not honoring the cookies.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not need to honour cookies when making requests to the API as we use token authentication. Even if we wanted to keep users logged in within the web view, which we don't because the web view is just for static help pages, we wouldn't want to send those to the API.

<comment><USER4> Then you should disable cookies on your API calls by setting the `httpCookieStorage` property of your URLSessionConfiguration to nil. You could also use an ephemeral configuration (which will preserve cookies set by the API in memory but won't share them with webviews), which may or may not be a good idea depending on if you're using this session for anything that should be cached to disk (e.g. downloading images).

<comment><USER5> This is the correct answer and the reason that NSURLSession really came into existence - there is a need to partition behaviors between different frameworks and subsystems and the previous NSURLConnection model relied on a smattering of process global configuration options.

I'd be surprised if AFNetworking didn't also offer the ability to create a "private" NSURLSession with custom storage objects.

I'd also recommend looking into debugging these types of issues using, eg, Charles Proxy. There's more information on logging at:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1887/_index...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1887/_index.html)

See also:

[https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2013/705/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2013/705/)

Disclaimer: NSURLSession contributor...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh hey, I know this. From a commit message earlier this year for an SDK I own:

 _SDKSender: switch to ephemeral NSURLSession and disable cookie storage

Switch to a private (ephemeral) session independent of the app and disables cookies. The SDK otherwise shares the cookie storage with the app, which is not desired. This was causing the SDK to send the $dayjob tracking cookie (and others) to $dayjob API endpoint._

</comment><comment><USER7> Another fix is to disable CSRF checks for all API calls which should not be served by a browser (assuming they use a different auth mechanism which does not involve cookies!). This makes sense since CSRF is a layer that relates to attacks involving browsers/cookie authentication.

<comment><USER8> I always believe /login served by a browser and /login for api should never be the same, to echo your statement they require different handler. It should be two completely different view; but those views call the same login function internally. Perhaps /login is a bad example, but use that in views where authentication and authorization are needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Despite using Functions he doesn't really understand and yada yada i think this is a good reason to have a dedicated api endpoint and not mix it with domains where the normal web access happens.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is both awesome and depressing.

But it gave me a really interesting idea: a service/network/community/forum/etc for people to gather and discuss Really Confusing Bugs™ that they're trying to figure out. Not necessarily (?) for contemporary end users (maybe highly technical end users).

This could actually be a really cool concept. Somewhere squarely between HackerOne and StackOverflow - not for exploits, and not for simple(r) stuff, but specifically for complicated and confusing bugs you've been staring at for days/weeks and nothing's making any sense.

I can see a subscription model working for this, even - subscriptions would work both to allow people to provide extended assistance, and also because a contract makes NDAs easier.

Hmm. Thinking about how the subscription model would work... you sign up, configure billing, that then allows you to request extended assistance.

\- One way that could work is that people offer you help in return for thanks, which would work like a configurable upvote; higher quality answers attract more rewards. Maybe anyone can reward answers (via the credit in their account) after the fact?

\- Another way would be setting a minimum or exact reward amount up front to attract more help.

Regardless of how it worked, the site would have all discussion be public and open by default; you'd have to check a box to make the discussion private, and even after that you'd have the ability to go through and selectively un-redact parts of the conversations so everyone could be helped.

And anyone could sign up and offer answers instantly, and the rewards credited to their account could be cashed out at any time. That would attract new users.

I realize I've just described a weird kind of paid StackOverflow. I am very curious why SE hasn't pursued such an idea. As in, I am 1000% confident they've had this conversation _at least_ once, and I'd really love to hear what the opinions were.

<comment><USER11> ExpertsExchange was[1] a paid StackOverflow before the latter existed, SO came along and ate EE's lunch. Some of that was undoubtedly due to EE's (anecdotally, I never used it due to the money issue) bad UX, but free makes a big difference.

[1] They still exist, and it apparently gets traffic/use, but never hear anyone talking about them, and it never comes up when searching to resolve or diagnose a problem.

<comment><USER12> EE had a scheme where you could answer questions to get free membership; I used that for a while.

I remember getting screwed over but don't remember the details: they locked up the site and I couldn't even access the solutions I'd written anymore. A bit later still they made it appear locked but you could still get to the answers if you knew how (I think that was to get their solutions on Google.

I'd guess it was taken over and someone tried to squeeze the money out, hasn't happened to SO yet.

<comment><USER13> if I remember you had to scroll down past the ad content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> when you have a bizarre request issue... find a working request, find the failing request, compare the headers... problem solved.

<comment><USER15> That was literally the first thing the author did.

<comment><USER14> is that how you interpreted it? it's not until paragraph 13 (!) where author states:

"Josh realised my app might be somehow getting cookies from visiting our site inside this web view, and then sharing those cookies with AFNetworking's underlying NSURLSession, which is handling my requests."

which would have been clear if they'd checked the cookies of the NSURLSession request.

then, in paragraph 17, the author starts concluding:

> "And so the the CSRF check was failing every time, because I wasn't sending > a Referer header, or any other related CSRF bits."

which would have been clear if they tried comparing a working request to a failing request.

and finally,

> "And of course, I didn't even know about these cookies, so I wasn't deleting > them on log out"

which leads me believe the author _never_ checked the request at all, let alone before anything else.

i'm ignoring the fact the bug sat for months, and took a second person to fix, and got a write up on the blog... so i'm going to have to assume my advice has an audience (like anyone who would classify this bug as "bizarre").

(not trying to pass judgement on the author here at all... we have all been there :))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure about the "fix", since now users can't persist a logged in browser session?

If you aren't using cookies for API auth, is there not some way to configure your server framework to just ignore them if received?

<comment><AUTHOR> They shouldn't be logging in via the webview within the app anyway, so that's moot.

We are using cookies, as the post says, as a fallback authentication so devs can browse the API from a browser if they're logged in to the site.

<comment><USER4> Why are devs using a browser to hit API endpoints? There are much better tools. My preferred one is called Paw ([https://paw.cloud](https://paw.cloud)) but there are others.

<comment><USER17> Because Paw is GBP 39.99 and a browser is free?

<comment><USER4> There are other free tools too, like Postman ([https://www.getpostman.com](https://www.getpostman.com)).

<comment><USER17> True, I actually use Postman in Chrome, forgot to mention that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just popped in to say Wireshark would have made short work of this bug.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are they using a header or s.t. for their authorization in app, then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Using the Authorization header.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for following up! Glad y'all found the bug :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Za</comment>


Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal (1968) - vezzy-fnord https://mises.org/library/confessions-right-wing-liberal <comment><USER2> Interesting reading. I think the intellectual mistake the author made is in thinking that one's political dogma (and therefore party affiliation) should not change over time because the party does not change over time. That is, the idea that a political party is the manifestation of an unchanging view.

The fun revelation is that business dresses itself up as conservative, then pursues its own ends of profit. That's the entire definition of bourgeois. It is worth highlighting as in many ways, the free software movement is a very conservative one, from the point of view of the way code was shared in the beginning of its history: That is, you asked the programmer who wrote the code you were interested in for a copy and usually got it gratis as the money was made in selling the equipment. The change of label to liberal-radical came later when business started to realize that software, itself, was a sell-able product.

The point I'm making is that choosing a side in any two party system is always artificial. Any party affiliation should be viewed as one of convenience. This explains why Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democratic Party and why both Paul politicians aligned with the GOP.

From my standpoint, the only winning play for the individual is to decide what is important to yourself, acknowledge that it will change over time, and remember not to get caught up in the game being played. Your "side", or party affiliation, in fact, should change as your interests change.

In other words, don't be proud of your party, and don't overly-identify with said party.

<comment><USER3> > In other words, don't be proud of your party, and don't overly-identify with > said party.

Amen.

While I'm inclined to believe that an adversarial Congress is beneficial to the nation on the whole, the zeal with which most Americans seek to categorize themselves into "in-group" and "out-group" members is discomforting.

Scarier though, in my opinion, is how quickly the politicians are to capitalize on that polarization, which offers instant and immediate demonification of whomever takes the opposite view; and so long as the parties work like this, nobody notices that so much of the parties' political platforms are not internally consistent, or are even highly hypocritical.

Having been swayed by good arguments enough that I felt the need to make sense of it, I was able to divine a set of 'first principles' that I endorse, and policy choices that align with those principles tend to be ones that I approve of, no matter who, or from which party it originates.

Of course, being a political chimera makes for often difficult discussions.

<comment><USER2> I go a step farther. In my state, there is no requirement to join a party to vote in the primaries. Instead, you simply pick a party for which to vote. I believe the only rational choice is to say "Give me one ballot for each party," which gives close-to-stacked-rank voting for the primary.

I still show up for the primaries, as I want the chance to choose who I vote for when I get to the general election. However, such a system makes it impossible for me to consider political office (beyond school board) as my primary declaration is a matter of public record, meaning that I would not pass any test of party purity.

What I really want is stacked-rank voting in the primaries and in the general election. I think it would be interesting to see how the general public, used to a Coke vs Pepsi choice, handle a spectrum of choices where you don't have to Pick Only One.

<comment><USER3> Agreed again. I'm still dazzled that after all the fanfare and hoopla over instant runoff voting in the early 2000s that nothing changed. Note, dazzled !== surprised, but still.

As for parties, I change parties multiple times a year to get the best possible vote I can. Sometimes that means I'm voting for a particular candidate, or set of policies, but sometimes also simply against... and yes, it would completely disqualify us for any public position that couldn't be voted into as an Independent.

I wonder what it would take for the issue to get real traction though, as the more and more polarized American society becomes, the more entrenched the two party system feels. Any fracturing of the system is certain to benefit somebody disproportionally at first, and it seems like the timetable for actually making a real push towards it would take longer than the state of public opinion, so nobody moves towards it because nobody knows who will get the advantage by the time it happens.

If we accept that the two party system wishes to perpetuate itself, second only to a more monolithic one-party system, then the conclusion seems foregone, but perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. Either way, the parties themselves have shown resistance to warring factions within the party, despite how much they both claim to prefer a competition of ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rothbard's view on the the issues like state, liberty and war altered my perspective a great deal. Also, this video titled "How Murray Rothbard Changed my Mind on War" may be worth watching to see his influence.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCiMxuX9_g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBCiMxuX9_g)

<comment><USER5> Wow this is excellent, thanks for posting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If only more people read Bastiat...

[http://fee.org/resources/economic- sophisms/](http://fee.org/resources/economic-sophisms/)

[http://fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_thelaw.pdf](http://fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_thelaw.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> I owe a great debt of gratitude to Rothbard. The excerpts from his book on American history are gut wrenching as they are eye openers.

</comment><comment> wes-exp > And this meant that the great danger to the peace and freedom of the world > came not from Moscow or "international communism," but from the U.S. and its > Empire stretching across and dominating the world.

Can anyone explain how this statement makes any sense for a supposed libertarian at that time? Any way you look at it, the Soviet Union 1) suppressed freedom and 2) espoused militarism. I'm puzzled why it seems to get a free pass here.

<comment><USER8> USSR did suppress freedom. It was a state after all; that is the purpose. USSR had a military, but it never received more than a tiny fraction of the resources that USA military received. The CIA and other liars continually exaggerated the strength of USSR military in order to inspire paranoia in the political and media elite, and to keep the world divided in ways that were good for business.

Their military still might have been a match for USA military, because keeping armaments manufacturers wealthy was never their purpose in the way it was in USA. Fortunately that test never came, perhaps because USSR believed much of the same hype we believed in USA. The Soviets were constantly afraid of what USA might do, and nearly every action they made was a response to that fear. Thus it was the actions of USA that drove the cold war.

The phrase I'd like to examine is "free pass". What constitutes a "free pass"? Would we consider allowing people on the other side of the earth to live as they will to be a "free pass"? How about not attacking those who have never attacked us? Would _not_ spending more than the rest of the world combined on our military deserve the classification of "free pass"? We anarchists are so stupid, please explain it to us.

<comment><USER9> > The Soviets were constantly afraid of what USA might do, and nearly every > action they made was a response to that fear. Thus it was the actions of USA > that drove the cold war.

Every newspaper, every magazine in the USSR had the "Пролетарии всех стран, соеденяйтесь!" printed above the title. Which roughly means "Working men of the world, unite!" and refers this Marx's quote:

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!"

<comment><USER8> I'm sure that the Soviets regularly found something in our newspapers that upset their sensibilities. Our grandparents should have demanded better justifications for the radical changes made to our nation.

<comment><USER9> Except Soviets could not possible do this just for the simple reason that they were not allowed to read your newspapers.

Anyways, the point of that quote was not to enrich the newspaper's contents. It was to remind the citizens that the USSR's raison d'être was to bring the world's Communistic revolution.

<comment> vezzy-fnord Not entirely. In fact, one of the main "insights" brought by Stalinism was the rejection of the necessity of the Marxist international revolution in favor of Socialism in One Country.

<comment><USER9> Not entirely. Socialism in one country was a temporary measure since the world revolution did not take on in the 1920s. The way that measure worked was to build up military and political power to force the revolution even if some countries were not progressive enough to do it on their own. Hence the slogan. Hence the USSR forcing "revolutions" all over the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rothbard's writings have had a great influence on me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good read. It's scary how relevant this still is, 58 years later.

</comment><comment><USER12> so, against the government and against big business? what's left then?

and, awesome how his stance is ultimately self-defeating as any other political direction/movement will embrace the organisation of a big construct. libertarians and anarchists are adorable.

<comment><USER13> I kinda agree with you, and I think it's unfair you're getting downvoted by fundamentalists.

I don't understand the libertarian stance either. They are against concentration and misuse of power (big business and government), which I can relate to, to an extent. But at the same time, they seem unwilling to help or even compromise with the other people who are getting screwed (which is often a majority). Specifically, they don't want to support poor in any way, and are often against democracy.

Now I sympathize with the cause, but why should I (politically, economically) help/support person (a libertarian) that is unwilling to help/support me? It doesn't make any sense, in fact it sounds as a fishy proposition, where I am gonna get screwed (though at least I appreciate the honesty).

I'd be happy to hear from libertarians how is this supposed to work - <AUTHOR> should I support you? Is your system going to help me when I am in trouble and how? (Or don't forget to downvote me as a signal that you don't want to have a tough but mature discussion about your precious beliefs.)

<comment><USER14> I am, at least, philosophically libertarian. But I'm not an activist and don't participate in electoral politics.

Here's the first problem: the word "libertarian" is a huge umbrella term that encompasses many different philosophies. Reasonable uses of word go from "fuck you, got mine" all the way to "no coercion, please." I've seen plenty of folks self identify on various parts of this spectrum, so I'm not even including derogatory senses of the word. And of course, many would consider this to be a "right wing" usurpation of the word from traditional leftists. So despite the broad spectrum, one could still consider it wrong in a variety of ways.

With that said, I personally identify close to "no coercion, please." Notably, I largely see this as entirely orthogonal to what it means to _help others_. In contrast, "fuck you, got mine," is a clear statement that "helping others" is to be looked down upon, and that those who are poor are weak or lazy.

The "no coercion, please" is also easy to conflate with "don't help others" because such a position often entails an argument in favor of defunding or abolishing many of the social welfare programs we see today. Often, this argument is made without any attempt at providing an alternative, so it's easily dismissed by conscientious individuals. However, many of these arguments are not based on the proposition that the poor are weak or that helping others is somehow bad, but rather, that these social welfare programs are predicated on the use of force (as us libertarians see it, which is not necessarily how others see it, because certainly not all people think that taxation is coercive, but I certainly see it that way). Since they are predicated on the use of force, they are generally incompatible with libertarian philosophy. However, the part where social welfare programs _help people_ is, to me, not incompatible at all with libertarian philosophy. For example, there are uncountably many privately run charities in the world. These are of course organized voluntarily, and are therefore compatible with libertarian philosophy.

Naturally, this turns the discussion toward "well private charities provide no guarantees to help folks in need." And yes, that is true. But now you've arrived to the heart of the matter: the only way to provide a "guarantee" is to use coercion. (I personally don't think of this as a guarantee, but government institutions certainly have an air of longevity and stability that isn't often associated with private organizations, so I can understand the sentiment.)

I largely see this as a trade off between freedom and security. Freedom means there are no guarantees; folks in need will only get help if there are others willing to give it.

For me personally, I cannot ethically abide coercion, ever. This probably makes me an absolutist. Of course, in real life, my pragmatism takes over. I don't mind being an absolutist in theory. ;-)

<comment><USER15> >For me personally, I cannot ethically abide coercion, ever.

Do you support Basic Income? The system of "free market capitalism" is certainly coercive in the way it walls resources off and forces people to play into the system of exchanging labor for money so they can survive.

<comment><USER14> I think I made my position clear.

If "basic income" requires coercive force, then I'm against it.

If "basic income" does not require coercive force, then go for it.

> The system of "free market capitalism" is certainly coercive in the way it > walls resources off and forces people to play into the system of exchanging > labor for money so they can survive.

If exchanging labor for goods required for survival meets your definition of coercion, then we do not share the same definition. I submit that you can keep your definition. Instead, simply replace all occurrences of the word "coercion" in my comments as "the initiation of physical force (or threat of) by a specific person or group."

I'm happy to support the eradication of social ills that meet your definition of coercion; but I will not abide my definition of coercion in the process.

<comment><USER13> It seems to me, since basic income didn't appear spontaneously so far, it probably requires coercive force to appear, so you're against it.

Anyway, thanks for the reply to my original comment. Like user "solipsism" though, I found your views somewhat contradictory. But it seems very apparent that your answer to my question "would you help me if I am in trouble?" is " _NO_ , if it would mean to coerce the other party to leave you alone". Which is a rather weak ethic in my book.

<comment><USER14> > But it seems very apparent that your answer to my question "would you help > me if I am in trouble?"

My answer to that question is: "yes."

I'm not sure how you arrived at your conclusion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Toomim Bros Bitcoin Mining Concern - <AUTHOR> http://toom.im

<comment><USER2> This is a really neat idea. I had hoped that they owned the dam and the power generation too which would have upped the awesome factor considerably. They're "only" just doing most things right rather than everything conceivable. Oh well!

I think this is a great hack in the bitcoin world. Bitcoins don't care where they're mined so might as well mine them in places which minimize costs. Arbitrage!

</comment><comment><USER3> Why would it not be more profitable for them to just mine the bitcoins for themselves?</comment>


Multiple Android apps use combined permissions to siphon personal data - <AUTHOR> https://www.virusbulletin.com/blog/2018/03/vb2016-paper-wild-android-collusions/ <comment><USER2> So the main purpose of new technology is to help corporations spy on people. Google Maps wants to know where you go, Facebook wants to know whom do you call, chinese SDKs want their share of data.

Some time ago I looked into Uber app and saw inside a Baidu SDK if I remember correctly. It had the class that was collecting WiFi network ids and sending them to some server. Of course, I cannot say that this code was really invoked by the app, but anyway this was very suspicious.

Some regulation is definitely necessary. The market cannot do anything with it and it needs help.

<comment><USER2> Imagine if you invited an electrician to your house to fix something, but he would secretly search for your documents and copied them. That is what many apps do today. They advertise themselves as a game or as a map app but secretly they spy on you or use your phone for their purposes.

<comment><USER3> That's not a fair comparison. Imagine if you hired an electrician for no money, and you kept using them over and over again. I expect if I were to pay for an alternative to not have my privacy violated.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter. If an electrian says he will work for free it doesn't give him any special rights to do anything except his job.

It is sad that some people in Silicon Valley find it acceptable and ethical.

<comment><USER4> They don't say they'll work for free, they say they'll work in exchange for your data, which they will then sell

<comment><USER5> Where do they come out and say that? Where do they put a message, in readable english, and not buried under a thousand other things, that says they'll do that?

<comment><USER6> I guess you could say they do that when they ask for permission to you camera, to your call list, etc...

<comment><USER2> Allowing the app to access the contact list doesn't mean that the user allows to upload call history to the server. Maybe they only want to add one of the people from their contact list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congress REALY needs to pass strong privacy regulations.

<comment><USER8> They can barely keep the government running. Don't hold your breath.</comment></comment>


Getting started in CV? - <AUTHOR>

How do you recommend one get started? OpenCV is intimidating for a beginner. <comment><USER2> Start a small project. Complete it. Start a second project. Complete it. Use a scripting language first (python,ruby, nodejs, lua,... whatever you are fluent with).</comment>


Show HN: SciCast, Science and Tech Combinatorial Prediction Market by GMU - <AUTHOR> https://scicast.org/?referral_id=hn#/

<comment><USER2> Your site is completely broken for people who do not want to tell google- analytics about every website they visit. I am a long time noscript/adblock/requestpolicy user so I am accustomed to some feature degradation. But I have never seen a page be completely blank[1] because I value my privacy.

[1] I did get a blue background at first. I tried with and without the HN referral code you inserted in the submission, as well as turning on/off addthis/groovehq. I enabled javascript for all domains as well as allowed every external request except GA and still no page load. The only way to get your page to load is to allow google analytics. At that point I was able to view and use your site like normal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for that experience, I'll be sure to pass that along and get it rectified. I'm sure you're not the only one who would have an issue with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds like something I would be really interested in, but we should be allowed to browse the forecasts without having to register. I'm not giving you my email address without first being able to evaluate your product. You just lost a sale.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I agree (although this is a non-profit effort by a University so technically we're not selling anything.) We'll put a big call to action on the homepage to review the forecasting questions. In the meantime, here's a direct link so you can see what's out there. Hope you'll reconsider coming back: [https://scicast.org/#/questions/](https://scicast.org/#/questions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> really neat stuff. i learned about this last fall and got the link last month from someone involved. looking forward to what pops out.

cool stuff, guys.

</comment><comment><USER5> how do you deal with irresponsible press releases, like for example national ignition facility defining down "breakeven"?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're talking about how we resolve questions when the answer is (supposedly) known - we try to be pretty careful about what sources we tap and have a growing list of subject matter experts we reach out to to understand what may really be going on. We also have partnerships with IEEE, AAAS, and a few other professional societies who are helping both author forecasting questions and resolve questions. This is all a public/open effort so if anyone wanted to get involved themselves by posting forecast questions in addition to making predictions, they can do so.</comment></comment>


Printing the NYT costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but the paper's easier to read, doesn't require batteries, lacks DRM, stores well, ... And I can't see wrapping a fish or fries in a Kindle.</comment>


Student rating app penalizes fifth-graders who need bathroom breaks - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JoshSeim/status/1177402278895992834 <comment><USER2> As a parent who has two kids who have ClassDojo, I can say that ClassDojo supports points for any teacher defined criteria. I this case I believe it was a teacher-defined point system, not the default app settings.

So while it's all good to discuss gamification and the dark side of these things, it's not the apps designer that decided to negatively reinforce bathroom breaks, but their app did allow the teacher to set that up.

What other user defined settings and unintended dark patterns are out there?

<comment><USER3> This isn't gamification; this is a violation of a child's privacy, and teaches kids that if they don't toe the line and follow whatever arbitrary rules someone in power has designed for them, they get in trouble. I'm genuinely appalled that this even exists. This is one step away from some kind of social credit system.

<comment><USER4> > if they don't toe the line and follow whatever arbitrary rules someone in > power has designed for them, they get in trouble

Sounds like good practice.

<comment><USER5> Sure if you want your kid to grow up into a dumb grunt.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but I think his comment was sarcastic as that's an actual argument I have heard people make against homeschooling: "Bullying is no reason to homeschool. In public school your student will be bullied and learn how to deal with it. This is important life experience because it's how the real workplace is. Homeschooled students can not function in the workplace because they never learned how to handle the bullying." In other worlds the world is abusive, so there is a moral obligation to abuse our children so they learn to get used to it. Homeschooling parents are thus cast as abusing their children by not subjecting them to the constant abuse that describes the life long personal experiences of the anti-homeschooling advocate, who can't imagine any other world beyond daily abuse, belittling, nagging and worse, all seen as good for you as it makes you tough. Similar to the philosophy of the ancient Spartans who threw their babies off of cliffs and those who survived were strong enough to be Spartans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My son hated ClassDojo. Everything was about points, and he saw through the charade enough to see that it didn't really matter, and it was way overused in his classroom.

I won't do it, but I was tempted to make a TeacherDojo spoof where students in a class could award their teacher points for teaching well, and take away points when their teacher fell into bad teaching habits.

<comment><USER8> Long enough ago when I was at university we ranked our professors at the end of the semester. I don't recall anything coming of it or anyone being fired as a result of scoring badly, but it's not a new concept.

<comment><USER9> I forgot about those surveys we filled out. The professor left the room and a student had to volunteer to take it to the department sectary.

I was in school around the time RateMyProfessor came out as well. I'm surprised to hear it's still being used as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to admit that I instantly recoil at any system that tracks what a child does and potentially penalizes them with such granularity. I suppose it's not _that_ far removed from getting a gold star for behaving well...but pair that with technology, and an officious school board, and I can easily envision a kind of perverse social-credit system for students, following them for their entire scholastic careers.

<comment><USER11> I've made a personal pledge to never, ever give out numerical ratings for people or service any longer.

Because you _know_ that if I give out a number from 1 to 10, that number is getting attached to he customer service rep I happened to be interacting with, and go into a bullshit statistical system that tells management which reps are "good" and which reps are "bad".

It's de-humanizing, lazy, and nothing good will come of it.

<comment><USER12> I have a similar personal pledge. When companies ask for numerical ratings, I do one of two things:

1\. Put the highest number in every field. 2\. Write up an official complaint.

IMO there's no morally justifiable middle ground; non-perfect ratings are a de-facto punishment. If someone's behavior was so reprehensible to warrant that, you should be airing some kind of grievance and going through an official process.

<comment><USER13> I have a similar policy for the rare occasions that I use a ride-share service; so far, I've always given 5 stars to every driver, because I've yet to have an experience so bad that I think that preventing other people from having it is worth hurting the livelihood of the driver. Sure, sometimes I might have a really good conversation with one driver or a boring one with another when I'd rather just listen to my headphones, but I've never had any significant issues (though granted, I don't ride often). If I ever had a serious issue, I doubt that I'd be satisfied with just filing a review into the void, so I kind of doubt I'll ever give anyone fewer than five stars and not take some additional action to report the issue.

<comment><USER14> I have _generally_ the same policy, but i have given perhaps 1% 3 or 4-star ratings on Uber/Lyft.

Why? Unnecessarily aggressive driving. Not road rage and not unsafe per-se but 10 lane changes in 3 miles, none of them smooth or signalled. Dramatically excessive perfume in the car. Neither is a safety issue; neither is worth a formal complaint to the platform; both are annoying.

For CS reps and the like, many (most?) companies using 1-10 scales treat 9 and 10 the same (promoter), 7 and 8 the same (passive), and 1-6 the same (detractor). See also "net promoter score"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's curious that "restroom during class" is the only concrete, non-arbitrary event in that log.

"Not following instructions", "off task", "teamwork" and "great day" could mean many different things, in different contexts.

"Teamwork" could mean playing nicely along with a colleague who is bullying others out of teacher's view.

"Not following instructions" is whatever an authority wants to be.

"Off task" could mean that you're not succesfully juggling forcing yourself not to get a bathroom break while concentrating on a task.

(I may not sound like it, but I appreciate teachers and I wish they didn't need an app to justify their actions to hovering parents.)

</comment><comment><USER16> In addition to the qualms about whether this sort of point system represents a movement toward a "social-credit" system, I have another question:

What the hell does this have to do with education?

I have no problem with gamefication or apps like ClassDojo, but I have to say: the teacher opting to track bathroom breaks (and even apply a penalty by dint of them) comes as no surprise to me given the bizarre norms of educational institutions. It is in the shadow of these bizarre norms that we need to consider the appropriateness of scoring systems and interfaces.

I have never understood what things like hall passes, the pledge of allegiance, and double-file-by-sex lines at doors and cafeterias have to do with learning and nurturing.

They seem unambiguously oppositional.

A 5th grader (typically a 10 or 11-year old) is absolutely old enough to understand when they need to use the bathroom, walk there by themselves, and return to their classroom, picking up context clues from a capable teacher to plug back into the material without feeling (or being) left out.

Heck, many 4 year olds are capable of this.

What is the point of education if the culture of its institutions is insistent on treating students as though they are incapable of coherent thought in the first place?

<comment><USER17> I think the point of bathroom passes is to prevent disruptions from students who aren't interested in paying attention in class.

<comment><USER16> Sure, that's one of many excuses given for their existence.

But the underlying point, obviously, is: why are students not interested in paying attention? What is wrong with these classes? We're talking about an age group whose attention is easily kept by things that are fun, exciting, interesting, engaging.

If classes aren't that, then hall passes don't help.

<comment><USER18> Many things are wrong about the current school system, but the best is just to let a 14 years old girl talk about it: [https://www.bitchute.com/video/oiZWLadcxYEu/](https://www.bitchute.com/video/oiZWLadcxYEu/)

<comment><USER19> Wait is this why the alt-right hates Greta Thunberg so much, they already had their own bizarro version?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Her teachers add and subtract behavioral points in an app shared with her > mom.

Honestly, this is _way_ too much information. Why does a parent need to know the details of every minor issue in class?

<comment><USER20> Why not? If the parents over-react it's a problem with the parent that should be addressed.

I'd agree if it was about student's private life but as long as it's about classes - why should anything be hidden?

<comment><USER21> For parents not to interfere. School teaches children to be less dependent on parents, to interact with a system. Interfering parent can make it impossible for a child to learn these important skills.

Parents protecting their child is a good thing, but only to a point. A child needs to learn how to live without protection from parents. How to interact with a boss (a teacher plays similar role in a school), how to do what a boss have asked, how to ask a boss for a favor, how to learn rules of a new boss and to adapt to them?

How a person supposedly could learn all of it, if every time when happened something that is not convenient for a child, parents would interfere, come to talk with a teacher, and insist on changing her rules on behalf of their child?

<comment><USER20> Keeping parents (or whoever) from interfering by keeping them uninformed sounds like a dirty hack rather than a good design. Whoever should not interfere but does not know they should not should better be taught just this.

<comment><USER21> Parents are uninformed just because there is a price of getting information which they do not want to pay. Parents needs to ask their kid about her day and to talk with a teacher sometimes. Parents could know everything, but they need to make an actual effort for that and to keep making efforts.

This efforts is a good thing against parental anxiety. When parents did _something_ they might feel that they fulfilled their role of parents and stop there. When they got information for free, they didn't do anything yet as a parents, they may feel obliged to do something. There is a good chance that they would be unable to find a constructive thing they could do, so they might do a random thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A relative of mine is socially awkward and was often bullied. He became a teacher recently and was bragging to me that he doesn't allow his elementary school students bathroom breaks. Parents get upset but he doesn't care. After years of being bullied through school now he's finally in power in a school situation and is determined to use it. I'm now wondering how common this situation is.

<comment><USER23> So he's now a bully. And the cycle repeats.

<comment><USER24> That is how bullies are made, through emotional trauma.

The cycle repeats as long as it has to for us to see it, accept responsibility and build a better society where it doesn't need to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If we don't want a social credit system for ourselves, why would we implement one for our children? Here's why this terrifies me:

I was a sensitive kid getting bullied at one point and had a horrid 2nd grade teacher. Reflecting on her behavior as an adult, it was apparent that I was just a problem for her in her last year before retirement (there was a "Miss So-and-so is retiring" party we had to have as a class for her at the end of the year).

The bullying was bad enough that she would just remove me from the class and have me work alone in the library because I'm certain that it was easier than the alternative. This happened probably 30+ times until one day I broke down and started to cry because it was just a rough day, and I just felt very alone.

Librarians noticed, teacher notified, yelled at by the teacher privately for "being a disturbance", I then told my parents, Dad got insanely angry at the situation (rightfully so), and we met with the principal. I remember sitting outside of the office listening to my father destroy the guy verbally. I cried then too.

After the fact I didn't have to go to the library alone anymore, but she literally wouldn't respond verbally to me at times. I remember not being called on when I had the answer, being the only kid with a hand up. She just ignored me unless she absolutely HAD to respond (IMO abusive behavior towards a child). My grades went down and I was pulled from the gifted programs never to get back in. All of this happened within one school year.

I am horrified of what a teacher like that would have done to me with this tool.

<comment><USER26> One of my only memories from kindergarten was of the social control system the teacher had. There were three faces, a smiling green, straight faced yellow, and frowning red, arranged like a stoplight. Every child had a clothespin with their name on it. Behaving well? The pin with your name clasped the green light, etc.

One day my teacher was trying to punish a troublesome student, who I only recall because of this incident. She meant to move his pin to red, but accidentally grabbed mine and moved it instead. I, instantly, burst into tears because I had nothing wrong, and still recollect my feelings of outrage decades later.

I can only imagine trying to work through social credit bureaucracy as a child to correct mistakes, or understand outcomes.

<comment> en-us Wow reading this just brought a kindergarten memory for me.

We had laminated apples on the wall, and if we were bad we got a worm sticker stuck on it for a week, we called it getting a "wormy apple".

One day I was listening to an audio book with headphones and didn't hear the teacher call us back, so all at once she snatched the headphones off me, asked me why I don't listen, and gave me a wormy apple. I remember it to this day, I felt so wronged because I was doing an "approved activity" and felt I was punished for it. Seeing the worm on my apple made me cry and I never listened to audio books in that classroom again.

So I don't know if making that sort of stuff electronic will be better or worse but I know I didn't like systems like that at all.

<comment><USER27> I wonder how many people have unkind memories of their kindergarten teacher?

Mine had us color a bunny rabbit. I grabbed a crayon (purple) and colored it. I think I had seen a rabbit on Sesame Street of that color, and the 8 crayon pack doesn't allow for subtlety. She grabbed it from me, threw it in the garbage, and told me to color another one because that isn't a "proper color" for a rabbit. I slid the paper back and said something to the effect it's already colored because bunnies are white. Spent the rest of the hour sitting in a chair in the corner staring at the wall. Dad was "concerned" when he picked me up, and laughing in the truck. I was just very angry.

I can only imagine what a points system would have done to me in school. I'd of probably been done in 1st grade because of that stupid volcano.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a teacher defined penalty, not a ClassDojo defined penalty.

ClassDojo's main use case is to _reward_ behavior that's usually difficult to reward, like "Sally played well with others today!" It encourages the small things.

This is an interesting use case of the platform by the teacher, and I suspect the outcome will simply be the teacher won't use this penalty anymore.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps the ClassDojo developers should remove the points from negative notes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What is the benefit of ClassDojo? Instead of simply making notes about students in a notebook, teachers use ClassDojo so that... what? Parents and students can be notified in real time of how many POINTS they got? How is that at all beneficial, let alone beneficial enough to justify inserting a private, for-profit company between students and teachers.

<comment><USER30> The benefit for me is I get to see pictures from my son's class, of him doing stuff in class, which as a parent, I greatly appreciate the teacher taking the time to take and post pics of what they're doing in class. They also send messages regarding homework, upcoming quizzes, what they're doing for the week, upcoming field trips -- and I can contact my son's teacher at moment's notice without going through the school. What's the benefit of that? There was a potential shooter situation last year and all classes were locked down, and teachers could post to classdojo that they were ok.

I've never even seen this points system used. Its a communication tool between teachers and parents. My kids are 2nd and 1st graders, so maybe it changes as kids get older?

My biggest complaint - there is a lack of standardization by schools on what app the teachers use. In the past year, I've had to install/set-up Class Dojo, Bloomz, ClassTag - which all pretty much do the same thing, and now all have info and pics of my kids. I never even heard of the apps until the teachers said they were using it.

<comment><USER29> > The benefit for me is I get to see pictures from my son's class, of him > doing stuff in class, which as a parent, I greatly appreciate the teacher > taking the time to take and post pics of what they're doing in class. They > also send messages regarding homework, upcoming quizzes, what they're doing > for the week, upcoming field trips -- and I can contact my son's teacher at > moment's notice without going through the school.

So e-mail?

<comment><USER31> Email isn't reasonable for a class of 25 children. I get updates every day from my kids teachers in apps like this - they would never be able to figure out email.

<comment><USER32> what's the benefit of daily updates tho?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I assume the idea isn't "don't go to the bathroom" so much as "please use the bathroom _before_ class starts." That isn't such an unreasonable ask if classes are relatively short.

Adding that to a computerized point system is what makes it seem creepy...

<comment><USER34> 5th grade classes typically have hours without interruption. I'm pretty sure I pee once before lunch too if I don't have a terrifying and dystopian social credit system docking me for the priviledge of emptying my bladder.

<comment><USER35> In schools here, continuous class is 45min and there are breaks between them. No one has hours without interruption.

<comment><USER36> Most American schools are like that only from middle school. Elementary schools have teachers traveling between classes instead, if they bother changing the teacher at all. Breaks are simply recess and lunch periods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ClassDojo and related dystopian apps are really terrible for morale and have an antieducational result. If your kid's school wasn't enough of a prison camp indoctrinating them with propaganda wait until you see the results after the Dojo marketers get all the teachers mesmerized and on board with tracking every tiny thing and sending alerts constantly to parents about the most minor and always irrelevant issue. Obsession with microdata that has nothing to do with the actual academics or intellectual understanding of concepts allows teachers to ignore academics and turn everything into a operant conditioning experiment. Alert dings replace bells.

If your school district mandates Dojo, move districts or homeschool. If it's optional, meet with them and make sure they understand they are not under any circumstances to use it on your child and you deny consent. It is abusive software and its use should be banned by law if we want to have good schools and an educated populace in decent mental health. Constant nagging over minor issues destroys psychological well being. Imagine living with a partner who used such an app, or working for a boss. Anyone would agree that would be an abusive situation. Now why would you subject your children to such a thing.

</comment><comment><USER37> I hope it's something the parents can opt out of

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would the 5th grader get or lose points if he were to have an "accident" in class?

<comment><USER26> "A penalty of '-5' for 'urinating in pants during class' has been added to your permanent record."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just a few comments down, one teacher says she uses the app and doesn't penalize for bathroom breaks. It sounds like blame lies with the teach and not the app necessarily.

Better title:

"Teacher penalizes sutudent for bathroom break using "ClassDojo" App."

</comment><comment><USER39> In the future, totalitarianism will be gamified.

<comment><USER40> If you haven't already, I highly recommend you read We by Zamyatin [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_%28novel%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Weird, so we're teaching our kids how to live in a Social Credit system now? Why do we create totalitarian horror shows for our kids that we would never want to live under ourselves? The only consolation is that this generation is probably going to value their privacy after the spyware they have to live with in school.

</comment><comment><USER42> How Dystropian is this thing? Who needs it? You don't want a kid you want a Bot.

</comment><comment><USER43> My son's school uses this. He came home from his first day of class, started carrying around a book like a clipboard and taking away points from my wife and I whenever we moved or spoke. So there you go, gamification through the eyes of an innocent child. Considering the percentage of my family that was wiped out fighting Hitler, this Nazi stuff really bugs me. It starts with gamification, turns into social credit, work camps are next.

</comment><comment><USER44> Seriously? Duh. If you don't teach your kids that they need to plan ahead and take responsibility for themselves, they never will. And if you haven't taught your kids, your teacher is gonna have to - especially if it means a disruption to every other student in class.</comment>


Ask HN: Who built the first site of Amazon.com? - <AUTHOR>

Was Jeff a programmer? Does anybody have a quick break down on how Amazon got started? <comment><USER2> If you haven't seen it you might find one of the early Amazon job postings amusing: [http://groups.google.com/group/mi.jobs/msg/d81b6c1fa8f361fc?...](http://groups.google.com/group/mi.jobs/msg/d81b6c1fa8f361fc?pli=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. His pre-Amazon background was developing technology for investment banks.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom- empl...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/meet-shel-kaphan-amazoncom-employee-1)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for this interesting read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> edit: Staunch wins by 1 min - good work

Bezos job post from 1994: [http://groups.google.com/group/mi.jobs/msg/d81b6c1fa8f361fc?...](http://groups.google.com/group/mi.jobs/msg/d81b6c1fa8f361fc?pli=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> indeed he did :)</comment></comment>


Hackers Unite: How Can Spam Spoofing Be Defeated? - <AUTHOR>

So I go to check my mail and I get dozens of "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" messages from a server in France.
No, I'm not Julia, and I don't have a private message to send to every permutation of "Thierry[0-9]*" at the French site.
And yes, I know how easy it is for a spammer to set an email's "From" header so that it looks like it came from the info address at my domain.
Other than just ignore it, what can I do to prevent this from happening?
(Yes, it's not a huge problem in the grand scheme of things, but still annoying)
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> I've been getting this for years from my domain... I don't think there's much you can do short of fixing the SMTP protocol

<comment><AUTHOR> _I don't think there's much you can do short of fixing the SMTP protocol_

Yes, that's what I thought.

I remember there was a vigilante effort, to attack the sites advertised in spam, but that too ran into difficulties and shut down.</comment></comment>


Why Did Google Abandon Firefox?  - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/09/02/why-did-google-abandon-firefox/

<comment><USER2> Sometimes reading the tech business press is like listening to fish talk about bicycling.

Here we have an entire article discussing Google's strategic motivation for selecting one open-source project over another for a given task. And there's not a single mention of the possibility that the Google engineers sat down to design a stripped-down Browser of the Future, took a good look at the Firefox source, took a good look at the Webkit source, took a look at each other, and said "Webkit".

In Pundit World the amount of work required to turn one buzzword into another buzzword is always O(1).

<comment><USER3> I somewhat agree with you - but the question is, why did the Google Engineers sit down to make the Browser of Future? - especially when they already have well-forged relationships with Mozilla and Opera?

Clearly they wanted to do something else - they wanted a new tool for the job - something they felt they couldn't or didn't want to do with Mozilla. Page refers to some reasons (which you may or may not agree with).

I think that's what the article is trying to get at.

<comment><USER4> _why did the Google Engineers sit down to make the Browser of Future?_

I've spent 2 years of my working life with the Mozilla codebase. Also, 3 very close friends work at Google, and I must know at least 25 people who work there.

My take is that mechanical_fish is completely correct. There was no secret strategic reason for doing this. Some engineers at Google simply wanted to make a better browser, and decided that the Mozilla codebase was too huge and crufty to deal with.

Not a day went by working with the Mozilla codebase that I didn't think I could make a better browser from scratch, if only I had enough time and all my smart hacker friends wanted to pitch in and help me out.

Google is probably still the most "bottom up" out of any of the huge firms out there, and they have "20% time" and all the personnel needed to make this happen. Once the guys got somewhere on their skunkworks version, the higher- ups probably thought "oh cool... another browser, we should put that out there. And hey, as a bonus maybe we don't have to keep dealing with the Mozilla foundation"

Personally, I'm jealous because they basically implemented everything I thought sucked in Firefox. I had no idea Google had this up their sleeve (very impressed that my Google friends kept this a secret from me; yes, they knew about it), so until September 2 I had a minor dream that maybe someday I could spearhead the next killer browser. Unfortunately I spend too much time at my day job and on hacker news. Execution is everything folks, get to work!

Of course I could be wrong and this started out as a sinister plot to own all your data and give the finger to the Mozilla foundation, but I really doubt it.

<comment><USER3> I don't have the experience you have, so I have to side with you on that basis alone.

I don't find Google's moves sinister - they want to provide a better user experience in order to be a better (and more successful) business. Google's strategy has always been one that works symbiotically... If they think more of my data is going to help them do that, well, then they might be right... and they might be right that most people will be happy with this.

I don't buy that this is a skunkworks project though - there are a lot of key individuals contributing to this.

Putting out a browser like this is a pretty serious undertaking. It'll take a lot of resources to maintain, and carries the Google brand in an extremely public way. So whilst the origins might be up for argument, I think this is a very deliberate and strategic move on Google's part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No abandonment here. If the Google Gears, fast Javascript, super secure browser of the future is Firefox and IE8 is dragged halfway along to that, then Google will have won!

</comment><comment><USER6> The technology is secondary. Firefox, Safari, and Opera are horrible brands that non-technical people hate. For many people IE == internet, and the only brand in the world that can compete is Google. They "abandoned" Firefox so that our parents will abandon IE.

<comment><USER7> _Firefox, Safari, and Opera are horrible brands that non-technical people hate._

Um, really? Most of my friends who use Firefox quite like it. Those who use Macs use Safari, for the most part. Basically no one has heard of Opera. But I don't know of a single non-technical user who "hates" any of those brands.

 _For many people IE == internet_

I think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client application and a website.

<comment><USER6> _I think you give far too little credit to most Internet users. Even among older users, the vast majority are aware of the difference between a client application and a website._

That was equality, not identity! It's a terminology thing. Yes, they know the difference between the internet and their browser certainly, but I know people who more or less _refer_ to IE as "the internet." It's part of the name, after all. I think they generally call the net itself either "the web" or "online." Obviously I'm pulling from a small data set, but nonetheless, IE does give the impression on the outside that it's the authoritative browser, much as Google's homepage does for search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well everyone wants to rule the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Adblock</comment>