Show HN: Browser extension to read HN comments for any url, in ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in <comment><AUTHOR> Well this is awkward. Seems that shortly after I posted this here both Mozilla and Google rejected the extension from their stores. Mozilla's primary concern was that the analytics were opt-out, not opt-in, so I'm patching that in and resubmitting.

Typically, Google just said that it "did not comply with their policies" with no additional information, but I'm guessing their concerns are along the same lines.

Meanwhile, if anyone is interested in trying it out, the README has instructions on running the extension locally in Firefox or Chrome.

<comment><USER2> It's not awkward to violate people's privacy, it's wrong. Maybe you didn't know that before, but you still don't seem to get it.

<comment><USER3> Person posts cool tool they wrote, that they find useful. Shows it to the community, this community, which many may really appreciate. Then gets ripped for not thinking through the complex privacy issues with said tool. Not everything is malicious.

It would be better to give constructive criticism, like:

This is a really cool tool! I might even choose to use it, but I have a few concerns: 1) it sends too much data unfiltered to the algolia search servers. Could you instead make it a button that only then triggers the request or opens another browser window? 2) the analytics are also a concern. In general, you should always make these opt-in; better, ask the user through a dialogue to enable them; even better, request feedback through some other system (github for example).

Let's try and be nice here and give people the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER2> I agree with the sentiment but not this example.

Sharing people's browsing data with third-parties can threaten their lives in some circumstances. There's no excuse for a developer creating browser extensions not to take this threat seriously in 2018. It's negligent.

<comment><USER3> I did read your comment (and I didn't downvote you b/c I agreed with you). The reason I wrote this response was because your comment read as being very aggressive in response to an honest attempt at explaining an issue the dev was having. What your comment lacked was any additional information about better approaches.

I get the concern and share it, but your comment only said that what they did was wrong. It didn't offer any ideas of how to fix it. Telling someone they're on the wrong road but not telling them how to get to the correct one leaves them just as lost.

<comment><USER2> What the developer didn't seem to understand in this case was the gravity of the issue. I don't think your explanation would have conveyed it as well.

<comment><USER4> Take care of yourself.

<comment><USER2> Thank you!

And let's all try not to get the users of our software imprisoned or killed: [https://boingboing.net/2018/01/28/30000-accused.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/01/28/30000-accused.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As other comments here point out, there are significant privacy issues with sending every visited URL to a "trusted" server to check for comments. There are also load issues for the server that is getting all the unwanted requests. So if doing this, you'd probably want at least the initial lookup to be local.

So, can this be done with an initial download of some small number of megabytes, then incremental updates of a few kilobytes as often as desired? I think so.

Guessing at numbers (see other comments here), there are probably fewer than 1,000,000 URL's that have comments associated with them on HN. For each, you store hash of the canonicalized URL and a comment count. Collisions aren't deadly, so you could probably get down to 8B per hash (7B for hash, 1B for count). Updates can be a list of all new and revised URL-hash-counts since a given date.

Lookup the hash of the URL of each visited page with binary search on the 7B prefix in the ~8MB ordered list of data. If found, report the number of comments in something clickable that loads a sidebar. The only data that leaves the machine is based on the active click to load the comments. Maybe store a "false positive list" so that the rare collisions are only visible to the user once. Maybe use a bit for "visited" so you can distinguish pages with new comments?

The numbers seem surprisingly manageable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent idea, and a nice summary of the discussion of this from further down the thread.

I've opened an issue to implement this here: [https://github.com/jdormit/looped- in/issues/4](https://github.com/jdormit/looped-in/issues/4)

As time allows, I will implement this later this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Will this instantly look up any URL I visit, or does it only look up HN posts for the current URL when I click some icon?

I'd rather not have a browser extension that sends everything I visit to some US servers - but I do like the idea behind this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The current implementation will look up any URL you visit so that it can populate the "number of comments" text that appears over the button. The data only goes to 1 server - hn.algolia.com, a HN search API provided by the company Algolia.

<comment><USER7> At least change it so it sends a hash of the URL to a server that knows the hashes of all the HN submitted posts. That way if there is no match you'd have to have hashes of _all_ legal URLs to leak anything.

<comment><USER8> Doesn't that still leak a fair amount?

Suppose I'm an evil overlord and someone in my organization has been tipping off the FBI about my upcoming operations. I'm pretty sure it is one of my work-at-home minions.

If I can obtain the hashes of the URLs that my minions have visited, I can look for a minion that has in their history the hash of [https://tips.fbi.gov/](https://tips.fbi.gov/) and now I've got a good suspect.

<comment><USER7> How will you tie the relevant minion to the hash?

You'd have to have a lot more than just that hash, the log would at least have to include a static IP or something that you can isolate by window-of- opportunity, for instance all the other minions were at a ballgame and the timestamp indicates that that one minion that wasn't at the ballgame visited tips.fbi.gov right then from an IP not associated with a stadium hotspot.

Regardless, if you're going to leak stuff on 'evil overlord's organization you'd better make sure you don't do it from anything that can be associated with you, so not your laptop, not your IP, not your browser and certainly not with all kinds of weird plugins installed. Burner device and a location and time chosen so it could be anybody in 'the organization' leaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This comment refers to a similar extension but was asked by HN to stop doing it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15938700)

And there is also: [https://github.com/powerpak/hn- sidebar](https://github.com/powerpak/hn-sidebar) which was in the Chrome Store but not anymore...

<comment><AUTHOR> :fingerscrossed: this one doesn't end up in the same bucket.

Any idea why the earlier extension was shut down by YC?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why send each URL to a server to be checked, instead of doing a periodic download of the (very small) list of HN links and comment counts, to be checked offline like an ad blocker? It's probably 5kb compressed.

<comment><USER11> What makes you think it's a very small list? HN has been around since 2007, with a lot of submissions. Any guesses on the size of that? I think it's bigger than

<comment><USER12> Well... including comments it looks like we are pushing 16.3 million posts. The id in the url is sequential. If you are saving url, HN id, and comment count, that's probably no more than a couple megs, if even that.

<comment><USER13> ~391 MB if we store SHA-1 hashes of the URLs (160 bits each) and HN ids and assume 16.3 million posts[1]. (Probably less, since, as you said, some posts are just comments.) If we're okay submitting one out of every hundred URLs as a SHA-1 hashed value to an external server, we can reduce that further to ~18 MB with a bloom filter[2].

[1]: [https://www.google.com/search?q=(160+bits+%2B+32+bits)+*+16....](https://www.google.com/search?q=\(160+bits+%2B+32+bits\)+*+16.3+million&oq=\(160+bits+%2B+32+bits\)+*+16.3+million)

[2]: [https://hur.st/bloomfilter?n=16300000&p=0.01](https://hur.st/bloomfilter?n=16300000&p=0.01)

<comment><USER8> I don't think we need either a strong hash or to submit hashed URLs to a server. We can use an ordinary hash and the only URLs we need to submit to a server are story requests to HN, if we do this thing like this:

Include in the extension a hash table construction as follows:

      foreach ID of an HN story submission
        URL = the URL of the submitted story
        URL = normalize(URL)
        insert_into_hash_table(URL, ID)

insert_into_hash_table(key, val) is a function that inserts val into a hash table with key key. The hashing function does not need to be cryptographically secure.

normalize(URL) is a function that takes a URL and normalizes it. What normalize means in this context is a little fuzzy, but the basic idea is that if URL_1 and URL_2 are different URLs to the same article, normalize(URL_1) == normalize(URL_2).

NOTE: what you include with the extension is the hash table itself. Conceptually it is probably just a sparse array containing HN IDs, with maybe a little more depending on how collisions are handled.

In the extension, do this:

      URL = normalize(URL_of_current_page)
      ID_list = lookup_URL_in_hash(URL)
      foreach ID in ID_list
        story = get_HN_story(ID)
        if (normalize(URL_of_story(story)) == URL
          show_story_comments(story)

The hash is only used for data retrieval from a local hash table, so does not need to be cryptographically secure.

After the hash lookup we have a list of candidate stories on HN that might match the browser story. It's a list because due to collisions there might be more than one HN story with matching hash.

Note that all that is ever fetched from the server during operation of this are HN stories, so there is minimal information leakage.

<comment><USER13> Don't hash tables typically store the key itself in the table though? Wouldn't that take up _more_ space per entry than a 160-bit hash? Using a sufficiently collision-resistant hash function allows you to eliminate the need to store URLs entirely, which in theory should reduce the size of the hash table significantly.

<comment><USER8> Whether or not you need to store keys depends on how you handle collisions.

For instance, if we had a hash table whose keys were names, and whose values were telephone numbers, we'd probably have to store keys with the phone numbers so that in the case of a collision we could figure out which phone number matches the search key.

If, on the other hand, we had a hash table that stored record numbers of employee records from our employee database, keyed by employee name, then we probably would not need to store keys with the hash table values. If there is a collision, we can just retrieve all of the colliding records from the database. Those records will contain the employee name, and we can use that to figure out which is the right one.

For the HN comment extension we are closer to the second case. The HN story contains the URL, so in the case of a collision we can fetch all the colliding HN stories and see which one is the right one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any other websites/apps that are _known_ to respect DNT flag?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe that medium.com respects DNT. I'm sure there are others, but I haven't looked into it too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does this have to be an extension with `<all_urls>` permission? Can it be a bookmarklet that will just open the full-fledged HN in a new tab?

<comment><USER16> Here's a bookmarklet I use to launch a quick search for a page I'm looking at.

        javascript:(function()%7Bwindow.open('https%3A%2F%2Fhn.algolia.com%2F%3Fquery%3D' %2B (window.location.hostname %2B window.location.pathname %2B window.location.hash).split('%2F').join(' ').split('%23').join(' ')%2C '_blank')%7D)()

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is also Kiwi

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi- conversations...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kiwi- conversations/pkifhlefpamigmobjmjjjnjglpebflhp?hl=en)

Also "researches" Reddit, Product Hunt and Google News. And only on demand

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you for posting this!

What does your development workflow for CLJS browser extensions look like? Do you have to rebuild and reload the extension on your development machine each time you change the code? Is it possible to use Figwheel when writing browser extensions?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm still working out the kinks in the workflow. I believe it is possible to use Figwheel while writing browser extensions [0], but I haven't set that up. I have `lein cljsbuild auto` running in the background to automatically recompile the JS when I change the source code, and use Mozilla's web-ext utility [1] to automatically reload the web extension once the JS has compiled.

This system has some disadvantages, though. The main one is the glacial feedback loop - due to strict CSP restrictions in web extensions, I had trouble compiling the CLJS with {:optimizations :none}, so each save-compile- reload cycle takes ~30 seconds from when I save the source file to when I see the results of the change in the browser. I also did not figure out how to set up a REPL environment connected to the code running in the web extension.

Lots of room for improvement here, basically.

[0]: [https://github.com/binaryage/chromex-sample#chromex- sample-p...](https://github.com/binaryage/chromex-sample#chromex-sample- project-has-following-configuration)

[1]: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Ge...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add- ons/WebExtensions/Getting_started_with_web-ext)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do you have REPL both for background and content scripts?

I tried to use clojurescript for Chrome extensions few years ago but failed to configure fast reload cycle (either repl or figwheel).

<comment><AUTHOR> No. In fact, the development cycle on this was pretty awful - due to browser extensions' strict CSP, I couldn't even compile the CLJS with {:optimizations :none}, so every code change took ~20 seconds to recompile.

Do you know any good resources on REPL-driven ClojureScript development? Preferably with a REPL that lives in the page environment so that browser variables etc. can be accessed.

<comment><USER19> Chromex-sample ([https://github.com/binaryage/chromex- sample](https://github.com/binaryage/chromex-sample)) mentions :optimizations :none and figwheel support (but with disabled repl), but I didn't try it yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, looks like they got :optimizations :none to work for background scripts but not content scripts (which makes sense). Figwheel support sounds great, I'll look into adding that to Looped In.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of hoodwink.d by why the lucky stiff. Anyone remembers it?

</comment><comment><USER21> sick nice job Jeremy</comment>


Are Aliens Among Us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=are-aliens-among-us&print=true <comment><USER2> was I the only one severely disappointed that this wasn't actually about aliens?

<comment><USER3> Actually, I was fully expecting the same thing, after which I would have immediately hit Back and then come into the comments thread to see all of the "Hacker News is not Reddit" comments.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Meta Intelligence – Writing Programs That Write Programs - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/meta-intelligence-writing-programs-that-write-programs-part-1-genetic-evolution-679b65c37c5f <comment><USER2> So this uses an evolutionary algorithm to learn Brainfuck programs that output strings, taking advantage of the simple set of instructions in the language.

Pairing Brainfuck with evolutionary algorithms is a very nice idea, for sure. But, the algorithm they show takes half an hour to learn a program that outputs the word "HI".

That's just mad. Half an hour for two measly letters? Why is that thing so slow?</comment>


After 'South Park' Censorship Episode, China Deleted the Show from the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywaq3g/after-a-south-park-censorship-episode-china-deleted-the-entire-show-from-the-web <comment><USER2> Good, good....the more the merrier. Maybe finally the world will stop cuddling with China like they did in past 3 decades and start treating them for what they really are. A tight grip censorship dictatorship that has thrown dust in the world's eyes posing as softies while behind the scenes they amassed a lot of wealth riding West blindness.

<comment><USER3> God help us when South Park is helping us find our moral compass...

<comment><USER4> South Park has been advocating an ideology, including many morals, from day one of the shows. It may be a mixed message, it may be contradictory, but a lot of SP comedy hinges on pointing out the absurdities in our societies.

Comedy has always been a place you'd look if you want to see someone speak truth to power, for millennia too, and South Park has always done that.

<comment><USER5> The message of South Park is to point at people with any conviction and say "ha! Look at these idiots with an ideology. The only correct way is to be edgy and make fun of everything"

It's basically about nihilism.

<comment><USER6> "It seems to be a hangover of the Medieval Catholic era that causes most people, even the educated, to think that everybody must "believe" something or other, that if one is not a theist one must be a dogmatic atheist, and if one does not think capitalism is perfect, one must believe fervently in socialism, and if one does not have blind faith in "X", one must alternatively have blind faith in not X or reverse of X. My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assume certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. The more certitude one assumes, the less there is left to think about, and a person sure of everything would never have any need to think about anything and might be considered typically dead under current medical standards where absence of brain activity is taken to mean that life has ended." Robert Anton Wilson

<comment><USER7> yes however it goes without saying taking a stand to not believe is also a belief position

<comment><USER8> I like rush

"if you decide not to choose you still have made a choice"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you cannot watch the episode in your country, here is a link to the "Band in China" on facebook (subbed in traditional Chinese): [https://www.facebook.com/fighterstudiohk/videos/396572967928...](https://www.facebook.com/fighterstudiohk/videos/396572967928125/?v=396572967928125)

<comment><USER10> Uhm? Facebook is the first thing that non-Western countries will block for political reasons.

<comment><USER11> magnet:?xt=urn:btih:645FEB655D770627403E61BD6DF817C8EE30492B&dn=South+Park+S23E02+HDTV+x264+SVA&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.leechers- paradise.org%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.trackerfix.com%3A80%2Fannounce

<comment><USER12> Why is this link downvoted? If it's due to your views on piracy, torrents shouldn't be any worse that the pirate Facebook stream.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this in every way.

I'm curious to see if their relationship with Ubisoft gets strained, though, given some recent news with gaming companies trying hard to maintain good relations with China, and because I believe Ubisoft is partly owned by a Chinese company.

(FYI - Ubisoft / Obsidian made the Stick of Truth games, and I believe a mobile game or two with the South Park license.)

<comment><USER14> Tencent has about a 5% stake iirc. They also have small interests in Activision-Blizzard and a big chunk of Epic. I have no idea what 5% of a company buys them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I love how a single episode of a show can piss off the government of a country. Just recently Saudi Arabia banned an episode of "Patriot Act" and now this. Tyrants are really sensitive I guess.

<comment> ur-whale > Tyrants are really sensitive I guess.

Here's a fun game to play: close your eyes and imagine yourself in their shoes, hanging on to power day after day by a thread, relying on fear and coercion to keep on going.

Now comes such an episode making fun of you in front of the people you scare for a living.

What do you do?

<comment><USER16> You don't ban it, cuz it shows that you habe been hurt by it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just explained this to my mother, who is 80 and has dementia, and this is what _she_ said:

"That's silly."

"It's only going to make people around the world watch it."

"A country the size of China with the power that they have and they mess up on a tiny insult."

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome response ... love those two ... fortunately they have financial and creative freedom to do what they want.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think South Park angered the CCP only with Winnie the Pooh. Southpark can be seen as subversive to authoritarian regimes, the catchy jokes may make the people think outside the reestablished mold.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. To my knowledge, South Park was never imported into China. Maybe I am outdated, when it is imported to China?

<comment><USER21> This is not about it officially airing on Chinese TV, it's about blocking it entirely from the whole of the Chinese Internet. You can't even search for "South Park" and get any search results, not just on video sharing sites but on web search and social media sites as well. There's another discussion on hacker news today that goes in the more details, it's pretty scary the extent to which the Chinese government can wipe an entire topic off their corner of the internet. And with centralized chat systems like WeChat, your messages won't go through either if they catch censorship algorithms. This effectively allows them to limit conversation about topics, which greatly hampers the Streisand effect everyone else is alluding to.

<comment><USER20> I just surprised it wasn't already years ago, given South Park's nothing-is- safe free-pass in The States which we loved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Southpark, NBA, keep going and China will implode with boredom.

</comment><comment><USER23> Have noticed Morey guy, Matt, Trey & whatnot. China remains faceless. China this and China that.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it irony that the episode on censorship isn't even available outside of the States?

<comment><USER25> There is no US-only restriction. Some locations might be restritcted, but I could watch the episode in Estonia. [https://southpark.cc.com/](https://southpark.cc.com/)

<comment><USER24> The restrictions are weird. The link you posted isn't available from Sweden.

The irony of anti-censorship episode being only available in select countries...

<comment><USER26> It is not like it is censored in Sweden, it's just someone holds the distribution rights in Sweden for South Park. So, they cannot show it to you on their website.

So, there is no irony here, it's copyright issue, not censorship issue.

<comment><USER27> It is at least pretty interesting that the end result of repressive censorship and "free" market capitalism seems to be the same: limitations on what you can see or hear.

To the average human, it doesn't really matter if it is the state that prevents you from seeing something or the forces of market capitalism. You have to do something illegal to see it either way, and you will be punished if discovered.

<comment><USER28> The difference is that in capitalism you can pay the owner to see it. Most of the people who are blocked from one source by copyright probably have it available on a paid streaming service.

<comment><USER29> As the current market shows, you cannot always get the content from the owner. Some TV Shows are unavailable and the owners are unwilling to release them for whatever reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Once again, Parker and Stone are breaking the mould. Power to them.

</comment><comment><USER31> So China is censoring the fact that they are censoring.

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/08/we- good...](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/08/we-good-now- china-south-park-creators-issue-mock-apology-after-show-reportedly-censored)

"'We good now China?' South Park creators issue mock apology after show reportedly censored"

Well all publicity is good publicity, fair play to them for standing up to their principles

<comment><USER33> They got me to watch an episode for the first time in over a decade, so yeah, well done all around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Make no mistake, China knows South Park doesn't give a fuck about this.

This is about sending a very clear message to everybody else. You can be as big and well known and South Park, yet be cancelled in one second.

<comment><USER35> > You can be as big and well known and South Park

I think you're overestimating South Park's popularity, especially when compared to the NBA. They cancelled it because they don't like being made fun of.

<comment><USER36> i'd say 99% Chinese people don't know or don't watch South Park. yes, its popularity is very much overestimated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Deleted only from the web controlled by the Peopple's Republic of China. You can still access South Park from the Republic of China and elsewhere.

(Look what I did there: two countries, not one.)

<comment><USER38> The One China policy is moronic. If they keep being assholes, it is about time to give Taiwan their long overdue recognition.

Hell, give them back the Security Council seat that they had until the 70s...

<comment><USER39> > Hell, give them back the Security Council seat that they had until the > 70s...

I'd rather prefer reforming the UN SC to get rid of the "veto" concept. It's time that the US, China and Russia have to finally be held accountable for the shit they did all over the world.

<comment><USER40> Hum... Are you aware that the UN has no intrinsic power, but is just a forum that hosts diplomatic negotiations?

What change do you expect getting rid of the veto would bring?

<comment><USER39> > Hum... Are you aware that the UN has no intrinsic power, but is just a forum > that hosts diplomatic negotiations?

I was talking about the Security Council which can legalize military interventions either by individual countries or by UN-labeled forces (e.g. as in the Afghanistan War), and can conduct investigatikons into war crime and other international law violations.

> What change do you expect getting rid of the veto would bring?

Right now, the veto powers block consequences for their allies - the US/Israel don't want their numerous illegal acts (regime changes, Iraq/Afghanistan war crimes, their part in the Palestine issue) investigated, the Russians block investigations into the atrocities of Assad's Syrian regime and the Chinese block everything that targets North Korea plus whatever the Russians need support. The only thing that's somehow consistently investigated are crimes of African warlords, creating an additional nasty white supremacism layer on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I see lots of Anti-China sentiment. I would be very careful here into not falling into the trap of making ourselves China's "Enemy".

China in its current form needs an "Enemy" to survive, without it, it has to deal with difficult questions like "censorship", and in order to survive will need to change - and that's what really scares them.

<comment><USER42> So how do you oppose a government that is the sworn enemy of values you regard more precious than your own life?

It's hard _not_ to be the enemy of such a government seeking to increase its power and influence on the world.

<comment><USER41> Totalitarian governments rely on distraction and misdirection of the populace in order to survive. Without it to use as ammunition to unify the people against a common "enemy", the very nature of its limiting rule forces the populace to start questions to try and improve their own condition. Questions like "freedom" and "censorship". Totalitarian governments are not equipped to satisfy difficult questions like this and will either adapt or crumble.

Thus the best way "oppose a government that is the sworn enemy of values you regard more precious than your own life" is to allow it to face its internal problems without giving it the "enemy" it so desperately needs as ammunition to use against you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> All the other stuff doesn't matter I guess (nba, hollywood, apple, blizzard, etc)? But since techies love south park for some reason we suddenly care? HN are full of hypocrites. In any case, I need to go rewatch the episode with chinese translations. Watched it on hulu and CC didn't show for the chinese speaking parts :( .

<comment><USER44> The Blizzard story is the top HN story today with 1,700+ upvotes.

Yesterday, HN's top story was about Apple removing the Taiwan flag from the emoji keyboard: [https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-07](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-07)</comment></comment>


Pornhub Is the Kinsey Report of Our Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/pornhub-and-the-american-sexual-imagination.html <comment><USER2> Don't understand why this was flagged/killed. Just because it's about porn? It's a bit long but I'd say it meets all the quality standards and does bear some relevance.

 _Pornhub collects and analyzes a staggering amount of user data — some of which it uses, like those other companies, to help curate content and determine what a user sees. Pornhub also publicizes some of its anonymized findings on the company's data-analytics blog, Pornhub Insights._

<comment><USER3> It doesn't really have much insight. A woman watches porn and writes about her experiences on it. Pornhub does statistics and it isn't really explored in depth in the article.

<comment><USER4> I disagree. It has lots of interesting insight into what those statistics mean and how they've evolved. Surprised HN is so easily censored by a single prude.

<comment><USER5> Many users flagged the story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting read.

I've always wondered why straight porn can't be written with the modicum of a believable story to explain why the woman is there, and how she can enjoy what is usually mostly a one sided act to please the man. My guess is that believable stories/dialog/acting is a trifecta too difficult to pull off, at least under their typical budgets.

<comment><USER6> > _how she can enjoy what is usually mostly a one sided act to please the man_

But don't you hear the woman's continuous ecstatic moaning? She's clearly the one being pleased./s

Porn has evolved into 7 minute clips people watch for free. There's no time for story, and apparently little demand.

<comment><USER4> Yea, the internet has killed porn.

I mean I always turn off the sound because those moans are never believable. My experience is that in real life women often dictate what needs to happen for them to be satisfied, they don't just go all googly because a man deigned to put his manhood inside her various openings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Few of us want to actually receive an erotic massage

...what?

</comment><comment><USER8> Didn't OKCupid (or possibly one of the other big dating sites) post a bunch of similar research? I remember reading a bunch of interesting articles regarding dating trends.

</comment><comment><USER9> IT's a crappy article, that is why I at least have flagged it. Not worth reading, just a bunch of giggly-talk about different kinds of porn.

<comment><USER4> Please don't impose your prudishness on others. This was an interesting article.

<comment><USER9> IT wasn't prudishness - it was literary taste.

To mention the Kinsey Report and then not talk about it in any detail (it's mentioned exactly once in the article in a near-throwaway line; to string together anecdotes one after the other without an apparent overall theme to unify them aside from their shock/giggle value; then a segue to Kink.com.

It's a dog's breakfast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Uh, @dang or other mods, please unflag this article. I certainly found it worth a read, and @resu_nimda explains the "why".

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised the article didn't mention SFM (thanks, gaben).</comment>


Create a custom book from Wikipedia entries - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Print-Your-Own-Custom-Book-from-Wikipedia-141549.shtml

<comment><USER2> There are hundreds of thousands of wikipedia and other CC-licensed spam books being sold on Amazon. It's seriously annoying as a consumer, and even more so if you happen to be a dev at a comparison shopping site ;)</comment>


Breaking Up with IoC Containers - <AUTHOR> http://justinbozonier.posterous.com/breaking-up-with-ioc

<comment><USER2> He's actually managed to create a container by using the variable scope of the App class. That'll work fine for awhile, but it doesn't scale particularly well. You also lose lifecycle management (in his example, everything is a singleton) and lazy instantiation. Also, you lose the ability to isolate dependencies on external libraries to separate assemblies -- in this case, the main assembly needs to know everything about everything.

I'm biased (I wrote a DI framework for .NET), but I don't really understand what people think they're gaining by avoiding the use of a container. The complexity of dependency wiring increases geometrically with the size of your application, and I personally would like as much of that complexity hidden as possible.

<comment><USER3> It is a good way to start. It is a bad way to end up. Dynamic languages can get away with not using IoC containers for large projects: <http://onestepback.org/articles/depinj/index.html>

On static languages, using a dynamic language DSL to configure the container will usually do wonders, while losing refactoring support (for instance, Spring plugin for Eclipse will be aware of all rename methods and rename classes, as long as you use the xml for configuration).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I buy the assertion that doing your own DI makes your code more cohesive and self documenting. If you carefully consider your classes and dependencies as you create them as other commenters have mentioned, a IoC container seems to really make wiring things up easier.

I say all this as a relative newcomer to IoC containers but the work I have done on large applications with both Castle Windsor and Ninject has me currently in the camp that a container can make dependency management a great deal easier with the tradeoff of making it slightly harder for new developers (especially those with zero DI/IoC experience) to figure out what's going on. IoC containers make large, complex apps much more pleasant to work on, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're only using an IoC container for wiring up some singletons that the main app knows about... I suppose he has a point. For most applications that I work on that would never fly, I rely heavily on the lifetime/scoping abilities of my DI framework (Autofac).

</comment><comment><USER6> Dealing with dependencies is almost always the toughest part of making code modular. This seems to be good advice for a small, simple app. But as your code gets more complex, you need a strategy for dealing with dependencies somehow. I'm not saying that needs to be a DI framework of course. But I start to appreciate them more and more as my codebase grows.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're on a great track with this comment. It is also important to not forget that instantiating objects is a part of our domains not just some wart to be hidden.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes the instantiation is really private. Lifting all dependencies to the top level isn't progress, especially if you want plugins or a friendly interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This hoists all dependencies to the top level, it looks decent because the dependency graph is entirely static. Suppose you want more runtime flexibility, such as replacing every instantiation with a runtime choice between 3 implementations. Note that this usually changes the topology of the dependency graph since each implementation requires a different selection of internal objects (involving more runtime choices).

Some applications don't require this sort of runtime flexibility and they have dependencies that are not likely to change in future versions, in which case it may be fine (even preferable) to dump all the dependencies on the user.</comment>


Let's write better software - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filipekberg.se/2012/09/27/lets-write-better-software/

<comment><USER2> > What's your suggestion on ensuring that we deliver high quality?

Understand the economics behind software development, and stay as close to the edge of cost/quality curve as possible.

Simply wringing your hands about "doing better" doesn't do much. You have to understand why 'cheap / not so good' wins in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> > We've seen that consumers are not scared of changing their behavior, as > that's what we do; we adapt. Vendors need to start delivering better > software and hardware!

Uhm. This is a rather bold claim that certainly needs some kind of reference or proof. In my experience, this is quite the opposite, and people tend to be pretty loyal to electronic brands. I'm not saying that people never switch brands, but that they usually won't do it unless the alternative is significantly better.

Why is that so? Because when you're used to a certain technology, there's almost always a cost associated to change: time to setup a new workflow, getting used to a new ecosystem, incompatibility, or just plain time and hassle.

I'm taking my own case: I'm currently running Lion on my Mac, and I'm sure as hell not going to update anytime soon, regardless of wether Mountain Lion is a better OS. Why? Because I've a pretty complex setup (multiple programming environment, multiple libraries that require special installs and special versions, etc..), and I know that it would take me at least a month to completely transition (that is to catch all the incompatibilities, etc..). Why would I waste a month of productivity when my current setup works well?

Anyway, my point is that the claim: "consumers are not scared to change their behavior" needs some backing up, because it isn't obvious to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> "As consumers have somewhat adapted to this and expect rapid updates for software's. The vendors no longer need to spend as much time on finding bugs as they did before."

This problem is as old as software itself. At this point I believe that it will never be addresses since software "can always be fixed later" and the low barrier to entry encourages this behavior.</comment>


The Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurtsp.com/the-future.html <comment><USER2> This is a "spiky version of the present" future - all the prominent things seen by one individual, extrapolated linearly. As such it has a discontinuous shape.

The main element I would critique is in the culture. Culture in 2015 will feel old and dated by 2030 - our memes, our artisan craft breweries and hip indie games. Something else will overtake them. Culture has the soft power to change people's perception of reality even as the substance of that reality remains more stagnant. And culture isn't directly associated to a new tech so much as it is the proliferation of that tech.

For example: "Drone" today equates to big war machines dropping bombs. "Drone" tomorrow could mean the kid across the street with a new toy and the ensuing shenanigans inflicted on stodgy 50-year-olds who think you're going to blow everything up.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. It is very hard to make credible predictions for longer period of time, but linear extrapolation normally works for 2 to 5 year scope [http://liuliu.me/eye/predicting- future-2016/](http://liuliu.me/eye/predicting-future-2016/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That reads like one of the flying car predictions from the 50's. Here's my prediction: the future in 40 years will not look and feel much different than the present, or 40 years, or 100 years in the past, at least in the '1st world'. Fashion will look different, music will sound different. Faster and smaller computers are hardly life-changing, especially if they are only used to make your restaurant order easier. Autonomous cars are useless when people no longer need to travel large distances day by day.

The biggest change will be that more people in the 3rd world will enjoy better living standards, and that's a huge achievement on its own. We don't need flying cars for that.

<comment><USER5> 10 years ago there were no smartphones. 30 years ago nearly nobody had a computer.

<comment><USER6> And now that they have them, they are not life changing in any significant way (except for niche cases, e.g. helping someone with a disabillity connect etc).

Sure, one can work as a web designer now, and they couldn't before. But they'd still have some other job anyway in the past. Same with smartphones. We wouldn't have selfies, and casual surfing on a restaurant and constant BS calls while on the move. Other than that, not much would change.

Whereas things like women rights or seggregation or cars or toilets or flights or electricity etc have much more changed how we live in a much more profound way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Free public transit and easier restaurant ordering with wearables? India dominating the world? Little college campus utopias were everyone is smart and rides bikes?

Sounds like someone has spent too much time in the tech industry in San Fransisco and perhaps should broaden their perspective a bit. Maybe go back to Ohio and look at the meth labs and bulldogs and then think about the future. Also, 30% of the world (at least) probably barely works now. This includes to some extent people who are nominally employed.

<comment><USER8> This. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it does remind me somehow of George Packer's New Yorker piece[1]:

"It suddenly occurs to me that the hottest tech startups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that's who thinks them up."

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the- worl...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/27/change-the-world)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about nature, ecology, biodiversity? What about third world societies? Natural disasters, immigration, gentrification, violence, crime? I imagine the author as living in a big city, working in tech, living the connected life, but seriously, this kind of "future" is to me rather narrow-minded.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Also very US centric, what about the future outside the US in other Western countries?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Many people live throughout their life in campus environments similar to college campuses of the early 21st century. These campuses were seeded from the ruins of cities ravaged by crisis (Detroit), the transition of festivals to sustained existence (Burning Man), and around the headquarters of major companies. These mini Utopias on earth are small, high density villages with everything a person wants. A high density of friends, intelligent people, exciting activities, all in walkable or bikeable distances. Importantly, there is high mobility between these campuses (changing companies, new research projects), but little mobility from outside to inside." This one got me because this is not the future, this is the past, a lot tried it in the 60s and 70s, I tried it with the punks in the 90s, it didn't work, I still don't want it to work, this concept goes against the privacy feature these cultures want to provide so it fails in the end.

<comment><USER12> There's a little bit of a "best parts of living in a village" vibe to this. We try to provide something like a traveling version of a campus-like community via hackerparadise.org.

From living in and helping facilitate this "campus environment" for the past year: it's kind of nice. I can't say how well it works yet long-term, but I very much appreciate being in a community where I know who my neighbors are, what they're up to, where I actually care about how they're doing. More than just the benefit of being surrounded by like-minded, intellectual/creative people, there's this shroud of anonymity that living in a city comes with. It's refreshingly pleasant to live and work in a community where the shroud is lifted.

Campus' recent shutdown was a step backwards. I don't know if the author is right; the biggest open question to me is financial sustainability (IE, are enough people willing to pay a premium for communal living to fuel growth & innovation)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> No mention of pollution or climate change? The trend for climate change been observed since the 1950's. 99% of Scientists agree that it's really happening, and it will have a major impact on how livable our planet is.

<comment><USER14> This paper[1] looks at things from the perspective of cumulative CO2 emissions, as they have a roughly linear relationship with the temperature increase. For example, over the period of 1870 to 2012 we added about 1,430 (+- 70) GtCO2 to the atmosphere, and we're already observing a +0.8°C mean global temperature increase:

> Taking into account CO2 emissions prior to 2014, the remaining emissions > quota (from 2015 onwards) associated with a 66% probability of keeping > warming below +2°C is estimated to be 1,200 (900–1,600) GtCO2. This +2°C > quota will be exhausted in about 30 (22-40) 'equivalent emission-years' at > the 2014 emission level (40.3 GtCO2 yr^-1). Owing to inter-annual and > decadal variability, the actual year when +2°C will be reached is uncertain. > The remaining quota associated with a 50% probability of committing to 2 °C > of warming is estimated to be 1,500 (1,100–1,900) GtCO2 (Table 1), > corresponding to 37 (27–47) equivalent emission-years at the 2014 emission > level.

So, within the 40 year timeframe mentioned in the link, and assuming (optimistically) that we've reduced global CO2 emissions to 2014 levels (recall: global emissions have been growing by 2.5% each year for the past decade.), we'll have hit a 50% chance of having locked in > +2°C of warming.

[1] -- Friedlingstein et al - nature geoscience, 2014 -- pdf version [http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein...](http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/global/pdf/Friedlingstein_2014_Persistent%20growth%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20and%20implications%20for%20reaching%20climate%20targets.NatureG.pdf)

<comment><USER15> I don't think that a linear relationship between temperature and CO2 level is a safe bet. The climate is pretty chaotic, it seems unlikely that such a simple relationship is true in general. It seems entirely possible that we'll hit some kind of runaway effect at some point that completely breaks the linear relationship.

Anyway, I'm not a climate scientist and there are a number of people who claim that 1000 GtCO2 lead to 2 degree warming, so your 1500 GtCO2 seem only a little optimistic. However, just reducing CO2 production is not enough. We have to completely stop, because CO2 takes basically forever to sequester from the atmosphere, and every degree of warming we cause increases the likelihood that we leave the "safe" linear-relationship territory.

See [http://trillionthtonne.org/](http://trillionthtonne.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Greater empathy by proliferation of virtual reality.

For a vr world where you can live someone's life that's not crap we will have to have hit the singularity, which conflicts with a lot of the other ideas.

> Gestures that previously were arcane are now the way to invoke computer > programs

This is a strange one. Why would you gesture for a check and not just push a button to just pay it. Is it a themed restaurant?

> China, India, and the United States are the three world powers.

Not sure why these three are picked. China I get.

>A good segment (30%) of the world barely works.

There's no reason the think the rest of the world will support them. Besides which currently most people can live this in the first world. Rural property is cheap and so is simple food. But most of the population wants more than just food and a house. Like high end medical care and GoT.

> More and more infrastructure follows a pay-per-use model.

People don't like making a stack of small losses. We prefer to pay big then use the products at our leisure. I can't see this changing.

There's some interesting thoughts here's. Misses the mark in bits as well though. Burning man that never ends, not sure what to think about that. But I can see it happening.

<comment><USER17> >> More and more infrastructure follows a pay-per-use model. >People don't like making a stack of small losses. We prefer to pay big then use the products at our leisure. I can't see this changing. You're assuming that it will be humans who will be making the switching decisions for themselves. If humans employ agents that algorithmically negotiate with different infrastructure providers, then I think it's possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> _" Almost-free on-demand point-to-point public transit. Combine UberPool and self-driving cars and this is what you get. It could be actually free with ads..."_

I don't see how self-driving car services could be "almost free". Self-driving cars cost money to manufacture. Like all mechanical equipment, they have finite lifetimes, so their purchase cost needs to be paid back over that lifetime. They need to be maintained, e.g., tires and shocks don't last forever, and metal corrodes over time (especially in environments where roads are salted for de-icing). Someone will need to clean the interiors every day (or more often), since people tend to leave messes (sometimes really disgusting ones).

The power for them isn't free. Even if they're solar powered, solar panels have to be manufactured, installed and maintained (e.g., cleaned off periodically to maintain maximum efficiency), and they need to be replaced after their finite lifetimes expire. Rechargeable batteries need to be replaced after a certain number of recharge cycles.

Roads, bridges and tunnels cost as much to maintain for self-driving cars as for conventional cars. There will still be tolls and taxes. As gas and diesel vehicles die off, the revenue from the taxes on their fuel will need to be replaced by other taxes, such as per-mile taxes on electric vehicles.

I doesn't seem that merely showing ads to passengers could pay for all these capital, labor and tax expenses. And if the cars are owned by a for-profit company such as Uber, there has to be enough income for the company to have a profit after paying their operating costs and taxes.

<comment><USER19> Let's make some generous assumptions -- a taxi costs $20K, lasts 300,000 miles, gets 50 miles to the gallon and fuel costs $2.00 a gallon. (Or equivalent, electrically, I'm easy.) Then fuel is four cents a mile and depreciation is seven cents a mile for a total cost of eleven cents a mile.

In the future, running an ultra-efficient electric car we can imagine the fuel price could be lower and the range before replacement even higher.

Is eleven cents a mile "almost free"? It's certainly a lot cheaper than the vast majority of public transport trips I've taken in recent years. Could it be ad-supported? Well, maybe. How much would advertisers be willing to pay to captively monopolise the attention of someone whose individual tastes and spending habits were already well profiled? Quite possibly more than eleven cents a mile (a few cents a minute in traffic).

(Personally I'm more than willing to outbid the advertisers in order to get peace and quiet.)

<comment><USER20> This is pretty close. Benedict evans did a more accurate calculation , and got ,for electric self driving cars, 14-19 cents/mile:

[https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/636684338352951297](https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/636684338352951297)

One thing he forgot - what about shared transport - say sharing with 3 people could offer ride time relatively close to a car. That gets us to 4.5 cents/mile. That comes about to $50 a month/american-person(avg 13.5K miles/year) , less for a kid, surely less for people in dense cities(say $25) .

EDIT:and if you're willing to ride an on demand bus/minibus , maybe it could go to 1/2-1/3 of that , so maybe your monthly transport demands could be met by less than $10.

<comment><USER19> Sharing rides with strangers is precisely the kind of thing that I'd hope to _avoid_ by replacing public transport with self-driving cars.

But anyway, yes, it does appear that the economics of the self-driving taxi beat the economics of the bus or the train, especially given that buses and trains generally operate at a large _loss_ and still charge people, on average, a higher fare than what they'd pay for a self-driving taxi.

A self-driving bus that operates a route could be even cheaper, but why bother when you can hail a cab to take you straight to your destination without stops for just a few tens of cents more?

<comment><USER20> I can imagine a self-driving taxi , for shared rides, that's designed for privacy , so you don't feel like riding with others, except for a bit of an extended trip.

I wonder why nobody have build such a car yet, but there's good likelihood it will happen in a huge self driving market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _Secondly, most companies have now realized that disruption is the way of the world, and thus most have become 'venture builders' that continuously run experiments and attempt to disrupt themselves, thus permanently remaining on top._

I'm pretty skeptical of this one, but I am curious to see how that plays out. I suspect there are some inherent, systemic rigidities that develop in large companies, that will prevent this from coming (entirely) to pass. If so, small companies / startups will continue to emerge with some technological innovation (or business model innovation) or other and "disrupt" existing models.

That said, an interesting related question would be "will be actually reach 'the end of technology' at some point?" That is, will we reach a point where we have mastered all of the technologies that _can_ exist, given the constraints of the laws of physics? I mean, if we assume a fundamentally unchanging universe (unchanging in terms of the fundamental laws) then human / technological progress has to stop at some point, no? The question is, how far from that point are we?

<comment><USER20> >> "will be actually reach 'the end of technology'

In general ,technologies are building blocks of newer technologies.Maybe we'll run out of problems first ?

<comment><USER22> At some point you run into the laws of physics. Right now it looks like we can stretch things quite a bit further, but there's only so much free energy in the world and only so many ways to shape it. It's completely conceivable that we'd run out of new technology before we run out of problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra "A good segment (30%) of the world barely works" \- and behaves exactly like disgrunted arabs in poor muslim countries?

I.e. radicalize, want to blow up the world, ready to take arms for $150/month?

Another role model for those people is 1st world ghettos. We're not doing it better than that yet. "The cost of subsistence has been driven down significantly", that's nice if you actually have some independent source of income. Otherwise you're a slave of someone who has it.

"Solar panels are everywhere" \- making electricity out of rain, darkness and misery anyone? Not every country in the world has enough sunshine (however, most do)

Not a world of explaination why India is superpower. Not a word about Europe.

<comment><USER23> I'd bet more than 30% of Greeks "barely work" and they're not radicalized. I wonder why that is?

<comment> guard-of-terra Because they've only been out of work for relatively short period of time. Of course, people with european mentality will take more time to radicalize, but it's going to happen.

Greece is also already home to far-right and far-left political forces seeing mainstream acceptance.

Also, being a part of united Europe, they can find work in other european countries. Thus the most energetic people leave and get busy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The way it looks to me housing will be a bigger factor. People are more and more moving to cities leading to rising prices, which makes it difficult for most people to earn what they need for living.

I don't see how this will be changing in the future.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _A good segment (30%) of the world barely works. The cost of subsistence has > been driven down significantly and peer-to-peer marketplaces have > proliferated, so a good percentage of people have chosen to check out of the > rat race. They do odd jobs for cash, but they primarily devote their time to > their passions, working as artists, artisans, or community builders._

In Portland maybe. In most of the developed world most of the 30% that doesn't work hasn't decided to "check out of the rat race" but just can't find anything decent (or, in some countries, anything at all).

</comment><comment><USER25> Sadly, I see this article as an overly optimistic view of the not-so-distant future.

Maybe 40 years seems like a lot of time in some fields (electronics, software, human life-span), but not so much in some major areas (culture, some hard sciences, societies, economy).

Yes, the rate of technological advances are sometimes exponential. But in some fields, they are clearly slowing down, and stabilizing. And even when technology can alter our daily lives, introducing new elements to our lives, most changes are introduced as a convenience, or a way to enhance our productivity, but our daily life remains almost the same, in the big scope.

Sometimes, a REAL revolutionary element emerges, like the Internet. Computers enhanced the way companies did their work, but the Internet introduced changes much more intensive, enabling new markets, new products, new channels of communication, and above all, changing how we learn, distributing knowledge, and empowering the people to express and divulge their thoughts and opinions.

But in the end, the core of our lives remains the same. If we compare the daily life of a middle class man living in 1935 (80 years to the past, not just 40), to the daily life of a middle class man living in 2015, we would find, generally speaking, that they are really similar. The general structure remains the same. Sure, we enjoy lots of new gadgets, and maybe work 1 or 2 hours less... some of us.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes wrote: "Our grandchildren", would work around "three hours a day"..

 _" Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!"_

Of course, for the vast part of the society that didn't happen. And that won't happen in the next 80 years...

You'll see... One could argue that our standard of living is better than what kings enjoyed 200 years ago. Better infrastructure, better services, better medicine, less physical work, etc. But that standard of living has a cost. Of course, we live in a society, and we pay that cost between all. And as a society, as we get more specialized and qualified jobs (comparatively better jobs), we _" earn more"_. But we have a lot more things to pay for. More services, more products, more everything. And then comes inflation. In the end, this is the key: Cost of living adjusts as we move forward in time, as we introduce new elements in our lives.

If someone is not rich, and would want to stop working, he could try to live like a Mennonite, while spending his savings, but that's not what most people want.

So, in order to get better lives and adjust to our new standards, we either work more ours or we try hard to be more productive, more competitive, increase your social network, get more educated to get better jobs, increase our sales, etc. And as we do that, we live more stressed lives.

Real change in our lives comes when major social change arrives. And revolutionary social changes, often comes from complex origins, not easily attributable to a single technological change.

In my previous example, I proposed comparing a man's life in 1935 and 2015. Now, compare an average woman's life in the same years. During WW2, women became part of the labor force. When men came back, women had to go back to their roles as housewives. But didn't last long. Women proved capable of doing "real" work (getting paid), and they claimed their rights to be included. To have a life outside their homes.

\----

> Almost-free on-demand point-to-point public transit.

Cheaper, probably, but not almost-free. Unless it's a public utility and it's owned and subsidized by a state, then it's going to be profit-based, and given the level of investment needed, it can't be almost-free.

>Magic is real.

As someone else posted, that kind of uses feels awkward.

>A good segment (30%) of the world barely works

As I wrote before, this may happen but not because "people have chosen to check out of the rat race." But because automation and the increasing concentration of wealth is leaving lots of people out of the market.

>Many people live throughout their life in campus environments similar to college campuses of the early 21st century.

Communities and cities growing around major companies is nothing new. On the contrary, that was far more common in the early 20th century. And it wasn't really a nice environment. What the future will see, is the expansion and proliferation of gated communities. And eventually, private cities. Nordelta, in Argentina, is an example of that. With 5 schools, medical center, 20 restaurants, shopping center, hotels, golf, sports fields, parks, offices, etc. And of course, high density != friends.

>Hyper-personalized healthcare.

For the ones who can pay it. This is one of the areas where the difference between high-end and low-end services will increase enormously. If you are rich, custom-made organs and genetic treatments, tailored just for you, will be available. If not... you'll have something a little better than now, but not that much better.

\----

So, in general, what I care the most about the future are the big social changes, and those are not necessarily the technological ones. Those are my predictions:

\- Middle East will still be a mess. Governments coming and going. Factions fighting for power, etc.

\- As the clash of civilization escalates, people will take refuge in their own value systems. Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia will increase A LOT. More and more.

\- Religion will recover lost ground in the west and the far east. We saw this happen in the Middle East, when secular governments fell (some puppets, some dictatorships and monarchies) and theocratic and radicalized movements expanded their influence. I'm seeing this happening in some parts of Europe and Latin America.

\- A new wave of New-Age like movements will make appearance, promoting healthier spiritual lives.

\- The gap between the rich and the poor will increase.

\- As China's economy and influence expands, and it's workforce is paid better, new opportunities rise in cheaper-labor countries, and many companies will move their production centers. This poses a threat to the Chinese Government.

\- US and China economies are very entangled. So, direct confrontation benefits no-one. A new economic cold war, under the table, will be fought. Something like the current Cyberwar.

\- Eventually, the world will see the first WMD attack (radiological, bio or chemical).

\- We'll see the rise of a new kind of fascism or pseudo-Nazism. This is one of the things that scares me the most.

\- As we get used to mass surveillance, our expectancy of privacy will go to the floor. And the sad part is that we'll get used to it. And we may even convince ourselves that this is for the better.

\- Proxy wars between China, Russia and USA will be fought in Asia and Africa.

\- The quest for ever-cheaper labor will lead to Africa.

\- A large scale cyberwar will be executed.

\- But eventually, money (and not war nor peace) will find the way.

While I try to be realistic, I seem to have a pessimistic view of what's to come.

<comment><USER4> This is a much more realistic outlook, and much better expressed than I ever could. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Google should be a dictatorships  and Page should be as dictator as Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/fon/what-larry-page-should-do-as-new-ceo-of-google.html

<comment><USER2> A dictatorship is most important when it comes to design, which incorporates some element of artistry and stylistic vision. It also helps enforce the ideas of a single-form across all divisions, and creates the consistency between products that Apple is so famous for.

There is no evidence that Google needs this. Yes, Google's scorn for design is often mocked by designers, but I see no evidence that Google+good design would be better than what Google is right now. And let's not forget all the downsides of dictatorships, while we're at it...</comment>


The Rise of Computer-Aided Explanation - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150723-computer-explanation/

<comment><USER3> _Better than either approach is to take both the objections and the computer- assisted explanations seriously. Then we might ask the following: What qualities do traditional explanations have that aren't currently shared by computer-assisted explanations? And how can we improve computer-assisted explanations so that they have those qualities?_

I am interested in this line of reasoning. Can anyone point me to relevant discussion (preferably scholarly)?

</comment><comment><USER4> We haven't had the rise of computer-aided explanation yet. The article is more about the problem of not having it. It's needed; "Why did the classifier do _that_ " is starting to become a big problem. Google is having PR problems because their image classifier labeled black people as gorillas.

They can probably use their classifier in feedback mode to generate a canonical image of what the gorilla recognizer is looking for. Publishing that image would create worse PR problems. But at least there's some way to get insight into what's happening. That's been a big problem with ANNs - you get a matrix of values out, but there's no "meaning" associated with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> >> Chomsky compares the approach to a statistical model of insect behavior. Given enough video of swarming bees, for example, researchers might devise a statistical model that allows them to predict what the bees might do next. But in Chomsky's opinion it doesn't impart any true understanding of why the bees dance in the way that they do.

Chomsky is at liberty to pursue an understanding of bee behavior. The engineers and scientists who created the system were interested in translating, not understanding. It seems to me that any system, whether based on a statistical model or some other approach, that achieves a valid translation is clearly a success. For all we know the brains of human translators work similarly.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. It's easy to intuitively claim that "just" being able to accurately predict the behavior of a system isn't the same thing as having a "true understanding" of it, but are there any observable, tangible differences? I wonder why Chomsky drew the distinction.

One is reminded of Dijkstra's line about how asking whether computers can think is like asking whether submarines can swim.

<comment><USER7> Claiming there's no difference between prediction and understanding reminds me to what philosophers of science call "instrumentalism": theories are only to be judged by how well they work in predicting facts. But imagine a world in which Newton, instead of formulating the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion, built a complex machine that, given the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent trajectories, with astonishing precision. Nobody would be able to explain why it works in any "deeper" way. Would that world be undistinguishable by ours? If anything, would have Einstein had the same chances of devising general relativity? And Schwarzschild of deriving from it that black holes should exist? Doesn't the fact that we care whether black holes exist, despite how little they admittedly influence the set of mundane phenomena we observe everyday, imply that this world is distinguishably different from that with the accurate, hypothetical Newton black box?

<comment><USER6> > But imagine a world in which Newton ... built a complex machine that, given > the relative positions of a set of planets, could work out their subsequent > trajectories..

Thanks for the reply, I see what you're saying. Just to get metaphysical though, can't one argue that that's essentially what Newton did? Granted the machine he made was mathematically elegant, and the study of its components has been fruitful, but nonetheless it's the nature of physics that one never knows whether a formalism is really describing what's going on, or whether it might someday be superseded. Can we not imagine, say, a future where the art of warping spacetime is so well-understood that Newton's theories about a gravitational "force" are seen as just a bit of predictive machinery - <USER2> for making approximations, but bearing no connection to the "truth" underneath?

<comment><USER7> I guess that that's what happened, and what's happening everyday... Newton action at a distance wasn't convincing enough, so others sought other, "deeper" explanations, among which most notable is of course general relativity. (And it's probably noteworthy that, from an "instrumental" point of view, its benefits were initially marginal...) The difference to me is between saying "the explanatory power of this current theory can (and will eventually) be outdone" and "being able to explain is a dimension of no importance in a scientific theory". Maybe that is Chomsky's concern, even though this instrumentalist attitude is far from new or unknown (think of Copenhagen (lack of) interpretation of quantum mechanics, and its (in)famous motto: "Shut up and calculate"!) If you are interested in this line of reasoning, I found David Deutsch ("The beginning of infinity") and Karl Popper ("Conjectures and Refutations") two passionate (and opinionated) voices!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the recommendations. Admittedly I'm just being perverse in applying this to fundamental physical laws but the distinction feels very important in areas like linguistics (where researchers' ideas of "truth" tend not to be expressible in calculus).

That is, I picture an exchange where a deep-learning researcher says "our clustering algorithms found that languages A & B share characteristic C", and a linguistics professor replies "Aha, but the underlying truth is that A & B belong to the X class of languages, and X-like languages always have C". Intuitively the latter version somehow feels more robust, but in practice they're basically equivalent, and the first version arguably carries less baggage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dell Has Sold 'Tens of Millions' of Dollars' Worth of Linux Laptops - <AUTHOR> http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/01/dell-talk-linux-laptops-distros-sales <comment><USER2> > "All PR will let me say is that from an initial investment of $40,000 it has > returned, over the four years, tens of millions [of dollars]. That's as > specific as I can get."

Tens of millions USD sales should map into tens of thousands of laptops. Not ground breaking but still a great ROI.

<comment><USER3> I would read that as ten of millions [of dollars of profit], not as revenue, which would imply quite a bit more laptops.

<comment><USER4> It probably is revenue. And not a huge investment for Dell. But one that is ROI positive and generates extraordinary goodwill among the dev community. 100,000 laptops across 4 years is not a huge number.

<comment><USER5> 100,000 laptops across 4 years is not a lot relative to Windows or Apple sales.

But it is a lot for laptops running Linux out of the box.

100,000 in sales is generating 10's of millions in revenue for Dell. Acer or another player now has evidence a Windows laptop can be made to also support Linux out of the box, and it will sell. Whether or not anyone else acts on it remains to be seen.

This could be a good time though. Apple is losing mindshare. Windows Bash is hardly good enough for daily driving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a personal (and a bit off-topic) antidote, I buy low-end Dell servers without an OS and install Linux, BSD, or OpenBSD. This is easy to do on their web site and they've always run very well for me. Ebay has numerous good deals on used business Dell systems too. They are a dream to maintain, the cases and internals are so nicely organized. Lately, I just bought a Optiplex 3040 from a Microsoft store, it was easy to install Linux (dual-boot in this case).</comment>