AMD takes on Intel with new Ryzen processors for laptops - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/26/16552208/amd-ryzen-5-2500u-7-2700u-laptop-processors-intel-core-i5-i7-chips-cores <comment><USER2> The integrated graphics unit of those is apparently 2-3x as good as the Intel equivalent in some benchmarks[0]. Sounds very promising overall.

[0]: [https://heise.cloudimg.io/bound/2300x1400/tjpeg.q90.webp- los...](https://heise.cloudimg.io/bound/2300x1400/tjpeg.q90.webp- lossy-90.foil1/_www-heise- de_/imgs/71/2/3/0/6/6/9/8/000-ryz24-06b0d915a6a4c80f.png)

<comment><USER3> zen core + strong gpu would make a brilliant laptop chip

<comment><USER4> Is the 15W TDP number for the whole package or just the CPU?

<comment><USER5> The whole package. The chip CPU + GPU is a single die.

<comment><USER6> TDP can apparently be configured to be higher or lower (12-25W).

See [https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd- ryzen-7-2700u](https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-2700u)

<comment><USER7> That's similar to what Intel does (and somewhat less flexible, Intel's cTDP on 15W parts is 7.5~25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This should make life easier for Linux users who want something better than integrated Intel GPU. No more Optimus horrors and lack of proper PRIME support.

<comment><USER9> Not yet - there is no display support for that GPU in current Linux kernel, nor in 4.14 that is going to be released in 1-2 weeks.

Users will have to wait for 4.15 - until mid-late January.

<comment><USER8> You can use staging kernel from AMD meanwhile. Upstreamed one will be more polished, but it's basically the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really hope that those will be as good as their new CPUs and Apple would consider them if they don't have ARM in the works.

It would be nice to have an octa-core in a laptop.

Also would be really nice to have Vega as well — current Radeons aren't very good compared to 10-series nVidia chips.

<comment><USER11> They are 200% faster. Says so in the article.

Think when Apple finally moved to Intel and th speed increase. EVEN though Apple claimed they were the as fast if no faster before the switch.

AMD had horrible performance on laptops and they are finally able to say they doubled the speed AKA they had a horrible product before.

"For its own part, AMD claims that the new Ryzen chips will offer dramatically improved performance over its own last generation of laptop chips, with up to 200 percent more CPU performance (for multicore use) and up to 128 percent better GPU performance, although AMD's last generation of chips weren't exactly computational powerhouses to start." [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/26/16552208/...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/26/16552208/amd- ryzen-5-2500u-7-2700u-laptop-processors-intel-core-i5-i7-chips-cores)

<comment><USER12> That's triple the speed.

<comment><USER11> Double speed 200% = 2.00

2000 mhz * 2 is 4000 mhz

Tripple would be 300%

<comment><USER13> Yes and it's "200 percent more", the more being the key bit. More being 100% + (200%), i.e. 300%, i.e. triple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dear AMD, please turn on SR-IOV for your GPUs on these laptops. I want to be able to use it in multiple VMs. This is a huge selling point for some people, I will go with Intel because they have GVT-g enabled on all their chips.

<comment><USER15> I have a Lenovo Ideapad y510p [newegg] with a i7 4700MQ [ark]. Cost me $999 when I bought it too (got $50 back after price match with Amazon bringing cost down to $950). Anyways, I play with VirtualBox a lot as well and would love to know more about compatibility with Linux. I am on Fedora 26 for my base os (that I am typing this on) now and nVidia proprietary drivers have been nothing but trouble so I just stick with whatever the distro comes with.

I would like to know about the progress with SR_IOV as well. I've never had an AMD processor but would definitely welcome some competition. AMD, if you're reading having graphics drivers "mainline" in the Linux kernel would be a huge plus. Thank you!

[newegg] [https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1683431...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834313584) [https://archive.fo/iFkUO](https://archive.fo/iFkUO)

[ark] [https://ark.intel.com/products/75117/Intel-Core-i7-4700MQ- Pr...](https://ark.intel.com/products/75117/Intel-Core-i7-4700MQ- Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_40-GHz) [https://archive.fo/5SpgX](https://archive.fo/5SpgX)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How are the Linux Radeon drivers these days. Last time I tried (8 years ago) they were awful compared to the NVidia equivalent.

But now that I might be able to get a 3 pound ultrabook with decent graphics, I'm willing to put up with a lot more inconvenience .

<comment><USER17> Linux AMD open source drivers are top notch now. Even have really good foss OpenCL support. The only asterisk right now is that you only want to use these new APUs / any Vega GPU on distros running kernel 4.15 or later (which will release probably Jan of next year).

<comment><USER16> How are the open source drivers for games? Can you render Civ 5/6 or Rocket League?

<comment><USER17> I've been playing Civ 5 on the Mesa radeon driver since it came out on Linux with great framerates. That being said, My FPS at 1080/high has gone from ~45 to over 90 in the last two years on the same 290 card.

<comment><USER18> I can replicate this experience. Enemy Territiry with radron would give you maximum 30fps in 2014 or so, forget playing with rain or on a populated server. Now I get 90fps at 1080p comfortably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Finally laptops gets freed from 2 anemic cores. Intel will now 'suddenly be in a position' to rush reasonably priced 4 cores to the laptop market.

AMD needs to be competitive for the health of the industry and consumers. There is little doubt now Intel was holding the market back.

We have seen similar stagnation on desktops with any slight step magnified by the tech press desperate for content. And fortunately AMD have an efficient architecture with Ryzen.

<comment><USER20> I mentioned this above: Intel already can. They released quad-core "U-series" parts a month or two ago.

<comment><USER21> Which proves what OP said about Intel holding back innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've always had a soft spot for AMD, the rebel, the chief rival to the behemoth Intel. I'm glad for this move, and I hope they create meaningful competition.

</comment><comment><USER23> I really want a laptop with one of these, but all announced models so far seem to be flawed (as in, just short of perfect).

Envy x360 seems the most promising, but doesn't seem to come with the Ryzen 7 2700U. So probably not.

Ideapad 720S has memory limitations (no dual channel support) and is straight out.

Swift 3 seems to be the closest to what I want - but .. limited to 8GB :-/

Given that I'm currently, right now, in the market for a laptop, I guess I've got to skip AMD for now.

</comment><comment><USER24> Dear Lenovo: we would like this chip with a seven row keyboard very, very much. A485 perhaps?

<comment><USER25> Let's wait for the 30th Anniversary Edition. Then it would be the perfect time anyways for me to get a new laptop.

<comment><USER24> I'd love to have the 7 row on laptops which are not that special. I did buy the T25, mind you.

<comment><USER25> Me too. And I do love it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really hope lenvo makes a x1 with a ryzen option and good linux support. Would be perfect as a developer laptop.

</comment><comment><USER26> Desktop Ryzen still suffers with thermal/power efficiency issues compared to desktop Intel cores, so I wonder if they've managed to address that issue for these mobile cores. If not, I wonder how customers will feel about paying a battery life tax for better performance...

Incidentally, AMD GPUs have been at a disadvantage compared to NVIDIA's in the power management area for a while, as well. Which is unfortunate because they're very good cores with (arguably) a better feature set for compute/rasterization than NVIDIA's. Intel seems to have the market for low- power GPUs on PC sewn up as well. If AMD manages to make improvements here they could put out a very compelling product, if only because you wouldn't need GPU-switching in your laptop (with all the hassle that entails) and it'd be easier to substitute a laptop for your desktop when you do compute-heavy work.

For example, [https://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd- ryzen-3-1300x-r...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd- ryzen-3-1300x-ryzen-3-1200-cpu-review/16) shows worse idle power draw and worse load power draw for Ryzen. In desktop cases this gap doesn't matter as long as you have a good heatsink+fan but it will map to worse battery life and worse noise/thermals in a laptop. (An extra thirty watts in total system draw under load can add up on your utility bill, though.)

Power draw on AMD's GPUs is not great either, unfortunately: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx- vega-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/11717/the-amd-radeon-rx- vega-64-and-56-review/19) And past GPUs they've released also had issues with drawing more power over the PCIe slot than it was rated for (and exceeding their TDP in general, I believe).

<comment><USER27> Ryzen 3 1200, 4 core 3.1/3.4Ghz vs. i5-7400 3.0/3.5Ghz the Ryzen uses .12 watts more at idle and 2.19 watts more at all cores full load.

That is a pretty small (<5%) gap.

<comment><USER28> 5% is a lot these days, and that Intel CPU will beat Ryzen clock-for-clock as well. Laptop manufacturers are fighting over every percentage point of gains these days, not trying to move backwards. People want to see all day battery life with reasonably good performance.

I like AMD and want more competition for Intel. If you have a use that scales across many cores, AMD is a great value for workstations. Their new server lineup is pretty compelling too. But if they want to win in mobile they need to be better on power and thermals even for normal users who won't use the iGPU's capabilities heavily.

<comment><USER27> AMD's game is never about "winning" \- that is not even considered as a possibility. Surviving and getting 10-20% marketshare is a home run for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love that we finally can have a 4 cores on ultrathin laptop.

<comment><USER20> We already could. Intel released quad-core "U-series" parts a month or two ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> IF someone comes out with a unibody laptop with a Ryzen in it, I'm fully in. It'll easily replace my current macBook fleet.. (nb: eyes the GPD Pocket and its revisions..)

<comment><USER31> I've bought a Ryzen 5 for a home server, but sadly is awfully unstable. Apparently there is a bug in the Ryzen family. I'm using it with Freenas 11 (FreeBSD) and the system is having horrible random freezes with black screen. There are some threads talking about same issues, this make me lose faith in AMD, and going back to Intel.

<comment><USER32> Have you tried disabling SMT? And have you tried installing the latest microcode update? AMD has been having problems for a while, but I think they ought to have been fixed by now.

I, myself was thinking to acquire a Ryzen 5 1600 for a high performance programming desktop. I was thinking of running FreeBSD, it's sad to hear that it's glitchy.

<comment><USER33> Disabling SMT only reduces the frequency of the segfault bug occurring. AFAIK it does nothing for random whole machine freezes, for which there is a reliable workaround (other post of mine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It doesn't seem like it supports LPDDR4, so I don't think they are competitive for the "macbook pro" market.

<comment><USER35> Yep, AMD lacks the "courage" to limit customers to 16 GB of RAM.

<comment><USER34> LPDDR4 supports more than 16GB of RAM.

<comment><USER36> That is what he is saying

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Hopefully the next generation Thinkpad ?A485 will have these chips - would be the ideal linux coders laptop.

</comment><comment><USER38> Are these just as buggy as the desktop ones?

<comment><USER39> What are you referring to? Provide some links!

<comment><USER38> _" 50+ Segmentation Faults per Hour: Continuing to Stress Ryzen"_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14936468)

[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen- seg...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ryzen-segv- continues)

<comment><USER28> This is a known issue that only affects early revisions of Ryzen CPUs under specific workloads, so it's unlikely to appear in new ones like the mobile Ryzen. If you're affected, AMD will RMA your chip for free.

And AMD isn't the only manufacturer to have such issues. Intel had a bug in Skylake where it would crash under heavy load with Hyperthreading enabled. Modern CPUs are complicated beasts.

<comment><USER40> How do you RMA the CPU in a laptop though, I would expect it to be soldered in?

I guess through the manufacturer who gets to rework the main board ... gah how annoying that must be. I can easily imagine such a process taking weeks.

I hope you're right. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored system called AMD Secure Processor (formerly "Platform Security Processor" or "PSP") [1].

This separate processor contains closed source, proprietary binaries that have complete and unrestricted access to the host. Despite a large petition for AMD to opensource this, they refused in the end. [2][3]

Anyone running AMD chipsets have a completely separate and unaccessible operating system running on their computer that they can not control nor know exactly what it's doing. [4]

Intel has the same sort of system with it's Intel Management Engine (known as Intel ME) that even the NSA didn't want to have running on their own computers. [5]

[1] [http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software- technologies/s...](http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software- technologies/security)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5z4phx/petition_fo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/5z4phx/petition_for_amd_to_opensource_the_psp_backdoor/)

[3] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6msujx/what_happened_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6msujx/what_happened_to_the_open_source_the_security/)

[4] [https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd](https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd)

[5] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/intel_management_en...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/29/intel_management_engine_can_be_disabled/)

<comment><USER42> > Unfortunately anyone who takes their security or privacy seriously will be > totally unable to use this. Every AMD chip contains a likely backdoored > system called AMD Secure Processor

This is fear mongering to the extreme. Intel has the _exact_ same type of system embedded in their processors called Intel Management Engine. You can't escape this problem by buying Intel.

I notice you provided a lot of sources, but none for the claim "a likely backdoored system". Your post reads like something a bad Intel astroturfing shill would say.

<comment><USER43> The Intel one has a known technique to disable the ME, the AMD one does not (for the moment).

<comment><USER44> However, disabling it is not trivial, needing to open your laptop and solding skills, also special equipment to read/write modified firmware.

<comment><USER43> You don't need soldering skills (at least for the device I use), but I agree it's not trivial. However, a nontrivial fix is still a significant improvement over a nonexistent one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is the Universe a Simulation? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/opinion/sunday/is-the-universe-a-simulation.html?action=click&contentCollection=Media&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article <comment><USER2> This seems like such faulty and backwards reasoning to me.

The experiment of detecting anomalies at the subatomic level is very interesting and that work should continue.

But, why must we say such anomalies lead to "we are living in a simulation"?

This seems like a fallacy of logic from reasoning backwards from the effect to the cause, with absolutely no connection between the two.

(Maybe people just want to hop on the "everything is a computer" bandwagon for marketing/publicity; it is tiring. At it's worst, it makes future tech assertions look kookish)

<comment><USER3> > But, why must we say such anomalies lead to "we are living in a simulation"?

That is not the main argument that we are living in a simulation. The main argument is the following disjunction (from wikipedia). Either:

* human civilization is unlikely to reach a level of technological maturity capable of producing simulated realities, or

* a comparable civilization reaching this technological status will likely not produce a many simulated realities for any of a number of reasons, such as, diversion of computational processing power for other tasks, ethical considerations of holding entities captive in simulated realities, etc., or

* any entities with our general set of experiences are almost certainly living in a simulation.

Personally I think the biggest prima facie weakness in this argument is that while we will probably reach a point where simulating a human mind is feasible, and we will probably do so when that time comes, it may take a lot of computational mass to simulate a person. Thus, any recursive simulations would get smaller and smaller in terms of the number of thinking entities in them.

<comment><USER4> I would say it probably _doesn 't_ take a lot of computational mass to simulate a person. We're each doing it right now with a glob of meat the size of a grapefruit, and that's just what evolution was able to come up with.

So simulating a universe where minds are a low-level primitive, and everything else is simulated lazily and using lots of shortcuts is reasonably plausible.

But that's not the kind of world we find ourselves in. Our minds appear to be constructed of the same stuff as the rest of the world. If we're to accept the simulation argument, then our definition of "simulated reality" must imply a physics implementation that is high enough fidelity to support minds as _high level_ structures - you have to actually be able to build compact working brains in the simulation.

Alternatively, we'd have to suppose that a brain is actually just a very convincing facade, usually sitting inert until someone observes it, at which point it reflects the inner workings of the person's mind at whatever level of detail is necessary to convince the observer that it is the mechanism behind the mind.

Both of these seem far less plausible.

<comment><USER3> > But that's not the kind of world we find ourselves in. Our minds appear to > be constructed of the same stuff as the rest of the world. If we're to > accept the simulation argument, then our definition of "simulated reality" > must imply a physics implementation that is high enough fidelity to support > minds as high level structures - you have to actually be able to build > compact working brains in the simulation.

Devils advocate, but there could simply be level-of-detail heuristics, where the mind is explainable in terms of physics, but not implemented that way (unless you look). Similarly, for people who take damage to their brains, the model for that person's new brain could simply be derived during that simulation step and substituted.

That's just a high level view of how a lazy simulation could still produce minds that appear to by implemented using physics.

<comment><USER4> That's what I was saying in the "Alternatively, ..." part.

But this does suggest an avenue of testing the simulation hypothesis that might be more useful than looking at purely physical anomalies. The physics engine might be simplified, but edge cases will likely be subtle and difficult to distinguish from gaps in our theories of physics.

But if the simulation is using heuristics to gauge whether a brain is being observed, and making it correlate to the mind primitive backing it as needed, then we should eventually be able to construct scenarios where those heuristics are wildly inaccurate. If we could, for example, trick the simulation into presenting a completely inactive brain while its was conscious, that would be informative.

<comment><USER3> Agreed although presumably our hypothetical simulators have sysadmins and could simply ratchet up the fidelity around anyone who is looking.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, there are a number of ways that it could be thwarted. Any civilization that can achieve this kind of universe simulation would probably also have solved general AI, so the "heuristics" we're trying to fool may in fact be an intelligence far more clever than ourselves.

But evidence is never perfect.

<comment><USER3> Actually in a universe where time doesn't necessarily flow forward, evidence could be perfect. They could just delete branches where the simulation is discovered and revert back to the point where the bit leading to the discovery was made. But I see what you are trying to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Kant may have rendered this article's vector at the question pretty meaningless over 200 years ago.

In the Critique of Pure Reason, he posits that space and time are the forms of our intuition, and he claims that anything that comes to us does so through these forms. That is to say, we do not know things as they are in themselves-- we only know them insofar as they have properties that can be reflected in a form that can be processed by our intuition. We bring space and time with us, as part of our structure, and mathematics is an examination of that structure.

So Kant would have it that mathematics is neither a Platonic form nor something we have created-it's an exploration of our capabilities of sensation. This seems to me like a much better explanation of why mathematics are "universal" than the article's approach.

It also leaves open the question of whether we are "living in a computer simulation" without suggesting that it's a simple matter (or even necessarily possible) to see out from inside.

<comment><USER6> I think the supposition that space and time are forms of our intuition is suspect, and is indeed undermined by relativity. The supposition that maybe spacetime are the forms of our intuition also doesn't necessarily withstand scrutiny, because there is at least one way of formulating quantum field theories with no reference to spacetime at all (see, for example, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285) ).

<comment><USER5> I don't think relativity or quantum field theory undermine the idea that space and time are our forms of intuition. On the contrary, I feel it may be the first framework that really created a sensible space for those phenomena.

Kant's approach holds that our /intuition/ is limited by space and time and that "things in themselves" may in actuality be many different ways. We can only receive and understand things insofar as they exist or can be manifest in space/time. I think his theory very much leaves open that we can better grasp the properties of things by studying the way they appear in space/time and drawing inferences. His very point is that space and time do not exist in themselves as far as we perceive them--they are merely the forms through which we are capable of receiving anything. And thus I would say he created a groundwork of thought that made room for relativity and quantum observations well before they were conceived--in fact, I imagine Kant's groundwork was important in our path to them.

[Edited for a slight bit more clarity]

[HN meta comment: it's really annoying that any given story that has a lot of upvotes and that is seemingly appropriate for HN can be flagged from the front page. Why spend time writing an insightful comment when any given story could be sent from the top of the front page to the middle of page 3 by the capricious action of a flagger or moderator, meaning no one will ever see the comment? Such unpredictability really discourages quality participation and encourages quick responses--why expend a lot of effort when the chance of anyone reading your work could evaporate so quickly and arbitrarily?]

<comment><USER6> Space and time _are_ things themselves and _do_ exist independent of our perception. As evidence: all the solutions to general relativity that have no matter content but nonetheless are not flat, because the curvature of spacetime itself has energy that gravitates (the Schwarzschild solution comes to mind). Spacetime has its own real, physical, dynamics.

<comment><USER5> Kant agrees that empirically, space and time are things themselves and exist independent of our perception. In fact, for Kant, anything that can come to us or be reasoned by us, and the relations of those things, must comply with space, time, and, therefore, mathematics.

I wasn't trying to say that space, time, and mathematics do not exist independent of our perception. Rather, I was refuting the idea that mathematics is either a Platonic form or something we made up. The Kantian idea is: anything we come into contact with or understand must come to us in a way that conforms with mathematics, or else we wouldn't be able to experience it. Therefore, everything we know complies with mathematics--it's not some Platonic form outside us or our creation, but the very structure of our understanding. There might be a superset of laws that things in themselves comply with that we don't have access to. We are, however, limited to the understanding we can achieve through space, time, and mathematics (which do describe everything we can encounter).

My initial response wasn't terribly well written and was rambling, so I tried to clean it up a bit. It started to address your point but veered off-topic. There's also an important difference between perception and intuition that I originally didn't express very well.

Getting back to what I was originally trying to say, I don't think the nature of mathematics has much to do with whether or not we live in a computer simulation. We could be bound to mathematics for any number of reasons that are beyond our capability for understanding. What I was commenting on was the article's introduction to the question. I suppose, though, that the article itself admits the relation between the introduction and the topic may not be strong ("But one fanciful possibility is that we live in a computer simulation based on the laws of mathematics"). I just don't think "Mathematics applies to everything we can experience, therefore we live in a computer" is a particularly interesting approach.

I really appreciate your responses.

<comment><USER6> > I don't think the nature of mathematics has much to do with whether or not > we live in a computer simulation.

Yes, I don't understand the logic behind this idea. If our universe is only orderly because it is inside a simulation, what is the universe in which the simulating computer like? Totally non-mathematical, and yet rich enough to have computers in it? Seems farfetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of an article I read a year back, same topic:

[http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-big- toe.html](http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-big-toe.html)

"The bottom line is, if we are in a simulation, there needs to be compressive sampling because quantum effects between particles would otherwise require an infinite amount of memory, so the meaning of the wave function is that it's for data compression. [...] The fortuitous data compression implicit in wave functions is merely another reason to suspect we are in a simulation. "

<comment><USER8> The Falkenberg blog just prompted me to write on the subject, because it implies that if a creator exists, they are not omnipotent.

[http://www.bencollier.info/content/physics-and-demiurge- crea...](http://www.bencollier.info/content/physics-and-demiurge-creator-not- omnipotent)

<comment><USER9> Seems like backward reasoning. It's fair to say "Hey, if the universe is a resource constrained simulation, that would explain why wave-particle duality!", but I don't see any logical requirement that "Because wave-particle duality, it must be a resource constrained simulation (if it's a simulation)".

<comment><USER10> Quite. The creator could just as easily choose such a physics for obscure aesthetic reasons, or reasons for which we have no concept at all. Furthermore, we have no way of knowing whether "resource constraints" are a meaningful concept outside our little physical universe, either.

<comment><USER11> "No one could be able to simukate our universe because we can't do it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That article is so much fluff, and doesn't really say much in the way of hard science.

What he's referring to are Quantum Chromodynamics simulations, which in very general terms were born out of a desire to simulate the sub-atomic interaction of the nucleus of various elements, mapping nuclear reactions for weapons like the hydrogen bomb, when live fire tests were banned by international treaties.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD)

      Numerical lattice Quantum Chromodynamic (QCD) calculations
      using Monte Carlo methods can be extremely computationally
      intensive, requiring the use of the largest available
      supercomputers.

It's nice to contemplate the philosophical implications of being able to simulate the stimulated emissions of high-energy gamma ray emissions with high reliability and resolution inside a computer, but where's the meat of the article? It's just eleven paragraphs of "what if?"

<comment><USER6> [http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847](http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847)

and see my top-level comment for more detail.

<comment><USER12> If I'm the sentient result of an elaborate computer simulation, then you are very obviously an apparatus of those who control the simulation.

If that's true, then please cut the shit, and knock on my front door right now, and just come right out and tell me:

      5362677_0010? You're a computer simulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We are living in a universe with natural laws and intelligence. Whether it's a "simulation" is sort of a nonsensical question. Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone? What distinguishes those two other than our definition of iPhone, which of course is subjective?

The question is similar to "is there a god?" That is, is there an intelligence outside of our universe that consciously created this one.

Do wave function anonomolies indicate that our universe is the product of intelligence, or do they just show us how little we understand about the nature of existence?

Further, following the logic of the article, we most likely live in near infinite nested simulated universes, since the same reasoning applies to our gods, unless of course reason is an aspect of out universe in which case how can we expect to reason about what is outside it?

These are interesting questions, but jumping to the conclusion that we are in a simulation seems both premature and nonsensical to me.

<comment><USER14> >Is an iPhone emulator a simulation or an actual iPhone?

That's a really good question, and I hope the next metaphysical conundrum I encounter can be despatched with as easily.

The answer is that it is a simulation. Next!

<comment><USER13> You're missing the point. What makes an iPhone more real than an emulator? Is it that we consider an iPhone to be real and an emulator to be a simulator, is it that one came first? An emulator is still real. One could emulate an emulator - which of those then is real? Is the "real" iPhone not a simulator? It's all a matter if semantics.

Even if we live in a universe created by an intelligence, we are not in a simulator - we are in a universe created by an intelligence. If we are in a simulator, what are we simulating? The real universe which is like this one?

<comment><USER14> What makes the iPhone real in this case is that its chips are running the code, whereas the simulator runs code that does not control actual chips, and functions as though it did as emergent behavior. The calls in the code running in the simulator don't actually touch the hardware they're coded to touch, they are not subject to actual hardware behavior. That's all.

It's not a distinction without a difference. Javascript does not run on the CPU, Firefox does. If you recreate Firefox in javascript (i.e. a whole slow VM) then it is still a simulation of a computer running Firefox. The physical computer is not actually executing the C++ instructions that Firefox is coded with.

It is quite easy to see this level of abstraction difference.

The question is, am I existing in a physical sense with my atoms being 'the metal' or are there some more fundamental laws that are used to 'interpret' (at a higher level) the laws of our universe, without being bound by them, and are only interpreting the movement of my atoms.

This is quite an easy question to understand and don't see why it poses such a metaphysical conundrum to you.

If we are in a simulator, all that means is that there are more fundamental rules that are being used to create our universe at a higher logical level as an emergent property.

(The way a VM that is done in Javascript does: [http://bellard.org/jslinux/](http://bellard.org/jslinux/)).

The question is, is our code running at the lowest level, or is some other code running at the lowest level but simulating our laws as an emergent property? (a la linux in javascript).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved > Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable > consequences

So the argument seems to be that, if we were living in a simulation, and it used physics we now know to be slightly inaccurate, we would be able to measure that.

Maybe I'm missing something, but that's not very logical is it?

<comment><USER16> The article should have linked to the original Simulation Argument by Nick Bostrom, since the physics part is just one of many possible tests to verify the hypothesis. Here is Nick Bostron's argument: [http://www.simulation- argument.com/](http://www.simulation-argument.com/)

<comment><USER15> What are the other tests? I've read Bostrom's argument, but wasn't aware that he was proposing any specific tests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I sometimes picture the Universe as being some kind of a recursive knowledge generation simulation eating memory as it learns, with (Known Universe <-> Subatomic Particles) being the current limitations. The One Electron[0] acts as the program counter.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_electron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_electron)

<comment><USER18> It is interesting how counterintuitive quantum mechanics seems and yet many aspects make perfect sense in the eyes of a programmer.

* The foundation of Quantum Mechanics is the idea of quanta. The data or physical quantities of a computer and our Universe can change only by discrete amounts like the bits of a computer. Distances, energy, and possibility time are quantized in our universe.

* The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle also implies Interactions don't 'count' unless they affect some other piece of the system. Is the Universe doing called 'lazy evaluation' here?

* In computer simulations, the criteria to achieve von Neumann stabilitiy is that no effect can propagate at a speed faster than the size step divided by the time step. Interactions in our universe are also limited by the speed of light.

* Holographic Principle does away with spatial locality, drastically reducing the number of possible states our Universe can have. None of this makes sense unless the Universe is trying to minimize resource usage.

* E=mc2 : mass and energy are two forms of the same thing. It a computer it's all bytes at it's simplest form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847](http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847)

This comment is a response to a bunch of the comments in this thread, but it didn't make sense to scatter the information throughout the page.

The way lattice QCD [0] works requires a few approximations in order to fit the problem into your computer. You

(1) simulate a universe with finite volume (state-of-the-art calculations have boxes just a few times bigger than a nucleus in each direction),

(2) discretize the space into a bunch of points some lattice spacing apart connected by links, and,

(3) possibly simulate at values of the quark masses that are not their physical values (this helps make a a matrix you need to invert better- conditioned).

Finally, you know what action[1] you want to simulate (that of QCD[2]) and you construct a discretized action that accounts for all of the above approximations that approaches the real action you want to simulate when you take the limits volume --> infinity, lattice spacing --> 0, masses --> physical values.

There are many different ways to build such a discretized action (and they go by names like the Wilson action, the Domain Wall action, the Staggered action, and others), but no discretized action is "perfect" in the sense that anything you try to measure can have errors that depend on how different the volume you actually measured is from the infinite-volume limit, how much having a finite lattice spacing changes your answer, and how much unphysical masses matter.

We have theory that controls how measured quantities depend on these parameters, and thus can understand, via extrapolation, how lattice artifacts change the quantities we measure from the true continuum limit.

You can use this understanding to find out what the answer is in the limit of there being no discretization at all (lattice spacing = 0) and then compare measurements of our world to those predictions. If they match, then the world doesn't really have a grid of points at its bottom, but if they don't match you can find out how finely spaced the grid of spacetime is.

Unfortunately, any simulation you do will have error bars, and so in practice all you can say is "the continuum world looks like this ± that", the practical consequence being that you can only put an upper bound on how different the lattice spacing of spacetime is from zero: "If the lattice spacing were bigger than X then we would have conflict between the experimental observations we made of the universe and the simulation. No such conflict is known, so the lattice spacing is smaller than X."

Source: I am a postdoc doing lattice QCD, and I have met Martin and Zohreh.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_QCD) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_\(physics\)) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_chromodynamics)

<comment><USER19> You're overlooking something basic and uncontroversial that may prevent such an analysis from being deterministic. Gödel's incompleteness theorems say that, for a sufficiently complex system, there are true statements that cannot be proven from within that system, using the system's methods. This means that, from a perspective within the universe, we may be constrained by the incompleteness theorems from making any kind of conclusive determination as to its true nature.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems have a wide reach. They prevent a solution to the Turing Halting problem, and they placed a firm limit on projects such as Russell and Whitehead's tendentiously named "Principia Marthematica" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica)), a very ambitious project that was fatally undermined by Gödel's work.

The incompleteness theorems need to be considered in the present question -- we're inside the "system" we're trying to analyze, consequently there are questions we can't meaningfully resolve. I think the question about the universe being a simulation meets this classic criterion for indeterminacy.

<comment><USER6> Also, Seth Lloyd turns the question [0] on its head and suggests that it's silly to call the universe anything _but_ a computer, since it contains systems that are Turing Complete. What is it computing? Its own history / dynamics.

That said, it is different to ask if we're in a simulation vs. in a computer ---the word simulation makes one think of some programmer compiling some source code and executing some program: it entails _agency_.

[0] [http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/lloyd/](http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/lloyd/)

<comment><USER20> By that logic, my house is a computer as it contains many systems that are Turing complete.

<comment><USER6> The logic should more precisely be: the dynamics of the universe, ie. the things that physics allows, includes the operation of Turing machines, so that the physical laws are at least Turing complete. Thus, the universe, from a computational point of view, a computer.

<comment><USER21> That's sort of like saying the universe is a table because its constituent parts, laws, etc make tables possible. I guess it's interesting, not _very_ interesting, though.

<comment><USER6> There's somehow something deeper about computerness than there is about tableness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's probably better to resist the temptation to ascribe meaning to models. The model is the meaning, nothing more or less. If we observe these artifacts, it means that's a property of our universe. Really, we're completely locked within that system and can't say that it means anything else.

But, I'd argue that if we can be a simulation, we're ignoring the qualia of consciousness issue. So I'd say that if we can be a simulation, we can just be one of those mathematical entities in Platonic space. The universe seems to be written in math, perhaps all of _this_ is just what it's like to be one of those Platonic ideals.

There's not much use in speculating in that which cannot be falsified.

</comment><comment><USER23> Part of me is becoming tired of "brain in a jar" lines of reasoning, because there can be no other side of the discussion by default. If there is, I'm a Citizen who would like to know more.

<comment><USER24> What sides are you talking about? Either the line of reasoning (whichever you're talking about) has flaws or it doesn't.

If you're trying to say "it leads nowhere", I sort of agree. But it only "leads nowhere" once you get to the acceptance that truth is subjective. Getting that far is worth it and can change the way a person thinks about many other things.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I'm trending toward "it leads nowhere". To me, it's like trying to prove a negative: "prove you aren't a brain in a jar, receiving electrical//chemical inputs instead of walking around in a body". Well, right down to it, I can't just as much as you can't.

> So truth is subjective, knowing that is worth it, and getting that far is > awesome.

Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Universe in layman terms.

Grandpa Tom, is playing "Mario" on his beautiful "iMac" presented by his grandson for Christmas. He is just a regular grandpa who is in his 70s and is really new to this computer world. After playing Mario for a while he starts wondering how does a key on keyboard is making Mario Move. He starts putting himself within Mario character and starts seeing things around him. What he see is a world where he just have to "Run from dangers, get powers, survive and save the queen". Mario is so much involved he doesn't even know that there is something called as keyboard and a monitor outside his system. Mario thinks he just have to move and perform certain actions to accomplish his goal. thats all.

After playing so many hours of game, Suddenly mario starts thinking "am i doing things on my own or am i being controlled ? how the hell i am going to find out. the environment around me just extends in whichever direction i go. but not if i die. so what is this sorcery !"

In this whole story, Mario is each one of us. The next obvious question is, how do you know ? Neither does Mario. Some of these Marios went beyond the simulated environment (non materialistically, because there is no matter which runs this system, just like above cpu, interaction....) and figured out all this. We can decide to "believe" or "find an answer ourselves".

Now a programmer knows an answer. I wrote this goddam Mario program, i did not give him enough instructions (C/C++/whatever) to thik, so he will never know what the hell is going on. But, given intelligence to think on his own, he might be able to figure out things around his environment, but still he can't see the CPU<->Memory<->GPU<->Display<->Keyboard interactions. He can, only if .... ? . So, who are we , better than mario ? who can think on their own right... ? what more do you want ?

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER26> I don't quite understand how we propose to identify those anomalies when we have nothing to compare them to. Maybe the weird behaviours we observe in quantum physics for instance are the result of some optimisation/bug in the simulation, but how would we prove that?

How would a video game character understand and then prove he's in a simulation if the simulation itself didn't program them to do that?

It kind of reminds me of the people looking for life on other planets by searching for worlds similar to ours. It's of course a reasonable approach but in the end we have no idea if statistically speaking the presence of water or a certain temperature or atmosphere gives higher probabilities for life to emerge. We're just extrapolating from a sample of one.

<comment><USER6> We can simulate worlds with different parameters and compare them to our (experimentally observed) world. See my top-level comment for more detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> And, if so, can we run arbitrary programs on it?

<comment><USER28> grep -r meaning

<comment><USER29> >>> 42

<comment><USER30> "We apologise for the inconvenience"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would a parent universe that didn't share mathematics as universal noumena be capable of creating a simulation of a universe like ours?

</comment><comment><USER31> Mathematics is like a fractal, given some axioms it explodes into an infinite set of true equations. No one has to observe math for it to exist. I think our universe(s) could be the same way, given some natural laws, or equations, everything we know is defined to take place. Why would there have to be anything 'running' the simulation.

</comment><comment><USER32> Yes: [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2535](http://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=2535)

</comment><comment><USER33> Even if it is a simulation, as in the words of Rene Descartes, I think therefore I am.

My interpretation of it is, I might be in the matrix but I exist somewhere. I might be a butterfly in another dimension hooked up to the matrix like simulation to be in a human body and experience earth. Anyhow I exist.

</comment><comment><USER34> In my naivety i think it will be impossible to proof that we live in a simulation. Even if we could simulate an universe we cannot say we live in one. And if we find bugs in our current universe we cannot say if it is a bug or our model is just wrong.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't know, but this whole discussion just prompted me to pop in _The Matrix_ for another rewatch.

 _The orders were for your protection_

 _Ha ha. I think we can handle one little girl_

 _I sent two units, they 're bringin' her down now_

 _No, lieutenant, your men are already dead_

</comment><comment><USER36> Okay short version..

Our physical world is complicated that any math system is incomplete as far as modeling the real world..

Since we use math to understand the world..its simulation is somewhat a true statement from our in precise mathematical model of it...

</comment><comment><USER37> The Universe is a simulation, so what programming language/galactic cloud does it run on? Haskell for typing and correctness, Erlang for 'just fail', Ruby for POLA (God's, that is)...

<comment><USER38> Hacked together perl and lisp

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> a good enough simulation is indistinguishable from the real thing. So that question doesn't actually parse for me.

<comment><USER39> Unless the question is to ask whether the universe is a poorly written simulation with edge cases that differ from the real thing. In that case, the question is very interesting.

<comment><USER40> The main objection is that the way edge cases would "differ from the real thing" depends on what their "computers" are like which may not be anything like our computers. In fact there is no reason to believe they are similar at all.

<comment><USER24> To take that point further, not only may their computers be nothing like our computers, the whole point of the article is that our natural laws and the basis of our mathematics is part of the simulation. That implies that the host (to borrow virtualization jargon) world's computers may work according to rules nothing like our own. Certainly you can't make statements like _quantum effects between particles would otherwise require an infinite amount of memory_. You can't make any statements about the host world, any more than we can make statements about the nature of a god, if one existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I started to read that article on a browser without NoScript installed. It reminded me why I love it so much.

</comment><comment><USER42> It blows my mind that some very famous people submit comments here.

</comment><comment><USER43> The minimum evidence that we are in fact in a simulation would be observing a violation of physics.

Until then, all is speculation.

<comment><USER44> When someone posts something like this, do they honestly believe everyone else having this debate, including serious physicists, are just stupid because they can't see the brilliant insight they have posted?

<comment><USER19> It's a typical post by someone whose knowledge of physics is limited to the content of the Discovery Channel, whose physics scripts are worded in just this way.

<comment><USER45> Oh, get over yourselves, both of you.

He's just starting a conversation, and while I wouldn't advocate handing out participation ribbons, you're just trashing someone that had a thought and expressed it--you and gfodor are buddying up to one another over how worthless that thought is.

Spare us your revelry.

I'm as big a fan as a dirty flame war as anyone. I find complaints over HN's critical culture to be tiring and self-defeating.

But if you're going to be negative, don't give each other high fives about it.

Edit: I suppose this is directed more at you, lutusp, because gfodor seems to be posting criticism in earnest.

<comment><USER19> I posted what I did so nontechnical readers wouldn't be misled. Would you object if I similarly addressed someone who claimed that evolution must be wrong because it's not in the Bible?

> ... you're just trashing someone that had a thought and expressed it ...

Indeed, that's what I did, but it was because of what was expressed, not the fact of its expression.

Surely it has by now occurred to you that you're defending this person's right to say whatever he chooses, while denying me the same right? Or did that escape your attention?

> Oh, get over yourselves, both of you.

Under the circumstances, it's time for you to get over yourself. The OP's post, and my reply, are perfectly symmetrical -- one demands the other.

<comment><USER45> Heh. Well, you've made it pretty easy for me.

>>Under the circumstances, it's time for you to get over yourself. The OP's post, and my reply, are perfectly symmetrical -- one demands the other.

Perfect. Now for an actual rebuttal...

\---

>Surely it has by now occurred to you that you're defending this person's right to say whatever he chooses, while denying me the same right?

I didn't say you shouldn't say anything, I'm saying you're an _asshole_ for being proud of having said anything.

Your original response regarding what constitutes a violation of physics was fine. Your response to gfodor was simple gloating.

<comment><USER19> > I didn't say you shouldn't say anything, I'm saying you're an asshole for > being proud of having said anything.

Congratulations on abandoning the moral high ground, rocket scientist. You just demolished your own position.

How did you get to your present age without learning about the risk of fatal self-reference?

<comment><USER45> I never said I was proud that I could tell your comment was self-aggrandizing. I only said it was obvious.

<comment><USER19> You've just demonstrated that you're a study in hypocrisy and have no grasp of how you sound. Under the circumstances, what's my incentive to continue?

<comment><USER45> Why are you asking _me?_

Goodnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Maybe we stuck in a strange loop?

<comment><USER47> Or just a natural one.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I leave my job? If so what are my next steps? - <AUTHOR>

I'm 26 years old. I taught myself how to program in college, mostly by making websites. After college, I took a part time job doing nothing, while the rest of the time I increased my programming chops. After about a year and a half I decided to actually try for a real job.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I'm actually good at programming and I've discovered that I really enjoy learning new things. Lately, I've been digging into the Linux and Win32 apis, and have had some opportunities to write two native projects for my company and I really loved both projects.I've been working through Sedgewick's Algorithms in C++ and I've been loving it.
I am incredibly lucky to work with great technologists who look out for me and let me do things like the two native projects I mentioned, but when it comes down to brass tax I'm here to make our UX better. I feel like what I'm passionate about is out of sync with how the company values me.
It feels like the demands of more responsibility and recognition are making it rare that I get to work on cool things. I've made some good friends here. I value entrepreneurship and business savvy, which there is a lot of here (I feel like I've been getting my MBA over the past 2 years). I've only been working here 2 1/2 years and I don't want to seem like a job-hopper. However, I don't enjoy the job anymore. <comment><USER2> My 2 cents, if you feel you are more valuable look elsewhere. I am a startup founder, and I don't want anyone to hang out that feels the have outgrown what we do. At the same time, I want everyone to see how much more there is to learn. But having come out of the enterprise space, I know there is a lot of grey area. If you feel you should move on, no one should tell you different. If you aren't sure, learn for awhile then make your decision. Base the decision on how you feel not where you are at.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't necessarily think that I am more valuable than they recognize, it's more like I'm being pigeonholed and I think I want to try other things. Thanks for your thoughts though. It's good to hear the perspective of someone who runs a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 2 and a half year is very reasonable. You are free to go see elsewhere if you are no longer happy there. I would start looking for a new job before leaving, however.

Also, talk to your boss. Tell him you are considering leaving to do _, perhaps he value you so much he will turn some things around to make it so you get to do_.</comment>


DAO.LINK, the bridge between blockchain and brick-and-mortar companies - <AUTHOR> https://blog.slock.it/announcing-dao-link-the-bridge-between-blockchain-and-brick-and-mortar-companies-9510ba04d236 <comment><USER2> "For those unfamiliar with the concept of DAOs, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are blockchain-based entities driven by immutable computer code as opposed to fragile, complex by-laws. Because DAOs consist of computer code, they interact with the physical world through Contractors."

lol wat</comment>


We Are Legion - The Story of the Hacktivists - Documentary [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pGYKIRj5_8

<comment><USER2> This is a leaked old version. The new cut will be released in theaters and cheap download ala Louis CK very soon.</comment>


Ask HN: Why are people certain a vaccine with be found for Coronavirus? - <AUTHOR> I am pretty ignorant on the topic, so please go light. I'm asking because there are viruses such as HIV that still have no vaccine, so why are people so sure that they will find/create one for Corona anytime soon? <comment><USER2> Significant progress was made towards vaccines for other diseases closely related to Coronavirus such as SARS and MERS before funding dried up. While a SARS vaccine probably wouldn't be effective against Covid-19, there's no reason a priori to assume covid-19 has some special quality that makes it substantially more difficult to develop a vaccine for.

HIV resists attempts to produce a vaccine because of its high mutation rate. There are too many strains out there for one vaccine to ever be effective and no guarantee that new strains won't pop up. Had HIV been caught and contained early on, a vaccine cocktail could probably have been developed that would be effective, but now you'd still have to worry about any HIV positive person having a strain you are not vaccinated against and thus would have to take the same protective measures.

Covid-19 has been mutating slowly thus far, so there is good reason to believe that if a vaccine is developed, it would be effective. It is possible and even probable that covid will remain endemic in some regions, particularly those with poor healthcare systems, and thus new strains will have time to emerge. We thus may need new vaccines for seasonal strains, similar to the flu, but still it will be much more manageable.

At the end of the day though, a vaccine may not be necessary for life to go back to something close to normal. The US already has about 1.3 million community spread pneumonia cases per year on average which has a substantially higher mortality rate and we get along just fine. The issue with Covid was that we were unprepared for it - hospitals did not have adequate amounts of supplies and equipment to handle the sudden spike in admitted patients. This leads to worse outcomes for those who catch the disease and extreme measures to limit the rate the disease spreads. If all the hospitals already had tons of extra ventilators lying around and if everyone already had face masks at home and if businesses already had adequate plans for sick leave in place then this outbreak would have been a mild inconvenience. While we obviously can't go back in time, we will be prepared moving forward.

<comment><USER3> >The issue with Covid was that we were unprepared for it - hospitals did not have adequate amounts of supplies and equipment to handle the sudden spike in admitted patients.

What hospitals are you referring to?

Are you aware of any patients in the US that have been denied hospital beds, ventilators, etc.?

There seems to be a confusion between the anticipated crisis, and the reality on the ground. Even in NYC, I'm not aware of any hospital system needing to turn patients covid patients away.

<comment><USER4> You're living under a rock. Folks have been turned away from the hospital and told to come back when they're dying.

<comment><USER3> I'm not living under a rock. I'm actually living a mile or two from a virtually empty hospital. The post I was responding to implied hospitals were overwhelmed. I simply asked which ones. Specically. Name them. If you don't know, fine. But, responding with downvotes snd insults doesn't seem productive.

Two weeks ago, we (by 'we' I mean the 320 million+ who don't live in NYC) were told by Cuomo that hospitals would be overrun and 40,000+ ventilators would be needed. Thankfully, that wasn't true. Was it?

<comment><USER4> Living 2 miles away from a virtually empty hospital in the middle of nowhere = living under a rock. Here where there's a dense population, every hospital IS overrun and if they are not past capacity, it's literally because they turn you away unless you need severe intervention like intubation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Expanding on your question, will it even matter immediately if they do? If one was found today, how long would it take for it to be available to everyone?

<comment><USER6> The time scale is from several months to over a year. It takes a while to answer questions like - does it provide immunity, is it safe, what doses provide immunity and are safe, is one innoculation enough or does it need to be repeated, how long does the immunity last and so on. When you come across headlines about institutions which have began vaccine trials (there have been a few), that means that they are in the early stages of answering these questions. Then you have questions of production and distribution which can vary a lot depending on the type of vaccine that's produced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think anyone is that sure there will be a vaccine but there is some promising work being done, I believe there are around 70 different vaccines being developed ATM.

One that looks like it may work is from an Israeli group working on a milder corona virus that seems to use the same spiked protiens as the one killing everyone and there is hope that once infected with milder one, the bodies immune system will be able to fight off the deadlier one too.

I makes me wonder, scary as it is, that is if the milder virus can make us immune would it be worth the risk releasing a live version into the population? This would greatly reduce the time required to produce and distribute a life saving vaccine and effectively make it free for everyone.

<comment><USER8> How do you spread it without also spreading the stronger virus?

<comment><USER7> Good point! Although, we really haven't stopped the spread of the stronger one, bending the curve is just slowing it down. Maybe the milder one could be spread faster if it were intentional?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> blaser-waffle Not discussing it's possibility with the public -- "there is no cure!!" \-- would cause a panic. There is no situation where "we're not working on vaccine" will sell well with anyone anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is an informative and balanced take on this on the ABC News (Australia) site:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus- va...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian- frazer/12146616)

</comment><comment><USER10> Partial answer- because Corona is not new and some work has already began a while ago.

For example this [1] Israeli company

> MIGAL initiated its Corona-vaccine development program four years ago with > $4 million funding by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture.

Although it was originally for chickens...

[1] [http://www.migal.org.il/en/node/7010](http://www.migal.org.il/en/node/7010)

</comment><comment><USER11> Billionaires are very preoccupied in saving the rest 99% dreamers but before the vaccine come out show me the money.

It seems a negotiation between drug dealers in dirt dark alley.

<comment><USER7> I think the argument you are making has some truth to it. It is a common belief that drug companies are more interested in developing treatments than cures as there is far more profit in treatment.</comment></comment>


Inside Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.eswick.com/2014/06/inside-swift/

<comment><USER2> I also covered some of this (in fact, last I saw this article, much more than is here, but I can't see the article right now because it is just saying there is a database error) in my talk at AltConf (during WWDC), where I used Hopper and Cycript (my Objective-C/JavaScript hybrid debug REPL) to demonstrate the layout of a Swift object (as well as taking some questions afterwards from the audience).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii-02vhsdVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii-02vhsdVk)

<comment><USER3> All the 'I also _____' and 'me too me too!!!' comments are so distasteful.

<comment><USER4> I'm new to HN, but are you new to the internet? Saurik knows a few things about iOS, google him.

<comment><USER5> Grandparent was probably out of line (saurik's comment provided useful information that went beyond me too-ism), but I can understand why one would be wary. Its hard to keep up with who is legit, and there has been a lot of me tooism lately.

At least no one has started writing any horrible books on Swift yet.

<comment><USER2> I am not certain I understand the problem with "me too-ism". Hacker News is a discussion forum: if I go into the comments on a post, what I am expecting to find is more information about the topic written by other people... if someone links to a related project or an article with more detail, I don't see how that's a problem.

In this case, I am actually featured prominently in this article--it isn't just that I know a lot about iOS or about Swift, but as the second half of this article and arguably the whole reason it was written was to show how to use Substrate (something I wrote) with Swift, I think it would be difficult to claim anything I say on the matter is "me too"\--but even if it were someone totally random, I don't see why it should ever be considered a bad thing to direct people to more information :(.

(FWIW, I actually don't consider this article entirely correct: the information here implies that the symbols are available for all functions, and that was not my experience while on stage disassembling the WWDC app. I think I may need to parse the embedded Swift modules and provide new APIs for developers to look up methods out of the vtable, but before I go too crazy with that I am interested to see where the Swift-provided Swift.reflect ends up going.)

<comment><USER5> Pleas not I wasn't accusing you of me too-ism, I realize what I wrote was ambiguous.

<comment><USER2> I did get that, but you did say that people might should be "wary", and I found it a little confusing as I don't really understand the concept of this "me tooism" as a problem. (I also was addressing both your comment about it being difficult to keep track of people who are "legit" by pointing out my direct connection in the article, but that response was more to the thread as a whole.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Swift is Apple's new programming language, said by many to 'replace' Objective-C. This is not the case. I've spent some time reverse engineering Swift binaries and the runtime, and I've found out quite a bit about it."

Correct me if I'm wrong (and my point certainly isn't meant to detract from the interest of looking more in-depth at Swift internals), but this article doesn't appear to support this claim at all. It seems equivalent to saying Scala isn't meant to replace Java, or C assembly, because at the end of compilation it's all just Java. Abstraction is real. Also, Apple is providing a "migration guide" for porting Objective-C apps over to Swift. Nothing is conclusive, obviously, but certainly the article does not show that Apple doesn't intend for Swift to ultimately replace Objective-C as the primary language of Mac development.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, the article's technical analysis is good but I'm not sure what this line was supposed to say: what it _actually_ says is wrong. Swift is definitely intended to replace Objective-C.

Perhaps that line in article meant that it's not binary identical to Objective-C. Swift classes definitely use different method invocation semantics (unless you adorn the class with the @objc attribute).

<comment><USER8> What I meant by that was, the Objective-C runtime is still needed.

<comment><USER9> Sure, because Apple wants a transition path for existing code.

The Objective-C runtime takes the role of COM in Mac OS X/iOS.

A binary ABI between OO languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The site appears to be down. Here is the cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rOWlIup...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:rOWlIupvFksJ:www.eswick.com/2014/06/inside- swift/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER11> Thanks. Demand must be tremendous because that site doesn't respond either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think Apple has been clear that much of the underlying mechanics of Swift remain tightly coupled with the ObjC runtime, which makes sense if you think that Swift code must interoperate with all the existing Cocoa and Cocoa Touch frameworks and third-party code written in Objective-C (thus also allowing Apple to hedge its bet in case Swift tanks with developers).

What's _really_ going to be interesting going forward is whether Apple introduces new features in the runtime that are only available to Swift code, or whether it starts making change to the runtime that favour Swift over Objective-C—and that's probably going to tell us when the latter is to be considered a legacy language.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you have Xcode 6 installed this is the binary to actual Swift REPL:

        /Applications/Xcode6-Beta.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin/swift

Also try :gui command inside the REPL

<comment><USER14> Don't run the binary directly, that path will change when the GM ships. Use:

        xcrun swift

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. So Swift's speed stems from not doing things the Objective-C way.

How well does compatibility fare?

</comment><comment><USER11> In other news, the computer serving the article has evaporated due to overheating. By browser almost died.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am getting DB error

<comment><USER8> /me buys more RAM.</comment></comment>


Afghanistan's Taliban, US sign peace deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/afghanistan-taliban-sign-deal-america-longest-war-200213063412531.html <comment><USER2> Not even Alexander could conquer Afghanistan.</comment>


New NASA X-Plane Construction Begins - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/lowboom/new-nasa-x-plane-construction-begins-now <comment><USER2> It's disappointing that SST died off the way it did. In the 1960s, the 747 was originally designed as a stopgap between subsonic and supersonic, which was viewed as the next inevitable step.

Unfortunately, in a hamfisted effort to study the impact of sonic booms, the air force created so many over Oklahoma City that the government lost a very large lawsuit over the damage done to nearby buildings. Regulations ensued, and that effectively stunted any efforts to minimise the sonic boom in commercial applications.

I'm hopeful this can kickstart a new effort to renew SST and scale it to where it was more cost effective than the Concorde tried to be.

<comment><USER3> Sonic Booms wern't the only problem. It's hard to get around the cost element since jet fuel is a significant chunk of an airline ticket and SSTs are necessarily going to burn a lot more of it. Ultimately people largely chose to save the $1,000 and take the extra 3 hour penalty to their trip. Even for people willing to pay more you have to consider competition like the luxurious Emirates A380s that give you a small bedroom for the trip vs. the coach seats on the Concorde.

<comment><USER4> It's probably worthwhile to continue researching the space, but it's hard to see the economics working out--especially outside of small business jets. There just aren't that many people who care enough about extra hours that they can already travel in a fair bit of comfort if they're willing to pay for it. This is especially true if the design can't handle truly long distance travel like trans-Pacific.

Although it's not quite the same thing, I'd observe that British Airways has even cut back on its business class-only flights from London to New York. There just aren't _that_ many people willing to pay thousands of dollars to either save a few hours or to travel in more comfort for a few hours.

<comment><USER5> The United States spent $20 billion for air conditioning during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/21/air- conditioning-m...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/21/air-conditioning- military-cost-nasa_n_881828.html)

Perhaps in the near term it only makes sense for business jets, but it is a step forward. It isn't money down the drain and the research will pay future dividends.

<comment><USER6> > The United States spent $20 billion for air conditioning during the > Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Do you think this is some kind of luxury? Have you got any idea how hot it gets in an operations room tent in Afghanistan? And some of those tents are hospitals.

<comment><USER5> I was going to simply say that we spent $1 trillion on the Iraq War (another trillion in Afghanistan).

I was only trying to show how little the research costs in the big scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nasa also has an interesting free ebook about the previous sonic boom research: [https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/nasa-ebook-quieting- the-...](https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/nasa-ebook-quieting-the-boom)

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps someone with more experience can answer this question: is this an exceptionally large contract ($247 million)? The article implies that it covers the plane and its delivery, not the whole research project.

<comment><USER9> For aeronautics, it's exceptionally large. For NASA as a whole, it's not (e.g. James Webb is >$8bn).

This is the later phase of the NASA's Quiet SuperSonic Technology Preliminary Design, or QueSST Project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't this plane have any front facing window in the cockpit? Whats the reason for that?

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be surprised if it's a thermal issue. Front facing windows on supersonic aircraft get extremely hot. They probably figure they can do better with good camera/video setup instead. Or maybe the pilot wears VR goggles attached to an array of cameras around the plane so he gets a virtual transparent cockpit.

<comment><AUTHOR> > pilot wears VR goggles

I would opt for much simpler camera, an already-proven ILS and windows that allow the pilot to look down on the side of the plane.

The fewer things to go wrong on a brand-new design, the better.

<comment><USER3> What's the point of X-Planes if you aren't trying out the new toys?

<comment><USER11> The point is to investigate new airframe technologies, not fully integrated flight systems which the commercial world can handle with DoD contracts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, to properly investigate something, it's usually better to investigate only one thing, not a combination of various different things that,with luck, means something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _For the first time in decades, NASA aeronautics is moving forward with the > construction of a piloted X-plane_

That plane doesn't look very pilot-able. How can the pilot see forward? I know it's an early render, but still ...

<comment><USER13> Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927 in this cockpit:

[https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/slides...](https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/styles/slideshow_lg/public/images/exhibitions/hero- images/2001-136h.jpg)

Note the lack of front window. A periscope was installed at the last minute at the behest of a sponsor, (much to the chagrin of Lindbergh) but there's no evidence that it was ever used.

And that was before cameras and in-cockpit AR!

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I can't find any sort of artificial horizon, but i suspect the two "spirit levels" at the bottom (T shape) serve much the same purpose.

Given that it was an ocean crossing he would probably be watching the airspeed, altimeter and compass for most of the journey anyways (instrument flight rules?).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> with carbon emissions rising, I don't think a supersonic jet is something earth needs... I really wonder why Nasa invests in that. Is there some other research to be made on that prototype ?

<comment><USER16> This. We need farmers, not engineers.

<comment><USER17> We don't need farmers. We've had too many farmers for the last 100 years. That's still going the way of consolidation and increasing automation. Engineers on the other hand are in high demand.

<comment><USER18> I think it was a reference to Interstellar

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E792RxIpnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E792RxIpnU)

<comment><USER17> I saw the movie, but I missed the reference. My comment applies to the guy in the movie. He needs engineers too, not farmers. You don't raise agricultural output with more hands, you raise it with better tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I hope that nose is really light. Reminds me of the X-3 Stiletto which, from what I read, has been called an awful plane to fly (My intuition would say that its due to inertial characteristics, same reason the F-104 was so dangerous to fly).

<comment><USER3> It would have to be. Look how far back the nosewheel is. That nose is going to be like a baseball bat when this thing is taxiing around.

It's so comically long that you kind of want them to put a hinge on it way back at the cockpit so it can swing upright and let the pilot see where he is going when he's on the ground.

<comment><USER20> These days, rather than a Concorde-style hinge, you'd probably just put a stereoscopic pair of cameras in the nose and use a VR headset.

<comment><USER3> That wouldn't solve the giant club problem. Or you'll have the disorienting sensation of turning the wheel and having your POV swing sideways instead of pivoting. Possibly barf inducing since your body would be pivoting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> When I saw the title, I was hoping for a scramjet or ideally a scramjet/rocket hybrid with a railgun launch pad.

<comment><USER22> I've been dreaming of a viable scramjet since the X-30.

<comment><USER23> Ugh. The X-30! What a boondoggle! Nobody had any idea how to get that done. In every aero/astro engineer's undergrad fluid dynamics class, they teach you about heat addition to subsonic and supersonic flows. The _biggest_ takeaway is that adding heat to a moving fluid _destroys total pressure (aka stagnation pressure), the measure of useful work a fluid can do_. The amount of total pressure destroyed depends on the amount of heat and the flow velocity. Half the job of a diffuser and/or compressor is to raise the pressure of the incoming flow, but the other half is to slow the flow down so that heat addition can be done without destroying too much total pressure. The very idea of "supersonic combustion," the "sc" in "scramjet," is antithetical to engine efficiency.

At some point,even a theoretical scramjet becomes a drag-producing device, instead of a thrust-producing device. Real scramjets will always crap out long before orbital velocity, which is around M=30.

To end on an optimistic note, dream of a rocket-based combined cycle engine, instead. They may or may not ultimately be viable as SSTOs, but at least there's room to dream, there!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We need a bio-bird. Zero emission, self sustainable

<comment><USER25> Only if Pigs can fly

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [Pedantry warning]

Can someone fix the title please? It uses X-Plane in the singular 'X-Plane construction begins' rather than the title from the article which is more clear about this being the newest among many explains over the years.

Maybe something like "NASA begins construction of new Super Sonic test plane"

<comment><USER27> The submitter used the HTML doc title, which is usually fine, but sure, we've changed the article title.

<comment><USER26> Thanks! And thank you for deleting this as well. There was no need for my comment to stay open to discussion once it was addressed. No need to give us all more space to go down a rabbit hole.</comment></comment></comment>


A sexual harassment survey of 600 men - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/upshot/sexual-harassment-survey-600-men.html <comment><USER2> Self-reported. Not a random population. The numbers are higher because most men (the ones who refused to take part) are intelligent enough to not denounce themselves to the NYT for serious sexual offences. Not reliable, and may do more harm than good, because it maximizes minor harassment, but minimizes the numbers of serious harassment.

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, the correlation with Trump approval is totally fishy. These numbers don't rule out the possibility that men harass women at roughly the same rates regardless, and self-report differently due to their awareness of the issue.

<comment><USER4> It makes sense that those who condone harassment would support others who harass, or at least tend not to see other harassers in a negative light?

Self-reporting bias would certainly have some effect, but not as much as brute similarity of worldviews regarding women, gender, sex, workplace etc. Like attracts like. Nothing fishy about that.

<comment><USER5> Harvey Weinstein, several actors, tech people, politicians, etc who were serial harassers/assaulters were all outspoken on "women's rights" and feminist causes. It's very easy to think your own identical behavior is different from others and demonize people in turn. There are countless examples of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit ridiculous, as the questions aren't specific. For example, I've definitely said something some people might consider offensive at work in the past year, but it wasn't sexist and it was in context. According to this, I would be categorized into 'made sexist remarks' regardless.

If you send a friend a direct message on slack with a comic that other people might find offensive, or reference something that they did the night or week before, would that fall into multiple categories?

I've designed surveys before and been trained to do so in a way that limits inherent bias. This doesn't seem to be a well thought out or designed survey set. Also, what is a SQL server reporting system doing asking people about sexual harassment?

<comment><USER7> > This is a bit ridiculous, as the questions aren't specific.

The issue is the editorialising the results, _and_ not providing the _other_ questions they asked, the actual results, or a more detailed description of the methodology.

If they did that we could ignore the article and potentially discovery something useful in the results.

> Also, what is a SQL server reporting system doing asking people about sexual > harassment?

That's gone over my head.

<comment><USER6> at the bottom, the small print says the survey is from SSRS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting survey, but it seems very disingenuous that the researchers have lumped in "objectionable behaviour" with "sexual harassment". These sets do not have that much overlap.

"About a third of men said they had done something at work within the past year that would qualify as objectionable behavior or sexual harassment"

Objectionable behaviour: doing something your boss doesn't like, breaking process, even being an outspoken feminist could be considered objectionable behaviour. If you have not completed one "objectionable" action in a year you must be a robot.

"Made remarks that some might consider sexist or offensive?" \- There are so many acceptable remarks that some might consider "offensive". Eg. "God is not real".

Seems like bad research to lump these sets together and then present it strictly as a survey on sexual harassment.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's unfortunate that the most prominent behaviors are characterized so vaguely. It seems that "could be considered offensive by some" is an extremely broad criteria that is likely to be padded with benign behaviors, especially given that these categories are each about 4X the size of the others, and the variance is otherwise quite low. Given that, I wonder what the aggregates look like after throwing these categories out? What percent of men engaged in any of the remaining categories? How are offenders distributed across blue/white collar jobs, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER10> Notice nearly all of these end with "which might offend someone."

Is that really how we draw the line? Someone, anyone just has to be offended?

I think we really need to reevaluate sexual harassment law and culture.

</comment><comment><USER4> Bottom line: besides being unethical, harassment at work results in a less competitive labor market (a huge percentage of talent opts out of the industry), a less productive workplace, and shoddier products (lack of diversity mirrors the lack of customer engagement). This is to say that doing the right thing is also good for business.

</comment><comment><USER11> Was expecting a survey of men who had been sexually harassed at work.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised "Jokes or stories" and "Sexual remarks" had a similar proportion.

</comment><comment><USER13> What is bothering me here is "some might consider". I know for a fact some consider picture of a frog or milk to be a racist symbol (sad, but true). I know that calling oneself handsome can be construed sexual misconduct[1], what if I have done that? Another things that "some" think are sexual misconduct or sexist: compliments & drink invitations [2], fitting clothes[3], "ladies and gentlemen" [4], accidentally misspelling somebody's name [5], prioritizing facts over opinion [6], talking about sandwiches [7], using word "genius"[8]. True, some of these examples border on the insane, and some are opinions of a tiny minority that are clearly offense mining and oversensitive. But the questionnaire doesn't have any allowance for that - if I know _some_ might consider using the word _genius_ sexist, and I said that word, if I am a honest person, I have to report "yes" to that question, and forever enter the official scientific statistics as a sexual harasser. I think there's something wrong with that.

[1] [http://thetab.com/us/columbia/2016/10/01/i-was-reported- for-...](http://thetab.com/us/columbia/2016/10/01/i-was-reported-for-gender- misconduct-for-calling-myself-handsome-in-class-2611)

[2] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/23852/study-lot-young- people-...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/23852/study-lot-young-people-think- compliments-drink-amanda-prestigiacomo)

[3] [https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/university-oregon- appropria...](https://www.truthrevolt.org/news/university-oregon- appropriately-fitting-clothes-now-cis-privilege)

[4] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/18600/london-tube-just- banned...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/18600/london-tube-just-banned- innocuous-phrase-be-more-amanda-prestigiacomo)

[5] [http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/04/u-tennessee-student- accuse...](http://reason.com/blog/2016/10/04/u-tennessee-student-accused-of- sexual-ha)

[6] [https://mobile.twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/77849809757...](https://mobile.twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/778498097576116224)

[7] [https://www.dailywire.com/news/22084/australian-feminists- lo...](https://www.dailywire.com/news/22084/australian-feminists-lose-their- minds-over-emily-zanotti)

[8] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education- news/c...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education- news/cambridge-university-sexism-row-genius-lecturers-students-a7787401.html)</comment>


Apply HN: Empirical – A Platform for Reproducible Science - <AUTHOR> http://empiricalci.com
Empirical is a platform that allows scientists to run, share and compare experiments, including their whole research environment.
WHY EMPIRICAL? The idea for this product comes from the frustrations that I had while doing research in computer vision. There are many inefficiencies slowing down modern science, from trying to figure out what's the state of the art to the lack of easy means to reproduce and evaluate research.
We aim to attack these inefficiencies by providing a standard framework  to run, share and compare experiments. Bringing some of the best practices in software development to science and making it easy for researchers to adopt them. Also with each experiment that is performed in the platform we're hoping to build a database to map the state of the art.
We know this is idea will make a big impact in the way science is made.  This has the potential to change the meaning of peer review, and improve reproducibility and discovery, which will lead to faster iteration cycles and better science.
STATUS: We're currently working through the prototype and hoping to have an alpha version soon. Meanwhile, you can stay updated by signing up on our site: http://empiricalci.com
BUSINESS MODEL:
SaaS, paid private plans + paid storage and computing time.
ABOUT US: We worked together for over a year in a different startup. Bren as a UX product designer and Alan as a computer vision engineer and tech lead. Before that, Bren studied CS at Berkeley and then specialized in UX at General Assembly. Alan was doing a Ph.D in AI systems, specializing in Computer Vision at Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Feedback is greatly appreciated and please let me know any question you may have. <comment><USER2> This is pretty interesting. Are you asking users to place code on your platform? So a user runs a test in Matlab and gets a certain set of results, you are asking them to upload the code and the results so that others can see what has been done and what the results are?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the intended result. Although, we're not hosting the code, we're integrating with GitHub for that. We're going to be hosting the Docker images and the results/output. You'll be able to see which version of the code produces certain results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It appears to require Docker. How will this play out with Windows only software and programmable lab equipment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Down the road we'll be able to add support for specialized lab equipment in a case by cases basis.

For Windows only software, Docker and Microsoft seem to be making progress on that front. It's still to be defined how it's going to play out. Fortunately there are many cross-platform alternatives for most scientific software (at least in the AI area). Curious to know, do you have a particular software in mind?

<comment><USER3> No. I was comparing the requirements against my ability to imagine messy details. I suppose Docker jumped out as a different level of abstraction relative to the general problems of scientific reproducibility; the diversity of scientific investigations; and the existing social and physical infrastructure of scientific laboratories.

I suppose the sort of messy detail I might imagine is how does a Matlab license work in terms of multiple containers. And the details are messy because of legal and institutional constraints in the markets I suspect are looking for this solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, MATLAB is a special case due to it being licensed software. I've used it in the past by mounting my local MATLAB installation into the container and I think I had to pass the MAC too. I believe we'll be able to get it to the point where we only need to mount the local license.

We're building a client on top of docker to deal with all this extra functionality. You can think about it like a specialized version of docker- compose</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Law Enforcement Uses Border Search Exception as Fourth Amendment Loophole - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/law-enforcement-uses-border-search-exception-fourth-amendment-loophole <comment><USER2> I mean, yes this is awful and shameful but is it really news? It has always been the case that you have virtually no rights when entering or leaving the US especially with regard to protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

<comment><USER3> It's awful and shouldn't be normalized: which is the point of the ACLU's argument. If this guy, whom is also a US citizen I might add, is suspected of breaking the law, law enforcement needs to meet the burden of proof of obtaining a warrant and not just walk all over the Constitution.

<comment><USER4> If I understand correctly, these searches and seizures are occurring before the person is granted entry, which means they have not yet inside the country, nor even shown that they are allowed to be in the country in the first place. To me, it (unfortunately) makes sense that the laws of a country only apply once you've entered it, so I actually can't fault their logic there -- if I were a judge, I would (reluctantly) rule that this logic is fine.

What is DO have a problem with, though, is that they seem to have deliberately structured the procedures this way in the first place precisely for this goal. People should be granted/denied entry first, then searched afterward if entry is granted -- because it would seem that their permission to be present inside the country should be independent of what they are allowed to bring into the country. So if the ACLU is fighting against this, I sure hope they're making this argument rather than the first one.

Does this make sense, or do people disagree?

<comment><USER5> > To me, it (unfortunately) makes sense that the laws of a country only apply > once you've entered it,

So, are you saying that a US citizen, before entering the US, would be allowed to kill a customs officer without any consequences? Or are you saying that customs officers could torture citizens as long as they are outside the US without any consequences for them?

<comment><USER6> > Or are you saying that customs officers could torture citizens as long as > they are outside the US without any consequences for them?

The US government and its courts have ruled that yes, that is exactly the case.[1][2]

      Eight years after Mr. Meshal's rendition, his case ended up before a three-judge
      panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The
      questions hanging over the proceeding were: can the United States government
      allow, or even facilitate, the rendition of an American citizen to another
      country for interrogation? And can United States officials themselves conduct
      rendition and interrogations of American citizens, including threats of torture,
      on foreign soil?

      According to a decision handed down last week, the answers appear to be yes. If
      this decision stands, it will mean that an American citizen overseas who is
      unlawfully targeted by the United States government for rendition, interrogation
      and detention with the help of a local government will have no form of redress
      in the courts.

      Obama administration lawyers argued that Bivens did not apply to Mr. Meshal's
      case because the incident took place overseas and involved unspecified "national
      security" concerns.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/opinion/how-the-fbi-can- de...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/opinion/how-the-fbi-can-detain- render-and-threaten-without-risk.html?_r=2)

[2]: [https://www.aclu.org/cases/meshal-v- higgenbotham](https://www.aclu.org/cases/meshal-v-higgenbotham)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Are we still not talking about politics?

<comment><USER8> The experiment was ended early. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13131251)

<comment><USER9> I was wondering why so many submissions seemed politics-related. I miss the experiment. It certainly wasn't perfect, but it was better.

<comment><USER10> It was burying our heads in the sand at the very time when it's most critical to be aware of how we and our industry are affected and involved with politics. If someone in the tech industry who provided significant support to the incoming administration was also involved with YCombinator, the timing would almost be sketchy.

<comment><USER9> Pretty much every political thread on HN accomplishes nothing more than to increase the net amount of frustration in the world. The same ideologues rehash the same arguments. No one's mind is changed. And each time a few people get fed-up and quit HN, causing the remaining community to be slightly more strident.

The sooner these threads are dealt with, the healthier our community will be.

<comment><USER11> Not the case, of course. I've changed my mind thanks to political discussion on HN. I've seen others do the same. I don't believe you that there are people quitting HN because of politics threads -- there's no evidence for that or reason to believe it.

Politics can be really, really relevant to tech and vice versa. A lot of the things that have been discussed in this election are explicitly about technology and software (H1B visas, 'closing up the internet', social media to name a few). It would be ridiculous to plug our ears and pretend they don't exist -- that's how non-technical people end up making the rules about technology that we have to follow, i.e. how we got into a lot of the messes we are in today. Tech nerds like us love to pretend it doesn't matter because it's hard and it involves feelings and emotions and you can't reason your way out of it but we always, always lose big time with that approach.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>