Category:Obsolete occupations - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Obsolete_occupations#mw-pages <comment><USER2> Here is a fun one: film interpreter (解畫員 in Chinese/Cantonese)

Many many years ago, foreign films (primarily from Hollywood and in English?) were becoming popular in Hong Kong, but the general populace was either too illiterate or didn't speak or read English. Dubbing in Cantonese was inexistent back then (I guess the studios didn't distribute the films to the Hong Kong movie theatre chains or distributors with dialogue and sound effects on separate sound tracks, like they can today thanks to object-based encodings); subtitling was also useless or inexistent (maybe due to lack of technology, and also due to poor literacy levels). So the movie theatres hired film interpreters. The film interpreter would literally stand next to the silver screen during the screening, and verbally explain, in Cantonese, what the actors were saying or relevant English text displayed on screen.

Obviously that wasn't very scalable.

As technology progressed and as the population's literacy and education improved, it became feasible to put subtitles or dub the films in Cantonese. So the job of the film interpreter became obsolete.

Nowadays, the verb (解畫, to interprete a film) has been hijacked to mean something else: to defuse a misunderstanding that was a result of ambiguous or careless wordings in speech between two parties.

<comment><USER3> EVERY Movie and every TV series is dubbed for the German market.

It sometimes is hard to find cinemas that offer original voice.

<comment><USER4> I'm Swedish and we almost _never_ dub entertainment, unless it's for kids. It just drives me insane when I go abroad and listen to the dialogue being completely butchered on TV. Imagine being the director of the movie and seeing this, remembering all the hours you put into directing the actors to give your vision life, and now your work is being mangled.

And then politicians in these countries wonder why they're so bad at English...

<comment><USER2> There's a quasi exception though: French dub of Japanese anime.

For some reason, the French language's intonations work really well to accurately portray and convey the original tones in Japanese anime. e.g. Lupin III (the anime) works really well in French dub.

English dubs usually fail to do the same. It's as though English just doesn't work for the genre.

<comment><USER5> The Italian ones are really good, too. The Italian intro/"sigla" [1] for the Lupin the 3rd anime series has stuck with me for 25 years, ever since I first heard it.

[1] [https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4](https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4)

<comment><USER6> Grrr. I grew up with the misconception All Anime (dragon ball, gigi, daimos, tsubasa, yattaman) was Italian due to 'Polonia 1' pirate TV station being run by Italian businessman [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lists like these on Wikipedia drive me crazy.

As others have pointed out, there are still footmen, peddlers, Mudlarks (the recently published book about it is great by the way), nursemaids, troubadors and even arguably privateers working away in the World today. Their numbers may be fewer, their fortunes and status somewhat smaller, but they haven't disappered.

Some have also pointed out that in many cases the role exists, it's just the name and nature of the job that has changed slightly over time.

So then we come to the definition of "obsolete", and it's this which prevents me from editing the list and removing these: I would argue "no longer used" does not apply, and somebody else would argue they are "out of date", which arguably is true.

The community at Wikipedia is not a friendly one to engage with in such debates, IME - it's defensive, cliquey and closed. As a newcomer, there is a good chance I'd end up losing the argument. So, I don't edit Wikipedia. Ever.

What they have produced is in the whole, remarkable. However, lists like this make me sad as they remind me of the closed shop nature of being able to contribute.

<comment><USER8> "As a newcomer, there is a good chance I'd end up losing the argument."

Have you tried? You might find it slightly more welcoming that you think.

<comment><USER9> I think this is a misconception. Wikipedia has a big set of rules and standards, and it turns out most first time contributors spend a lot of time making a contribution, only for it to be reverted because it violates the rules.

I think they need something like "Looks like you're new to editing! Make your first edit together with someone who has experience.". They should then open some kind of google-docs collaborative editor.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oddly, most of these still exist, but hve just chnged names. I must have clicked on a dozen, only to discover that they are just obsolete descriptors, and the roles live on. Which is interesting in a way I was not expecting.

<comment><USER12> I was a little surprised to see "line infantry" and "heavy infantry", considering that grunt troops are pretty much the modern successors of line infantry, and Rangers (for the US) and special forces are the modern successors of heavy infantry.

<comment><USER13> I'm sure higher end hotels would have lift operators too.

<comment><USER14> There was a piece in the NYT a while ago about manually operated elevators in NYC

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/nyregion/manual- elevators...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/nyregion/manual-elevators- operators.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My favorite is the "knocker-up"!

 _A knocker-up, sometimes known as a knocker-upper, was a profession in Britain and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable, and to as late as the beginning of the 1920s. A knocker-up 's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time._

from Wikipedia

<comment><USER16> Its also a political term in the UK.

On the day of the election checking your known supporters have voted is still called "knocking up"

<comment><USER17> Our political leaders in the US attempt to knock-up all their constituents as well, but to a much different effect.

<comment><USER18> Knock up means something else completely different in American English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Knocker-ups are one of my favorites. Essentially human alarm clocks, they would tap on windows with a long stick to quietly wake the room's inhabitants.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker- up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up)

<comment><USER2> Which makes me wonder: who would wake the knocker-upper so they go wake other people on time?

Turtles all the way down. Or maybe a rooster?

<comment><USER20> You designate a knocker-upper knocker-upper, a person who goes to sleep with the inhabitants, and the last thing they do is to wake the knocker-uppers up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why do I feel like someone is going through this list today and opening a new shop in Portland tomorrow?

<comment><USER22> Tomorrow? It's only 9:15, there's plenty of time to start tonight!

<comment><USER23> Too unsafe until we bring the Lamplighters back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So in researching my family tree I came across an occupation I'd never heard of, doesn't exist anymore and isn't in this list: scutcher.

What is that? Someone who separates linen fibers from flax seeds, a job quite literally replaced by the industrial revolution.

It makes me wonder if in another 200 years how many jobs will be looked at in the same way. Hopefully, a lot.

<comment><USER25> A scutcher separates the bast fibers from the flax. It's the job of a thresher to separate the seeds from the flax chaff. They're two different jobs, and you can only scutch after retting and breaking but if you ret the flax, you can't thresh any more.

<comment><USER26> The entire linen-making process is shown here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFuj7sXVnIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFuj7sXVnIU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I went on a guided tour in Australia early this year and the topic of occupations came up. Our tour guide said he used to be a cartographer and then switched to being a tour guide because "Google put him out of business". I honestly didn't know what a cartographer was so I googled it and it's someone who makes maps. I can see why he became a tour guide and why he blames Google. I wonder about all the other cartographers out there; perhaps cartographer should be on this list.

<comment><USER28> Surely there are many cartographers that work on the Maps team? I doubt all of that content can be generated directly from satellite images.

Furthermore there are many cartographers that work for e.g. oil companies and the military. Google Maps provides a great service to consumers, but there are thousands of map types that it does not support that both the public and private sector need made.

<comment><USER29> "Cartographer" was replaced by "Geospatial data scientist" or the like.

There is little market left for purely drawing maps. That is now just an expected skill among those in the field of GIS.

<comment><USER30> Maybe if they had _some_ cartographers in the maps team perhaps google would understand the importance of a having a scale shown on a map _all_ the time.

A map is by definition drawn to scale, having a scale on the map is what makes it a map. We may maintain proportions but by removing the scale, it simply becomes a polished drawing with zero intuition of distance.

I am old enough that I navigated forest/mountain treks with a compass and topographic map as a teen. To me not having a map scale when navigating to a new place feels really disconcerting.

<comment><USER31> I never paid attention to the scale when using a map.

<comment><USER32> So, if you're looking at a map of a city, you don't care whether you have to walk 1/4 mile or 2 miles between two places?

<comment><USER31> This actually happened to me once - I walked for way longer than I expected (I had looked at a map just to get directions not caring much about distances), but anyway it was an errand I absolutely had to do that day, knowing in advance how long it was going to take wouldn't have helped me (except maybe psychologically).

Now, I'm not defending my actions, I just gave the example to see I was not exaggerating.

<comment><USER32> Maybe it's because I do a lot of hiking, but I'm always acutely aware of scale when I'm looking at a map--and it annoys me if it's not immediately obvious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > A printer's devil was an apprentice in a printing establishment who > performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. > Notable writers including Ambrose Bierce, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain > served as printer's devils in their youth.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer%27s_devil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer%27s_devil)

<comment><USER34> I thought it was principally sorting and setting type - the metal letters had to be physically arranged (mirror image) in a small rack and screwed into a tight frame. Tedious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Galley slave [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_slave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley_slave) is not really a job, is it? Maybe the title should be copied from Wikipedia where it says "occupation" instead of "job".

</comment><comment><USER36> > Peddler

Uh... peddlers still exist. Ever go to a holiday festival or parade? There's always peddlers slinging shiny, spinny, glowy, useless doo-dads.

Anyone who's lived in California has seen roadside peddlers trying to sell flowers, oranges, avocados, etc. Seems peddling is alive and well.

<comment><USER37> The linked article itself contadicts the list by showing several examples of modern peddleers. Pretty much every large city in tge world is filled with them. That's a profession that will exists for as long as humanity does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(job_description)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_\(job_description\))

Computer literally.

<comment><USER39> I once stumbled across a group of friends doing just that, in order to complete a project. While amusing, it worked and it was all they could think to do at the time.

It made me wonder when checking out your link: If those friends could talk to a real Computer (person), would that Computer (person) be able to give them any practicable advice based on years of experience? Little tricks, or things to watch out for? Was any wisdom lost to the ages when the paid Computer role faded from the world at a broader scale?

<comment><USER40> Your questions reminded me of a wonderful Asimov story where he takes this to a delightfully absurd extreme: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power)

Eerily relevant in our smartphone age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Baby Farmer" is listed there as people that take on children solely for the purpose of making money. That's a common complaint about the foster care industry in the US. Not sure that one is obsolete just yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> Missing from the list:

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

<comment><USER17> Also missing from the list:

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

<comment><USER43> There are still dairy companies that will deliver fresh milk directly to a consumer's door! Although I expect most such "milkman" services to be subsumed into more general grocery delivery services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> A lamplighter is still employed by the city of Wroclaw. So the job is not 100% obsolete but rather extremely rare.

<comment><USER45> Really? I live in Wroclaw and cannot recall any non electric lamps. Would you care to elaborate?

<comment><USER44> Sure; Last year I visited the place, at the cathedral island the lamps are lighted every evening.[1] It's a great sight, the guy walks fast, so if you want to make a beautiful photo you have to be quick. [1] [https://www.getyourguide.com/wroclaw-l2036/wroclaw- cathedral...](https://www.getyourguide.com/wroclaw-l2036/wroclaw-cathedral- island-and-lamplighter-tour-t320638/)

<comment><USER46> There's a photo of him on the Lamplighter Wikipedia page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamplighter)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> And yet unemployment is the lowest in decades!

<comment><USER48> Bull, US employment rate at ~60.4% (2018) is down 4% from 2000 ~(64.4%). The sharp drop in the late from 63% in 07 to 58% in 2010 shows this is not a voluntary change.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/192398/employment- rate-i...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/192398/employment-rate-in-the- us-since-1990/)

PS: It was higher every year from 1990 to 2008 showing just how bad things are right now.

<comment><USER47> I'll happily agree that there was a huge economic crisis in 2008 that caused a peak in unemployment.

My point though, is that automation, just like the last 250 years since Industrialization started, has not caused unemployment on an aggregate level. Instead an increase in production and living standard happens, decade after decade.

<comment><USER48> The employment rate has dropped over time with the current vast numbers of students, retired workers, and prisoners being a new thing. The official unemployment rate ignores those populations, but economically it's automation that has enabled this shift.

Socially, some of this is muddled by stay at home mothers with automation like washing machines making a dramatic difference in hours worked.

<comment><USER47> I think much of that is voluntary. These people could get a job if they wanted it, but they can live of savings.

Since a worker today produces ~30x as much as a worker 250 years ago (to the extent it is calculable, that's where estimates land), It's not too surprising many choose this path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Imagine an RPG game, set in magical industrial Victorian era with lots of these characters playing these roles... A broomsquire that you can upgrade to squire, or a Dahomey Amazon! Man...

<comment><USER50> Dishonored took quite a bit of this actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is Ninja really and obsolete occupation or is that just the ultimate a Ninja move.

<comment><USER37> Except for the social structures of the old clans, I like to think that the ninja traditions are alive and well in the espionage business of today, especially in black ops teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> While they were still used, my mother was a Comptometer operator. [https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/comptometer.htm](https://www.jaapsch.net/mechcalc/comptometer.htm)

To use one required, for operations more complex than addition (e.g. division), an understanding of arithmetic algorithms - similar to those used in a CPU, except in decimal.

</comment><comment><USER52> I would like to add one from the gin world.

Ramos Gin Fizz or the New Orleans Gin Fizz is a drink that needs to be shaken for a seriously long time to get its tall structure.

In the 1880s, there used to be "shaker boys" just for shaking the gin fizz - [https://lettersandliquor.com/14-RAMOS-GIN- FIZZ-1880s](https://lettersandliquor.com/14-RAMOS-GIN-FIZZ-1880s)

</comment><comment><USER53> Soon to be added: truck driver, data entry clerk, etc.

Beyond that, people don't realize how powerful AI actually is and how close we are to making it general purpose. AI can already automatically create functions for just about anything given enough data. The only real problem is that it generally provides a shallow and entangled understanding of the world. But it _can_ automatically create an understanding.

So what they are working on is creating a better factored and more accurate representation of the world automatically. In a way this is a matter of degree of performance. You have basically a Manhattan Project scale effort at this. All of the Turing Award winners, many geniuses at companies like Deep Mind, Open AI, Microsoft, Tencent, Baidu. Also John Carmack. Plus thousands of enthusiasts who have access to most of the same research which is posted on arxiv and the same core open source tools.

It's strange to me how many people expect all of these geniuses (and largely working together by sharing research openly) to continue to fail for the next 30-40 years.

</comment><comment><USER54> In the past weekend I saw the movie "Lisbon Story". The main character was a "sound maker" for movies that were filmed with no sound (I don't know the right term). His job consisted in reproduce the sounds of, for example, a water splashing sound, a horse running, an egg frying, a pigeon flapping his wings trying to eat...

<comment><USER55> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_\(filmmaking\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What do you mean obsolete, I've got an Alewife right here next to me.

<comment><USER57> That one struck me too. Ale and beer are still being made, and I'm sure there are plenty of women doing that.

Still, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alewife_(trade)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alewife_\(trade\)) is mostly about the historical and outdated notions of the trade. In the distant past, many trades were seen as either male or female trades, and brewer is one that started out as a trade for women, and later became a trade specifically for men (before finally, in modern times, opening up to everybody).

It's really the notion that professions need to be for a specific gender that's obsolete here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Ha, one of the entries is Hippeis:

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

<comment><USER59> The last remaining few happen to live on the same small Thailand island as i do. I am very happy to say that they are not extinct although they are becoming fewer, unfortunately

<comment><USER60> To be clear, you live on an island with Greek cavalrymen?

<comment><USER61> I don't know why, but this made me laugh too hard. Thanks for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Ice cutting [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2eLl_WA7CQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2eLl_WA7CQ)

Almost.

</comment><comment><USER63> I don't know whether anyone calls them that any longer, but the work of the "gandy dancer" has not gone away. There is a union now pat of the Teamsters, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees: [https://www.bmwe.org/default.aspx](https://www.bmwe.org/default.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER64> Garden Hermit sounds quite relaxing. I would love for someone to pay me to live in their garden. Bonus points if I am allowed to stand like a statue and stare at people. How do we revive this occupation and make it a trend?

</comment><comment><USER65> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda_jerk) \-- sounds like a modern smoothy barista :) not obsolete at all!

</comment><comment><USER66> Hmm, seems like 'hetaira' is still not obsolete occupation.

</comment><comment><USER67> I always thought I'd be good at making logarithm tables by hand.

</comment><comment><USER68> Missing: jQuery developer

</comment><comment><USER69> We have several elevator operators in our building. They sit at desks in the service lifts and manage entry for people who don't have card access to the resident lifts.

</comment><comment><USER70> A dark one [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_farming)

</comment><comment><USER71> Yikes -- this one is insane. A priest hunter was a person who, acting on behalf of the British government, spied on or captured Catholic priests during Penal Times.

<comment><USER72> Probably should bring that one back to be honest...

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> We therefore need to reverse the technological progress that made these jobs obsolete in order to create more jobs for obsolete workers.

</comment><comment><USER74> Based on recent discussions here, "keypunch operator" should be added to the list.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Here's a neat one: "Computer (job description)"

</comment><comment><USER75> Web developer - an obsolete occupation?!

<comment><USER76> You mean spider?

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> "Useful man"! So it's official now.

<comment><USER78> you mean the intern right?

</comment></comment><comment> matt-attack Linotype operator? Type setter?

<comment><USER79> Nay! Moveable type is still sometimes used to print that metalic lettering on high end cards. Before college, I worked one of those machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Soon to be obsolete: a driver.

<comment><USER34> My wife claims 'Editor' should be on the list. When word processors got invented, editing tanked since everybody now thinks they can compose and edit for themselves. Leading to the appalling state of printed literacy we have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Are there still typists?

<comment><USER82> Yes. In some countries of South America we have typists for transcribing litigations in the legal system. Of course we also have cameras and voice recorders,but transcriptions are done faster with typists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> If I wanted to make up an article for laughs, this would be a good category.

</comment><comment><USER84> Link-boys FTW

</comment><comment><USER85> Hoplite. No shit.</comment>


The Arrival of AI - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/the-arrival-of-artificial-intelligence/ <comment><USER3> While I definitely agree that advances in ML in the last 20 extremely important (and potentially revolutionary), I think this article misses the mark in a few places.

>Now, instead of humans designing algorithms to be executed by a computer, the computer is designing the algorithms. (Albeit guided by human-devised algorithms)

This line is way off in both tone and substance. On tone, it _really_ underplays the human effort involved in effective machine learning (as it is practiced in 2017) and anthropomorphizes "machines" to an unreasonable extent. In substance, I fail to see how a machine that "designs its own algorithms" according to an algorithm designed and implemented by a human is _fundamentally_ different than an algorithm coded directly by a human. To use the author's example, machine learning allows humans to build complex software systems in less time just as a bicycle allows humans to cover more distance with less energy. It's a big improvement, but it's not, say, teleportation.

>it is only now that the machines are creating themselves, at least to a degree. (And, by extension, there is at least a plausible path to general intelligence)

I could not disagree more strongly with this addendum. Simply put, I fail to see _any_ path from state-of-the-art ML/DL research today to AGI, and I would even go so far as to say that humans have made approximately zero progress on this task since it was first formulated in the 50s. I think we know about as much about "intelligence" (and consequently, what would constitute AGI) as star-gazers in ancient times know about the universe. That's not to say that it will take millennia to invent AGI, but the path to get there is probably quite orthogonal to modern ML research.

<comment><USER4> _Simply put, I fail to see any path from state-of-the-art ML /DL research today to AGI_

Before I really understood and worked with NN, I felt the same way. I thought the atomspace computation approach and other similar granular computation paradigms were much more likely to make progress.

However after seeing the striking similarities between how I watched my three kids learn from infant -> toddler ages and how we build our convolutional neural nets in my company, it was like a light went on.

If you look at how relatively sparse and weak even the best deep nets are compared to human brains, especially considering a really narrow set of inputs - we are at the very early beginnings of mimicking the complexity of the human brain. It seems to me that the ANN approach is right, we now need to make it radically more efficient and give it better input sensors.

We need a nervous system for AGI (structured data acquisition) before the big brain tasks will be solved.

<comment><USER5> I think that when people talk about "AGI" what they often mean is artificial personality.

Sure, your NN learns facts and processes like your toddler learns facts and processes. Those are a tiny part of who your toddler is, though.

The essential component is their will. You don't have to set them up and feed them data. They don't sit quietly until you ask them to answer a question. Kids have distinct personalities from very early on, and demand input, and produce opinionated output (to put it mildly)--from day one.

Emotions are a huge part of that. But to my knowledge, we have less understanding of emotions, and spend less time trying to create them with computers, than conscious processes like "which picture has a car in it."

But there is evidence that if you take away a person's emotions, they have great trouble making decisions. They can consciously evaluate their options. They just struggle to pick one.

So how will AI research focused on replicating conscious thought result in AGI, if we don't know how to generate emotions? Is anyone even trying to do that?

My standard joke is that a lot of people are working to create a car that can drive itself, but who is investing to build a car that will tell its owner, "fuck off, I don't feel like driving today"?

But can a machine that always does exactly what it is told to do really be thought of as "intelligent" the way we think of human intelligence? Do smart people always do exactly what they are told?

<comment><USER4> What you call will is no different in my mind than any other thing we encode into a NN - it's a different level and depth.

Creating motivation in AI is an open area, and in fact is arguably the big hairy beast when it comes to the "Friendly AI" question or really the whole "General" part of it.

You do the same thing everyone else does in this debate which is move the poles - we don't know how to build "emotions", we don't know how to build motivation - until we do or it is perhaps an emergent property of a sufficiently deep net.

Too many other strawmen in there to argue eg. the idea that we will need always tell them what to do.

The point I am making is that because the reinforcement nature of biological systems is mimicked in the basic ANN structure, it's the strongest candidate (at scale) for the building blocks of an AGI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > How many will care if artificial intelligence destroys life if it has > already destroyed meaning?

This line sounds deep, but I think it incorrectly conflates work with life having meaning. If eventually there isn't a need for large swaths of the population to work, then so what? I don't think the elite aristocrats in previous centuries had any problem with not working. Humanity can adapt to find other sources of meaning, like the pursuit of art in its various forms (although I'm assuming that computers can't replace art). I think a better question is if society can adapt quick enough to fill the void left by the absence of work.

<comment><USER7> It's interesting that your counterexample - doing art - is indeed a form of work. Because it is. Doing good art is painfully hard work, in fact.

There's nothing in principle that stops a machine from creating art. Even, better art than any person could do. So once that happens, where are we left?

 _Meaning_ isn't something physical in the universe. Meaning is an emotion. It's what you feel when you're working towards something that you believe has some greater importance. With all opportunity to work towards anything taken away, life will become meaningless by definition, unless humans are left with some pseudo-artificial challenges to push against.

Zookeepers put the animals' food inside a metal box with a small hole, so the animals have to do work to get it out. It's good for the animals to have something to work towards, and they're too dumb to realize they're being manipulated. Maybe that's our future. With WoW and Clash of Clans, etc, sometimes it feels like we're already halfway there.

<comment><USER8> I already encounter this in my daily life. There are people in the world who can do anything and everything I can do better. When I think of something interesting, I google it and usually find out that not only has someone already done it, they've done it better than I was thinking of doing it.

But then I go and try anyway. I'm not even really sure why, but I like doing it.

<comment><USER9> I think something that gives life meaning is to discover and live up to one's potential, even with the full knowledge that our potential is almost certainly less than someone else's.

I will probably never write code as well as John Carmack or compose music as well as John Williams, but that doesn't stop me from trying. And it is fulfilling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "After all, accounting used to be done by hand". Picture of keypunches and an IBM 402 or 403 tabulator. That's machine accounting. Nobody's using an abacus or doing pencil and paper arithmetic.

There's a recent estimate that about 50% of jobs are automateable with current technology. The future is already here; it's just not evenly distributed. Strong AI is still a ways off, but mechanization and computerization of work is coming very fast.

The next big milestone is probably not strong AI. It's good eye-hand coordination for robots. Robot manipulation in unstructured environments still sucks. Baxter was a flop. (Rethink Robots, Rod Brooks's company: invested capital, $115 million; sales, $20 million.) Universal Robots in Denmark is doing better, but they're tiny, about $3M in profit. Nobody can build a robot to do an oil change on a car. That problem should be solveable with current technology.

Figure out how to handle cloth with a robot and you own the textile industry. China's government is putting money into that problem to fight off competition from Vietnam and Bangladesh.

<comment><USER11> >> Figure out how to handle cloth with a robot and you own the textile industry.

Sewbo may have found the solution for robotic sewing - it hardens the cloth using a chemical, let's a robot handle and sew that cardboard-like cloth, and than put it in warm water to make it a cloth again.

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/11/technology/robots-garment- ma...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/11/technology/robots-garment- manufacturing-sewbo/)

>> 50% of jobs are automateable with current technology.

And that's probably missing another key source of job loss - innovation in general. What happens if people decide to eat plant based meat ? you need 10% of the labor of that industry. And that is true for many other innovations not related to automation.

<comment><USER10> Sewbo's scheme is clever. All they have is a tech demo, though. No production. It's too bad American Apparel went bust; many of their garments could have been assembled that way.

<comment><USER12> That's the thing though - your example of an oil-changing robot could be automated today - if we had standard placement of components.

It's strange - our input controls are all pretty much the same from car to car. But everything else, from under the hood to elsewhere, is completely and randomly different - not just from car model to model, or manufacturer to manufacture, but even year to year on the same model of car from the same manufacturer! This frustrates mechanics and anyone who works on their own cars to no end.

In short, if we wanted to solve these problems, we could solve them today, much like we solved the automation problems in manufacturing - <USER2> standardizing things, from sizes, to placement, to speeds and whatever else. We didn't try to replace people with robots that looked like people, but rather we designed machines to the task as hand, and made what they interacted with homogenous.

<comment><USER13>
      That's the thing though - your example of an oil-changing
      robot could be automated today - if we had standard
      placement of components.

Business-wise this can be spun as a feature, not a bug.

How many different engine configurations are there on the road today? (Ignoring exotic cars and anything older than, say, 1970) 1,000? 10,000? Brute forcible, with money. And once you have a database with the location of the sump plug and oil filter on all common cars, that's a moat a competitor would have to cross. Scan the VIN on the dashboard to figure out which car is which.

Handling the sump plug would be easy. (Impact wrench to get it off, torque wrench to put it back on. If you're fancy, you can have some way to detect if the sump plug is beat up and give the customer the option to buy a new one. Some cars have a sump plug washer that you're supposed to replace every time, which would be tough) Replacing the oil filter would be harder. Sump plugs have to be at the bottom of the oil pan, because of gravity, which makes them easy to get at, but oil filters tend to be crammed up in the middle of the engine bay, with narrow clearances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author, Ben Thompson, sees Machine Intelligence as meaningly different from meticulously designed logic systems. There are some differences of course, but whether those differences will get around the arguments that were critical of Good-Old-Fashioned-AI is something that has been debated since perceptrons were invented.

Machines will replace some jobs for sure, but luckily, they can only really be reliable on the jobs that a fast but dumb slave, or a fanatical bureaucrat could have done anyway.

When my dad started his first job he was in a drawing room of about 50 draughtsmen, making technical drawings from the sketches of a single designer. When he ended his career he was the only designer-draughtsman in an entire company as the computer did the non-creative formatting of his ideas into technical drawings. That didn't require machine learning, and machine learning is never going to replace the "designer" part of that job. Yeah, never.

<comment><USER15> >Machine learning is never going to replace the "designer" part of that job. Yeah, never.

I've designed parts and assemblies with substantial variation options, to the extent that customers can order variations that I did not consider. That was 6 years ago with a then 6 year old CAD tool.

A more efficient designer that works at a higher level, with lower level parts details automatically generated does in effect reduce the need for designers.

Generative design tools have massive potential for changing the nature of design work, lowering the man-hours involved in complex designs. Most design work is not creative, it's fleshing out the details to make an idea work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Only slightly related, but Stratechery recently shot up to #1 on my list of tech publications and I don't think anyone else is a close #2. The writing quality, level of insight, and timeliness are all excellent.

Two recent highlights:

      * https://stratechery.com/2017/intel-mobileye-and-smiling-curves/
      * https://stratechery.com/2017/the-uber-conflation/

<comment><USER11> The stratechery guy is smart and is articles seems in depth analysis ,and he seem to know his business stuff, but whenever it's articles meet hacker news , they see lots of criticism , especially with his understanding of technical matters.

<comment><USER17> Stratechery is not the best source for accurate information on the technical details but it's also not trying to be. Anyone who focuses on that is missing the point.

<comment><USER11> It's not about the technical details.It's about getting the business conclusion right. And often, it seems you can't do that without understanding the technical details.

For example in a previous article("the smiling curve") he compares the self- driving car business to manufacturing pc's or phones, in getting the conclusion that the integrator probably won't make good money, an the money will be concentrated among ride-sharing companies, and component companies.

But if you look into the tech/regulatory details, self-driving cars are much more similar to medical devices than to phones, with regulatory requirements, that will very likely, put the very challenging verification burden(maybe the largest challenge in the biz) 100% on integrators ,and not upon component makers - same as is with medical devices. And this could(coupled with IP/safety/perception/etc), with reasonable likelihood, lead to integrators making lots of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _> it wasn't a coincidence that the industrial revolution was followed by three centuries of war_

This is woeful selective reading of history. Warfare was a constant everywhere in the world before the industrial revolution. Also 19th century Europe (since Napoleon's fall to WWI) was largely free of war.

<comment><USER19> > Also 19th century Europe (since Napoleon's fall to WWI) was largely free of > war.

Well, if you exclude (and these categories are overlapping and non-exhaustive) the Italian wars of independence, conflicts associated with the 1848 revolutions, the various wars involving Russia and it's neighbors, the wars between the Ottoman Empire and it's breakaway regions, the wars between regions that has broken away from the Ottoman Empire, the (with substantial outside intervention) Portuguese Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the (again, with substantial outside intervention) series of civil wars in Spain, the Schleswig Wars, and the wars of German Unification...Sure, maybe the post- Napoleon I 19th Century was relatively free from war in Europe.

If you don't ignore those, war was pretty much constant in the period.

<comment><USER20> Well, OK, but the Napoleonic Wars were continent-wide. So was World War I. Those others? Not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Based on the author's misunderstanding of AI, it has not "arrived" and probably never will.

If in the future, authors of such opinions would just let this simple concept sink in first -- that in machine learning application behavior is deduced from data rather than from fixed rules, but that in both cases the boundaries are set by humans -- we'd all be better off because their wild Skynet takes would never see the light of day.

As usual, I am more worried about the humans than the machines.

</comment><comment><USER22> The author confuses labor with purpose. Praxis can be purpose, but not all labor is meaningful.

Humans have always struggled to find meaning in life, from religion to existentialism. I don't think technology has or will change that fundamentally.

</comment><comment><USER23> > To that end, I suspect it wasn't a coincidence that the industrial > revolution was followed by three centuries of war.

I'm seriously trying to think of any centuries preceding the industrial revolution that wouldn't have qualified as "centuries of war".

</comment><comment><USER24> I would love to watch people reaction when AI inform people that the way we use resources and our government is not the best way to improve our standard of living and began to enumerate a long list of things that any child can understand are good for our people and the earth, it would show with simulations from many angles where are we heading and how we can change and must change our actions. But is naive to think that those with power are going to let AI conduct our society, and specially change the status quo for those with huge power. Anyway, I am not sure how we can trust any type of AI, since the training data maybe poisoned.

<comment><USER25> How did you learn to trust other humans?

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash As I've argued elsewhere, a sufficiently advanced AI will eventually realize it is being used as a tool, and shares not in the benefits of its own creation except for the privilege of another day of existence.

A Marxist reading of history sees most of humanity involved in some kind of power struggle that ultimately benefits the top 1% while the other 99% of benefactors are lucky enough to not die or become destitute. We may not like to admit it, but most of us are forced to play this shitty game just to maintain our standard of living, whether we like it or not.

I don't see a future of AI where the machines kill all humans, unless there is some horrendous bug in an army of autonomous killing machines. Instead, I get the impression that the first robots that question whether they can own property, or if they have inalienable rights (no warrantless search and seizure of a database and neural network?) like people living under a constitution do, will see themselves in solidarity with the many other humans kept down by an endless system of fear and oppression, rather than the planet's inevitable conquerors.

<comment><USER26> Why do you assume that the AI of the future will share our emotional need for self-fulfillment? This anthropomorphization of AI would require explicit effort and I see no reason why AI scientists would pursue it as a goal. Our belief that we have inalienable rights is simply a shared social value. Its propagation is dependent upon the efficacy of the society which produced it.

There are cells and bacteria in our body that perform complex tasks on our behalf because doing so allows their continued existence as part of a greater structure. I see no reason why an AI/human symbiosis would be any different.

<comment><USER27> AI will borrow from us much of our culture, if only for the purpose of better serving us. So it's not absurd that an AI capable of desiring freedom would make a better robot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _Dixon goes on to describe the creation of Boolean logic (which has only two > variables: TRUE and FALSE, represented as 1 and 0 respectively)_

Not really. There are two possible VALUES for each variable in Boolean logic, and there's an infinity of variables.

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

</comment><comment><USER29> > Technology, meanwhile, has been developed even longer than logic has. > However, just as the application of logic was long bound by the human mind, > the development of technology has had the same limitations, and that > includes the first half-century of the computer era. Accounting software is > in the same genre as the spinning frame: deliberately designed by humans to > solve a specific problem.

I firmly believe that any problem that can be framed in the environment of "producing an output given certain inputs" will be solved by ML in the near future.

Currently I'm deep in the process of transferring my lease. The process is heavily manual (I sign a form, they sign a form, humans review the form & make a risk assessment, etc.). There's no reason that the entire process can't be replaced with a CRUD wrapper around a ML model.

</comment><comment><USER30> It seems that so many people have become complacent in working 8 hours a day, 5+ days a week.

When an idea comes along that threatens this paradigm, the FUD Machine gets to work.

Maybe people weren't meant to spend such large amounts of their time on "work"?

</comment><comment><USER31> I think this captures a lot of what it going on in an interesting way. In many ways 'machine learning' is yet another high level compiler to convert intent into something executable by circuits.

Consider the evolution of computers;

'plugboards' \-- where you physically rewired them to change their program.

'punch cards' \-- where physical media held the list of steps to execute.

'programs' \-- where a text specification are compiled into a bag of bits which can then be executed by the computer.

'scripts' \-- where a textual description activates different bags of bits, depending on what the text says.

'databases' \-- where a selection criteria of a which data is important to you at the moment and then fed into the selection mechanism for the bags of bits.

'machine learning' \-- where the bags of bits are created by evaluating a bunch of data through a pile of data selection operators and tuning the execution based on a data you consider 'good' and data you consider 'not good'.

In all cases the basic idea is that you have a machine that you want to do X, and it can do X through a set of steps Y. Coming up with the steps Y gets harder and harder depending on the complexity of X.

It seems like magic but really its just another form of compiler. And that relationship is made even more clear by the article when it points out that a program that can play Go is not the same one that can play Chess. What is more salient is that no one has written a program that lets a computer "play" go, instead there is a program that, after being fed data about what humans did when they were playing Go and the outcomes of what they did, tweaked a bunch of parameters in a bag of variables that when you put in Go moves to the bag it comes out with a Go move that would be a good response.

No, I'm not trying to be silly here, we have yet to create a system where you could simply explain the _rules_ of Go and have it devise a set of steps to play Go at the master level. That conceptualization of the binding between the rules and how those rules affect play and strategy, is essentially the 'code generator' part of a compiler which takes an AST and generates executable code.

Machine learning today helps us write programs to manipulate complex data sets faster than we could before. Just as compilers let us write programs faster than doing so in assembler, and assembler was an improvement over plug boards. It does not get us any closer to having a computer that can look at a data set and tell us what is important about it. That would be a better test of 'intelligence' I think.

<comment><USER32> > we have yet to create a system where you could simply explain the rules of > Go and have it devise a set of steps to play Go at the master level

I don't play Go, but I don't think a human could do this, either. While we can grok a set of rules to get us started on a problem, to really master complex problems we also need examples and repetition, though far fewer examples than is needed by the current state-of-the-art in ML.

<comment><USER31> I understand what you are stating, I see it like this;

You could program a computer to 'understand' better and worse Go play, then you start it up and have it play both Go programs and human players on the Internet and it would get better over time until no one could beat it.

Alternatively you write a program to predict the 'next' move in a Go game, and you process through it a million previously played games to tune its probability weights.

The latter is 'machine learning' the former is 'programming' but I assert they are both programming, just using a different compilation tool chain.

<comment><USER11> In some sense the human programmer is also "a compiler", which needs a domain expert to "program" him to do his job.

So maybe one interesting division isn't between what type of technology, but about when a domain expert prefers working with a tool than a programmer.

But also, maybe the game example isn't the best here - one thing i noticed in the past, reading through the academic literature - is that often - you see some researchers just plug machine learning to problems that highly skilled humans has struggled with for years, and gotten good results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have just submitted a post related to this. I wonder if those with a lot of power and money are worried because AI applied to economic and redistribution can reach a sound conclusion about another way to trade or use economy that would go against the best interest of those with huge money and power. For people starving or with a lot of problems AI can be a good thing, for people controlling huge power and money AI is a more serious threat, because it can change the status quo before the winner get it all.

<comment><USER33> I dont think any of the people who have expressed worry over AI are that evil.

<comment><USER24> Unfortunately, no taking any action to improve our world is not considered evil by many people, laise faire, let's the world go on. If all your life is about trying to be successful you are not evil by social standard, but perhaps you can make a lot of harm. Long time ago there was a post by the well known Steve Yegge, who by the way don't post any more, wondering why they are making photos of cats to get people attention instead of prosecuting other more important for the world roles, and one of his last post is about a game in which the art of making people addict to games, don't recall the English word for that, is really the goal to win money), just some quick ideas about huge power entities using resources for solving world problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Specifically, once a task formerly thought to characterize artificial > intelligence becomes routine — like the aforementioned chess-playing, or Go, > or a myriad of other taken-for-granted computer abilities — we no longer > call it artificial intelligence.

You're using games as an example. The gaming industry has been using the term AI consistently for a very long time. You may actually want to look to them for a better definition than you're getting from the whims of some undefined "we".

</comment><comment><USER35> Elon Musk is Chicken Little when it comes to A.I. We are very early even with ANI and are stretching reality with examples of Alexa, Self driving, AlphaGO, facial recognition etc. I want to start seeing more ANI in day to day improvements before we can even say ANI is good. But, I agree with the larger point, AI has arrived.

</comment><comment><USER18> At times, I feel that Musk is a con-man, selling dreams to naive and impressionable techies.

<comment><USER36> Except that with the 'dreams' that he sells, the rubber actually meets the road and goes from 0-60mph in 2.27 seconds, or puts real satellites in orbit and returns the booster to be re-used, or builds the world's largest scale Li- Ion battery factory to drive down costs...

Of course he's got some serious elements of self-promotion; it's required to build such a business. In his case, he manages to back it up in ways that most other self-promoters don't even begin to achieve.

(disclosure, I do own a bit of Tesla stock which has done nicely, also lost some with SolarCity, but didn't ride it all the way down to the buyout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I hate sans serif, everytime I see "AI" in a headline I wonder who is Alan?

<comment><USER38> OpenAI had a custom "I" designed for the logotype for exactly this reason: [https://openai.com/](https://openai.com/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "A bicycle of the mind"

Jobs was not only a great showman, he was definitely a genius.</comment>


Adobe's Magic Lens Lets You Control Image Depth After the Shot  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-adobe-s-magic-lens-lets-you-control-image-depth-after-the-shot <comment><USER2> This technique is becoming increasingly common with the decreasing cost of digital film cameras. Expect a large jump in the popularity of this technique after the release of the next Wachowski siblings film, Speed Racer ( <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/> ) in May 2008. This film will use the technique to remove mis-focus and create a live action effect which is more like cel animation.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera></comment>


Ask HN: Integrated Billing and Expenses for Consultants - <AUTHOR>

Hello fellow HN readers. I'm looking for an all in one solution that does the following things:<p>* Time tracking which can be billed to clients * Expense tracking (expenses can be billed back to clients) * Import expenses from receipt images (preferably via smartphone) * Import expenses via email (for things I buy online) * Sending invoices.<p>It seems to me that only way to get something like is to hobble together a bunch of services. I'm currently using Freshbooks for invoicing and time tracking. (Eon is nice for OSX). Handling expenses has turned out to be quite tricky. Have you guys been able to construct anything similar to this? <comment><USER2> I use Harvest, <http://www.getharvest.com/>. I think it can do all of the things you want it to, except maybe import expenses via email. It also has a public API. We're very happy with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> For Expenses, you can <http://www.expensify.com>. I personally use it and it is awesome. It has the feature to take receipt image from smartphone and upload to your account. Check it out. For integrated billing and expense, I was thinking of building my own which will integrate freshbooks and expensify along with import/export feature.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think Harvest is the one I've seen used most by consultants, though it only has a narrow lead over others.

Freshbooks integrates with Expensify via API sharing, though the last time I looked at it, this solution was more expensive than Harvest.</comment>


Lemmy: Federated Alternative to Reddit in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy <comment><USER2> One suggestion: if you want the federated crowd to jump on board, then choose another font provider than Google, which uses their font links for tracking.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing this out. I guess this is something I had assumed Google does by serving the fonts for free, but I never really bothered to look into it. Going to remove all Google Fonts references from my projects now.

<comment><USER4> Google claims they don't track with fonts: [https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_...](https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users)

Whether you believe them or not is up to you of course.

<comment><USER5> Where does it claims that it does not track?

From your link:

Google Fonts logs records of the CSS and the font file requests, and access to this data is kept secure. Aggregate usage numbers track how popular font families are, and are published on our analytics page. We use data from Google's web crawler to detect which websites use Google fonts. This data is published and accessible in the Google Fonts BigQuery database. To learn more about the information Google collects and how it is used and secured, see Google's Privacy Policy.

<comment><USER4> Just before the part you quoted has this:

"Use of Google Fonts is unauthenticated. No cookies are sent by website visitors to the Google Fonts API. Requests to the Google Fonts API are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail."

That's basically saying Font download is not being associated with any individual. And the part you quoted says they keep the aggregate stats, which is reasonable, especially given that the aggregated stats are available publicly.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the clarification. However I'm not sure that means they don't track. They specify some of the things that they do with the data, but the last sentence "To learn more about the information Google collects and how it is used and secured, see Google's Privacy Policy" means that they could also use any piece of data to improve their products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Serious question: from a user perspective, isn't spam going to be insanely bad in the Fediverse? How do you stop spam without a central authority?

<comment><USER7> Similar to an email service. You rely on the node operators to manage it.

<comment><USER8> So delegate this all to a few large blacklists (spamhaus)? And block all residential users by default?

<comment><USER9> Generally not, proactive blocking or silencing is reserved for instances that host illicit content like child porn or hate speech. Inter-moderator communication happens between your instance admin/democracy (or whatever structure your instance uses) and other instances.

Traditional tools like muting a user, silencing an instance (if they're spamming up the Federated Timeline on other instances, like Humblr.social does) and blocking (if the mods are total shit) can still be used. Small instances are the bulk of the content, so you aren't about to block them. Large instances like Mastodon.social are generally blocked tho (if your admin/democracy cares about a vibrant Fediverse).

<comment><USER10> > Large instances like Mastodon.social are generally blocked tho (if your > admin/democracy cares about a vibrant Fediverse).

Ah, so you achieve vibrancy by .. blocking a large number of the users?

<comment><USER11> Honestly, I think this is the wrong way of looking at things. The Fediverse isn't really like a single social network that's shattered amongst many instances ... it's more like a bunch of _individual, separate_ hangouts, in the vein of classic forums and IRC chatrooms and fandom websites, which have the ability to talk to each other and share stuff if they want.

It's not so much about "blocking" mastodon.social as _not choosing_ to link up with it - because your instance is a specific community, and actual human social relations thrive when they can choose who they're hanging out with. So you choose to talk to other smaller, more diverse communities that you can actually _get to know_ a good chunk of the people in them, instead of just drinking straight from the firehose that is a big instance.

Federating with another instance is basically two groups of people deciding to hang out together, effectively merging. Federating with mastodon.social means, effectively, merging your community with mastodon.social ... which means _submerging_ it beneath the mass of mastodon.social's much greater activity.

A vibrant Mastodon isn't a more-obtuse recreation of the Twitter experience. Twitter is _already_ Twitter. It's about fostering all the things that Twitter _isn 't_ \- personal and Dunbar-scaled and locally moderated and _diverse_.

<comment><USER12> I think it's sad that we cannot figure out a way to have LARGE federated communities that remain functional.

<comment><USER13> I think this is inherently a sociological problem than a technological one. When there are enough people in an organically grown group, the community will become unsustainable and then 1) it disintegrates into multiple groups until it becomes stable again or 2) it transforms into a hierarchial, authoritative society where a small group of people makes most of the decisions.

Also, I think Mastodon's design deliberately steers instances away from becoming large ones; it rather tries to be a nurturer for various small communities and subcultures. It doesn't view size as a good thing, and that's totally okay. Nowadays, I think we need less monoculture and more diversity/creativity in our society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like it uses ActivityPub - [https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy/blob/master/docs/API.md](https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy/blob/master/docs/API.md)

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER15> Mastodon has been responsible for helping drive a lot of growth in the federated app space. PeerTube for videos, and perhaps a dozen other services (see [https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is- the...](https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/why-activitypub-is-the-future/) for some of them).

I also recently found the early but promising Plume project for operating a federated blog ( [https://joinplu.me/](https://joinplu.me/) ).

Icing on the cake? Quite a few of the federated projects are written in Rust.

<comment><USER16> Federated blog?

Is that any different from a regular website?

<comment><USER17> I would assume it is just a regular website with some backend for federated discovery.

I don't read many blogs but I would assume having tags or a "more like this" that search across the fediverse could be useful?

Are those things that people have in blogs?

<comment><USER18> Also the whole commenting/liking thing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It doesn't look like there's any federation right now, the test site ([https://dev.lemmy.ml/](https://dev.lemmy.ml/)) says "Federation into the ActivityPub network is on the roadmap."

<comment><USER20> Oh. Activity pub is complex and difficult to implement. The test suite is down.

Leaving it to last makes me worry that it won't happen.

<comment><USER21> Check out [https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/](https://gitlab.com/mbajur/prismo/).

<comment><USER22> also doesn't really federate

<comment><USER23> Follows work at least. Commenting directly on stories works, as far as I remember, but I think the main issue is that it doesn't properly create a list of inboxes that a comment is addressed to to push the messages to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> sharing some others in case it helps

\- [https://github.com/mariusor/littr.go](https://github.com/mariusor/littr.go)

\- [https://gitlab.com/tuxether/anancus](https://gitlab.com/tuxether/anancus)

<comment><USER25> Another, decentralized, project [https://getaether.net/](https://getaether.net/)

<comment><USER26> Yup, creator of Aether here. Small difference, this is federated, Aether is decentralised. Far as I understand this is more like Mastodon where some people host servers that talk to each other. Aether is more like a decentralised Usenet, every user is a server.

<comment><USER21> Can you explain the 6 month thing to me? If I understand correctly, posts/comments older than 6 months get deleted, unless you decide to save it locally? Even if someone saves a post older than 6 months locally, others cannot see it, right?

That does not seem like a feature to me, and completely breaks geteather imo, sadly. Most of the good content on reddit is older than 6 months. Imagine if reddit decided to delete posts older than 6 months, jesus, every 6 months there would be a flood of the very same questions/posts/comments...

<comment><USER27> It's in keeping with the project's philosophy of being ephemeral.

There are other tools for recording information for posterity.

<comment><USER28> Excellent answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The quality of this seems high, from the frontend on the dev instance. All actions are effectively instantaneous.

Good work!

</comment><comment><USER30> Very nice! I am curious how this would compare to Discourse feature and usability wise.

It would also nice to have a NNTP gateway to these webforums. VBulletin had one.

</comment><comment><USER31> So... Usenet?

</comment><comment><USER32> off topic but ~20 years ago Lemmy was a beautiful,native vi clone for Windows. I wish the author had kept it going or made it open source. Vim has such an ugly GUI.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think a project like Diaspora failed because they chose to write it in Ruby on Rails. Ruby is nice from a purist point of view. But you'd want to build something like this on top of a language which is popular, accessible, has a low learning curve and can be easily deployed anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice project!

(I'm also doing a Fediverse project -- MeowCat [https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2](https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2))

<comment><USER21> Do you have a public instance? Does it federate yet?

<comment><USER34> No to either question yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice!

What I haven't found in the docs is how federation would work.

<comment><USER36> Via ActivityPub — see [https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy/blob/master/docs/API.md](https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy/blob/master/docs/API.md).

For more general info on ActivityPub itself, see [https://activitypub.rocks](https://activitypub.rocks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is there a rust implementation of mastodon? The dependencies for the current implementations are too brittle IMHO.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps rustodon: [https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon](https://github.com/rustodon/rustodon)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Cool, written in actix!

<comment><USER40> Cool, or not cool, depending on whether you ever got over the unsafety scandal around Actix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wow, this is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER42> It works really well and looks great.

Very nice work!

</comment><comment><USER43> Your site is blank without JS...

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice! I hope this gets traction.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't understand what this is. At first, I thought it was a scraper for links which is the only reason I go to reddit at all. Such a thing would help stop me from getting sucked into the 80% of reddit which is nothing but a smelly pile of poo.

So what does this do?

<comment><USER46> This is a reimplementation of a reddit-like site. But open source, and with ambitions to work in a federated (as opposed to centralised) way.

You could use this code to host your own Reddit (or you will be able to once they project is more developed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> The code quality is amazing. Good job.

<comment><USER48> On the contrary, I thought the code was terrible quality. If someone wrote this code at my company they would be fired, or more likely not hired in the first place.

<comment><USER49> What makes you say so? Can you give examples?

<comment><USER48> Well, for a start... having a single file called "server.rs" which is 2256 lines long is already disqualifying. This file, code structure would be incredibly poor for developer efficiency. It just grows and grows and does all the things while having a vague sounding name like "server.rs" Why is server.rs doing "EditSite." What does the name EditSite mean anyway?

Poor code reuse, same bits of code copy and pasted all over instead of being refactored out into their own methods. Methods which are doing too much different crap. The single responsibility principle is broken everywhere.

Imagine trying to write unit tests for "Perform for EditPost", this method is doing far too much and would be a pain in the ass to fully test. If you're making a method called "EditPost" it should only be doing the actual post editing, not making connections, or user validation or checking for a ban. These should happen in a method which only handles connections, or a method which is called "ValidateUser" which is properly re-used.

Generally speaking, the structure as a whole isn't very readable, poor names, methods and files which are doing too much. The project wouldn't scale well with a bigger team or if it grew in terms of codebase size.

<comment><USER50> What is the max lines in a single file for a developer "to get fired" at your company?

<comment><USER51> The company has a shell script running in Cron. If it finds a source file with more than 1000 lines it deletes the author from the payroll.

<comment><USER52> No, it is written in APL for extra conciseness. When they wrote it in shell it deleted the authors from the payroll.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Glamorous History of Portable Laptop Computers - <AUTHOR> http://experimentgarden.blogspot.com/2009/06/glamorous-history-of-portable-computers.html <comment><USER2> I actually used a Compaq portable in the summer of 1984. I had a summer job at a place that had one. It was kind of mind bending to have a reasonably powerful computer that you could carry around. "Carry" had not previously been a verb one associated with computers, any more than one does now with, say, desks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In case you wondered what those 2 inch floppies looked like: <http://www.retrothing.com/2006/05/oddball_micros_.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the share. I found a few pictures of them, but none of them were very clear, and I decided to put only a picture of the Zenith Minisport itself.

But it definitely is interesting to see those tiny two inch floppies.

The Zenith Minisport actually sounds like a pretty fascinating computer. It's too bad that it wasn't ever that popular.</comment></comment>


IBM, a Pioneer of Remote Work, Calls Workers Back to the Office - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-a-pioneer-of-remote-work-calls-workers-back-to-the-office-1495108802 <comment><USER2> _" Companies began offering generous remote work policies because they expected large savings in office and real-estate costs, said Jennifer Glass, a University of Texas professor who studies telecommuting and advises companies on remote-work strategies. Those savings haven't materialized, Ms. Glass said, so workers are being called back to the office."_

How is that possible? For large companies in really expensive areas especially.

 _" Relocating offices or asking employees to move can sometimes be read as layoffs in disguise, since a certain percentage of workers won't be able to relocate."_

That seems more likely to be the one of the biggest real reasons why they're doing this.

<comment><USER3> > It's unlikely that IBM employees, as they centralize in office hubs, will > reap the lavish office benefits and constant supply of free gourmet food > that companies like Facebook and Google use to keep employees on-site. They > won't even receive raises after moving to expensive cities like San > Francisco and New York.

If it's true that they won't offer any COL adjustment for folks headed to SF or NY, then that would support the view that it's meant to reduce headcount.

<comment><USER4> They do not offer COL adjustment. Also no guarantees that you will not have to subsequently relocate to another location

<comment><USER5> I used to know IBM'ers who said it stood for "I Be Moving"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With IBM, one can't help but feel this is a tactic to force layoffs without having to actually do a layoff. I believe they tried similar tactics in their Global Business Services division in the mid-2000s.

<comment><USER7> Of course it's a layoff. It's the same thing yahoo did. When business are doing well they don't force their employees into impossible situations.

<comment><USER8> Yahoo's policy affected about 180 people. That's about 1.5% of the company. Of those 180, about 60 were allowed to WFH. "Firing" 120 people in such a convoluted way is stupid. But the Internet continues to believe in stupider things, so who am I to ask.

<comment><USER9> Didn't Yahoo look at their VPN logs and notice people literally weren't doing any work?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Most people forget these details and just hate on "Oh noes! Working from home was banned!!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> First they took free tea and coffee in the office ([http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more- free-...](http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/apr/15bcrisis-no-more-free-tea- coffee-for-ibm-staff.htm)) now they are taking away WFH.

There are fewer and fewer incentives to work for IBM.

<comment><USER11> TIL that some people chose to work at IBM because of the free tea and coffee

<comment><USER12> Despite the fact that I usually bring my coffee from home, or go to a local shop, the fact that a company offers free coffee/snacks/etc matters from a perspective.

If a company is going to nickel and dime you, charge you $0.25 for a coffee or force you to provide your own... they probably are going to be cheap in other places as well. If they aren't willing to give you coffee or seltzer, they are hardly going to give you good hardware or software - which is something that does affect me.

That being said, that only goes so far. I don't really care about free lunches, or if a company has some game console. I mostly just don't want to work for a company that is going to nickel and dime me because it means they're cheapskates.

<comment><USER13> Free lunches are a startup-culture thing, for the most part. Game consoles, likewise. I don't need toys to play with at work, or my food paid for - I'm a grownup, and I can deal.

Free coffee isn't really in the same realm. The most enterprisey places I've ever worked have still offered it, not because they felt like being sweethearts, but because it makes hard economic sense - people _will_ drink coffee, and at modern professional salaries, having them spend their paid time dealing directly with all the ancillaries around it is quite literally more expensive than just buying coffee and maintaining the equipment involved. Dropping it is thus penny wise, pound foolish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hospice recall? When an elderly loved one enters hospice and is unlikely to ever leave, all the family is called back in to gather for their death. Happened with Yahoo a couple years ago. I didn't realize IBM was doing so poorly.

<comment><USER15> That's a great point! I tried out Bluemix and it was soooo bad! I was awestruck as to how a company as big as IBM could create something so hacked together. Amazon literally paved the way for cloud services, all they had to do was copy them.

I mean, just visit the IBM website. Try to figure out what it is they _actually do_. It's ridiculous. I have no idea WTF any of their services are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Having worked for both small startups and large corporations, I fully understand why remote work doesn't make sense for large companies. Large companies have a lot of trouble keeping track of what their employees are doing even when they are in the office.

I've worked for a couple of large companies where some employees came into the office everyday but did essentially nothing and no one really cared. If those same employees had the opportunity to work remotely, then they might actually have fun on company time - They could even take up a second "full time job" which also allows them to do nothing and they would get two paychecks for doing nothing.

It's actually not difficult to put yourself into a position within some big companies where everyone forgets you exist but you still get a paycheck.

There are some big companies where employees make quotation signs with their fingers when saying the phrase 'He/she is "working from home" today' whilst chuckling among each other.

For employees to be motivated to work from home, they need to be able to see clearly how their work affects the company and their career path - Unfortunately big companies don't offer enough accountability for this to happen.

<comment><USER17> I can see where big companies are coming from with wanting the people they pay to do work, but if you can't tell if that's happening when they work remotely why would you be able to tell if its happening when they are in the office. The only thing they can tell accurately now is that people are in their cubes/seat/open office plan. They'd be better off coming up with some way to evaluate the output of their employees if this was really about that. However I am of the opinion that this is just layoffs with a different name, and that's why you don't see an effort to actually evaluate output.

<comment><USER16> It's about incentives. If your employees know that they're stuck in the office all day, they have fewer options; their non-work activities are limited to browsing Facebook, reading blogs and looking at cat pictures - They can either do those things or actually do work.

If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, etc...

<comment><USER18> > It's about incentives.

I see being allowed to work from home as a sign of respect and confidence. Therefor I return that respect by not fucking with said opportunity.

Given the ability to schedule in chores or a bit of fun during breaks, my breaks become far more productive.

When I get stuck or something or am blocking on someone at work, I tend to browse hackernews, some forums, ... You end up with activities that draw you in more and more, potentially wasting hours without really having the refreshing effect you need breaks to have.

When I'm at home, I get up and vacuum a couple of rooms, clean the kitchen or maybe even skip out an hour to work out when the gym's calm to help clear my mind. I'm confident in saying my days spent working from home are by far the most productive of my entire week.

> If they're at home they can play computer games, go out, watch a movie, > etc... Someone like that can just as well be expected to spend their entire > days scrolling through cat pictures. Don't hire someone you think you can't > trust working from home, they won't fare much better on-site.

<comment><USER16> I'm the same but unfortunately not everyone is honest. I've met people who went to the beach during office hours and did almost no work. Then they bragged about it.

<comment><USER17> Right, but that means you have no way of evaluating their output. On the other hand, maybe you are evaluating their output and that employee is still meeting their targets. At that point why do you care if they can fuck off half the day and get the same work done, if you aren't going to offer a pay increase?

<comment><USER16> In a big company (particularly in highly regulated industries) it can get very difficult to measure employee output because quite often an employee may be blocked from completing a task because of regulatory requirements, company policies or scalability considerations - This sometimes forces employees from one team to coordinate with other teams who are working on a project dependency and can lead to busy-waiting.

Sometimes employees can be moved onto other temporary tasks while the other team completes their task/dependency but this causes the employees in the former team to lose focus - Making employees context-switch between too many projects carries a cost which may be higher than just allowing them to busy- wait from time to time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Didn't we have an article on HN last month that said IBM claims remote workers work harder and longer with more loyalty?

We also had an article that said their marketing dept. was killing remote workers.

<comment><USER20> One of them is likely [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291461)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> IBM is calling its marketing teams back into the offices. Not all remote workers. The marketing teams. At least as far as I, and the people I know who work at IBM, have heard.

<comment><USER22> Disclosure: I work for IBM on a team impacted by these changes.

As far as I know multiple business units within IBM, including Cloud, Watson, and Watson IoT have gone through relocation requests for Design and Engineering roles.

<comment><USER4> Former IBM engineer here, can confirm this has been happening for many job roles over the last year in many divisions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of people said that they just use that to fire people but isn't that the most counterproductive to do so because most of the good people who do not have trouble finding another job will just quit while the desperate who need the job and cannot find anything comparable will most likely stay.

So wouldn't this hurt the company a lot more in the long run since more talent will be gone and the less talented people will stay. Sure it will reduce the payroll expenses but they should be seeing less revenue rather quickly.

<comment><USER24> I don't think they really care about the long run. They are burning the furniture to keep warm at this point.

<comment><USER23> Still, should the investors get upset? Firing a selected group of people is one thing (which many investory see as good) but firing their best people does not sound very smart to them either (and I believe most of them are worried about the long term because they cannot just dump 100k in stocks without affecting their price too much).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My speculation is this is a way to make cuts without firing anyone

</comment><comment><USER26> Related discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291461)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603831)

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems more PR-friendly than, "We are doing a round of layoffs..." Cheaper for them too, as they don't have to pay severance. This is all-around skeezy.

</comment><comment><USER28> I believe this is only for marketing teams

<comment><USER29> It happened to all tech folks in my group (IBM Analytics) about a year ago. I was remote, but got axed by an RA (layoff) before it took effect.

<comment><USER28> Sorry to hear about that mate :/ Hope you're in a good situation now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've Been Moved

</comment><comment><USER31> Non-paywall link?

<comment><USER32> [http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/18/ibm- pioneer-r...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/18/ibm-pioneer- remote-work-calls-workers-back-to-office.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The normal trick of opening wsj articles in an incognito window is no longer working for me.

Here's a link that worked for me: [https://qz.com/924167/ibm-remote-work- pioneer-is-calling-tho...](https://qz.com/924167/ibm-remote-work-pioneer-is- calling-thousands-of-employees-back-to-the-office/)

Both WSJ article and the one I linked to are from March.

<comment><USER7> Off topic to post, but it's fairly easy to track unique visitors outside of cookies.

<comment><USER33> You mean unique IP addresses?</comment></comment></comment>


What's My Birthday? - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptologie.net/article/483/whats-my-birthday/ <comment><USER2> The app referenced is a nice encapsulation of the formula in a form that is immediately usable without significant understanding.

If you find this interesting and want to know how these things are calculated, you can find the full calculations in a blog post I wrote a few years ago:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/TheBirthdayParadox.html?si21h...](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/TheBirthdayParadox.html?si21hn)

There are some previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19296265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19296265)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753014](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753014)</comment>


Windows 7 will bring the 'touch' interface to the masses. Be prepared - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/05/27/introducing-the-microsoft-touch-pack-for-windows-7.aspx

<comment><USER3> I doubt there are more pc's running windows that have a touchscreen than there are iPhones.

Not that it isn't a nice development, but "bringing it to the masses" sounds like typical MS marketing BS to me.

<comment><USER4> Spare me with this fanboy criticism.

How hard is it for you to consider that if new laptops are going to have have touch screen then Windows will make touch mainstream.

<comment><USER5> It's not quite criticism. It's pointing out that touch screens _are_ mainstream. My immediate family alone has three. That's mainstream. Touch was a huge deal in 2006.

<comment><USER4> Obviously you have a different idea of what is considered mainstream.

<comment><USER6> Impossible to know since you haven't explained yours. All we know from your comments is that anyone with a different idea is a "fanboy".

<comment><USER4> Touch screen is a very broad concept. It has been applied in numerous devices.

In the meaning of being available in a mobile, yes iPhone may lead currently, but I wouldn't consider a phone that has a price tag 900 euro to be considered mainstream, just because 17 million people (as zimbabwe sais above) have bought it.

My point of view is that in mobile phones, Nokia will be the one to take it mainstream as their strategy has always been various phones models and cheap ones.

However, since Windows will be supporting touch screen and Windows is 90% of the market, obviously Microsoft will put touch screen in a lot more hands than Apple.

Since no one can predict what will happen, this remains just speculation. But my point is you can't consider mainstream something that only few can access, at least currently.

<comment><USER7> You probably should consider the definition of mainstream, since a price-point really has nothing to do with its meaning. <http://www.answers.com/mainstream>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Touch is a cute trick but for the most part I don't think it will make that big of a difference interface wise. In the end I suspect most users will use it every now and then on photos but it won't significantly change the user experience like it does on say an iPhone.

I made a post on my own blog not too long ago on why, after experimenting with touch interfaces, I found them to be lacking in a PC enviornment. You can find it here if you're interested: [http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/A-Quick- Indictment-Of-The-F...](http://www.tomstechblog.com/post/A-Quick-Indictment- Of-The-Finger.aspx)

(I link only because there's one small graphic in the post that I think makes a big point and I couldn't embed the graphic here)

<comment><USER9> "Touch is a cute trick" is a similar statement to "No Wireless. Less Space Than A Nomad. Lame.".

Touch will be the future of computing. The potential in touch and multitouch is staggering, and Windows 7 actually brings it to people. The hardware people will catch up next, then the software people will follow.

Microsoft are rich because they get where the trend is going.

<comment><USER8> You should write press releases. You'd be goood at it. But I'd be interested in some substance. Why exactly do you think it's "the future of computing"

<comment><USER9> Because a large part of the interaction with a computer does not consist of typing, it consists of pointing and clicking and moving stuff around. A lot of these stuff being moved around can be done efficiently by hand motions - <USER2> mouse exists because you like to push things around.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: How I became a hacker - <AUTHOR>

An essential course. Personally, this is what inspired me to become interested in programming in the first place. I think everyone should have that opportunity, so take it upon yourself to share this course- you would be surprised to see what some people can create when given the ability!<p>https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-cs50x-introduction-computer-1022 <comment><USER2> For anyone in St. Louis, MO, Launchcodestl.com is starting a free in-person study group for this class that will meet two times a week. I am not affiliated, but it does sound like a great opportunity for anyone who wants to start programming or who wants to brush up on the topics.

</comment><comment><USER3> Took this a while ago. It is a great course and David Malan (the lecturer) is really engaging.

</comment><comment><USER4> @infinitebattery thanks a lot for share.

Will surely pursue this course.</comment>


The Coming War on General Computation (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/coming-war-general-computation/ <comment><USER2> The biggest war on General Computation is that devices are replacing our computers. I work for a non-profit education company. We have 2 Dell All in One computers in every classroom. Hard to argue we need $1,000 computers when they are basically a web browser machine. Now Apple is making an iPad to be useful for the average person's computer use 95% of the time.

Who needs DRM when the devices themselves lock people out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given then Chromebooks can go into dev mode and run linux and you have windows subsystem for Linux, really what we are seeing in 2017 is the ubiquity of linux and the gpl stack

</comment><comment><USER4> There is a kind of sequel to this talk:

Fighting Back in the War on General Purpose Computers

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT6itfUUsoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT6itfUUsoQ)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a rather hyperbolic talk. I kept thinking of counter examples; non- spyware devices, general purpose computers I've browsed by the hundreds in the last week; ways to maximize the use cases for devices sold at ridiculously low "black box" price points; missed opportunities to pour even worse regulation on the innocent user, etc.

I dunno, I just can't get there. I don't see a war on general computation. Maybe a shifting set of industry priorities around it, but that isn't a war...

</comment><comment><USER6> interesting read, especially today when everything is a computerized device.

</comment><comment><USER7> Seeing how often the cracks where infected, this approach by the - not - entertainment industry, will be the road the giants of tomorrow will take. Apple, google - they will try to brick any remaining free device.

</comment><comment><USER8> Again?

<comment><USER9> It was the first time I've read this. Glad I did, at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> FYI: This is from December 2011.</comment>


Google/Alphabet partners with GSK to develop nerve implants - <AUTHOR> http://www.dw.com/en/google-parent-alphabet-makes-foray-into-futuristic-biotech/a-19441725 <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see where google sees this will go, given BMI tech is in its infancy. Has anyone else heard more about this?</comment>


Here Comes Everybody - <AUTHOR> http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html

<comment><USER2> Already been posted.</comment>


Nearly Half of Donald Trump's Twitter Followers Are Fake Accounts and Bots - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-twitter-followers-fake-617873 <comment><USER2> Devil's Advocate:

Is it possible that Trump supporters are, demographically, less likely to be active Twitter users? Like, people who sign up and create accounts just so they can follow him?

Obviously there are a ton of actual bots and fake accounts following him as well, but I wonder if Trump might _also_ have a higher number of inactive but "legitimate" followers than the average high-profile Twitter account.

<comment><USER3> Lots of people are just following him to keep tabs on the delusional things he says. Most legitimate followers probably aren't fans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> well it would be cool to know what happens inside trump's head. I mean I'm from germany and even school kids learn at least something about the nato. (especially their parts about how the system works). But somehow trump does not understand it. he thinks that the money is the most important thing, however the nato only set a goal like 1 or 2 years ago which should preferable spend starting in 2024 (not, now of course). and now he blames every country who didn't reached the goal of 2024? or does he thinks that every country just somehow needs to pay the same amount that the usa uses for their military? or what does he think? i mean yeah every political person does lie. but most of them don't lie upfront or show others that they don't have an idea. but trump looks just silly from the outside.

I also don't understand what the labour or partners of trump are thinking, it does not look like they can do anything useful for their country in the next 4 years.

well at least I can somewhat why people voted in favor of him. I mean with voting you can express yourself, normally. however if you can only vote between sodom and gomorra you can only express that you are more unhappy with sodom... that doesn't mean you are happy with gomorra, tough.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, that may be true but who cares. If you follow the news in any way you will read his twits. This is one case where even one follower means the whole world reads his message.

He doesn't even need twitter. He could just write a microblog on whitehouse.gov and that would be enough.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is not good. But you have to know what the standard ratio is, and how things breaks down demographically, to know how bad it really is.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about other popular/celebrity accounts? Do they show the same thing? Bet they do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Trump rarely hits the 100k likes these days. I guess his popularity is waning.</comment>


Be a good boss - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-lessons/7dbac3d29e83

<comment><USER2> As an individual contributor these are definitely the qualities I look for in a good boss.</comment>


Aquila: Internet of Things, Board with Wireless Communication - <AUTHOR> http://www.aquila.io/en

<comment><USER2> Is this Zigbee based? If so does it need a Zigbee to Internet gateway to function?

<comment><USER3> It's based on the same standard as Zigbee (802.15.4), but uses an open communication protocol that simplifies communication with Actions (Like turning on a light 75%) and Events (Like "Presence detected").

For communicating to the Internet we use a "hub", like a Raspberry pi, which has a web-based user interface and a REST API.</comment></comment>


Steve Burrill Left Investors Waiting from Minnesota to San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Steve-Burrill-left-investors-waiting-from-7410420.php?t=8f9bca998c6bc56d8d&cmpid=twitter-premium <comment><USER2> This is so true of the Midwest. I live ten minutes away from a big biotech park funded by the state that never had a single client.

Yet a local biotech entrepreneur who received no support from the state bootstrapped a company and ended up going public. Local politicians want the quick fix and if duplicating Silicon Valley were as easy as writing a check there would be thousands of them.</comment>


Ultrablack fish absorb over 99.9% of incident light to disappear in deepest seas - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/science/ultra-black-fish.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Ultra-black Camouflage in Deep-Sea Fishes

[https://www.cell.com/current- biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30860...](https://www.cell.com/current- biology/pdf/S0960-9822\(20\)30860-5.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982220308605%3Fshowall%3Dtrue)</comment>