Waymo Tests Autonomous Trucks in Texas - <AUTHOR> https://www.ttnews.com/articles/waymo-tests-autonomous-trucks-texas <comment><USER2> Curious what the founder of Starsky Robotics is up to. The site is still up and there's even a blog post after the post about them shutting down: [https://www.starsky.io/](https://www.starsky.io/) [https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of- aut...](https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-poor-roi-of- autonomy-f5d6f4f2dd14)

Here's the post entitled "The End of Starsky Robotics" [https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of- starsky-...](https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky- robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5)

<comment><USER3> That's a terrific post; thanks for linking. It seems like Starsky did everything right— they focused on a highly safe system for only highway driving, and an elaborate teleop setup for covering the last mile and exceptional conditions. Basically they just hit a wall as far as VC timelines and expectations.

But I wonder if Waymo can basically follow the same playbook and do it long enough to make it work courtesy of Google's pocketbook.

<comment><USER4> CEO of Starsky here. My assumption is that they won't - Waymo has a lot of inertia around trying to build full autonomy, and it working in a corner of Phoenix seems to not have convinced that that it's way too hard.

The winner in this space is almost certainly a company that hasn't been founded yet, doing an updated version of Starsky's approach...which is why I've been trying to explain Starsky's approach in detail through blogposts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The driver is such a small cost in all of this. Contrary to what the media says, drivers are really not making that much for the amount of time they spend in the truck and on the road.

It would be good if an autonomous system could be more of a supporting technology that works with the driver allowing him/her to rest while it takes over on those long interstate segments of a trip. It would definitely save time and money for everyone. Best of all you still have the driver to complete the difficult segments or deal with bad weather and break downs.

<comment><USER6> It's not just the drivers salary, it's finding drivers (up till covid, trucking companies were getting desperate and jacking up rates here) and the rules about hours behind the wheel. Self driving trucks don't have drug testing, physicals, better job offers, and mandatory rest periods

<comment><USER7> The trucking companies were desperate, but apparently not desperate enough to significantly raise wages or improve working conditions.

<comment><USER8> uh..not this tangent again.

<comment><USER9> What is "this" tangent again? I might be going off on a tangent here but, I bet it's this novel idea that companies should raise their compensation when they have trouble finding people to fill their open positions.

<comment><USER8> > companies should raise their compensation when they have trouble finding > people to fill their open positions.

So you are anti H1B ? another tangent :D

<comment><USER10> Another inflammatory strawman comment, not this again...

<comment><USER8> exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My theory is that the self-driving car industry, similarly to Theranos, at some point switched from a fake-it-till-you-make-it mode to full blown faking it. This was either some time around 2016 when Waymo made a video of driving a blind man around Austin [0] or maybe 2015 when Elon pronounced that self- driving is a "solved problem." [1]

[0] [https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8](https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8)

[1] [https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510](https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510)

<comment><USER12> I think the primary fallacy in the theory is confusing companies like Waymo with companies like Tesla, and mingling their (in)capabilities.

Both have a very different approach in trying to get to self-driving, and when combining what both can't do, it would seem nobody can do anything. And whilst both throw out their fair share of "demo videos" (=advertising), they have different track records for what they can (and actually do), and what they can't (but claim to do).

<comment><USER13> You just named the two companies closest to autonomy, IMO. Waymo has the lead in actual self driving, Tesla has the lead in actually commercializing features. I'm confident these two companies will reach mostly autonomous driving before many of the other fakers.

<comment><USER12> I named these 2 companies because the parent referenced them in their argument. But I agree that they are the ones that are the ahead in their individual approaches, though I think Tesla is not really that near to autonomous driving. They have a lot of features in development that their test drivers (=consumers) are using, and that gives the impression that they got that already (Elon even claimed Tesla has FSD on highways in early 2019), but the step to "the driver doesn't always have to pay attention" is gigantic and far away - and on that scale, Tesla's lead to other manufacturers (who don't do that kind of marketing or testing on consumers) is relatively small.

They're still doing better than a lot of the wannabe-unicorns that pursue self-driving or Lidar though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> California's DMV won't let autonomous vehicles over 10,000 lbs. on the road with just a testing permit. CA's testing permit for autonomous vehicles is much like a learner's permit - no passengers for hire, no heavy vehicles. Which makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're interested in trucking, the podcast 'Over The Road' is worth a listen. The host Long-Haul Paul has a voice to die for, and the oncoming change to autonomous trucks plays a part in some episodes. I think there's 12 or so episodes in total

[https://www.overtheroad.fm/](https://www.overtheroad.fm/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I never expected that Google would enter trucking business.

<comment><USER17> It's a multi-billion dollar market that they could, potentially, completely dominate using a technology solution. That's _exactly_ the industry Google goes after.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would you like to be the last car in a high way traffic jam when you see one of these coming closer in your rear view mirror?

<comment><USER12> Lidar-based systems are pretty good at detecting stationary objects. Humans on the other hand crash into traffic jams pretty regularly.

So in that situation I'd prefer that to be an automated truck.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relativ...](https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Relative- Privation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm expecting to see waymo autonomous vehicle fatalities in the near future!

<comment><USER20> You can have fatalities and still have several orders of magnitude fewer fatalities than non-AV.

<comment><USER21> This is true, but ignores two things:

1\. People will (over)react to autonomous deaths. Every AV death "matters" more.

2\. Getting the death rate below non-AV is difficult to test. Accidents are _rare_. Are you going to let these things loose on the public for hundreds of millions of miles before determining that the death rate might not be better yet?

<comment><USER22> 1\. And any accident of a properly-used/maintained vehicle will be viewed as some company's fault because of design/software flaw.

2\. There will doubtless be accidents that will be quite different from the sorts of accidents humans have. And those will be viewed as proof that these cars aren't safe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How online learning with LurnQ is more social and clutter-free - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/in/how-online-learning-with-lurnq-is-more-social-and-clutter-free-7000013593/ <comment><USER3> I understand that it's "social" for specific reasons (content discovery, distributed authoring, re-using the communication platform for discussions, etc) but the mandatory social login really is a high bar for people looking at it for the first time who are unable or unwilling to log in to one of the big ad^Wsocial networks. (There was a discussion on HN - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5408735> \- about the effect, and about alternative approaches, aptly named "Users don't like social login.")

<comment><AUTHOR> here is a similar debate on Quora and Robert Scoble's answer [http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-the-logins-to-so- many-...](http://www.quora.com/Startups/Why-are-the-logins-to-so-many- startups-websites-tied-to-users-Facebook-accounts?srid=OQY&st=ns)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Scoble is obviously very excited about social media ("we are heading into an age of predictive services based on our identity"), which is fine - <USER2> still see it as a trap and not an exciting future - but even if I, and others like me, accepted social media I think LurnQ would see usage go up if the sign-in were simply optional (ie, if they placed the login below the content). (I also understand that that may seem like extra work if all the features are "best" with the social parts... But by not doing so, the non-facebook crowd - which includes the impatient and not-logged-in - simply press X.) Take Khan Academy, for example: you can watch the videos and explore but login to get the features that depend on tracking through time.

<comment><AUTHOR> The core value proposition of Khan Academy is the content they produce which is amazing stuff. LurnQ on the other hand is a consumer tool that aims to simplify online learning. It helps you manage your learning in the open learning ecosystem. It i somewhat like GitHub for learning and unless you signup the experience can not be delivered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...damn, just when I started equating "social" with "cluttered" :)

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Was trying to read that as "more free from social and clutter"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like they generalized (weakly) the much older and popular language learning site, LingQ (<http://www.lingq.com>)...

</comment><comment><USER7> naah .. too clunky! plus, no way to delete my account.</comment>


Parasite – Firebug for GTK+ Applications - <AUTHOR> http://chipx86.github.io/gtkparasite/ <comment><USER2> Hah, well, wouldn't have expected to see this on Hacker News all these years later.

This got folded up into GTK+ years back as the GTK Inspector, so we dropped further development on it. They could do more with this being part of GTK+ than we could as a loadable module.

I also don't really work on GTK-based applications anymore, so it didn't make sense to continue development when I no longer had a vested interest in building new features for it. Instead, I build Review Board ([https://www.reviewboard.org](https://www.reviewboard.org) \-- code review product) full-time now. Takes about 156% of my time.

The little Parasite bug lives on, though, as the mascot for Splat, a bug tracker we maintain for our needs (and might turn into a product someday). See [https://hellosplat.com/tour/](https://hellosplat.com/tour/) for more drawings of the little guy.

<comment><USER3> Ah, reviewboard, I remember using that back when Mozilla used it. I quite liked it, was good for interdiffs.

Which reminds me, I filed a security bug years ago against it (using the mentioned Splat), and no one seems to have ever noticed/looked at it. #4614 if you're interested

<comment><USER2> Ah yes, I remember this. We did see it and looked into it at the time (and I've just gone over it again). It's really a different problem than it seems. Not a security issue, but I can see where it'd look like it. Kind of a terrible quirk with the unreliability of diffs.

We discussed it internally, but those discussions never moved to the bug. I'll follow up on there, give you an overview of why you saw the behavior you did and our rationale.

Thanks for the poke!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The equivalent for Qt (but much more powerful) is GammaRay ([https://www.kdab.com/development-resources/qt- tools/gammaray...](https://www.kdab.com/development-resources/qt- tools/gammaray/))

</comment><comment><USER5> The website could maybe mention and link to GTK Inspector? That is the recommended alternative/replacement to this for some years now.

I used gtkparasite almost 10 years ago when I was learning GTK+, was quite useful :)

<comment><USER2> I'm very glad to hear that :)

Took your suggestion and updated the webpage!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last commit on master: Dec 30, 2013. Maybe a [2013] tag could be added in the title!

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember feeling excited about this when it came out. But if you look at the github, it hasn't seen any updates for six years.

<comment><USER8> It's built into GTK+ now as GtkInspector: [https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/05/15/introducing- gtkin...](https://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2014/05/15/introducing- gtkinspector/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The mascot is really adorable :D

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does this work on Google Chrome?

<comment><USER11> Google Chrome already has integrated developer tools inspired by Firebug, and has for years.

<comment><USER12> My guess is parent was asking if Parasite/gtk inspector can be used on the chrome application itself.</comment></comment></comment>


How energy from dry ice could power human colonies on Mars - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/how-energy-from-dry-ice-could-power-human-colonies-on-mars-38250

<comment><USER2> Calling it a "working fluid" would be more accurate than describing it as an energy source.

They're talking about using it as an analogue of water in a standard steam engine.

We don't usually describe the water in steam engines as the energy source per se.</comment>


Run a script during shutdown/termination of an aws instance - <AUTHOR> I need to execute a script during shutdown/termination of an AWS instance(debian). I added my script to the /etc/init.d/myscript and a symlink to /etc/rc0.d/K01myscript however I noticed that when I terminate the instance I don't see that my script is executed. Any idea? <comment><USER2> This seems like a good question for StackOverflow or ServerFault.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's already there :) But dint get enough responses.</comment></comment>


Domain Pigeon: Your Unintelligible Five Letter Domain Name Awaits - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/domain_pigeon_five_letter_domains.php

<comment><USER2> Oh wow.

I just got into work and saw this on my Google Alerts. It's funny--I'm currently redesigning the entire front page. I think it looks kind of sloppy right now and was hoping to rerelease on Sunday before I started promoting it and receiving more traffic. So much for that idea :)

Can't complain too much...

<comment><USER3> To me, that's actually more support for the idea that you shouldn't wait for everything to be absolutely perfect before launching.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, good point.

Patten said "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow." Not a bad way to approach your projects either...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hope that when I launch my startup, if we're featured on online publications people post threads here. I think it's really nice (and great kudos) :)

Congratulations on the publicity matt1, its a great service.

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The site looks good and works well. However, are ~4000 nonmember domains and ~13,000 member viewable domains "all" one can get? That is, Domain Pigeon pre- selected these names? If so, that is certainly a different approach, going for quality instead of quantity(since 13,000 domain names is certainly a drop in an ocean of possible domain names not taken yet). I kept looking for some sort of associative search box, for example one could enter "LISP" and find "LISPy" names.

<comment><USER2> When domains are added they are randomly assigned to be either community domain names, which everyone can see, or private, which only members can see. Currently its about 3 private for everyone 1 community. This is going to change at some point though in favor of some better distribution system (imagine the case where Domain Pigeon has 250K public, 750K private--see the problem?).

As far as searching goes, the box on the left column searches the database and will display domains that match your search term. Since the site is relatively new and I've focused mostly on abstract domain names, most won't find any results (which is also why the search feature currently isn't in a more prominent position.)

There are going to be lots of positive changes in the coming weeks, including what I hope will be the best domain name generator on the net. Stay tuned...

<comment><USER6> Why do you keep the good domains private? I bet the affiliate commissions from showing off these domains would be much higher than the revenue from membership fees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You may try 4 letter domain names at <http://www.domainnamesoup.com/4letterdomainnames.php>

</comment><comment><USER8> Congrats...

Please don't take this the wrong way - the name seems to work because I remember it - but why the name "Pigeon"? At least in the big cities, I think many people associate them with disgusting flying and then piling fecal matter. (I like them though.)

<comment><USER9> I'm not Matt, so I could be way off, but when I first heard the name I associated "pigeon" with carrier pigeons. Almost like domain pigeon is powered by a carrier pigeon fetching you the latest domain results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just registered tguts.com. The name works well for the trading social network I am building.

</comment><comment><USER11> 6 days ago I commented in your post revealing DomainPigeon.

I predict that it won't work because domain squatters will simply scrape and register all of the semi-decent domain names.

Are there any means in place to prevent this from happening?

<comment><USER6> No one is rushing out to register gibberish domains. If anyone wants too they have plenty of other opportunities to do so. Nearly all domains still available are not intrinsically valuable - they generate close to zero type-in traffic for squatters to live off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great site! I just registered 6 domains, and then decided to go ahead with the $14.95 subscription for access to the full list. Definitely worth it! :-)

</comment><comment><USER13> it's missing domains with dashes in them

<comment><USER2> No its not :)</comment></comment>


The Brain Is Hardwired to Snap - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-brain-violence-rage-snap-science-booktalk/ <comment> norea-armozel I remember when I was younger I would snap at the silliest moments, mostly when I wasn't getting my way. This went on for about 16 years, so there was a point I was very dangerous to be around if I lost it. What I find interesting looking back is how now I don't really get all that mad and at worse I'll just snarky or rude. I don't know what's changed over time (hormones maybe?) but I do know that unless someone really pushed me I probably wouldn't go into a ragefit.

<comment><USER2> Part of the function of your frontal lobes is to moderate impulses, and they actually continue growing and maturing for several years past age 18. It sounds like you just had a little more growing up to do.

<comment> norea-armozel This is somewhat true, but I actually use to be very verbally abusive until three years ago. Then again I was dealing with not even having a therapist to talk about my gender dysphoria (not being out sucks for me). So who knows wth is going on with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "We're constantly dividing people into "us" vs. "them." And once we put someone in the "them" category, it can open up the floodgates for violence and is the root of a lot of human misery and wars."

Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the world. Less division. More us...less us and them. The media seems to do a great job of pitting one side against the other. I think many of our attitudes and perspectives are learned and perpetuated by the media.

<comment><USER4> > Some may call this naive, but this is the reason we need more unity in the > world. Less division. More us...less us and them.

Then you have learned nothing. The tribalism in humans is hardwired. It's not going away, whatever we may wish or do. The media doesn't create the divisions, they just profit from them.

The key to peaceful coexistence is properly delineated regions and nations, so that each thede can have their land without being afraid of being invaded and replaced.

<comment><USER5> But divison is not just about nations.

1) It's also political differences in the same nation. Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc.

2) There are divisions based on topics of interest, subcultures, etc. that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.

<comment><USER4> > Tribes fragment to smaller tribes, small tribes merge to large tribes etc.

When boundaries can change slowly enough we don't even notice. That's organic growth, that's ok.

> that aren't location-based, but thanks to telecommunications, global.

Thankfully I only have to close the browser tab to forget about someone Who is Wrong On The Internet. But I can't do that in meatspace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd just like to take this to task for how much supposition is floating around. Early on we are introduced to the idea of snapping via an anecdote. We are given a neuronal hook via something called a 'hypothalamic attack region', which produces rage in rats.

Is this region responsible for the opening episode of rage? We have no idea; it is pure speculation to assume it is. All of the subsequent examples (crime, heroism) are imputed to this circuit similarly without evidence.

Then we are given a model (LIFEMORTS), which is extended to cover race relations and much else. We are told our thinking is 'tribal'; we are expected to believe this is science, because recall the existence of the hypothalamus attack region! But there is no evidence chaining these three together (neurons, the model, the behavior) - we have zero reason to accept the model view of what happened in Baltimore. It is pure speculation.

</comment><comment><USER7> R Douglas Fields grossly misinterprets how much people are exposed to influences their behavior. "Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent crimes are men."

Something about all these people make them terrible humans, but it's not an adrenaline response. He's belittling all the social problems in his book by attributing them to neurological reflexes.

<comment><USER8> Not at all. He's saying that what likely landed many, though probably not all, of them in jail ("snapping") has its basis in neurology, but flat out states that that response is due to numerous outside triggers, including things like stress, and that our responses to those triggers are something we can control once we recognize they're pressing these deeply wired buttons.

That said, I do agree, the story as told here is still a bit black and white for my taste. For me it was the heroism angle that threw me... E.g., maybe the majority of decorated vets are men because, until recently, only men were eligible for combat roles.

<comment><USER9> He talks about the Carnegie Award for Heroism, which is for civilians: [http://www.carnegiehero.org/](http://www.carnegiehero.org/)

<comment><USER10> Interesting that the the "Deed of Trust" starts off,

> Gentlemen

The first paragraph goes on to talk about supporting _widows_ and children. Thankfully the paragraph does end with, "Grants of sums of money may also be made to heroes or heroines as the Commission thinks advisable-each case to be judged on its merits."

But by the third paragraph, it's back to "A medal shall be given to the hero, or widow, or next of kin ..."

I'm sure that language doesn't bias anyone on the Commission.

[1] [http://www.carnegiehero.org/deed-of- trust/](http://www.carnegiehero.org/deed-of-trust/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > We've all been there: Some jerk cuts you off on the highway. You lean on the > horn, scream abuse. You want to get out the car and kick the @#$% out of the > bozo's SUV.

Nope

<comment><USER12> "The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that between 1990 and 1996 road rage contributed to 218 deaths and 12,610 injuries. The study analyzed 10,037 police reports and newspaper stories about traffic accidents that led to violence. What's more, AAA found that road rage incidents increased nearly 7 percent each year within that six-year period."

in [http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/anger.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/jun05/anger.aspx)

<comment><USER13> Not sure what you're trying to say, exactly. "There is proof that road rage exists"? OP didn't say "Road rage doesn't exist", he said "It's not universal". A universal quantifier ("all" or "none") can be disproven with a counter-example (op to article), an existential quantifier ("some" or "not all") can't (you, if I understand it correctly, to op).

He's just saying "speak for yourself."

Or did you mean something else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory" is an excellent book on related subjects.

</comment><comment><USER15> > When you look at the subject of aggression there is no more important factor > than gender. Something like 90 percent of the people in prison for violent > crimes are men. Men have different brains than women, which comes from our > different roles during evolution, when the brain was formed. Men had a role > of being aggressive, which makes no sense for a woman because a woman was > not endowed with the physical strength of a man, who probably outweighs her. > But although 90 percent of those in jail are men, 90 percent of people who > have been awarded medals by the Carnegie Institute for heroism are also men.

What is wrong with this guy? Doesn't he know that gender is a social construct?

<comment><USER16> It's kind of frightening that people are leaving university with a developed hostility toward the notion of sexual dimorphism in humans.

<comment><USER15> Steven Pinker's'The Blank Slate' explains it well. Western culture has a bias toward nurture explanations rather than nature explanations because admitting nature affects people's perceptions of their abilities and our sense of agency as a culture. If all differences are culture we can fix them. That's why it becomes political.

<comment><USER5> This is especially so in US culture. The "eveyone's responsible for their own fate" meme is still very strong there.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. The opposite is ridiculously pushed from what I can tell of the online-manifestation of western culture. Rather, what I'd argue is the elephant in the room, is that it doesn't matter which of the two is the right answer. We should take responsibility for doing the right thing, regardless if our nature or our surroundings made us a certain way.

Barring certain extreme cases, of course, such as mental illness and such.

<comment><USER5> I wasn't talking about which one is right. It's just an interesting feature of American culture. The positive side is that people are proud of their successes, they are encouraged, every kid is told they can one day become President etc (obviously exaggerated, but the Tall Poppy Syndrome is not characteristic of the US).

The stereotypical US things, like no universal health care, no tuition-free education, lax gun laws, mass incarceration, death penalty etc. are also a manifestation of this attitude.

You must take care of yourself, you must protect yourself, if you make it then great! If you become a criminal, you become subhuman and can be executed and treated brutally by the police. If you become dirt poor, that's your fault, you can become homeless, there's no welfare.

Now again, I'm exaggerating somewhat to emphasize what I mean. And yes I also know the historical origins of this mentality, and as I said, there are also positive consequences, like most major innovations and scientific discoveries coming from the US, the huge dynamic market where anyone can start a new company with manageable levels of bureaucracy (compared to most European countries) etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Warner Music: blanket internet license solution to free music - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080818-paying-for-music-has-become-functionally-voluntary.html

<comment><USER2> FTA _So Griffin's job is to help Warner monetize digital music, and he's convinced that the issue of payment for music is nothing less than "our generation's nuclear power." If our society can monetize music in a balanced, consumer-friendly way, the results will be awesome. If we can't... well, remember Chernobyl?_

Umm... _Chernobyl_? Like where lots of innocent people died and an entire portion of the planet was rendered permanently unlivable? This is the in the same category as a 13 year old girl downloading "The Jonas Brothers" on Kazzaa?

Yes, the current model of moneterizing content/art/whatevertheycallittoday is broken. We should work on fixing it. It is important to do so. But this sort of ridiculous hyperbole does not help their case. It borders on being obscene.

<comment><USER3> They think it gives their rhetoric punch, like kids will be reading this and thinking "But I don't want to cause Chernobyl!!" so then they'll stop downloading music

<comment><USER2> I actually think it may be worse than all of that. In war and politics, compromise is the weapon of choice of the craziest party. Tell lawmakers that filesharing is Armageddon, that _beeeelions_ of dollars are lost each year to the pirates and that the entire economy will collapse if not fixed right away. The draconian measures that are seen as the "compromise" (which would, if presented outright seem ludicrous) now seem tame and acceptable.

"Lifetime of the artist plus 70 years" sounds so much more acceptable than "lets just do away with this public domain thing."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"No civilized society, he adds, can endure "purely voluntary payment for art, knowledge, and culture."_

Right. So the Greeks, Romans, Germans, Italians ... all those troubadors, singing poets ... none of that happened? There was an entrance fee to the Library of Alexandria??

Blogga, pleez.</comment>


The Vatican Is Said to Be Hacked from China Before Talks with Beijing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/china-vatican-hack.html <comment><AUTHOR> For those who have trouble with the link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200729230159/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200729230159/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/china- vatican-hack.html)</comment>


PG's Hackers & Painters is O'Reilly's $10 ebook deal today - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/OReillyMedia/status/18336810142 <comment><USER2> It's also on Scribd for free. You can download the PDF as well.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And- Pain...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/47180/Paul-Graham-Hackers-And-Painters)

<comment><USER3> Gotta wander off on a tangent here — scribd is a beautiful site! I'm probably the last one around here to find out since this is the first time I've looked at their site since they dropped Flash (which I ignored) but wow, what a difference — if you found scribd not to your taste and haven't been back since, it's time to revisit it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, scribd is great now. I used to hate it. I recently Googled the Blueprint CSS cheat sheet and...not bad, Scribd! No Flash!

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/12850249/Blueprint-CSS- framework-v...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/12850249/Blueprint-CSS-framework- version-08-cheat-sheet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's only $12.23 on amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp/1449389554)

for the dead tree version.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll always be fond of this book because, directly or indirectly, it changed my life.

</comment><comment><USER6> A funny if not totally consistent counterpoint:

<http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm>

<comment><USER7> I always found this counterpoint article fatuous.

 _To which I'd add, what hackers and painters don't have in common is everything else. The fatuousness of the parallel becomes obvious if you think for five seconds about what computer programmers and painters actually do.

Computer programmers cause a machine to perform a sequence of transformations on electronically stored data.

Painters apply colored goo to cloth using animal hairs tied to a stick._

How many programmers sit down and say "It's time to do some electronic data transformations"? How many painters say "Time to push some paint"?

PG is right that programming is a fundamentally creative activity, and so are the visual arts. Plenty of programmers forget that. It's not that the medium is irrelevant, but then again PG isn't claiming complete identity between programming and painting.

(Personally, I prefer the analogy of programming to either writing or music composition, because the _writing_ connection is quite strong. [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/dahl-programming- minimali...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/dahl-programming-minimalism) if you're interested.)

<comment><USER8> Is your criticism really "fatuous? no YOU'RE fatuous!"? That comes across as a little, well, petulant. The point is not about what programmers or painters or line cooks say when they get down to work - it's whether any insight-bearing parallels can be drawn between them. The important thing being insight- bearing, rather than insecurity-assuaging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Direct link to the book, skipping the tweet <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449389550/>

Or at Amazon.com for $12.23 [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas- Computer/dp/1449389554/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278947858&sr=1-1)

<comment><USER10> FYI the kindle edition is always $9.99 and available at the Amazon link above.

<comment><USER11> yeah, that's what I was thinking too. I already have a Kindle, and it makes more sense for me to do long form reading on my Kindle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got the real dead-tree edition of Hacker & Painters that someone left in the book exchange rack at the Green Tortiose Hostel in SF. Just another reason I love that place.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good book. Recommend taking advantage of this deal if you haven't yet read it, its a easy read that will get the gears turning.

<comment> tomh- Is there new content compared to whats available for free online anyway?

<comment><USER13> A lot of similar material appears in both the book and in his essays posted online, but there's also some unpublished stuff in the book as well.

As to the ratio, I couldn't say. But as with Hacker Monthly, I find reading a print edition to be a new experience anyway, even if I've read the online text beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be free. Spain did win the WC after all. Just sayin'

<comment><USER15> All of the essays from the book are available at <http://paulgraham.com/essays.html>, though with some differences. (Some have different titles as well.) It's a great opportunity to use Readability,

<comment><USER14> <http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail164.html>

and

<http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail657.html>

also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> WTF? Why are we retweeting on HN?

<comment><USER17> Because I didn't catch the original tweet. Thanks to this a couple other people who would benefit from the book will read it.

And Tim and Paul will make some money out of it.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, and I think this is a perfect example of a valid retweet for HN. Most aren't, but this is from the source and includes the discount code.</comment></comment></comment>


IE Users Threaten To Sue Over Being Called Dumb - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceivablytech.com/8668/business/ie-users-threaten-to-sue-over-being-called-dumb

<comment><USER2> If the company actually gathered the data and then published it, I think IE users threatening to sue is a dumb move. Note that I'm not calling them stupid, I'm just saying that they'd be doing a stupid thing. Even clever people occasionally do stupid things.

But if it's a hoax, and they have no data (flawed or otherwise) this could be interesting.

Then again, maybe not.

See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840626>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2840900></comment>


Sunfish: A simple but strong chess engine in 111 lines of Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thomasahle/sunfish/blob/master/sunfish.py <comment><USER3> Óscar Toledo G. has notably written various tiny, strong and highly obfuscated chess engines in C (winning the IOCCC twice) and JavaScript (2nd place in the first JS1k). He's even written a 170 page book to serve as a reference to the 1326-byte "Nanochess" program, his strongest small chess engine.

[http://www.nanochess.org/chess.html](http://www.nanochess.org/chess.html)

<comment><USER4> Amazingly, the Dutch program Micro-Max by Geert Muller

[http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max- src2.html](http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html)

is even shorter and stronger than Toledo's.

<comment><USER5> That's crazy. Does look more like APL than C though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty neat stuff. Looks like the move generator is missing a few features like underpromotion but it is very concise. I wrote a rudimentary engine + move generator[1] using bitboards[2] a couple of years ago. Unfortunately python poorly suited for bitmath optimizations because it doesn't support fixed width integers. Once I saw how slow my movegen went compared to a c version, I gave up on finishing up the minimax search to complete the engine. It does run quite a bit faster in pypy but still no easy way to force 64 bit integers.

[1] [https://github.com/vishvananda/ivory](https://github.com/vishvananda/ivory) [2] [https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Bitboards](https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Bitboards)

<comment><USER7> Cython? Numba?

<comment><USER8> The problem with Cython, in this case, is that in order to get close to C/C++ speed, you end up having to write code that looks an awful lot like C/C++. All of the Python black magic that let's you write this in 111 lines goes away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "class Position(namedtuple('Position', 'board score wc bc ep kp')):"

Whoa. I've literally never seen this idiom before.

But I immediately like it.

<comment><USER10> Mmmhmm! Just be aware of some fun things to watch out for when it comes to the __init__ and __new__ functions:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4071765/in-python-how- do-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4071765/in-python-how-do-i-call- the-super-class-when-its-a-one-off-namedtuple)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you are interested in this sort of thing, the chess programming wiki is an excellent resource:

[http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/](http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong, but that looks like 388 lines of Python?

Still, very cool. I spent awhile trying to write my own and failed miserably. :)

<comment><USER13> Yes, that is 388 lines, however, the title makes reference to the chess engine itself. The rest of the code, such as setting up the board, handling moves, and ui, are not specific to the sunfish implementation, they can be used without the engine.

<comment><USER14> It would be much easier to read if the 111 lines where separated into their own file, though. Otherwise it's hard to discuss what is really important for the engine and what isn't.

Sidenote: independent from the discussions about the lines I consider it an awesome piece of work. Even in 388 lines it's still much better than what I could deliver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I haven't played it yet, but I am curious, the variable pst seems to give the score of a piece given the square it is, _independently_ of the position? How it that possible, am I missing something? (You only use pst to calculate the score of a move, if there is no check, checkmates or capture).

Having said that, the code is very neat and readable. Thank you for showing it here!

<comment><USER16> Correct, that's what it is doing. It is a very fast and surprisingly strong way of evaluating the position. Of course stronger engines do a hell of a lot more than this and gives weightings based on the positions of other pieces, but most of them have something like this as a baseline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately this program doesn't play legal chess. When I played the program it did not move its king out of attack when checked. And yes, I've played enough chess to know an illegal move when I see one.

<comment><USER18> > And yes, I've played enough chess to know an illegal move when I see one.

It's not like Chess is some weird, esoteric game where there is a gray area of whether or not moves are legal or not.

Maybe I'm biased. I'm currently working on a toy chess engine myself.

<comment><USER17> >It's not like Chess is some weird, esoteric game where there is a gray area of whether or not moves are legal or not.

Actually it is exactly like that.

If you play tournament chess, like USCF tournaments, then there's no doubt what the rules are. However if you play casual chess, like with some random guy in the park, then be prepared for some misunderstandings.

Some things casual players think are rules:

        Pawns move two squares only on the first move of the *game* not the first move of the pawn

        You can't promote a pawn the move after it arrives on the 7th rank, you have to wait a move

        Perpetual check is illegal (somewhat like the Ko rule in go)

        Capturing En Passant is generally not known

So when I'm playing a stranger I always ask if they've played any tournaments, not to gauge how strong they are, but to see if they'll know the rules of chess.

<comment><USER19> I haven't played in any chess tournaments, but I started doing this myself after my cousin captured my bishop with an en passant. The game was ruined by the ensuing argument...

<comment><USER20> You can only capture a pawn En passant and only if the pawn moves 2 squares in 1 go.

<comment><USER21> Perhaps an en passant lead to a position in which the bishop could not avoid being captured. If not, OPs cousin is indeed wrong.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, my cousin thought if his pawn was on the 5th row he could capture any piece next to it by performing an "en passant". Of course, it wasn't a proper en passant, but the way he moved his pawn was the same, it's just he was capturing a bishop instead of another pawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yuck, just caught it out with:

      e2e4 g8f6
      e4e5 f6d5
      d2d4 b8c6
      f2f4 e7e6
      c2c4 d8h4?
      g2g3 f8b4
      c1d2      -- 2 pieces en-prise at this point.
           h4h6
      c4d5 e6d5
      d2b4 c6b4
      a2a3 b4c6
      b1c3 c6e7

Just a piece down with very little compensation.

<comment><USER23> Auch, I guess it tried to do too many things at once, given its limited search depth :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty cool. I once wrote a C++ program to play me in chess. It was ~5000 lines of code! I can appreciation this script.

I think a more interesting problem now is to create computer algorithms that can be "taught" the rules of a board game --- a problem that falls squarely in the domain of supervised learning. In the studies I've found, the algorithms were provided with a lot of prior knowledge about the specific board game, so there may be a lot of room for progress.

<comment><USER25> There are approaches. One is General Game Playing where the rules are given as a set of logic formulas that basically describe a state machine

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_game_playing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_game_playing)

[http://www.general-game-playing.de/literature.html](http://www.general-game- playing.de/literature.html)

GGP is then about deriving knowledge about the game and its state evaluation using a) the rules directly, b) the represented state tree or c) past matches in that very game.

The other one I know of is a mechanism where you use reinforcement learning and assume one state in the beginning. With more info, you start splitting the state into several states using decision tree split criteria, such as cross entropy, and you end up obtaining a game state tree together with the knowledge to play reasonably well. Problem: I don't remember how it's called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My ego is saved by its weak endgame but it plays a pretty decent opening all on its own.

<comment><USER22> I found it quite weak in the opening, well, just about as bad as any chess engine without an opening book to go on. 1. e2e4 g8f6 2. e4e5 f6d5 3. c2c4 d5f4 (weird), 4. d2d4 f4d6. This is probably some opening like the Snake, or the Vulture or something. but beat it quite solidly opening up the f-file and hitting f7 with the queen and rook.

Second game I decided to avoid opening theory and head into a King's Indian Attack. Black's opening moves were sensible, knight and bishops to the right squares, pawns on e5 and d5, but it really wasn't taking my queenside pawn expansion seriously enough, giving up a knight for a pawn. But it's quite resourceful, it's managed to win an exchange, although it's in a desperate position. Currently it's hanging on this position.. oh. No, it's finally crashed. This is the position it died on:

      r . . . r . . .
      . . . . . . k p
      . b q . . . p .
      . R p . p . . .
      P . Q p P . . .
      B N . P . . P B
      . . . . . P . P
      . . . . . . K .

White's last move: f5h3. Took about 10 minutes and made the move h8g7, and then crashed with

      Your move: Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "sunfish.py", line 388, in <module>
          main()
        File "sunfish.py", line 365, in main
          move = parse(crdn[0:2]), parse(crdn[2:4])
        File "sunfish.py", line 345, in parse
          fil, rank = ord(c[0]) - ord('a'), int(c[1]) -1
      ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''

So, not strong, but surprisingly strong for the size of the code. Remarkable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a simple but strong suicide chess engine in literally 162 lines of C.

[http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2001/dgbeards.c](http://www0.us.ioccc.org/2001/dgbeards.c)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't care that much for chess engines, but the code looks really pythonic. I learned a lot from reading it! I already started to believe that real pythonic projects don't exist.

<comment><USER28> I thought I understood "pythonic." Aren't his variable names the exact opposite of what one would expect in pythonic code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Tried it. Typed e4. Got this:

        Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "sunfish.py", line 388, in <module>
            main()
          File "sunfish.py", line 365, in main
            move = parse(crdn[0:2]), parse(crdn[2:4])
          File "sunfish.py", line 345, in parse
            fil, rank = ord(c[0]) - ord('a'), int(c[1]) - <USER2>
        IndexError: string index out of range

<comment><USER11> Try saying e2e4 instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's the correct way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As a fellow chess coder I find this very cool, but we should be careful with the use of the word "strong." What ELO (for the non-chess people, rating) does this play at? I very much doubt it's truly what most would consider "strong" nowadays. In fact I doubt it plays above even 1500 - that's not strong. Great example of a simple chess engine in Python though? Surely!

<comment><USER23> You are right of course :) Sunfish is nowhere the level of 'real' engines. It is only strong compared to fellow Python engines, which I get from Ruxy Sylwyka who 'promoted' it to play in the 'Java league' [http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=thre...](http://www.talkchess.com/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=562610) ;) Still it's probably less than 1100 ELO. Maybe 1200 with pypy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Mentioning "strong" without benchmarks seems subjective.

</comment><comment><USER32> Python is the nicest language to read, right?

</comment><comment><USER33> I've a VIC-20 here running chess. 3.5k RAM. And people even got it to run on the ZX-81, with 1k. Now _that 's_ impressive.

<comment><USER34> 1K ZX81 chess: [http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/](http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/)

<comment><USER35> The greatest program ever written [1]

[1] [https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/10/12620/2164](https://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/10/12620/2164)

<comment><USER36> I had a ZX-81 and it was not poorly documented. Also, the Z80 assembly language was quite advanced compared to others from the same era (fe 6502). It had 16 some bit registers and 2 register sets (with at that time plenty of registers) that could be swapped.

The machine had a Basic interpreter that used bytecodes (to save memory), so programmers regularly mixed adopted a mixed style : basic + asm .

Anyway, to write a chess program for that machine is however rather impressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've noticed the odd trend of people bragging about how few lines it took to do X. Seems like people are trying to equate less loc == better code, which is not usually the case (better/more robust error handing and correcting, more complicated AI logic, etc).

It just means you are using a more abstracted version of whatever.

In reality, a 111 lines of Python program is likely thousands of lines if you were to count all of the standard Python libraries and/or any 3rd party libraries used.

What if I took this program, wrapped it in say, 5 lines of Python, then said I implemented chess in 5 lines of Python? Did I really? Of course not... but it makes for a good attention grabber.

<comment><USER38> > Seems like people are trying to equate less loc == better code

No. It's a tradition that goes back a long way. When it started it was about making code better - more efficient; faster; smaller. Part of that was the limited hardware available.

Now, when huge computing power is available to almost anyone, it's about the fun of finding that shortcut or that weird trick to remove a few lines of code.

<comment><USER37> Ah, that does make sense. Like Code Golf. ;)

<comment><USER39> That's exactly what it is. Code Golf is pretty fun to look at, check out the questions here: [http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/](http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/)

There's some cool techniques different people use to solve some seemingly major problems in just a few characters.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft attempts to decouple Windows 8 sales from flatlined PC sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-attempts-to-decouple-windows-8-sales-from-flatlined-pc-sales-7000000879/

<comment><AUTHOR> Essentially ...

"The way that Microsoft has taken a scalpel to Windows prices suggests that the company is less concerned about the effect that this will have on its bottom line and more concerned about the long-term effect that Windows 8 failing, similar to the way Vista did, would have on the company. Microsoft's priority, it seems, is to get Windows 8 installed on as many machines as quickly possible as possible."

Does anyone else think that the radically changed Metro UI sets up another 'Vista'?</comment>


WikiLeaks nominated for Nobel - <AUTHOR> http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/02/201122184159731783.html

<comment><USER2> Be a nice consolation prize for Julian Assange, having lost out on TIMES Man of the Year.</comment>


A neural implant helps rats with short-term recall. - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37873/?p1=A1

<comment><USER2> Same story, different sources:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677903>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2682618></comment>


A Dramatic Demonstration of the Power of Mental Frames by Simon Singh [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bG7EFhMw8w <comment><USER2> Very interesting video, and I really like the practical demonstration of how the same "dataset" can mean something completely different depending on what you expect from it.

Its a nice way to show that even though you might consider yourself "completely unbiased" and taking the scientific approach, you might get the wrong result anyways.

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI Simon Singh has lost the last couple years of his life being sued by the UK's chiropractic association for telling the truth - ie, it's a load of codswallop.

<comment><USER4> Further info on that: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/12/simon- singh-go...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/12/simon-singh- goodbye-libel-reform)

<comment><USER5> Hi everyone,

Off topic, but this reminded me of this petition:

<http://www.libelreform.org/sign>

Please, if you are not satisfied with the present state of things, sign it. If you are unaware, perhaps have a quick read, and see what you think? They have a report here,

<http://www.libelreform.org/our-report>

but do have a read around the net too. Simon has even come up with a pyramid scheme (for a good cause) in order to get 100 000 petitions. I have included his email below (verbatim). Please give this some consideration, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Dear Friends,

I've had an idea – an unusual idea, but I think it might just work.

As you know, England's chilling libel laws need to be reformed. One way to help achieve this is for 100,000 people to sign the petition for libel reform before the political parties write their manifestos for the election. We have 17,000 signatures, but we really need 100,000, and we need your help to get there.

My idea

My idea is simple: if everyone who has already signed up persuades just one more person each week to sign the petition then we will reach our goal within a month!

One person per week is all we need, but please spread the word as much as you can. In fact, if you persuade 10 people to sign up then email me (simon <<at>> simonsingh.net) and I promise to thank you by printing your name in my next book … which I will start writing as soon as I have put my own libel case behind me. I cannot say when this will be, but it is a very real promise. My only caveat is that I will limit this to the first thousand people who recruit ten supporters.

When persuading your friends remember to tell them:

(a) English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.

(b) These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to discuss matters of genuine public interest (and public health!).

(c) Our laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws are so hostile to responsible journalism. (In fact, it is exactly because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome signatories to the petition from around the world.)

(d) Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically runs to over £1 million.

(e) Three separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and two medical researchers raising concerns about three medical treatments. We face losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar concerns? If these health matters are not reported, then the public is put at risk.

My experience has been sobering. I've had to spend £100,000 to defend my writing and have put my life on hold for almost two years. However, the prospect of reforming our libel laws keeps me cheerful.

Thanks so much for your support. We've only got one shot at this – so I hope you can persuade 1 (or maybe 10) friends, family and colleagues to sign.

Massive thanks,

Simon

The Libel Reform Campaign is a coalition of English PEN, Index on Censorship and Sense About Science.

So far, 188 MPs have signed our Parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for libel reform and the Justice Secretary Jack Straw has formed a working party that the Libel Reform Coalition is represented on.

Please also considering donating to keep our campaign going: [http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWw8KBlcYDEg...](http://libelreform.indiemedium.com/lt.php?id=ZkQFWw8KBlcYDEgHBgsBUw%3D%3D)

</comment><comment><USER6> There's a great book by Joseph O'Connor called "Introducing NLP: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People " Which deals a great bit with "framing", as well as other concepts that really open up the understanding of human communication and perception. It was initially intended for psychologists/psychatrists/etc.. (I believe, based on the numerous references to using this in "sessions"), but it is really appropriate for just about every person who wants to understand human communication a little better.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great subject. Framing is essentially manipulating our bayesian priors. I am interested in the variation of this thought line that we can consciously vary our prior. I can do this with, for instance, a Necker cube. I can deliberately switch my anticipated model and have the rest of my experience line up with this switch. Although curiously, it has a rather slow switching time.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not _just_ the fact that he's compelling us to hear something, he's also pointing out what words we're going to hear on the screen. If he just promised we'd hear something and then not show them as it's playing, a lot of people would hear much less meaningful stuff still.

<comment><USER10> He specifically talked about the fact that when the brain has a "strong enough" bias, that's when it ends up telling you that its false error correction data is indeed fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazing how the mind locks on to the given pattern. Maybe that's related to the psychological fact that people tend to overestimate the control they have over the physical world. You could also call it optimism.

</comment><comment><USER12> But, could the demonstrator have given any other lines and still caused the audience to observe them in the song? Those lines were deliberately designed from careful study of the song.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really liked this demonstration. I wonder what the effects of this are on investors when evaluating a unique idea.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't this the same reason why optical illusions work? The brain finds patterns and holds on to them.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but I think the interesting part of this (and similar) demonstrations is that it shows illusions that cross more than one sense. It's not just tricking your eyes; it's using your eyes to trick your hearing.

See also 'the McGurk Effect':

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8BVdJk>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtsfidRq2tw>

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

It would be neat to find reverse examples -- where sound changes visual perception. (Perhaps the typical dramatic false-punch is one; the added sound of contact makes an otherwise implausibly short or off-center strike seem much more realistic.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm still pretty sure this specific example got put there on purpose though ...</comment>


Welcome to Mozilla Labs Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://mozillalabs.com/gaming/2010/09/07/welcome-to-mozilla-labs-gaming/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who feels Mozilla is losing focus? It's not that I think they shouldn't experiment (that's great for a non-for-profit company), but it seems they never really decided where they boundary ends. So from time to time you hear that they went a _little_ bit further from their core: it's always a little bit, but these sum up.

And I am not saying this to bash Mozilla: I think they are essential for a good Web. But that's exactly why I am concerned they are spreading themselves too thin.

</comment><comment><USER3> WebGL is a nice compromise. But, coming from a console game development background, I won't be happy until both Mozilla and Safari adopt NativeClient. C++ with Posix and OpenGL can do amazing things on the iPhone. On even a netbook it could be 10 years ahead of the best HTML5 demos.

For example: WebGL can run Quake2, but NaCl could easily handle Epic's "Project Sword" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2ncmwgJzqw>

<comment><USER4> NaCl is cool technology, but it won't be ready for wide adoption until it's divorced from x86.

<comment><USER5> From <http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/>:

"Some ARM and x86-64 support is implemented in the source base, and we hope to make it available for application developers later this year."

The port to ARM and x86-64 are pretty much done by the way. Also, see:

<http://code.google.com/p/nacl-llvm-branches/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know plenty of entries from the Node Knockout competition that fit this description perfectly. I wonder if Mozilla was inspired by what they saw at Node Knockout to put this on? There were a bunch of high-profile Mozilla employees judging.</comment>


Just Let Basic Die - <AUTHOR> http://coffeeghost.net/2009/12/22/just-let-basic-die/

<comment><USER2> I can only speak from my own experience, so I don't know if this holds for everybody, but I think the guy misses a lot of important points.

When I was 13 I discovered programming, using QBASIC, on my old 286. This was in 1993, before the Y2K and .COM hoopla, and before anyone I knew had access to the internet, or even knew what the internet was.

Back then, if you went to the library by my house, they had about 2 books on programing, from 1982, that had nothing more exciting in them than "this is how your draw a maze in BASIC on your Apple II". Every now and then you might be able to find an old issue of Compute, with some code samples in it. For the most part, however, there was a pretty large dearth of information about programming accessible to a 13 year old kid who didn't know any one who knew anything about programming.

The thing I did have, however, was a copy of nibbles.bas and access to the QBASIC help screens. The language was small enough that one kid could read through every item in the index, and figure out what the meant. There were a few things, like BLOAD and BSAVE that I couldn't understand because I didn't know what pointers were or how they connected to arrays. Other than that I was able to figure everything out by just reading through the help screens.

This, I believe, is what made BASIC suitable for use by kids. It wasn't complicated. There wasn't a vast class library. The ability to produce sound was limited to the PC speaker, and there certainly wasn't any 3D graphics. There wasn't a windowing system, or any kind of scheduler.

BASIC certainly didn't have huge libraries to import.

Everything was super simple.

That made it approachable. It was something a kid could explore by him self, understand, and appreciate.

When you are exploring computer programing, writing apps that play pong or let stick figures shoot at each other with laser guns, all the rules on the right way of doing things just get in the way. They keep you from having fun. All you really need is a few variables, SCREEN, CIRCLE, LINE, BEEP, COLOR, and GOTO.

You definitely don't need classes, fields, closures, while loops, or even proper indentation. That stuff doesn't add to your DISCOVERY of computing. Yes it makes you a better programmer, but with kids that shouldn't be the goal.

The goal should be to HOOK them on programming. Rules just get in the way. Python has way too many of them. A lot more than BASIC.

Python has to be taught. You have to teach people: use control structures, indent your code, model things with objects, import these things. That makes it great for, say, college freshman, or AP students. It's not really suited for kids though.

BASIC can be explored. Easily. You can hold the entirety of BASIC in your head, at once. Everything. You can't do that with python, or even lisp (because of all the libraries).

So I say, give kids basic, and let them roam free for a while.

Let them make laser games out of spaghetti.

I think sometimes its easy to forget how much fun it was to write crappy spaghetti code that did small amusing things. Think back to when you were a kid, before you were old enough to know better. That's probably what got you hooked. Its what got me hooked.

That means BASIC, or something like it. You have to let people be creative, and messy, long before you start throwing rules at them. You can teach kids structure, and recursion, and pointers, and all that stuff later.

<comment><USER3> _I discovered programming ... before anyone I knew had access to the internet, or even knew what the internet was._

Let me be blunt: Our kids are smarter than we are. Or than we were, anyway. They're growing up with Google.

The reason BASIC had to be so simple is that Stack Overflow didn't exist. You had to be able to grasp the language on your own, with minimal help, because at best help was miles away, or on the other end of a one-to-one telephone connection, or -- at the _very_ best -- on a one- or two- or maybe even _eight_ line BBS connection.

Now I venture to say that by reading the walkthroughs on Slicehost a ten-year- old could get an entire LAMP stack configured and start serving web pages with far less intellectual effort than I spent in writing a "guess this number between 1 and 100" program on the Commodore PET. There are individual videogames that are harder than BASIC was, to say nothing of the collectible card games or the RPGs.

The network is a big deal. It changes everything. In another generation it will take intense intellectual and creative effort to imagine just how geeks lived when I was ten, just as I'm still not sure I grasp how (e.g.) the atomic bomb was invented without the benefit of any electronic computer whatsoever, even a pocket calculator. (I have, at best, an abstract and intellectual grasp of what slide rules were about. I don't know how to use one.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm glad to read such a positive outlook on Python as a beginner language, as I just sent my eight-year-old niece (and her parents) a book on it. If this gamble pays off she might just succeed in learning Python before I do. ;)

<comment><USER4> Author here. I also wrote a free book on Python programming for beginners called Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, and you can download it from <http://inventwithpython.com> if you're interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For me the best bit on that page was in the comments:

 _"I'd be very careful not to underestimate kids. If you don't tell them something is supposed to be hard, they will astound you."_

Yes! The first step to achieving something, is believing it is possible. Seeing good motivational examples can help with that, so I agree: suggest widely-used languages to kids.

<comment><USER6> But there are limits. Kids aren't going to understand decorators or list comprehensions. They aren't going to get the point of doc strings. They don't want to deal with packages and namespace issues in every piece of code they write.

None of this stuff existed in BASIC. As a kid in the 80's, I could read code in magazines written by _professionals_ (of sorts) and understand every line. There's nothing like that in the modern world.

<comment><USER7> _Kids aren't going to understand decorators or list comprehensions. They aren't going to get the point of doc strings._

Define "kid." I know middle schoolers who could get this stuff. I reject the idea that loops and functions are "easy" and other various language features and concepts are "hard."

There are some things which are going to be out of reach, but it's not going to be the same for everyone, and what those things actually are might surprise you.

And seriously, how are list comprehensions difficult to understand?

<comment><USER6> It's not whether it's "hard" or not. It's the sheer volume of complexity in a modern development environment. Seriously, look at the manual to Micro-soft BASIC c. 1980. It's about 12 pages long!

I know professional python developers who sometimes have trouble reading the "new" stuff in code they see on the web. Someone just learning the language is going to be totally lost. That's just not a problem in Applesoft; read your 12 pages and you're done. Go code.

<comment><USER3> Human languages like Chinese or Hungarian or English have a greater volume of grammatical constructions, irregular forms, vocabulary, and semantics than any computer language, and yet toddlers learn them all the time.

Now, I wouldn't claim that humans are wired to learn Python the way they're wired to learn a human language. Nor would I claim that every child under ten should necessarily be able to navigate Python -- the majority of adults I know cannot navigate Python, or even BASIC. But:

 _I'd be very careful not to underestimate kids. If you don't tell them something is supposed to be hard, they will astound you._

I'm only about four chapters in to _Coders at Work_ , and yet I've already encountered Brad Fitzpatrick, who claims to have learned to program before he was five. When I was a high school senior I met one or two nine-year-olds who could kick my ass in mathematics competition. I myself will never know how much Python I could have learned before age ten -- I encountered my first computer, a C64, when I was about eleven -- but I do know that by age 14 I had gotten bored reading about BASIC and had taught myself assembly and Pascal (though I had to learn Pascal entirely from books, writing programs on paper, because I didn't encounter my first Pascal compiler until I was 15, several years later).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the nice things about Basic was that you didn't need to know how to use a text editor to program in it. Line numbers and the LIST command got you started. vi and emacs are a bit much for the wee ones. You can use a simple text editor, but there's still the concept of files, saving, extensions, vs. the integrated environment that a microcomputer Basic provided.

<power on>

10 print "Hello, World."

RUN

Doesn't get simpler than that.

<comment><USER9> ah yes it does...

      10 ? "Hello, World"

(yes, I know that's not what you were talking about)

<comment><USER10> IIRC (actually I could fire up one and check, but I'm too lazy for that) if you had an Atari 8-bit computer, you could go:

10 PR. "Hello, World"

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbanffy/4208561088/>

The simpler FX-series CASIO BASIC pocket computers used "PRT" for that. Cool gadgets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is already an ideal language to teach kids, and it exists right now.

PHP.

Whether or not you think it's a good language for building real world applications, it does have a lot of going for it when considered as a teaching language.

* It's weakly typed, dynamically typed and lacks variable declarations.

* It doesn't require learning OOP concepts before you can use it.

* The internet is full of free tutorials, documentation and knowledgeable people.

* There is only one variant. It's in active development.

* It's not so far removed from today's widely used languages. PHP -> Python is going to be easier than BASIC -> Python.

* _It can be used to build real things_. Despite what we'd like to think, command line interfaces are hardly ever used by the general population. Kids use websites on a regular basis. _This_ is what will get them excited about programming.

<comment><USER12> "Whether or not you think it's a good language for building real world applications, it does have a lot of going for it when considered as a teaching language."

You must really hate kids?

<comment><USER11> The reasons why many hackers (including myself) dislike PHP are totally irrelevant to its merits as a teaching language.

I don't like the type system, I don't like how OOP is seemingly an afterthought, I don't like the mishmash of syntax or the irregularities in function naming. These are fine reasons for a programmer to eschew it, but I can't see how they would be a hindrance to anyone learning the concepts of programming.</comment></comment></comment>


Meet the professor who says facial recognition can tell if you're gay - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/07/artificial-intelligence-can-tell-your-sexuality-politics-surveillance-paul-lewis?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17482494](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17482494)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17480488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17480488) (1 comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17478215](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17478215) (5 comments)

Other sources of similar or identical stories:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15225573](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15225573)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15212737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15212737)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206248](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206248)

Finally, 6 years ago someone submitted a similar sort of project here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4850715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4850715)</comment>


Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars <comment><USER2> A very interesting essay - but it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'. Most of what he's talking about has far more to do with the mechanics of maintaining a dictatorship than arabic culture.

He probably missed this because he's both unwilling to acknowledge that he's been training the troops of dictatorships for his adult career, but also, that the US is generally involved in the propping-up of such dictatorships.

US forces tend to spend a lot of time training extremely demoralized and unenthusiastic conscripts, surrounded by officers who see their own soldiers as the enemy, and don't trust eachother - and that's exactly what you expect of the army of a unpopular dictatorship, and it's exactly what such armies have looked like throughout most of history. The problems that mysteriously vanish when he talks about the 'elite units' are vanishing because the elites actually like the regimes they're in.

They also seem to vanish when they worked with the Kurds, for instance.

<comment><USER3> >it works better if you substitute 'arabic nations' with 'dictatorships'.

You are correct this applies to dictatorships in general, and in fact the article mentions the similarities to the Soviet military.

But then you have to ask why the Arab nations are almost all dictatorships, and that brings you back to culture, at least considerably.

<comment><USER2> Well, most countries are not particularly democratic, but countries with lucrative primary industries, especially strategically important ones, are often dictatorships. Which makes sense, because if you're a big nation, and you want to make sure your access to strategically vital resources is safe, you want to have a friendly government in charge - and a client dictatorship is dependably friendly, since they need you for the weapons they need to stay in power.

I'd say there's also the compounding influence of the colonial legacy. A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist. Without a deep culture of citizenship, it's kinda hard to get a robust democracy going.

<comment><USER3> >Well, most countries are not particularly democratic

And that is due to a great extent to culture, which is what the article is about

> A colony usually has no culture of the 'citizen', since the people of the > colony are basically a resource exploited by the colonist.

But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense.

<comment><USER2> >But Arab culture prior to the relatively brief period of Western colonization also did not have a concept of citizen, at least not in the democratic sense.

This sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, and I found: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottomanism), which is kinda interesting. I'm thinking the Ottoman thinking is probably the most relevant, since most of the middle east was part of the Ottoman empire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power, but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge; once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and his power dissipates._

This information hoarding behavior also occurs in large enterprises. I know one programmer who got to sit in a cafe reading a book, because she was the only one who understood how a particular subsystem worked. (She had written it in a particularly diabolical way, and only she understood the underlying system of objects only existed as adjacent entries in long arrays, which then underwent merge sort-like "merge" operations involving 4 array indexes, of which there were dozens of variations which called each other recursively. The company that had produced the system was defunct, and no manuals for the format could be found.)

One way to counteract this, is to require all groups within the company to provide a standardized API for accessing their systems, and to evaluate each group by how useful it is to the rest of the company.

<comment><USER5> Another variation of this behavior is information-based management, where business information is given (or not) to the various team members, usually because of internal politics/power struggles. (at least it's how my boss in my second internship explained it to me, I never directly witnessed it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> random thought: maybe if enough wars are lost, they'll stop practicing war and try to get their needs met by other means.</randomthought>

I think Norvell B. De Atkine might have missed out on some key details due to his status as an outsider. Especially if every Arab with whom he interacted truly suspected he was a zionist spy. It's difficult to overcome that kind of paranoia and the skills for doing so are not taught in the U.S. military. Also, it sounds like a lot of these people are being forced to participate in the wars, and that's just a recipe for failure. Guns are scary it takes a lot more than a draft to convince someone to stick around for that shit.

Another thing to consider is that the rituals used to build loyalty in the U.S. military are kind of a secret. Generally, only the ones participating in the rituals get to know what they are. The content is not entirely intuitive either: imagine being told to sleep in a 1-meter wooden cube in the woods; ants crawl into the cube and bite you; at bedtime, human chanting is played from speakers inside your cube, alternating between quiet and deafening over five minute intervals until the sun comes up. This is meant to build unit cohesion. It's weirdo shit devised by psychos to break human minds.

Also, the article is called "Why Arabs Lose Wars" but half of the examples he initially cites are wars in which both sides were arab: Egypt v Yemen, Syria v Lebanon, Iraq v Kuwait. Arabs won those wars... but I guess that wasn't worth noting because the losing side was arab?

Those were just some details which stuck out to me while I was reading the article. I acknowledge that about half of this article is objective, fact- based observation and those observations were genuinely interesting. I think that his evidence is inconclusive simply because of the context in which his observations were gathered.

<comment><USER7> That's not really how the US military works.

You're attempting to describe a training event that has nothing to do with a "loyalty ritual", it's not a good description and has nothing to do with unit cohesion, loyalty, or breaking anyone's mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An excellent and very readable book on this in the modern era is "Arabs at War" by Kenneth M. Pollack

He examines a number of recent wars in the area of interest and discusses some of the common findings he makes. He also finds a number of situations in which armies in the region are effective; it's not just a hit piece.

</comment><comment><USER9> I was expecting a dull write-up but this essay is extremely insight full and deep.

The problems and issues are probably not restricted to the military apparatus. Many organizational inefficiencies in e.g. Turkish political/private organizations are due same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER10> TLDR: Arab armies are ineffective because of the all the internal, external and ethnic politics which hinders all kinds of cooperation and unity at the battalion-level, otherwise on the unit and soldier-level they are comparable to Israeli units.

<comment><USER11> The article is pretty clear that on the small unit and soldier level the Arab forces are less effective, too. Specialists horde information, soldiers don't train for multiple roles, junior officers mistreat their soldiers, no one shows initiative, etc. There are good reasons for all of this -- it's not an Arab character defect, but a rational response to soldiers' circumstances -- but the author states quite explicitly that an Israeli tank crew can better absorb casualties than an Arab tank crew can because the Israelis are encouraged to share information and train for multiple tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830172)

Jan 3, 2016 | 41 comments

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the author is describing a symptoms of an ill organization structure rather than the root causes. The reason why there is no trust, sharing of information and centralized authority in modern Arab state armies because Arab societies never really transitioned successfully into a functional nationalistic countries. Arabs never really believed in nation state and in the absence of strong bonding narrative, there is no common ground for the group to collaborate and fight thus you end up with individuals seeking their self interest and subsequently the symptoms which the author observed.

Modern nation state concepts were forced into a region that is predominantly tribal and religious in culture therefore the resulted states, governments, armies and other national institutions are merely a superficial layer on top of a largely religious, ethinic and tribal societies. The west had a long and painful (400 years plus and two major wars) transition from societies dominated by religion to a national secular societies and eventually a capitalistic global societies. That transition never really took place in the Arab region, instead what happened is that western society tried to force national borders and proxy presidents after the world wars on societies that didn't have the cultural foundation for it and the region has not really managed to reconcile, unify and agree on it's identity ever since.

So why do arabs lose war? Because really there is no state or reason to fight for it. This was very clear in Iraq when fighting ISIS, the men of the country only mobilized after a religious greenlight from a senior clerk despite the fact that ISIS were at the border of the country's capital.

<comment><USER5> > 400 years plus and two major wars

More like a dozen of major war.

But what you are describing is close to the idea of nation-state, which has been blamed as the cause of the war of the XXth century.

<comment><USER12> Yeah indeed it cauased a new set of global conflicts, but it also allowed western societies to raise above the tribal, relgious and ethinic devisions (for better or worst) something I'd argue no Arab nation managed to do so successfully.

In fact it seems that western societies are currently undergrowing new trasnision beyond the nation and local bordres, which could be why they're having new make x great again movements and raise of local populist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Mostly because there is no Arab or Muslim empire left after Europeans killed off the Ottoman empire and it's easy to beat down tyrants with few allies. What's the reasons for these tyrants, dictators, and terrorists. Insecurity. What's the reason for insecurity? Lack of empire... so you always end up becoming someone's bitch... which leads to feelings of insecurity and inferiority.

The only way to deal with this is to become a vassal of an existing empire and good examples of this are Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, etc.

<comment><USER14> > Mostly because there is no Arab or Muslim empire left after Europeans killed > off the Ottoman empire

Can you describe the Ottoman's as Arabs? Without resorting to sources I seem to recall their origins were in Scythia. In any case, I do think there is some value in looking back at the history, even though it is pretty orthogonal to the analysis in the post (there may be some cultural touch points). Also, isn't it more accurate to say that the Ottomans chose the wrong (German) side in a war, and that this is the cause of their final dissolution?

<comment><USER15> Ottomans were not Arab by any-means. Ottoman State is founded by Osman Bey, leader of the Kayi Tribe which is a sub-tribe of Oghuz Turks, who migrated from Khorasan. The official language in Ottoman empire was Ottoman Turkish, which is basically Turkish with many many Persian and Arabic words, while the structure and grammer was Turkish. Ottoman Turkish mainly used in Istanbul by a limited-number of people who are closed to state affairs or some educated people like poets or government officials in the federal states. Common people was speaking plan Turkish, which don't have much Persian and Arabic influence, and this language was the language of the Ottoman Army. Ottoman state and army culture, discipline and structure was a classical Turkish state structure, of course with differences from previous Turkish states.

The problem Arabs faced after dissolution of Ottoman Empire is similar in a sense to Turkish people faced, in regards to the national awareness.

Ottoman Empire didn't dissolved because they chose the wrong side, instead it was huge empire consisting of many nation and spans over an enourmous area (East Europe, Anatolia, Syria-Iraq, Egypt, Arabia, North Africa), while the army and many government offices couldn't keep up with the developments of the time. Basically, Ottoman Empire dissolved because of the wrong politics and failure to renew itself. After the French Revolution, nationalism started to spread over whole Europe and this affected the Ottoman Empire most, not only consisting of different nations, but also different religions. Being a religious state (Islamic), main subjects were Muslims and non-Muslims, separated by Millet system according to religious affiliation. Government officials were either Turkish or Devshirmes (Christian boys converted to Islam and trained to be gov. officials), being Muslim even wasn't a qualification to be an official.

When nationalism sweeps Europe, Christian Balkan nations like Greeks, Serbians, Bulgars etc. started to rebel against the empire to found their own independent nation states, feeling comfortable as the empire was loosing power every day. In that situation, Ottoman government was trying to cope with "the problem" by supporting the empire-identity of Ottomanism, and only small number of educated people were following the idea of Turkish nationalism and to create a Turkish nation-state. This was all happening at the last decades of 1800s, and Ottomans lost Balkan region, latery Ottomans also lost Middle East, Egypt, Iraq, Arabia, North Africa. British Empire also supported Arab nations to rebel against Ottoman Empire, promising their own land (British Mandates).

Empire was already dissolved when most of the nations declared their independence. WW1 was just nail in the coffin, that officially surrendered Ottoman Empire and Istanbul to British Empire. After the end of WW2, Allied forces (British, Greek, French, Italian, Armenian) shared the remnants of the empire with Treaty of Sevres, but Ottoman Army generals and irregular Turkish armed forces rebelled against the invading forces and this resulted in the victory for the Turkish side in the War of Independence, and ultimately resulted in the foundation of the Turkish national state.

TL;DR: Empire didn't dissolved because of choosing the German side. And also Arab nations didn't share "ottoman" ideals as Turkish and even many non-Muslim millet did and finally rebelled against Ottomans with the British support. Saying Ottoman Empire was an Arab Empire is simply ignoring the historical facts. This is not so different than saying all the Christian nations in Europe are descending of the Jews because Jesus was one. Having words from a language and having the same religious affiliation doesn't make two different states, nations or cultures one.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_and_modernization_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_and_modernization_of_the_Ottoman_Empire) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_nationalism_in_the_Ott...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_nationalism_in_the_Ottoman_Empire) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence)

<comment><USER14> Thanks so much for the insights.

> Ottoman Empire didn't dissolved because they chose the wrong side, instead > it was huge empire consisting of many nation and spans over an enourmous > area (East Europe, Anatolia, Syria-Iraq, Egypt, Arabia, North Africa), while > the army and many government offices couldn't keep up with the developments > of the time.

Not an uncommon pattern.

<comment><USER16> Multicultural empires couldn't survive the onslaught of nationalism that came in the 19th century. The modernization attempts of the Ottoman Empire (unlike Austria-Hungary or Russia, the other two major multicultural empires of Europe) rested very heavily on a very narrow Turkish nationalism movement that alienated the Armenian, Arab, and Balkan peoples in the country. But Austria- Hungary, which was somewhat successfully trying to force an inclusive, multicultural modernization process still imploded, as did Russia, which was somewhat in the middle between Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans.

Even the multicultural aspects of the British Empire would come flying apart in the 20th century--Irish nationalism was successful in splitting from Britain in the inter-war period, and Indian nationalism would end the British Raj shortly after WW2. And Britain was consistently the most modern, liberal, and inclusive country in this period. The only countries that could successfully survive multiculturally were those that received multiple countries from the sheer immigration of the period and channeled them into a melting pot of immigrant cultures (most notably the US, but many of the large American countries went through similar experiences).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a feature to figure out how much our customers want to chat with agents - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@coverinsurance/how-much-do-customers-want-to-chat-with-insurance-agents-we-built-a-feature-to-find-out-f4687fa488ff <comment><USER2> The reason I prefer humans to AI or whatever is that humans are infinitely better at fuzzy searches. I'm not enough of an expert to know what I need to know to get what I want. So I relay on a human with experience to translate for me, then give an answer. This is also an issue I have with indian call centers. Its very hard to communicate something to them in a manner that doesn't use the "correct" words. So I lose a lot of the service I'm counting on.

<comment><USER3> To me there's no value in talking to a human if the human is roboticly following a script.

It's really frustrating to call the helpdesk and get:

HD: Hello! What's your customer number?

Me: xxxxxxx

HD: Thank you, what's the problem?

Me: It is failing to connect to the network. I've tried a soft reset, then a factory reset, and finally reinstalling the firmware. While sniffing the traffic it looks like the device is failing to accept the DHCP responses from my server, as it continually broadcasts DHCP solicitations and is send responses but never configures its network settings.

HD: Have you tried turning it off and back on?

<comment><USER4> I'd be interested in the stats on call resolution at the off/on step. You have to assume it's large enough that they ask it first.

Also I'm genuinely curious, what sort of response you expected to get when you called and told them about traffic sniffing.

<comment><USER5> Speaking as a one-time 'high speed internet tech support customer relations specialist' working at a call-center contracted out to Comcast, I was told that it was close to 90%. That seems exaggerated since I would say it was closer to 70% (ballpark) success for my calls, but it was high enough that the place eventually implement an entire first-line crew that did no more than ask about whether power cycling had been complete or explain power-cycling before handing the 'sub(scriber)' off.

If someone called in with the GP's depth of troubleshooting completed, the standard policy was say something like 'this is outside of my allowable offered support'(but if you really know how, help, but not officially!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Giving the customer the choice of how to contact you will always be a winner. Some will talk, some will text, for some it depends based on what's going on. But giving the customer a choice -- and respecting that choice! -- is always good for the customer.

</comment><comment><USER7> This makes me giggle because there's a very simple heuristic that gets you a 99.9% solution at least:

Assume the customer does not want to talk to bots. That includes bots implemented on a human substrate, i.e., call-center scripts.

<comment><USER8> This is true. We've got a human in the loop, who is primed with alot of context around your request. Customer service + advice on coverage is the primary thrust of the feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Greetings and salutations! Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you'd prefer an automated response, press 1 now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Unrelated, but I f*cking hate Cover. I tried getting a quote with them once and they gave me some quotes that were not what I wanted and had budgeted for that policy. Not a big deal.

A week later I started getting bombarded with junk mail sent to my physical address, from insurance companies offering me every possible insurance policy in existence.

What a good way to innovate./s They claim they're modernizing the process of buying insurance but still use the same old trashy tactics of the old companies like selling your personal information.

<comment><USER8> CEO of Cover here. This is super surprising, as we sell our own policies + own a national insurance brokerage. No need to share/sell your information at all (nor would we, as a matter of principle), because we have access to most carriers in the US. We'd prefer to sell you a Cover policy or one from our partner panel that can be managed via our service.

Do you mind sharing which companies sent you physical mail? I'm at karn at cover.com. Would be great to dig in.

<comment><USER10> I don't remember exactly since this was a year o more ago. A lot of companies! I only remember talking with the Cover agent via text message.

I was quoting for basic Renter's Insurance. She gave me a price of 125/year which was too much since I only need it super basic insurance and both Lemonade and Assurant give you that for half. Anyway. Not a big deal. Exactly one week after that I started getting junk mail from insurance companies.

I never quoted with anyone else besides Cover. I bought from Assurant after quoting with Cover. Cover was the only possible culprit for that burst of junk mail.

I don't know how you guys share data with other companies or vendors but definitely something happened in the way my info was handled. The timing between that interaction and the correspondence I started getting made it pretty evident.</comment></comment></comment>