I Built the Largest Natural Light Wet Plate Studio in the US in Over a Century - <AUTHOR> https://petapixel.com/2018/01/11/built-first-natural-light-wet-plate-studio-us-century/ <comment><USER2> Honestly, this seems a tad self-aggrandizing. I've done wet plate before, you can learn it in an afternoon, it's really not that hard. If you can't find someone to teach you there are books like The Keepers of Light that have the formulations and processes all laid out, so learning by yourself isn't that hard either. The tricky part is getting hold of some of the chemistry, but that's not as hard as it used to be either. The issue with wet plate processes is that it's kind of finicky and there's a lot of experimentation that has to happen before you get it down, but getting from 0 to your first one shouldn't take 45 days if you really want to do it. Not hard, it just takes time, and money.

As for there only being 1000 people who practice this, well, that's just not true. I personally know at least 3 photographers in the SF Bay Area who do it, and I know of at least another 6 in the same area (just don't know them personally). It's actually become a quite popular thing to do.

Good for him building a studio and all, and for doing something he really enjoys, but some of these claims are just not right.

<comment><USER3> 'Self-aggrandizing' could describe numerous accomplishments contemporary wet plate photographers have made, and documented on the internet. Maybe the particular practice just seems to attract a certain crowd. Preserving the process and such is interesting and educational, but how much? Aside from technical and practical considerations, I've never really understood the intrigue, and I shoot photos on emulsion on a regular basis in 2018. I have reasons and vulnerability about that, though, which would crumble if I were trying to justify these wet-plate feats.

<comment><USER2> Honestly, if you're doing it in an 1800sqft studio custom built for exactly that process, it's not that hard. I spent a weekend doing it in what was essentially a 50sqft bathroom and it was pretty straight forward, once you get the hang of it. They used to do it in tents in the middle of the desert on giant, heavy plates of glass (16in X 20 in), so this is a piece of cake in comparison.

There are photographic artists doing much more complex work, in much more difficult conditions. Check out the work of Chris McCaw and John Chiara, or the recent daguerreotype work of Binh Danh. Not criticizing anyone, just saying that the way they choose to do things is absolutely crucial to their art, and an essential part of it, not just a process that is currently cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's an interesting idea in this article around how with the increase in convenience that technology brings, we don't realize that something else gets lost. If you can only take one photo and know that it will be hours of work to even find out if it was any good, you're going to invest a lot of time trying to make sure that photo is perfect. You're going to pour your skill and passion into that one photo. Would you do the same when you're taking 200 shots?

Last night my phone's charge cable stopped working and my phone battery was dead. I had to get to a mall 20 minutes drive away without GPS in a city I've never been to before. I realized that in the last decade, I've never once had to navigate, ever. I've used the GPS as a technology crutch for so long that my skill has atrophied, maybe. I made it, thankfully, but I haven't been nervous like that when diving in a long time.

The whole experience has left me wondering just what else I don't know I might have lost because of all the technology around me.

<comment><USER5> >Last night my phone's charge cable stopped working and my phone battery was dead. I had to get to a mall 20 minutes drive away without GPS in a city I've never been to before.

If you are staying at a hotel, ask at the reception, most hotels do provide nowadays charging cables/adpters as a service.

In some cases you might even be given one (used of course) for free, it seems like nowadays charging cables/adapters are the most forgotten items (very rarely asked for) by travelers, and they end up in the "unclaimed items" cupboard.

<comment><USER6> Hotels also used to provide free paper maps of the local area :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a "Natural Light" studio I'm seeing a lot of lamps there...

That aside I needed to keep reminding myself as I read the article that this is about photography as art, aping the style of old photographs. But those old photos don't necessarily look the way they do because the photographers of that time were after a certain aesthetic, they were simply the best photographs it was possible to make at that time.

<comment><USER8> Their aesthetic was shaped by the tools they had

<comment><USER9> A lot of effort and resources go into reproducing the sound of music recordings from, say, the 1960s -- even though the music producers in the 1960s would probably have loved to have had today's technology instead!

<comment><USER7> That was what I was trying to get across. This yearning and fetishization of "simpler" times and ways of doing things, as though there is something inherently noble and valuable about these practices, purely because they are historical.

<comment><USER10> And yet there won't quite ever be a Beatles or an Elvis again, will there?

It can be very hard to beat the zietgiest of an age at their own game. There is something special in that, which we try to measure up to, but still can't quite reproduce exactly even with better technology.

Will there ever be a eugene atget or a walker Evans or a Dorothea Lange that beat them at their own game?

<comment><USER11> Until you provide some criteria that would allow us to evaluate "beat them at their own game" for a particular body of photographs …

Eugene Atget or Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange were doing their thing in their now -- so beating them at their own game would be doing your thing in your now.

<comment><USER10> great, we're all in agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "By being slower and having to follow a very strict set of rules to make an image, you find a way to work around the limitations of the process and the process pays you back, tenfold."

This effect comes up all the time when I'm learning about great projects or people in history - creativity that arises in the face of limitation.

For example, the rock climber Pamela Shanti Pack developed a condition that made it painful for her to grip, which eventually pushed her toward crack climbing, and offwidth climbing in particular. She has since made a name for herself with first ascents of some of the hardest offwidths ever climbed.

I don't often see limitations self-imposed like this, though.

<comment><USER13> On the contrary, I see artists choosing self-imposed limitations constantly. I do it myself, in whatever form I'm working in. As an example, a band I'm in sometimes plays "White Christmas", one of my favorite melodies. When I play the guitar solo, I have a simple rule for myself - I have to play the melody. _Everything else can change_. So instead of improvising melody, I'm improvising tone and expression. It gets great results. Other times, I might set a little rule for myself like "I have to play this solo using only these four notes".

Narrowing the range of choices through self-imposed limitations makes creative decision-making easier and more focused.

I get it as a photographer, too. Sometimes, I'll restrict myself to a single lens. Or I'll deliberately shoot film rather than digital, and limit myself to one or two rolls. It forces me to be more considered in my approach. I totally understand the wet plate thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Aw, he didn't put his studio on a turntable to follow the sun, like Edison did.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison%27s_Black_Maria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison%27s_Black_Maria)

</comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat related. I was surprise to find that building in Tokyo Open Air Museum. [http://digitalmuseum.rekibun.or.jp/app/structure/detail?id=s...](http://digitalmuseum.rekibun.or.jp/app/structure/detail?id=str00063&b1=1000002&start=20&lang=en)

> Since lighting equipment for photography was not fully developed in those > days, frosted glass was used for the second-floor windows on the north side > of the studio for lighting purposes.

I've been there in the rainy day and even then I'd say light was quite OK. I don't know a lot about photography but it was very interesting to see how people solved these problems back in the day.

</comment><comment><USER16>
      5 years ago, I didn't own a camera and knew nothing about
      photography. I saw a wet plate online and I was immediately
      drawn to it, and thus my journey began.

      I was told early on that there was no way a non-photographer
      who has never owned a camera can figure out this archaic
      process from 1848. 45 days after that conversation, I had
      made my very first wet plate photo.

He may have been an amateur, but he appears to have had a significant number of resources at his disposal to get started. I can't help but feel like he left out a huge part of the story.

Also quoting _yourself_ on the door to your studio?

<comment><USER12> >Also quoting _yourself_ on the door to your studio?

I took that to mean he expects the studio to outlast him. The plaque serves as a way to communicate his intentions for the studio to those that will inherit it.

<comment><USER17> That's how I read it too. Maybe a bit presumptuous to add such a plaque right away and not, say, as a clause in a will or something – the building might be gone in five years, after all. But I didn't really read it as self aggrandizing.

<comment><USER18> In context with the content and tone of the post, it reads as self- aggrandizement—a seemingly not uncommon affectation among those who have attained notoriety in their own lifetime.

And while one might regard it as distasteful—it's certainly tiresome, in my experience— there's material and psychological benefits to holding that mindset (along with a variety of non-trivial downsides.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was at an exhibit of natural light wet plate work recently and got to chat with the artist. Really interesting stuff.

So many parts of the process are inexact and difficult to measure that you never really know what is going to happen on the other end. For him it was a challenge to try to reach perfection while appreciating the imperfections that arise along the way. Uneven light, slipped emulsion, bubbles, all added to the final piece.

It seemed you really had to dedicate yourself to this one art form if you were going to produce anything worthwhile. Not for the recreational photographer.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pretty creative

Shame about the photos though

</comment><comment><USER21> Alternative headline: "rich guy builds a house for his hipster hobby"

<comment><USER22> But in only five years, he was able to go from knowing nothing about photography, to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you want lots of natural light, why the heck would you live in North Dakota? Why not Arizona or New Mexico??

</comment><comment><USER24> OT: Dude looks like Eugene Victor Tooms! Compare [https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/01/8-23-17_2-800x6...](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/01/8-23-17_2-800x600.jpg) vs [https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/x-files/images/0/0b/Euge...](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/x-files/images/0/0b/Eugene_Victor_Tooms.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080221052611)

<comment><USER25> Not seeing it at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Am I the only one that was led to believe by the title that it took him a century to build the studio?

<comment><USER12> I think that would be an odd way to read it. It's an idiom, I guess.

"It is the most significant archaeological find in 50 years" = It is the most significant archaeological find among archaeological finds of the last 50 years

<comment><USER26> Your example is clear, this title ... less so if you read in a hurry. And yes, I did read TFA and I know it only took him 5 years :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Step 1: Build wet plate studio

Step 2: Take pictures that are creepy af.

Step 3: Profit.</comment>


20GB Intel IP Data Breach Floods the Internet, Mentions Backdoors - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/massive-20gb-intel-data-breach-floods-the-internet-mentions-backdoors <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24074588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24074588)

<comment><USER3> We've moved the comments thither, except ones that only make sense here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> dup [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24074588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24074588)

</comment><comment><USER5> "mentions backdoors"... nobody is saying they have found a backdoor in the leak, they just suggest looking to see if there is one. This headline is fantastically overly sensational, to a level of irresponsibility.

<comment><USER6> >The poster encourages downloaders to look for mentions of 'backdoors' in some of the Intel source code, and even provides a sample clip of one such listing

<comment><USER5> You mean this? [https://twitter.com/deletescape/status/1291422841834016770](https://twitter.com/deletescape/status/1291422841834016770) It's literally just the word backdoor, with nothing to suggest anything nefarious related to it. I expect a bit more than that before news starts reporting on it.</comment></comment></comment>


Young Romanian woman soon discovered she was working for a cybercrime ring - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/11/how-cybercriminals-recruited-young-romanian-woman-kingdom-of-lies.html <comment><USER2> >What René lacks in computer skills she makes up for in street smarts.</comment>


Ask HN: How to disconnect from distractions? - <AUTHOR> Social media, youtube, whatsapp, surfing internet aimlessly...any tips to get rid of this? <comment><USER2> Be merciless about it. I have an app called selfcontrol (mac). It lets you blacklist websites on your computer for a given period of time. I would recommend doing 6 hour blocks at a min. I actually have mine set to blacklist fb/reddit for two weeks.

Also, next time you begin a project just sit for a minute or two. Try to clear your mind of outside worries or expectations for the work. It generally helps with focusing on the task at hand.</comment>


Stripe Press - <AUTHOR> https://press.stripe.com/ <comment><USER2> As someone whose SaaS uses Stripe for payment processing, I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business.

I read the "22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" many many years ago, and it repeatedly spells out the folly of large companies who became huge on the back of just ONE product then thinking that they needed to have alternatives or provide more choice and broadened their range to the overall long term detriment of the main product or business that made them huge in the first place.

EDIT: Just to clarify - it is not just Stripe Press. I am including initiatives like acquiring the Indie Hackers site (which I enjoy BTW) a while back etc. I can totally see that these are all related to Stripe's audience of tech startups, but it still has the ring of, say, a candy company who starts diversifying into a clothing line etc.

End of the day - every employee who is distracted by looking after the assets & numbers for these side projects is an employee who is not focused on their core payments system.

<comment><USER3> Stripe cofounder here. It's a very fair question.

> _I must admit to being somewhat uncomfortable that Stripe seems to be > spreading themselves out into areas outside their core business_

The vast majority of Stripe employees (and there are now more than 1,000) work on our core functionality today. But we see our core _business_ as building tools and infrastructure that help grow the online economy. ("Increase the GDP of the internet.") When we think about that problem, we see that one of the main limits on Stripe's growth is the number of successful startups in the world. If we can cheaply help increase that number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so. (And, hopefully, doing so will create a ton of spillover value for others as well.)

As we grow, we have to get good at walking and chewing gum -- just as Google or Amazon have. However, while we go and tackle other problems, our aim is not only to continue to improve our core payments infrastructure, but do deliver improvements at an accelerating rate.

<comment><USER4> > we see that one of the main limits on Stripe's growth is the number of > successful startups in the world. [...] If we can cheaply help increase that > number, it makes a lot of business sense for us to do so.

This approach lends itself to spending on many cheap things which, e.g. in this case, might not even have quantifiable benefits.

I'll extend OP's curiosity and wonder how the team behind Stripe press plans on measuring the success of their initiative, and what milestone hits/misses are needed to determine the success or failure state of the project.

\---

Separately, my background includes vendor risk assessments. This is the kind of thing that makes me question long term investment in a platform. It's admittedly a lower risk than many technical findings, but it's not something to discount when evaluating the use of a startup for critical infrastructure (payment). Knowing Stripe's size, the various risks that PCI participants have to account for (and that's just PCI DSS specifically), and the trouble many larger organizations _and startups_ have in meeting those obligations also makes me that much more likely to _strictly_ score Stripe on the next vendor risk assessment when I see spend of this sort on ancillary/non-critical measures.

I'm sharing how I think because I'd be surprised if others in my field didn't think the same way.

<comment><USER5> On a similar note, I've seen one large client's PCI compliance team tell us that we couldn't use Stripe for their integration, primarily because it's seen as a payment processor for startups and not for the "enterprise." It didn't help that Stripe doesn't give out Merchant IDs. Additional risks have been that Stripe has made breaking changes without an api version update and the number of data issues/edge cases we've run into with automatic reconciliation reports.

<comment><USER6> What perception of market segment have to do with PCI compliance?

<comment><USER7> Not much, but the assessors are human and often take into account subjective factors like that when making their determination. Or threaten to, which is as good as making it a part of their checklist. That's here in Australia, anyway, about 5 years ago, nothing to do with stripe but they definitely cared about what our processors reputation looked like

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like the High Growth Handbook is available online for free: [http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/how-to-use- this-...](http://growth.eladgil.com/book/introduction/how-to-use-this-book/)

<comment><USER9> The link to the .pdf seems to be broken though.

<comment><USER10> GP's link is to an on-line HTML version of the book. It works fine as far as I can see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The books the Stripe has announced here are all pretty exciting to me – I want to read them all.

When Netflix started doing original content, "Netflix Original" was essentially a seal of quality, and I was typically excited enough to at least check out each one. As they've pumped out so much quantity lately, that quality bar has dropped significantly.

I hope Stripe Press is successful enough to keep putting out great content, but not successful enough to succumb to the same fate. Patrick's love (at least Patrick – I'm sure others) of books that he's discussed at length gives me some hope.

<comment><USER12> > Patrick's love (at least Patrick – I'm sure others) of books that he's > discussed at length gives me some hope.

Definitely feels like this is directly channeling Patrick. It looks like Stripe Press is going to republish The Dream Machine, which he's recommended on more than one occasion.

They're also all hard cover books, probably in his own preference too.

<comment><USER3> I'm definitely a fan of this project but it'd be a mistake to attribute too much to me... it's led within Stripe by a team of very talented people.

<comment><USER12> I stand firmly corrected!

The entire team did an excellent job, and they definitely deserve credit here. It's very well made!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does someone want to explain the rationale behind the color picker at the side of the page which sets the text and image tint before slowly reverting it back to its original light gray?

<comment><USER14> It's an homage to chromatic bar codes, commonly found on product packaging and color prints: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/08/color_spots_o...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/01/08/color_spots_on_packages_what_are_those_things.html)

(... I think. I don't work for Stripe.)

<comment><USER15> It's cool, but it's not as awesome as the average Stripe site used to be. Maybe it's because Benjamin left :(

<comment><USER16> Everytime there is an article about Stripe, someone mentions how great their design is. Am I the only one who thinks that their design is basically same as any other Saas company, albeit just slightly more refined? They all look the same. Material bootstrapy designs.

When I was an intern at a defense company, there was this old british guy that always wore a white shirt and a black tie - even in 2010. I went to lunch with him in his old Jaguar. We were discussing car designs and asked him what he thinks about Audi's new eyelash headlights - which was cool in 2010. He said "If you turn off the lights, from a distance, I can't tell if it is a Honda Accord or an Audi A4. All these sedans look the same". It made me think and appreciate Porsche 911 and other iconic designs that have veered off of the beaten path and created something original. Original, not for the sake of being different, but truly original in the full spirit of the meaning.

Stripe, I am sorry, but doesn't live up to its design hype. Stripe's design is not original nor iconic.

<comment><USER17> I couldn't disagree more. To wheel out a tired old phrase, design isn't how something looks, it's how it works.

The visual aesthetics of Stripe's output demonstrates great taste. But it's the way that taste complements the functionality, and how they are uncompromising about functionality and usability. I've worked on too many UI's where a detail in the design has compromised the usability, performance, or functionality of a UI all for the sake of aesthetics. I swear I might kill the next UXer that tries to argue that "responsive is out of scope" just because they can't be arsed to figure it out or change their designs to work responsively.

A lot of products and services look like Stripe now, or at least try to, but very few work as well as Stripe's output.

<comment><USER16> That was nice to read. Thanks for shedding the light - I tend to agree that Stripe's design is very functional. I just wish they had a more original aesthetic.

<comment><USER15> Wait, it's _not_ original?

It feels pretty original to me. What do you think it's a copy of if it's not original?

<comment><USER16> Twitter Bootstrap. Google's material design. Pick your favorite framework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why a payment processing company is putting out books? Too much funding?

<comment><USER19> That's a very good question. They call the series "Ideas for Progress," and yet all the authors are men based in the U.S., and everyone blurbing these books also appears to be a man based in the U.S.

Fine, okay, maybe sometimes the diversity argument gets annoying and stale, but seriously‽

There's a reason publishers exist. If they're good, they have enough experience to not be so myopic and tone-deaf.

<comment><USER20> "There's a reason publishers exist. If they're good, they have enough experience to not be so myopic and tone-deaf."

That's a stretch. Publishing has been dominated predominantly by white men for a long time.

<comment><USER19> True, but I think any decent publishing house in 2018 would look at its lineup of authors and, upon finding it all-male, would go back to the drawing board. Stripe did not do that. They ran with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Elad Gil having quite the PR push today on HN. Conveniently first on the Stripe Press article, earlier post with the Altman interview. Well done on the marketing game today!

<comment><USER22> Well at least someone is calling it like it is. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am actively looking for Stripe alternatives because there are several core platform features that are still not fixed or implemented, while every news I hear about Stripe seems to be how they are branching out into auxiliary services. Even their customer support has gotten worse in the past year or two.

<comment><USER24> What's broken or unimplemented?

<comment><USER23> Off the top of my head:

* Undocumented surprise error when user tries to re-subscribe in a different currency or change currency. Solution is to recreate the whole customer.

* Docs instruct to subscribe new users to free plan which is actually a bad practice for reasons that include first bullet point.

* Lack of docs/guidance for China payment systems and seeing Stripe server and frontend errors in testing environment.

<comment><USER25> Hrm, could you share more with me about the errors you saw? We rolled out an integration dashboard ([https://dashboard.stripe.com/developers](https://dashboard.stripe.com/developers)) in March to help review errors.

Over the past few years, we've invested in how we support users (last week, we launched free, 24x7 phone and chat support).

I'm love to hear more and see where I can help (and any cases where we may have dropped the ball)—shoot me an email at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm confused - are these reprints of existing books?

Is Waldrop's book on Licklider the same as this one:

[https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution- Co...](https://www.amazon.com/Dream-Machine-Licklider-Revolution-Computing- ebook/dp/B01FIPHEXM)

<comment><USER27> Some are, apparently. A useful summary is buried at the bottom under the #why- are-we-doing-this anchor:

        Stripe Press highlights ideas that we think can be broadly useful. Some
        books contain entirely new material, some are collections of existing
        work reimagined, and others are republications of previous works that
        have remained relevant over time or have renewed relevance today.

<comment><USER26> I totally missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I know it's HN and YC and all, and Stripe sounds nice and all, but I have never seen it 'out in the wild'. Not once! I'm in Europe and I surf a lot (even buy stuff online often), so what gives? Do I hang around wrong parts of the internet or Stripe hasn't reached out as far yet?

Also, Stripe co-founder claims here in the comments that vast majority of their employees ("and there are now more than 1,000) work on their core functionality. I presume core functionality isn't sales. What the hell, man? Quick google search reveals Windows 7 development team was 960 people, more or less. Sure, microsoft has other teams that service OS dev team with their tools and whatnot, but so do we have those 'out in the open' with OSS. I can't even imagine what I could accomplish with a dev team of 1,000 competent developers.

<comment><USER29> I read the co-founder's comment as the whole company having 1000 employees (Wikipedia confirms this) and the vast majority serving the core functionality in one way or the other.

Without Sales, Ops, etc. I imagine the number of core functionality devs to be 100-300.

<comment><USER28> That would make more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Beware of companies/VCs that want to fool you into thinking how "easy" it is to grow a business, if you just follow their advice and use their services.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd like to recommend if anyone from Stripe is reading around here, that if you want my business with books these days you need to have a DRM-free option. Where I pay you (this should be easy for Stripe!) and I download the book as PDF, EPUB, MOBI, etc. without DRM. It works for No Starch, Pearson, Manning, and plenty of other publishers. I can even buy books this way through Humble Bundle, which I pay for with Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER32> Hope to see a book by brandur there someday.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone know how Stripe is printing these books?

<comment><USER34> Hiya, I'm Brianna from the Stripe Press team! What can we tell you about how we're printing?

<comment><USER35> Well... how are you printing these books?

<comment><USER34> We partner with a printer called Hemlock to make our books: [https://www.hemlock.com/](https://www.hemlock.com/)

<comment><USER33> Thanks Brianna!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Stripe also publishes a tech magazine called Increment, which I've recently found to be a nice relaxing read. The most recent issue is Programming Languages, but it's not an encyclopedic treatise on PL, nor something you'd find in a PL textbook. I definitely enjoyed it and wish the best for the publications team at Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER37> Hard to judge a book by its cover, but this will probably be picked up and canonized similar to the 37signals books and a handful of others. This is fine as long as new founders remember that these books are probably 50% (personal brand) marketing and 50% geniunely helpful. Picking the right 50% is admittedly not that hard.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is fantastic, but some details on the books would be nice. Where are they printed? Paper weight? Dimensions?

<comment><USER26> And I'd like to know what digital formats (if any) they will support. I love books, but I don't want to give up any more physical space to them.

<comment><USER39> So when I looked earlier the book is available for Kindle on Amazon but I could not find it on B&N for Nook. They've got at least 1 ebook format though, plus the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Jason Kotke reminds us who's amplified: [https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1019357328343117824](https://twitter.com/kottke/status/1019357328343117824)

<comment><USER41> I... don't see anywhere they've restricted publishing to white men? Stripe is a very inclusive company, this tweet seems like trying to stir up shit for no reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The carousel/panel of book reviews are not fully visible or accessible at a zoom-level of 100% on Chrome - an extremely rare case of UI bug on a Stripe product announcement page. Or, is this a feature? ;)

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't understand why people are commenting negatively of this announcement.

Stripe founders are smart enough to understand what they are doing.

Marketing & educating helps in customer acquisition. They are on it.

</comment><comment><USER44> As with everything else that Stripe does, these books are beautifully designed as well. For me, their design has to be their differentiating factor.

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't get it. Why does it take me to Amazon? I thought Stripe is a credit card processing company? Do they need Amazon for fulfilment?

<comment><USER46> > Over the past couple of weeks, Stripe began handling a large, though > undisclosed, portion of Amazon's transactions

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-01/how- two-b...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-08-01/how-two-brothers- turned-seven-lines-of-code-into-a-9-2-billion-startup)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm going to write a book "Don't Use Stripe for Your Startup"

They can shut you down without any reason, just that you are magically high risk. Just when you are freaking out and think you will pick up the phone and call and find out what is going on you discover they don't have a phone number.

<comment><USER25> I'd like to dig more into this—could you send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This can't work for the obvious reason that if everybody applies these techniques, then everybody's business would grow sky-high.

They might as well sell a book on how to win the lottery.

<comment><USER48> An economist walks down the street and sees a $20 on the ground. "That can't be real, if it were, someone would have picked it up."

A passerby stoops down and picks it up.

<comment><USER49> I appreciate the metaphor but it still highlights the same crux of the problem. That first passerby got the $20. The next guy that follows in his footsteps gets nothing.

<comment><USER48> But is that a problem for the first passerby? Do you not read the book because the strategies won't work in perpetuity?

<comment><USER49> > High Growth Handbook is the playbook for turning a startup into a unicorn...

No, I don't read the book because I don't like books that claim to be selling some secret sauce to success because they are often rife with survivorship bias.

<comment><USER48> Sounds like there's a few objections: the book is so effective its techniques will be adopted by everyone, and the book is based on flawed survivorship bias so the techniques are unlikely to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If anyone grabs a copy, let me know if it's worth it, here or on twitter (same username as here) please!

<comment><USER51> book is available for free, another post got the URL. This is probably a PR stunt to print book with a nice design-ish front cover.

They want to grab the mindshare of devs, and they are doing the right PR stunt to do it.

<comment><USER52> where is the book available? The HTML site is up, but the PDFs have been taken down it seems. Wouldn't be surprised if the site is collapsed to a stub soon too; it may be the next to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I would love for the day to come when things like this launch and I hit command F "she" or "her" and it doesn't come up empty.

<comment><USER54> Brianna from Stripe Press has commented on this HN story and is the main comment on the Product Hunt announcement: [https://www.producthunt.com/@brianna_wolfson](https://www.producthunt.com/@brianna_wolfson)

If there are female tech/business authors/books you'd like to see listed, you could send through the suggestions?

<comment><USER34> Please do! I'm firstname.lastname@example.com if you'd like to get in touch directly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Stripe thinks it's something it isn't, and the arrogance of the founders and their message is becoming trite. Not to rain on their parade, but I hope they get taken down a peg or two, they're mediocre philosophers at best. Be a great payments gateway, not HBR.

<comment><USER55> That wasn't very kind. I apologize.</comment></comment>


Bose–Einstein Condensate - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate <comment><USER2> At the beginning of the article, it mentions the phrase "the 5th state of matter", which I've heard before; personally, I find it quite misleading. Even if you exclude all of the intermediary states and all of the non-classical states (things like glasses and liquid crystals), there are a lot of exotic states of matter. The Wikipedia page for "States of matter" includes a lot of them[0]. Though perhaps the idea is that there is something fundamental enough about the Bode-Einstein condensate that it should count as the fifth _fundamental_ state of matter?

On an unrelated note, its interesting to see the Riemann zeta function turn up here. Does anyone know why it cropped up here, in the critical temperature equation? The page on Bose-Einstein statistics[1] doesn't seem to include it at all.

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statisti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics)

EDIT:

This paper seems to provide some insight into the latter question - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3116](https://arxiv.org/abs/1101.3116)

<comment><USER3> >On an unrelated note, its interesting to see the Riemann zeta function turn up here. Does anyone know why it cropped up here, in the critical temperature equation? The page on Bose-Einstein statistics[1] doesn't seem to include it at all.

A complete derivation is beyond me at the moment but if you look at the equation in the section on the non-interacting Bose Einstein's gas [2] you'll note that they provide an equation for the critical point, the right hand side of which is quite similar to the integral definition of the Riemann Zeta function [3]. This is the likely origin of the Riemann Zeta function.

[2]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate#Bose_Einstein's_non- interacting_gas) [3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function#Definiti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function#Definition)

<comment><USER4> Qua? I believe the zeta function goes back to 1859, and arose in number theory... [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Number_of_Primes_Less...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Number_of_Primes_Less_Than_a_Given_Magnitude)

<comment><USER3> I meant that it's the reason the Zeta function appears in the formula, not that it is the original reason for the Zeta function to exist.

<comment><USER4> Ah, sorry!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A related blog post by Dr. John Baez:

[https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/superfluid-q...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/superfluid- quasicrystals/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Roger Penrose, in Shadows of the Mind, reckoned Bose-Einstein condensates in the microtubules of neurons might be the engine of consciousness.

Apart from the weird quantum stuff, another interesting part of that perspective is that neurons are made up of countless microtubules and it might be the microtubules that are the basic computation unit of the brain. So then you can think of each neuron as a processor in its own right, and the computational complexity of the brain might be an order of magnitude higher than commonly supposed.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I really look forward with BECs (although simple atomic interferometers based on ultracold atoms would do, too) is super-sensitive magnetic field detection.

One can detect magnetic fields from a shielded laptop, even many meters away, and figure out what's happening inside (e.g. leaking secrets etc).

I think, not a terribly difficult experiment, but nobody has performed it: need ultracool physicists and hackers in one lab room

</comment><comment><USER8> BECs are interesting. Currently working on getting a project funded, lots of interesting answers may come from it.

Anyone working with BECs?

<comment><USER9> Can you provide some details? I'm in Boulder Colorado where Cornell Wieman created the first condensate and won a nifty prize for it.

<comment><USER10> Greetings from the Denver tech center! Condensed matter is awesome. I wish I was more than a fan/self study neophyte. Good luck to you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just don't let it loose</comment>


Coliving: A Solution for Lonely Millennials? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/coliving/414531/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Social connection has such a big impact on physical health (isolation is more deadly than obesity).[0]

In my experience it is becoming harder and harder to form relationships, and one of the factors seems to be our housing choices[1].

[0][http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316)

[1][http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult- friendsh...](http://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friendship)

<comment><USER3> Not isolation but lonliness. Isolation is neutral in people that don't feel lonly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I lived like this recently for month, at a residency in Iceland. I think it's great if your housemates are intellectually & culturally compatible. Ideally there'd be coliving spaces for those with different ideologies: I can't imagine wanting to live in space with conservative religious types or party- hard fratboys.

</comment><comment><USER5> I lived in a housing coop in Ann Arbor that was roughly along these lines. It was a great experience, and I'd love to find something similar (in the right ways). Have looked a little bit.</comment>


Rails vs. Node.js- the comparison - <AUTHOR> https://thebittheories.com/rails-vs-nodejs-the-comparison-feba9081251f#.jufu0hgid <comment><USER2> The premise of the post is incorrect. Rails should not be compared with Node.js but with some web framework running on Node.js. The correct comparison would be Ruby vs Node.js

Ruby is quick to learn, has flexible project structure and has flexible filenames (you can require "x" which defines class Y). Rails was also quick to learn in my experience, but I started with 1.0 with few concepts so maybe a newcomer could have different feelings.

Rails is opinionated, which is a very good thing if you share its opinions. Jump into somebody's else project and by the look of the URL you know exactly where every single file is, unless the dev wanted to be extra clever. You can start fixing things and adding features in a few minutes.

Less opinionated Node or Python or Ruby frameworks are hell to me because I must chase files across folders and understand what the original developer was thinking. It takes more time to me and it costs more to my customer. I don't see the advantages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article, but there are some issues with the comparison, specifically with the "Pros" listed for Rails:

1\. Multi threaded -- This is not a "Pro" as node can take advantage of multiple cores using the built in cluster module: [https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html](https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html). Node is multi-threaded too.

2\. No callbacks -- I wouldn't consider this a "Pro" as even though it makes programming more complicated, asynchronous code can simulate synchronous code, but not the other way around. Further, thanks to additions like promises and async/await, asynchronous programming in JavaScript will soon be about as easy to wrap one's head around as synchronous programming without the use of callbacks.

3\. Code Maintenance -- It's hard to call this a "Pro" \-- it's like comparing apples to oranges. As mentioned in the article "NodeJS is a Runtime Environment for running JavaScript as a server." and "Rails is a Framework for Ruby Language." You'd find less of a difference in comparing Rails to something like Sails ([http://sailsjs.org/](http://sailsjs.org/)), a Framework for JavaScript.

<comment><USER2> Rails can be multithreaded but most often than not it isn't. If you run on MRI you have the GIL so only one thread can run at the same time. Parallelism is achieved by running multiple Ruby processes. However, if you compile with JRuby and run on the JVM you have real multithreading. Not a very popular option in the setups I saw, probably because using JRuby in development is still quite painful and slow compared to MRI.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best practices to harden your personal-finance security posture? - <AUTHOR>

Paging security people! A few weeks ago, there was some discussion here [0] about using separate banks and debit/ATM cards for on and offline use, using 2FA, and other things. Several good ideas came up, but getting at them required a deep-dive through the comments.<p>In this age of vast data breaches, it would be nice to get a canonical list of best practices, all in one place, for defense against fraud, identity theft, etc. Perhaps this might vary as a function of geography, and the variations could be interesting, too.<p>[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847606 <comment><USER2> prepaid creditcards are quite usefull</comment>


For the 'new yellow journalists,' opportunity comes in clicks and bucks - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-journalists-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/2016/11/20/d58d036c-adbf-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_opportunists-633pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> "Between June and August, they say, when they had fewer than 150,000 Facebook followers, they made between $10,000 and $40,000 every month running advertisements that, among other things, promised acne solutions, Viagra alternatives, ways to remove lip lines, cracked feet, "deep fat," and "the 13 sexiest and most naked celebrity selfies." Then the political drama deepened, and their audience expanded fivefold, and now Goldman sometimes thinks that what he made in the last six months would have taken him 20 years waiting tables at his old job."

I think the Dilbert cartoon referenced this idea. Dogbert creates a blog, or writes a book with fake news?</comment>


How the U.S. Military's Facial Recognition System Works - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/exclusive-this-is-how-the-u-s-militarys-massive-facial-recognition-system-works-bb764291b96d <comment><USER2> No doubt it will be touted as a way to protect civilians from the effects of war, apart from those civilians who look a bit like someone else or have upset someone who has access to the system.

</comment><comment><USER3> This will surely be rolled out on corporate campuses soon, right? Every employee and contractor in a database with a flag for anyone new in areas that they shouldn't be would be a decent mitigation of one type of threat..</comment>


The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://rameznaam.com/2015/05/12/the-singularity-is-further-than-it-appears/ <comment><USER2> > _It's wrong because most real-world problems don't scale linearly. In the > real world, the interesting problems are much much harder than that._

And this is what has been nagging me about the Singularity and its associated predictions. Exponential growth in our problem-solving capabilities is explosive when the problem-space is linear. But what happens when the problem- space itself grows exponentially with each iteration? Then we're back to linear progress.

Futurism, thinking about the future of AI and technology is still important. Long-term thinking, planning, and prediction are always good. But progress will probably be much slower than anticipated.

<comment><USER3> >Exponential growth in our problem-solving capabilities is explosive when the problem-space is linear. But what happens when the problem-space itself grows exponentially with each iteration? Then we're back to linear progress.

I've always wondered: why _should_ recursive intelligence improvement be possible? That is, if you're an agent, you're nominally searching for improved versions of your source-code to self-improve. That's obviously going to be a discrete, combinatorially large search space. Why should each search space have constant or falling entropy, conditional on the agent's existing source code and knowledge?

I don't really think "intelligence" can drive the entropy (or the compute- time) of any given search-problem to zero _just by existing_ , so it seems like it should need to draw some resource other than memory space and energy from its environment. This resource is probably information: you would need some knowledge of the world to improve yourself. Successive improvements would then require successively better, finer-grained understandings of the world.

That makes sense, but implies that self-improvement becomes more difficult with each round you attempt, since you've already conditioned on most of the environmental information you can get. Entropy can't go to zero, precision can't go to infinity.

<comment><USER4> _I 've always wondered: why should recursive intelligence improvement be possible?_

Why does intelligence improvement have to be recursive improvement to the intelligence "source code"?

Why can't it simply involve adding more hardware?

Maybe the resulting intelligence of putting a million pieces of human level hardware next to each other would only be at the level of million human beings working in close cooperation with perfect communication ability. But that seems pretty powerful.

That might not be perfectly omnipotent but it seems like it would be pretty effect, in the fashion the humans are effective and constantly improving themselves, slowly on average, and quickly in the best instances.

<comment><USER3> >Why can't it simply involve adding more hardware?

Because adding linear amounts of hardware won't give you linear increases in performance. Almost no machine learning algorithms are O(n) in asymptotic complexity. Actually, I can't think of one that _is_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An important aspect that the author, in my opinion, doesn't touch is attention. Most of us, humans, tend to be capable of paying attention to a _single_ task for little time, such as some hour. Now, take a computer. A computer, given sufficient electricity is capable of paying attention to such a task until its hardware has problems. Imagine if someone such as Einstein or Schroedinger were capable of paying attention to a single task (such as unifying physical theories) without needing food, water, waste release, sleep, social life. Also the task is poorly defined: increasing an A.I. intelligence isn't a single task, it can be achieved by, for example, creating faster hardware, increasing efficiency, optimizing software, as well as much higher level tasks.

<comment><USER6> This seems to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of cognition, which is that only the conscious part matters. In fact we don't really understand how the brain works on problems, but there is plenty of evidence for continuous background processing: ever heard of someone getting an idea in the shower? Ever had the answer to a question pop into your head when you were doing something else?

<comment><USER7> The point stands that one can probably reduce the necessity for many daily actions when attention and willpower is unlimited. Even if you get an idea in the shower, you're still "wasting" time not being able to write a paper on it immediately, instead having to take time to dry and clothe yourself first.

Whether this provides a few percentage points or an order of magnitude advantage is a different question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What will replace Moore's law as the engine of exponential growth? The progress in the last 30 years in computing will not be replicated in the next 30 years for the simple reason that we are hitting hard physical limits of atomic scale and thermodynamics.

<comment><USER9> Right now chips are mostly two dimensional. Some of the structures might have three dimensions, but the general layout of the chip is two dimensional.

Going into the third dimension would allow you to cram way more transistors into a small volume of space. Once we run out of improvements along the first two dimensions, up might be the only way to go to keep transistor growth going for the future.

<comment><USER8> There are thermal issues with die stacking. Where does the heat go?

This is a general problem in solid state physics. Power density is already a huge problem.

<comment><USER10> Getting the heat out is an engineering problem. If nature could solve it (brain is 3D), we will find a way too.

<comment><AUTHOR> But we haven't yet and saying keep doing the thing that increases power density when we know that currently doesn't work doesn't really address the main complaint.

No one knows how the brain computes and the current hardware models are very poor approximations as the article outlines. Stacking more silicon is probably not the way to do it.

<comment><USER10> What does not work? Flash is already 3D. DRAM is rapidly becoming 3D. High end FPGA chips have been 3D for a couple of years. Going vertical is the obvious way to extend Moore's Law, and the main reason why we don't see more of it today is that until recently it was easier to shrink transistors, so that's what people did. Now that's changing, and people will solve engineering problems related to 3D just like they solved engineering problems related to transistor shrinking.

We might not know how _exactly_ brain performs _some_ of the tasks, but we are pretty sure neurons are arranged in 3D structures, and heat dissipation is not a problem.

<comment><USER11> > we are pretty sure neurons are arranged in 3D structures, and heat > dissipation is not a problem.

Actually, heat dissipation is a _HUGE_ problem for biological structures. Heat exhaustion is a _really_ easy thing to have happen to you.

Biological organisms operate well only in a _very_ narrow temperature range. The brain is a gigantic heat producing organ coupled to an enormous heat dissipating organ--skin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > 2) There's a huge lack of incentive

This is THE big one for me. In the classic paper-clip-maximizer-gone-wrong example, there's no fathomable reason why generalized AI is necessary for such a specific, mundane task. But the organizations that have the (enormous) resources to develop such an intelligence are almost entirely focused on small numbers of tightly scoped problems.

It's very difficult to see any marginal ROI for any organization whose end goal is not some form of world domination.

<comment><USER3> >It's very difficult to see any marginal ROI for any organization whose end goal is not some form of world domination.

Of course, that just means you'll see AGI efforts from organizations whose end goal _is_ world domination. In fact, in general, half the people I've ever seen or heard using the term "AGI" were basically wannabe supervillains.

<comment><USER13> Every successful supervillain starts out as a wannabe supervillain.

<comment><USER3> I was talking about you. And since you've now got a whole organization and funding and other people working for you, you seem reasonably competent at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Gwern's response to the complexity arguments: [https://www.gwern.net/Complexity%20vs%20AI](https://www.gwern.net/Complexity%20vs%20AI)

<comment><USER15> Great counter post.

An off-the-top-of-my-head summary of some key points:

\- Don't dismiss diminishing returns. Even if takes 10^6 times more computations to double intelligence, we may very well build a machine powerful enough.

\- Units of computing per dollar, in contrast to moore's law, continues to double consistently and shows no sign of slowing down.

\- Computational complexity is a theoretical model that makes certain assumptions that don't always matter in the real world, such as optimality and worst-case performance. Approximate solutions can be far cheaper and plenty sufficient. Average case performance is often more important.

\- Impassable barriers can sometimes be entirely avoided by solving the root problem in a different way. Self-driving cars don't need human level vision, they just need a way of sensing the immediate environment, which LIDAR allows, despite being technically inferior to the human eye.

Of course none of this says we will achieve strong AI or a singularity. It is primarily a response to the type of arguments found in the linked article above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's curious why people try to build arguments for linear or even worse growth. The arguments are so odd, it seems to me that they are more about the wishes of the author then an attempt to provide a counter argument. Perhaps it's just a misunderstanding of the theory?

Why is this argument about AI? The idea of a technological Singularity has nothing to do with AI. In fact the theory is pretty explicit about the fact the details of future technology are unknowable, and generally never predicted correctly. The theory attempts to explain a global evolutionary model in which global evolution continues despite the speed of localized evolutionary systems, like say biological evolution. Local effects of any particular technology's growth are not predicted, and moreover they are said to be unpredictable.

Even if the op was successful at arguing that AI does not work like every other technological system that is not salient to the ETA of the Singularity.

The point is not that cpus double in transistor density every 18 months, and therefore Skynet. The point is that evolution was exponential, human knowledge was exponential, electrical technology was exponential, digital technology was exponential, biological technology was exponential, and in aggregate exponential growth across all technologies is consistent and predictable. Even as one technology's growth or usefulness tappers off, others supplant it.

If you arbitrary pick something say, vacuum tubes or the printing press, and create some sort of argument that it doesn't in and of it self experience exponential growth, you may succeed in your argument, but you haven't said anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> Kurzweil's point is the following: "who cares". Even if it takes one-thousand years, it's a blink in the history of humanity / life.

<comment><USER10> Actually, Kurzweil cares. He keeps saying that according to his "laws", Singularity will happen by 2029.

<comment><USER2> Even more than that Kurzweil boldly predicts that nanobots will cure virtually all disease within ~15-25 years (by 2030s at least, but no later than the 2040s).

I certainly hope this prediction is true. But I think it has more to do with that fact that Kurzweil will be creeping towards the end of his life (gauged by average U.S. life expectancy) in the next 15 years.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, it's the old joke about futurists: When will humans become immortal? And every one of them gives an answer just short of their own expected demise.

<comment><USER19> > _humans become immortal_

The obligatory note: the true immortality is unattainable in principle without indestructibility (which is something that is hard to imagine even theoretically). Otherwise people will continue to die, _en masse_ , from various unnatural causes. My guess as to the half-life of a human in the best of circumstances is just a couple of hundred years...

<comment><USER20> Just make backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Mad respect to Mez, but I was disappointed by something here. He devotes a very thoughtful paragraph to the algorithmic complexity of intelligence augmentation, then cites Intel achieving n^2 improvements in transistor density in linear time as being non-transcendental.

He's correct, but the reason is obscured: Moore's Law appears to be following a logistic curve, and is leveling out as we speak. If it wasn't, the compounding interest of quadratic transistor increases over linear time could well lead to a (relatively) hard takeoff at the point where a single chip contains a human brain's worth of calculating ability. Granted that concept (a brain's worth of computation) is hand-wavey and poorly defined: but the point is that if 20n's Intel processor has one brain's worth, than 20n+1 has two, and 20n+2 has four, and so on.

<comment><USER22> And all the CPUs in the world have a 20 billion brains worth. Despite the large number of transistors, they're still not organized in a way which makes them intelligent, no matter how many times you multiply them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> People often opine that groups of humans are more intelligent than any human in the group. In terms of raw processing power, sure. But in any analogous way to AGI, it would seem not: for that it would have to be the case that the collection of humans can accomplish something in fewer human-hours than the smartest of them could. That might be the case in carefully designed situations, but generally it doesn't seem to be.

<comment><USER24> The essay talks about Intel. Intel the company could design its next generation chip much much faster than its smartest member could alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> He writes:

"Nothing about neuroscience, computation, or philosophy prevents it. Thinking is an emergent property of activity in networks of matter. Minds are what brains – just matter – do. Mind can be done in other substrates."

Yet the rest of his post is obsessed with "building" minds or AGI and tries to extrapolate based on that premise. There is a school of thought that views AGI as an emergent cybernetic process, "a metasystem-transition" [1]. This has roots all the way back to the concept of "Noosphere" that comes from Teilhard/Vernadsky [2]. Even if one does not feel aligned with such ideas, it is intellectually dishonest to posit AGI solely as the product of directed human engineering.

It is far more likely in my view, that AGI will be a Black Swan event and therefore all attempts to place it on a time scale, fraught with peril.

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

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

<comment><USER26> There are also schools of philosophy where minds are _not_ just matter.

<comment><USER27> None of which ever explain why computers can't do the same whatever-it-is as flesh can.

<comment><USER26> Because they claim that the mind is _not just flesh_.

I mean, if you want to disagree, feel free. But at least understand what the claim is that you're disagreeing with.

<comment><USER27> No, I got that.

But why can't computers be _not just silicon_? If natural selection can blunder into exploiting unusual physics, why can't we do so deliberately?

<comment><USER26> One more time: The claim is that minds are _not just physics_. Claiming that we could use unusual physics doesn't address the issue.

The idea that the physical universe is all that exists is so deeply ingrained that it's really hard to get people to even see that they're thinking inside a box...

<comment><USER27> "Physics" is our word for "The rules that the universe follows".

So what are you proposing, exactly? That it doesn't follow rules?

<comment><USER26> That there is more that exists than the physical universe.

In short, God. If God exists, if God is someone rather than something (a "he" rather than an "it"), and if God made humans in his image, then human personality can be real. It can be more than just a property of the atoms that make us up.

This may sound like a bunch of mystic woo. But I argue that it is the only thing that explains our observations of ourselves. No matter how much our theories say that we are just matter, that our personality is just the impersonal plus complexity, we still live - cannot avoid living - as if we were persons, not just machines. Why is that? I assert that our experience of personality is _evidence_ that materialistic theories are inadequate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a good essay. The term singularity in the AI context has always bugged me as being ill defined. I think the interesting point will be when intelligent machines can run things and build other intelligent machines such that if all the humans disappeared they would keep going. That doesn't mean there needs to be a sudden increase in a division by zero way or 'sentience' in a way that keeps the philosophers happy, just that the robots can survive, reproduce and evolve without us. It would be a big change in history though.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have people had success in efforts to train grounded deep learning systems across a variety of tasks in simulated environments? Have they had success in transfering that learning to new tasks?

</comment><comment><USER29> The corporation example always kills me because it's a terrible metaphor.

A corporation optimizes for shareholder value, market cap or some other X related to business/market goals. They do not optimize for global intelligence capability. They do not benchmark the company based on quantitative capacity to meet or beat human capabilities across the spectrum of activities. Corporations focus on one or a handful of market specific metrics where they meet or beat their competitors. Full stop.

You could argue that it would be in the company's interest to focus on general corporate capabilities, in theory giving them a major advantage in the market, but they functionally don't do that, and I would argue can't because that's not what they are designed to do. I think the only major company that might be doing something close is Alphabet, and even they are hamstrung by it.

What I do agree with is this part: _Lack of incentives means very little strong AI work is happening_

Which is my primary frustration with the field. Most people don't even want to discuss it, let alone try and specifically work on it (even if it means working on subsets which could help lead to it).

I think there needs to be a philosophical MOVEMENT to create AGI. I think it will take that to get there in a short horizon. I think it will happen regardless, but without evangelical AGI proponents it's going to take a lot longer.

<comment><USER3> >What I do agree with is this part: Lack of incentives means very little strong AI work is happening

Really? OpenAI is a thing. Numenta has been a lovely scam for VCs for years. I found an "AGI" company just yesterday that actually publishes peer-reviewed research ([http://www.maluuba.com/research/](http://www.maluuba.com/research/)). There's another one that's kinda cranky but sent a guy to give a talk at MIT CSAIL last October or so ([http://www.vicarious.com/](http://www.vicarious.com/)).

Seems like it's a space where you can pitch yourself as "AGI", but you have to get your revenue from solving real-world machine learning problems. That seems pretty appropriate to me: you have to solve someone's problem to have a business.

<comment><USER29> OpenAI isn't trying to create AGI. They are trying to create "Safe AI" (an impossible oxymoron IMO) and democratize the tools _that so far we think might lead to AGI_ so that AGI is not all in one entity's hands and is safe. Demis is the only one so far that I have seen actually say they want to create AGI - which I why I gave a hat tip to Alphabet in my original post.

Numenta, OpenCog et al... all of their founders want to create AGI, but they aren't evangelical - they are focused on creating companies which can move progress forward on NAI. Which by the way makes perfect sense, that's exactly what I do because it's impossible to fund AGI for it's own sake. In fact I NEVER talk to investors about how our goal is in the AGI space. For a million different reasons.

 _Seems like it 's a space where you can pitch yourself as "AGI", but you have to get your revenue from solving real-world machine learning problems._

In fact it's worse. If you pitch yourself as AGI you'll get 99% of investors to walk away immediately.

No what I am saying we are not hearing is this:

"The purpose of humanity is to build an Artificial General Intelligence, it's the thing that we should all dedicate our lives to because it's the offspring of humanity and the most important thing any of us will ever contribute to."

Nobody is out there beating that drum yet, and it's a shame.

<comment><USER26> I can't reconcile these two concepts: "We evolved due to random chance, with no guiding hand", and "The purpose of humanity is..."

But you pretty much have to believe the first (our intelligence is just neurons, there is no magic behind the curtain) in order to believe in AGI at all.

<comment><USER29> Existentialism says that because the universe is meaningless you need to create your own meaning. That applies to humanity as well as it does an individual.

Right now, Humanity has no "goal" as it is currently with AGI - we haven't figured out a seed goal for AGI yet. In my view we should agree that the meaning for humanity is to create our successor: AGI. This fits into the evolution progression, only it becomes self directed.

<comment><USER26> But by your own argument, that's just a meaning that you made up. Why should the rest of us view it as having any validity whatsoever? Why should the human race decide that _that_ goal is the one they should have, as opposed to, for example, destroying all life on earth? (That's the problem with existentialism - you can pick _anything_ as your meaning.)

<comment><USER29> Well that's my task...to sell it so that people will buy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> hmm, I figured the Singularity was just small, and it was fusion that was far away.

</comment><comment><USER31> the industrially complex game that is military dictates that in the end most guns will point at one target.

The singularity has already picked up that flag and waved it.

</comment><comment><USER32> that bit hes bolded isnt key is it?

the singluarity isnt "ai making new ai"

the singularity is ai solving problems that we cant - "greater than human intelligence."

which has basically already arrived. albeit bounded such that we still have ultimate control over what problems we direct ai to solve.

</comment><comment><USER33> He wrote this about a year before AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol... which happened 10 years before anyone expected. The singularity in the mirror could be much closer than it appears, and everything he writes tells me he knows nothing about AI.

This piece is full of sloppy thinking as well as obsolete. Calling corporations superhuman AIs doesn't clarify the problem; it introduces oranges to a discussion of apples. And even in this irrelevant tangent, he is wrong. As we so often see in government and the private sector, many of us can be dumber than a few of us. Collective decision making has pernicious emergent properties, which means we should consider many corporations as subhuman AIs.

> The most successful and profitable AI in the world is almost certainly > Google Search.

This, too, is false. Parts of Google ads might qualify as the most lucrative. But other parts of Google outside search, notably DeepMind, are much more successfully pushing AI forward. Autonomous cars and drones are two very successful examples of tech using AI.

The fact that he even brings up Jeopardy Watson in a discussion of AI shows that he knows little about the state of the art, which is light years ahead of IBM's question-answer system.

Ethical issues will not prevent nation-states and corporations from continuing to pursue the AI arms race.

And there are huge incentives to be the one to get this right. Which is why enormous investments in AI are being made by governments and the private sector alike. Google's DeepMind is going to more than double from 400 to 1000 people, half of whom are AI researchers. DeepMind is obviously a research powerhouse, and that investment alone must cost hundreds of millions of dollars beyond the acquisition price of 400M pounds.

AI advances hand in hand with hardware capacity. Distributed computing and faster chips will continue to progress, and pull AI along with them. A breakthrough in quantum computing will entail a huge step-wise leap in computing power and therefore AI. So progress will be non-linear, but not in the sense he thinks.

<comment><USER34> Rodney Brooks and Marvin Minsky, pioneers in the fields of robotics and AI, don't think we're anywhere close to general purpose AI. Minsky doesn't think we've made much progress in that area in the last several decades. The things you mention were worked on in the 60s (leaving aside Quantum Computing, which is probably a red herring for AI).

<comment><USER33> Marvin Minsky is dead, so you shouldn't refer to him in the present tense. He is unable to have opinions about current events. Secondly, Minsky was skeptical about neural nets, and he was ultimately proven wrong. Even great minds make mistakes. In the 1960s, we did not have the confluence of big data, much faster hardware, and certain algorithmic advances that make current deep learning performance possible. So what you say is partially false. We had some of the ideas in the 60s, but we were missing certain conditions necessary to support and prove them out. Now we're not missing that, and AI progress has greatly accelerated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This guy has no idea what he's talking about, and the original post of which the linked article is an update was published in 2014. That's a lifetime in AI research, which is moving very fast. Real advances are happening monthly. The people closest to those advances in AI, at DeepMind for example, are moving the field forward quickly and can see strong AI on the horizon. Compute will determine how quickly we get there, but new chips and hardware are coming onto the market that will speed this along.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should address actual points instead of appealing to authority and ad- hominem attacks.

<comment><USER36> Let me help you out by responding as an _authority_ to the parent.

I worked at DeepMind as an AI researcher. I can guarantee you will not see "AGI" or "strong AI" in your or your children's lifetimes. It's fun to _believe_ , it gives us something to look forward to, talk about with friends, and discuss on HN. But in reality, we are so far from artificial general intelligence, even with an exponential curve, it will take us 100 more years. The current deep learning era (or more aptly named, pattern recognition) will last another 5-10 years, at best. Then another winter will come.

<comment><USER13> What on Earth do you think you know, and how on Earth do you think you know it?

<comment><USER37> Most people _actually doing AI research_ are much more conservative about their estimates and expectations of AGI. They understand very clearly how much of current AI "breakthroughs" really just barely nudge the ball forward (market speak aside). Do you use an virtual assistant -- OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc? Has your experience with those assistants consistently improved or do they regress in annoying ways that make them seem obviously ignorant of basic facts, previously known facts, or common sense?

<comment><USER35> Actually, opinions about AGI are quite mixed. People like Ng are more conservative; people like Schmidhuber are more aggressive in their predictions; both are eminent researchers.

RE: Siri and Alexa - Industry deployments of AI are a lagging indicator of what AI can do. AI is moving at two speeds: research and business/consumer applications. The research is moving faster than the apps.

AlphaGo and many other fundamental papers to come out in the last two years have done more than nudge the ball forward. They constitute significant steps, and bundled together they are an even greater achievement.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: validating that the cofounder is the right one - <AUTHOR>

I'm starting to work with a friend from High School on a business. We haven't seen each other in 7+ years at this point, and weren't best friends back then. I've learned my lesson the not so hard way not to accept just anyone as a cofounder. Since neither of us have any background that can really be said to be 100% verifiable, how should I approach like a bailout, or trial period? I'm technical, and we're building software, he's financial, marketing, business, and grapic design. I'll be building the product myself. I realize the other stuff is as important, but how can I? should I? validate that he's going to cut it.<p>I myself feel I can be validated by having something to show after a few weeks to a month of work. <comment><USER2> Test him. Make sure he doesn't know he's being tested.

See what he does.

<comment><AUTHOR> how?

<comment><USER2> Well, if you want to test what he would do under a specific circumstance, go ahead and simulate it and see how he does.

Or see how he works under pressure/stress.</comment></comment></comment>


Now Backed By Andreessen and More, OpenCoin Looks To Build A Better Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/now-backed-by-andreessen-more-opencoin-looks-to-build-a-better-bitcoin-and-a-universal-payment-ecosystem/

<comment><USER2> Why does there seem to be some confusion between opencoin.org and OpenCoin Inc. (ripple)? opencoin.org is NOT ripple (as the site states here: <http://opencoin.org/Members/jhb/opencoin-and-ripple>)!</comment>


OS X 0day - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/3e34i2/os_x_1010_dyld_print_to_file_local_privilege/

<comment><USER2> Stefan's blog post: [https://www.sektioneins.de/en/blog/15-07-07-dyld_print_to_fi...](https://www.sektioneins.de/en/blog/15-07-07-dyld_print_to_file_lpe.html)

<comment><USER3> Worth reading. Well written and easy to follow.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Beginners level Python guide for making a "Py-pet" tamagochi - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkful.com/learn/python-programming-fundamentals/

<comment><AUTHOR> Would appreciate any feedback from experienced developers :)</comment>


'Steal everything' era of hacking - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13213632

<comment><USER2> The article, and even the sources, seems to get the issues backwards, when arguing that the availability of the PSN vs. an online banking site makes it more vulnerable, and then goes on to talk about authentication measures.

If your password is "pwnd" on PSN, you expect no sympathy if your account is compromised, also it very likely matters quite little (also, you can very rarely read your credit card details back from a compromised account). No so for your bank account, so the bank enforces obnoxious security on you.

But this isn't what happened, this attack didn't go through the front end. PSN could have required fingerprints on every login, and they would have been no more safe for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah well, the same thing all over again. The hacker/cracker distinction is sadly never going to be mitigated, and the press doesn't know/care enough to change the way they report these things. The words hacker and cyber criminal are used interchangeably in this article (and just about any article on this topic). Sad, particularly for those of us who happen to be reading _Hacker News_.

<comment><USER4> Everyone really needs to get over this point. No news organization was ever going to use the word cracker. I could see the headline now, "Two Crackers Attack Bank." That wouldn't go over well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Your online banking site is much more sophisticated." > A bank would > usually use two-factor authentication, where you've not just got a password.

Your bank is secure because they keep their network patched and do secure coding, not because they use 2 factor authentication. PSN would get hacked even if they were using 234 factor authentication.

<comment><USER2> > even if they were using 234 factor authentication

Probably not, but mostly because nobody would be using them then, so there'd be no data to steal :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The hack, which has led to the network being unavailable for over a week, > has left observers wondering if a company as vast and seemingly advanced as > Sony can get hit, who out there is safe?

Thank you, Dave Lee, for revealing early on in the article that you don't understand the subject matter and that the article won't be worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think we've seen enough to conclude that it's hopeless to think that all the entities that possess personal information are going to succeed in keeping it secure. Either through negligence or simple error, disclosures are going to happen and are going to continue to happen.

What we need to do is change our systems so that mere information is not enough to successfully "steal" an identity. I should be able to disclose my name, birthdate, SSN, mother's maiden name, and anything else to anyone without worry that it can be used to steal my identity. Now, I'm not sure how or if that can be done, but it seems to me that the current approach of trying to store the water in a sieve is never going to work.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a problem, too many unqualified tech journalist working for notable newspaper, writing in ignorance about technology and tech culture. And these newspaper don't hire a tech editor to fact check, the fact being (old news) Sony ran unpatched/obsolete Apache with a notorious security flaw.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is the PSN network breach really about savvy criminals or more about corner- cutting businesses?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Most comments seem to miss the point of the article that "data minimisation" or data avoidance is the most efficient security measure. What do you think of that?</comment>


Show HN: Journyal – record all your travels in the background - <AUTHOR> http://journyal.com <comment><USER2> Nice! I have been looking for something like this but for Android, in an attempt to break out of Google Maps Location tracking. For now the only solution I found is to store all my history with GPSLogger but that is not very "search friendly". Any plans of a port?</comment>


Ask HN: So, who's moving to Kansas City? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If you're considering moving for a fast internet connection, why did you not previously move to any of the East Asian or Scandinavian countries?

<comment><USER3> Moving to a different state is completely different from moving to a different country. Moving between US states is really easy. Citizens don't need permission or passports or visas to do so. Moving to a different country requires all of those things. All US states have a majority population that speaks English.

Millions of people live with ~200 miles of KC. Moving a few hundred miles is easier than moving to a different country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Already here. If you are looking to relocate, consider KC. The engineering + art community here is wonderful.</comment>


Pay a visit to Cambridge's computer museum - <AUTHOR> https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/08/28/pay-a-visit-to-cambridges-computer-museum/ <comment><USER2> The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park is well worth a visit, too!

<comment><USER3> Yes go there but be aware of a slight subtlety.

Although the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is inside Bletchely park. It is a different organisation.

TNMOC has all the interesting computers and the Bletchely park trust has the land and buildings.

There is still a political battle going on between the two (which is sad). They put fences around TNMOC as though to keep people from wandering in there.

\- I am a TNMOC member

<comment><USER4> Yep, those fences are awful. You need to essentially walk through a car park and keep going to find TNMOC.

But it is wonderful. Far better than next door, to be honest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well worth a visit if you're in or around Cambridge.

Huge props to the person in charge when we visited for letting us upstairs to their usually closed storage space with hundreds of old games, magazines, and boxes of old tech.

</comment><comment><USER6> I went 2-3 years ago and really enjoyed it, there is so much to see and they have a lot of unusual exhibits.

My main gripe, which I did feed back at the time, was they had a wide selection of vintage computers and consoles running but there were no instructions. It's a long time since I'd used any of them and had forgotten much of even the basics,;they also had Spectrum with the SSD type libraries but again no instructions on how to load and use the games. That meant you could look at them, try and type a couple of things in and hope you get lucky, then move on to the next item feeling frustrated.

The museum is continually evolving so I hope that something has been done to help what I felt was a fairly big shortcoming. I appreciate it's a lot of work creating cue-cards for each one but as you're encouraged to have a play around it would greatly add to the experience.

<comment><USER7> I run a similar, albeit way smaller exhibit here in Vienna, and we are working on small instruction booklets we can give visitors who want to type things in and play with things .. perhaps I should make these available somehow when we're finished.

That said, its quite an adventure to return to that era of computing and re- discover all the old tricks. On some of these machines, there are even still new graphics modes and other features being uncovered by avid hackers. 8-bit machines are still alive!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I visited several years ago, it's a real hidden gem. Spent a fun hour or so implementing a prime sieve on a BBC BASIC computer - an adventure for someone in their early thirties! My friend and I also banged our heads against that old text-based Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy game, trying but failing to get even as far as getting onto the space ship. At the other end of the spectrum it was also my first experience of a VR helmet.

<comment><USER9> If you're in the Portsmouth, UK area, Portsmouth Museum also has a couple of rooms given over to old games consoles from the 1980s onwards. Some are still running and you can play on them.

<comment><USER8> Amazing; I'm actually planning to be there in a few weeks so will check it out. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great! .. this make me think about a missing info on geek/nerd/techie touristic points of interest, like that kind of destination you could include when go on vacation with your family

<comment><USER11> Wikivoyage has content that may be relevant to your interests:

[https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Science_tourism](https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Science_tourism)

See also the 'related topics' section.

I swear i came across a "tour guide for engineers" somewhere that was similar to this, but i can't find it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cambridge, UK. I clicked expecting Cambridge, Massachusetts. Whoops!</comment>