Implication of sabotage adds intrigue to SpaceX investigation - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/implication-of-sabotage-adds-intrigue-to-spacex-investigation/2016/09/30/5bb60514-874c-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html <comment><USER2> Interesting comments about this on reddit, namely:

> If SpaceX had ANY and I mean ANY suspicion of foul play they would have > called the FBI. The company is not stupid enough to potentially contaminate > criminal evidence by running their own investigation along that line. So IF > SpaceX was thinking along those lines. It would be the FBI requesting access > to the roof. As such I think foul play can be safely removed from the list > of possibilities. This is likely just the case of an employee not thinking > though the potential PR headache the request would cause.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/55at14/spacex_asked...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/55at14/spacex_asked_to_look_at_ula_roof_which_has_field/)

<comment><USER3> If you suspect criminal foulplay, you call the FBI. If you suspect blackops by a foreign government, you call the CIA. And they may keep quiet about it.

I like how Stratfor's leaked glossary presented the FBI:

"Federal Bureau of Investigation, aka the Downtown Gang. Very good a breaking up used car rings. Kind of confused on anything more complicated. Fun to jerk with. Not fun when they jerk back."

<comment><USER4> It used to be that the CIA had no authority to run operations inside the US. Has that changed?

Do they routinely ignore their lack of authority at the request of private entities?

<comment><USER5> I just watch Sicario last night - pretty good movie actually - a central element to the story is how they operate in US borders.

<comment><USER4> Is it based on official documents obtained from the CIA? Or is it a made up story?

<comment><USER6> made up but plausible. A large part of the plot is how they need to work with local agents so they are not "technically" CIA. They are working in some way as consultants in a very dangerous operation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two fascinating theories from the comment section @ Wapo ->

"A large stationary target like a rocket is a simple shot for a sniper with a 50 cal rifle from a mile away. . . It was something discussed 30+ years ago: to have Special Forces snipers punch holes in the missiles on mobile launchers that would not be discovered until preparing for launch. Instead of destroying the system the enemy would have wasted time and effort moving to a launch location only to find out that they were incapable of launching."

and

"What the article doesn't mention is that ULA buys its engines from Russia and is a vital part of the Russian rocket program. As a part of ULA's activities, there are Russian engineers with military training in the country legally right now. "

<comment><USER8> Something like a .50 BMG round has a large report and the flight time is just under 2 seconds at a mile, so anything recording audio in the neighborhood would pick up the distinct crack of a rifle prior to the pad explosion. Some of the noise can be suppressed with a big enough suppression device but the sonic boom is unavoidable. Subsonic ammo is simply not workable at these ranges; that's called 'artillery' and it doesn't have sufficient precision to ensure hitting the rocket.

You can listen to the explosion here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6isMuPfxcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6isMuPfxcI)

I hear birds chirping. No rifles.

update: yes, I know Elon mentioned the 'quieter bang' sound and it could well be related, but it doesn't sound anything like the crack of a rifle round.

<comment><USER9> I don't know anything about fluid dynamics but I know something about shooting and being shot at. I agree with your comment. I would only add that rifle fire sound can be somewhat directional and depending on the temp, density, humidity, height above ground, and reflectivity of the ground much of the impulse can be dissipated or distorted.

Surely sensors would have picked up the impact a .50 makes. Although I don't know why one would need a .50. It's a heavy round with lots of drop and it's not like the rocket is armored. From what I've read of the relative fragility of rockets you could get by with a very small round in just the right spot.

<comment><USER10> But you will need accuracy to hit "just the right spot", and to get accuracy at long distance, you need a heavier bullet ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_rifle#Maximum_effecti...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_rifle#Maximum_effective_range): _" The recent trend in specialized military sniper rifles is towards larger calibers that offer relatively favorable hit probabilities at greater range"_), don't you?

<comment><USER9> True, but "heavier bullet" does not always mean "larger caliber". Also there's no telling at what distance a sniper team would have to be. Maybe they could be inside of 1km?

Also "just the right spot" could be huge on a rocket. The thing is as wide as a barn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "SpaceX had still images from video that appeared to show an odd shadow, then a white spot on the roof of a nearby building belonging to ULA"

"The SpaceX representative explained to the ULA officials on site that it was trying to run down all possible leads in what was a cordial, not accusatory, encounter"

So they are simply exploring what the white spot/shadow could be? I dont think that necessarily leads them to think it was "sabotage" \- just a possible clue in their investigation...

<comment><USER12> I smell media sensationalism and click bait.

I'm sure the possibility of sabotage or terrorism is being looked at as part of a larger failure tree, but I see no evidence it's a leading contender.

<comment><USER13> Maybe Bezos (owner of WaPo and Blue Origins) is trying to stir it up? /tinfoil

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you want more intrigue, the Swiss Space Systems CEO was kidnapped and severely burned just a few days before the SpaceX incident. Not necessarily a correlation, but points out that you can make enemies in any occupation.

[https://www.thelocal.ch/20160905/swiss-space-firm-boss- left-...](https://www.thelocal.ch/20160905/swiss-space-firm-boss-left-badly- injured-in-violent-attack)

<comment><USER15> " A leader in space technology, S3 aims to make space more accessible by creating low-cost, reusable satellite launchers, a development not welcomed by all in the industry.

Last year the company's base in Payerne was broken into and equipment damaged, said the Tribune."

Scary! Is there any more info on these attacks?

<comment><USER16> Looking for more, Paul. This from a Swiss news site says he had previously reported threats to the police, S3's data center was broken into and flooded with a fire hose, and that he remained in the hospital in serious condition with burns on his torso, arm, neck, and face, and would likely need transplants:

[http://www.24heures.ch/vaud-regions/patron-s3-sauvagement- ag...](http://www.24heures.ch/vaud-regions/patron-s3-sauvagement- agresse/story/13258075)

This one speculates on a connection with the SpaceX explosion, but has no new info:

[http://www.bilan.ch/techno-plus-de-redaction/pascal- jaussi-u...](http://www.bilan.ch/techno-plus-de-redaction/pascal-jaussi-un- entrepreneur-derange-secteur-aerospatial)

Swiss Space's web page's last press release is from 2014. There are threads on reddit and nasaspaceflight also just with speculation and no new info:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/518zy3/pascal_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Switzerland/comments/518zy3/pascal_jaussi_the_startup_s3s_ceo_savagely/)

[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31278.140](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31278.140)

<comment><USER17> So their plans for 2016 is to "open a spaceport" and for 2017 - "assemble a shuttle". Sounds like either a money laundering setup or a massively overhyped startup. Combine with the fact that they have Russian version of the site and it might be safe to assume that the guy had a run-in with unhappy "investors".

PS. The 24heures news article says that his car was stopped when he was driving through the forest, severly beaten, douzed in gasoline and set on fire. Now _that_ is pretty damn close to how they settled fiscal disputes back in post-Perestroika times. I'm pretty damn sure he just took money from wrong people and didn't deliver what he promised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems to be something that happened a while ago, before they traced it to the upper stage helium tank.

[https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/23/falcon-9-rocket- explos...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/23/falcon-9-rocket-explosion- traced-to-upper-stage-helium-system/)

So yes it's something they considered but there wasn't any actual sabotage - it was just a tangent in the investigation.

<comment><USER19> From the linked article:

 _The inquiry, led by SpaceX with assistance from government and industry experts, is still looking into the cause of the breach, which may be only a symptom and not the root of the Sept. 1 mishap._

That doesn't mean that the root cause is sabotage nor does it mean it isn't. It just means that root cause analysis has not been completed.

<comment><USER18> The root cause isn't known but the fact that they can trace it to a failure of the helium containment system nearly rules out sabotage as a contributing factor.

<comment><USER20> Why do you suggest that rules out sabotage? What better way to cause a rocket to explode than to rupture a high pressure tank inside the oxidizer tank right after it was fueled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think it's safe to say that Lockheed and Boeing didn't conspire to blow up a rocket on federal property -- but damn if the idea of Russia infiltrating spetznaz into the US defense industry for sabotage aimed at ensuring their control over the Western world's launch systems isn't a seductive piece of fiction.

<comment><USER12> No conspiracy is needed.

The whole thing is very unlikely, but if true I'd say the most probable actor would be a lone disgruntled employee or other nutbar with a gun. It would fall in alongside the epidemic of lone nut shootings over the past year only the victim this time was a rocket.

I'd guess the requisite kind of gun and ammo could easily be obtained from among all the military surplus and other serious kit available on the gun show circuit.

<comment><USER22> This is an oddly victimless crime though. If you know enough to do it, then you know the pad is clear.

It's almost exactly the type of stupid Putin might go in for if it felt deniable.

Conversely there have been telescope lenses that needed to be bullet proofed in transit to stop idiots shooting at them too.

<comment><USER23> I know you mean that 'nobody died', which is great, but the loss of a 200 million dollar satellite, a 50 million dollar launch vehicle (both representing tens of thousands of person-hours of work), and several further person-hours of time wastage investigating this incident, and months of delays in future launches... all this could hardly be called 'victimless'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >"Particularly trying to understand the quieter bang sound a few seconds before the fireball goes off," he wrote on Twitter. "May come from rocket or something else."

They should be able to sync the audio/video and figure out where the quieter bang came from. I can't imagine there was only one camera on the pad. Even easier if they actually sync the video timestamps with a common time signal.

<comment><USER24> >I can't imagine there was only one camera on the pad.

It's not like this was the launch. It was very possible that most cameras were not recording.

<comment><USER25> It's a full dress rehearsal, the only difference between static fire and a real launch is that they do not release the hold-down clamps and shut down the engines instead. The cameras would have been rolling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Entirely possible that this is a leaked PR spin being used to try and cast a more favorable light on the accident by placing blame on an uncontrollable third party and not SpaceX.

<comment><USER27> My priors have this as the most likely scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I was any SpaceX competitor other than ULA I would definitely shoot from the ULA facilities. But I also don't think a trained sniper would be so obvious.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is good context [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_azyt1JhI0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O_azyt1JhI0) for the tension between ULA and SpaceX - it's also nice before an election to checkout the hearings on CSPAn to get a better understanding of the type of people being elected...

</comment><comment><USER30> For those of you wanting to analyze the current evidence yourself, we've got an analysis board up at: [https://www.opensynthesis.org/boards/6/what-caused- the-space...](https://www.opensynthesis.org/boards/6/what-caused-the-spacex- falcon-9-explosion/). Sabotage by a non-employee is currently the most consistent explanation

Open Synthesis is currently invite-only while we figure out moderation. Send me an email or apply via the form on the homepage.

There's also an instance you can add/edit information to without an invite or providing your email: [https://open-synthesis- sandbox.herokuapp.com/boards/6/what-c...](https://open-synthesis- sandbox.herokuapp.com/boards/6/what-caused-the-spacex-falcon-9-explosion/)

<comment><USER31> nice! That is really useful for me to put together the basic facts as now known without sensationalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you're going to go conspiratorial, I'd say that the payload may be the key here.

</comment><comment><USER33> A lot of comments here seem to be fixated on a sniper firing a bullet. What about a laser?

<comment><USER34> If they had IR cameras, then an IR laser would show up, and everyone would have seen the reflection from a visible light laser strong enough to damage metal at range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Newspaper promotes improbable scenario to boost readership

</comment><comment><USER36> If this is the result of sabotage, it puts SpaceX's previous launch failure in a different context: any entity willing and able to take a shot at and destroy a rocket from within the confines of Cape Canaveral might also have been able compromise a strut provided by an outside entity.

I find SpaceX's predicament to be deeply troubling, maybe because if this is sabotage, it casts a pall on the humanity's ability to make progress.

<comment><USER37> As I recall, the company that made struts was not testing them properly and there was more than a few that did not meet the design spec. Tesla went to a different strut supplier after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sabotage seems totally plausible, considering that one company is making surprising progress towards us becoming a space faring species. Aliens also seems totally plausible, for the same reason.

If we're going to go nuts over pure speculation, I would prefer that we focus on aliens. They are much more entertaining.

<comment><USER39> < comic book guy voice > It is clear that you are a shill for the time travellers who are obviously the ones who are really behind this. < /comic book guy voice >

<comment><USER27> Worst. Shill. Ever.

<comment><USER40> Do not be dissuaded by the downvotes -- as usual around here, they signify that your comment was genuinely funny.

<comment><USER41> In the 20th century, humorologists thought that the knew the worst kind of humor, humor so bereft of actual humor that it almost wasn't humor. They thought it was the "pun".

The 21st century has proved them wrong. There is in fact a lower form of "for lack of a better category, I guess we'll reluctantly file that under humor". It is the "reference".

Mere references, lacking any other point of interest, do not do well around here. I am comfortable with this.

<comment><USER42> The reference, once achieving a certain obscurity, elevates itself to the "inside joke" and is often used as a form of social signaling to promote in- grouping and comradery.

<comment><USER38> xkcd.com/794

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> ULA has a 100% success rate. [http://www.space.com/30738-united-launch- alliance-100th-rock...](http://www.space.com/30738-united-launch- alliance-100th-rocket-launch.html)

Why does spacex have occasional failures? Do they run their experiments with customers cargos?

Note: I know nothing of the space industry.

<comment><USER44> 1\. Both of the rockets ULA currently uses(Delta IV and Atlas V) are much, much older than the rocket that SpaceX is launching. These rockets are on their 4th and 5th iterations, so they've had time to work out basically everything and aren't really pushing the limits of what they can do. Early on, these rockets did not have a 100% success rate. 2\. I wouldn't call these experiments. In the past, all experiments(such as the landing attempts) were conducted after the customer payload was delivered so it posed no threat to them. Recently, they started performing static fires with the payload already integrated to save a couple days between the static fire and the launch. I suspect that they will stop after this anomaly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I guess SpaceX will be installing ShotSpotter at all of their critical infrastructure now.

<comment><USER27> I wonder how well that would work given the background noise from rocket exhaust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Spacewars, chapter one

</comment><comment><USER47> Would really like to hear the sound he refers too. Also to see it graphed on a decibel chart. Anyone know if it's posted somewhere? Will go and look and EDIT, but I doubt I'll find it.

EDIT: here I googled that for myself: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maRTEzlSBLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maRTEzlSBLk)

<comment><USER48> Here is a video with some audio analysis

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JHhF3QNC8o8&feature=youtu.be](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JHhF3QNC8o8&feature=youtu.be)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Or maybe it was a bug in the computer simulation that runs us all?

<comment><USER50> Look, no. That code is _totally solid_ , trust us a little will you?

<comment><USER51> We also run on checkpoints. If a bug happens, we roll the simulation back to the last checkpoint and you never experience the bug and can enjoy a perfect universe.

You're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I heard... the Israeli's might not be happy about an Israeli company going to the US for launching their satellites.

Personally, I'm highly skeptical that this was anything but a mechanical problem with a new rocket.

<comment><USER53> Where else is a Israeli company going to go to do their launches? It's not like Irael and Russia are bestest buddies, and Israel has a lot of political and financial support from the US. That makes no sense whatsoever.

<comment><USER54> Well, they could launch in Israel? At least for small (500-800kg) payloads there's the Shavit [1] civilian version of their Jericho ICBM.

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

<comment><USER53> For some uses maybe, but they only launch one every three years or so, in retrograde low earth orbit only and they're reserved for military and government projects. And as you say, cant lift this payload anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The article clearly paints SpaceX as the newcomer and underdog who is trying to compete with the big monopolists. I wonder if there is another side to the story, though. Is anyone involved in the industry who can tell more, or point to good sources?

<comment><USER56> SpaceX IS the newcomer and underdog, but one that's advancing very quickly. The big monopolist in this case is ULA, the "United Launch Alliance", which was created in 2006 as a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Space Systems and Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

For years, ULA was only option for US government launch contracts. They had more than 100 launches – all of them successful except one single minor anomaly [1].

SpaceX tried and succeeded [2] to get into the lucrative government contract business, arguing that their launches are five times cheaper (90M vs 460M USD).

Before that, an interesting meeting of the U.S. Committee on Armed Services took place [3], discussing ULA's dependency on russian-made RD-180 rocket engines for their Atlas V launch system.

[1] [http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/ula-traces-atlas-v- ano...](http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/ula-traces-atlas-v-anomaly-to- malfunctioning-valve)

[2] [https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/27/spacex-cleared-to- laun...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/05/27/spacex-cleared-to-launch-u-s- national-security-satellites/)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ff_5jF_3QU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ff_5jF_3QU)

<comment><USER55> > SpaceX IS the newcomer and underdog

Woah, sorry. I never said they weren't.

> which was created in 2006

That sounds rather new to me, considering that space tech has been around since what, the 60s? If someone told me SpaceX was originally started in 2006 I'd be only slightly surprised, but I'd figure it just took years to attract expertise and set the whole thing up before we start hearing about it.

All I'm asking is for the other side of the story. ULA is being painted as evil here and no matter how true every word from SpaceX's side is, I would always like to read ULA's comments on the matter.

<comment><USER57> ULA may be new but Boeing and Lockheed Martin are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It's called rocket science for a reason. Looking into sabotage usually indicates that they have no clue what happenned and are looking into saving face.

Hopefully, Emdrive or a similar technology works out - otherwise, spacefaring is going to be a risky and overly complicated endeavour for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER59> I will just say it without any proof. I think spacex is not competent enough to solve this. Rocket science is still hard. That is the impression I got when they said they do not know the cause yet. Rocket exploding on the launch pad is pretty big fuck up in my mind, but I am not a rocket scientist. They will learn from this but this is a reality check. Without major breakthroughs they are no better than russians launching soviet era rockets.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think it's worth noting that we live a post-Snowden world where the worst conspiracy theories about mass surveillance were indeed true. I wouldn't be surprised if our own government did this to the advantage of the ULA.</comment>


A Look Inside the Process of One of the World's Most Efficient Studiers - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/05/18/anatomy-of-an-a-a-look-inside-the-process-of-one-of-the-worlds-most-efficient-studiers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StudyHacks+%28Study+Hacks%29 <comment><USER2> If you're lucky enough to be able to sit in a class taking notes and basically "get" the course material, when it comes to studying the necessary formulas, there's a quick and easy study tactic that requires about a single hour prior to testing. Basically, condense all your notes [formulas only, or concise examples] into a single page front [maybe back] and then read the page--over and over until the class starts. Receive the exam, flip over to the back page or ask for note paper [assuming they provide it] and regurgitate what you read back on to the paper. It takes about ten minutes. Then, take the test, referencing your notes as needed. I like to call it memory dumping, I've known lots of people who do similar but have there own names for it.

The crux of this tactic is that you actually understand how to apply formulas, so it of course presupposes you know the material.

<comment><USER3> I made condensed notes for a few courses, but the _act_ of creating them was key, not the resulting few sheets of paper. I wouldn't write any results down until I could derive them myself (within reason). And writing them by hand, rather than typing/latex. Somehow, I can understand something much better if I'm reading my own script than a print-out, even if the content is identical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cal Newport here points to the example of Scott Young, so then I was curious to look up Scott Young and to figure out where he went to university. He writes, "Popular discussion asks whether college is worth the money and time. I can't say for sure. I went to a mid-tier, public Canadian university, with tuition around $5000 per year and leaving with no student debt, so my experience may be atypical."

<http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/tag/university/>

I can't say whether or not his study strategies would work as well at a university that is not a "mid-tier, public Canadian university," or whether a student might have to study a lot harder at, say, MIT or the Indian Institute of Technology. Indeed, especially not knowing the exact name of the university from what I have looked up thus far, I have trouble knowing what the admission requirements are at Scott Young's university.

I have to fully agree with Scott Young's advice, "Befriend Exchange Students." That's a great way to learn about the world before accumulating enough money to travel widely.

A question for Cal Newport: how do we know that Scott Young is "one of the world's most efficient studiers" if we don't know how challenging the courses are at his university? After edit: I see that Young writes, "This is perhaps my only regret in university is that I weighed interest too much over challenge in selecting my major."

<http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/tag/university/>

Maybe some people who take more challenging majors are studying just as efficiently as Young did even if they take more hours per week to study their major courses.

<comment><USER5> Canadian universities don't really have entrance requirements, and they have a very low workload. If you have an 80% average, you can get into most Canadian schools for most programs. The 1st year honors mechanics course at Cornell is more work than an entire semester's work at in 1st year Canadian university. Cornell's 1st year Engineering Chemistry course covered more than 4x the material covered in 1st year chem at Queen's University in Canada (the course has since been removed).

But you'll have to realize that even between top American schools, course load and marking differs. My friend went to Oxford from Cornell, with a bunch of students from other top American schools for some program. I remember him saying how he partied all day while the others were complaining it was so hard. He described it like this: "At Oxford, if you're asked whether you'd rather do a problem set or get beaten by a stick, you'd take the problem set. At Cornell... you'd definitely take a moment to consider." I don't want to get into grade inflations/deflations here though. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to know.

Canadian universities also take 90% as the general A+. When he says he's getting an A+, it means he's getting somewhere between 90 and 100%. I don't think I can emphasize well enough, how easy this is. For one Human Resources exam, I studied 30 minutes the night before after getting drunk, and wrote the exam the next morning hung over. I got a 94%. That's the only reading/studying I ever did for that class. This isn't unique to this university either.

I personally usually just need to read, listen, or work through something once to get it, depending on what the material is. However, his methods make logical sense I guess.

<comment><USER6> I have no experience with Canadian undergraduate business education, which is what the author of the article appears to be taking, but I don't doubt that it's less challenging than engineering. Canadian engineering programs have higher entrance standards than this, and are accredited by a national authority for engineering education. And we still had to work fairly hard, especially in the fundamental Computer Engineering courses, even though they are less challenging than courses at MIT.

However, Canadian schools are also not generally the elite institutions that the Ivy League+MIT+Stanford are either. The top Canadian universities are public institutions with larger undergraduate populations that to a reasonable extent serve regional demand and need, rather than attracting the best from across the land (with some exceptions). A more reasonable comparison might be agaisnt some of the top 10 to top 30 public schools in the US, instead of MIT or Cornell or Oxford.

<comment><USER7> true, but also, these schools are more than adequate to equip a society to function

the top-tier universities of united states cater to the top 1% of the world, have incredible research records, nobels, etc... yet by almost any measure, the US itself as a nation is beginning to fall behind canada on per-capita measures of wealth, education, longevity, and happiness. this isn't that astonishing, the US is also falling behind many scandinavian nations with apparently unknown universities

remember last week's nba final? the "superstars" lost.

<comment><USER8> And where is Canada in per-capita measures of wealth when compared to Luxemburg?

In my opinion, the United States is the modern Rome, though , of course, way more powerful and advanced than Rome ever was, and will be so for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Totally agree that his strategies are the key to mastering material in some types of course - but, it does suggest you have sufficient IQ in the first place to do things like "Learn it the first time, understand associations, etc..."

It should be noted, though, that there is a large array of course where pattern association and critical thinking aren't going to help you that much.

My Psyc180 Brain and Behavior course was basically identifying and recalling an ungodly number of neuro chemical pathways and elements. Anatomy 101 (which I did not take) enjoyed a week or three of "Let's learn what the 200+ Human bones are. Great, now we move onto muscles." And, I didn't even want to think about what it would be like to subject myself to the ultimate pain that Organic Chemistry is. I would _love_ to hear of a human being that can get through Organic Chemistry courses without the requisite X hours outside of class per hour of lecture. (For a 13 week semester consisting of 3 hours/week, that would typically suggest 80-120 hours of studying for the 39 hours of in- class time) - I've seen that course knock out many a pre-med candidate who decided that maybe this wasn't where they wanted to go in life.

Even more interesting would be to find a human who could simply cram all that information in the week before the final without having studied outside of class.

But - overall, great study suggestions for courses of a particular type.

<comment><USER10> I must disagree with the Organic Chemistry bit. I took advanced organic chem as an elective in college and I absolutely loved it. Yes there are a lot of different reactions, and there is some memorization involved, but there is a very beautiful theory unifying so many diverse reactions and the focus was always on understanding the reasoning why and how those particular reactions occur (reaction mechanisms). Once you knew the basic facts, then solving problems involved a lot of deductive reasoning (in positing new mechanisms) and creativity (in building new compounds using known reactions).

<comment><USER9> It's possible that your college had a different focus in Organic Chemistry that involved less memorization, and more conceptualization?

Here is one typical text for Organic Chemistry: [http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis- Bruic...](http://www.amazon.com/Organic-Chemistry-Paula-Yurkanis- Bruice/dp/B000VCVPC4)

Roughly the same as yours?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know anything about Scott Young but this article makes me pretty skeptical that he is "One of the World's Most Efficient Studiers."

His notes on the exam: "draw a timeline", "check the cpp" and comments in section two: "bonds are paid semi annually", EAR > quoted rate etc betray a very easy/ introductory finance class.

Furthermore, according to tokenadult he is at a "mid-tier Canadian university." There are only three or four good business schools in Canada and in my mind there is no way that 50% of the class attending any of them would have failed this exam. In my opinion it was either an easy class that lots of people failed because he's at a mediocre school or he's lying about the failure rate.

I suspect that anyone studying engineering/cs or who has any sort of quantitative ability would have had no trouble attending the classes, doing the readings and then prepping for 90 minutes and doing well on this exam.

Finally, I don't think this is novel at all. The idea that memorization takes longer than understanding a concept in a general form should be no surprise to anyone who's ever crammed for an exam of this sort. And really, he just attended the classes, did the readings, took notes and then reviewed what he'd already learned - theres nothing ultra time efficient about this at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> Everybody studies differently.

When I was an undergrad my strategy was as follows:

a) Never do any "study" during the semester. (Go to lectures, take notes, do any required assignments, but that's it.)

b) When stu-vac rolls around (a week before the exams start), write a set of really nice summaries of everything you learned in each course, based on your notes and textbook.

c) Print out these summaries and... well, probably never look at them. It's the act of writing the summary that's useful.

But that's me. It might not work for someone else. I can't possibly comprehend the idea of staying up all night studying before a test -- how can there possibly be twelve hours' worth of material to study?

Also I was studying physics and maths, both of which are mostly about understanding rather than memorization. Put me in an anatomy class and I might well fail horribly.

<comment><USER13> _"... well, probably never look at them. It's the act of writing the summary that's useful."_

Very true. I'd say that writing out by hand works best, as opposed to typing it though.

<comment><USER12> To each his own. I personally found that the painful process of typing all my equations into Microsoft Equation Editor caused me to concentrate on them in a way that simply scrawling them down doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I did an unpublished survey of my med school classmates, got a decent response rate, about 70-80% as a I recall. I asked how much time they spent on about 30 or so study habits, and then some demographics. One of the demographic questions was "which quintile of the class do you think you're in?"

So, not exactly awesome methods, but some promising leads. There was a lot "meh" in the middle, but, in order

1) review and condense your notes the week before the exam is the single best thing you can do

2) go to class, read the book, and make one set of notes (eg: take notes on the reading, then add targeted bits during lecture, or vise versa)

3) Do the assigned homework. Or, in the case of medical school, do a lot of question books and understand the answers (question banks are the staple of medical school, which is a whole 'nother post). Add what you learn to your notes.

3) If you can't go to class, listen to the podcast, but taking notes is critical, and whatever you do,

35) don't take notes on a computer. Perhaps partially due to WiFi access, going to class and typing notes was the worst idea you could have, actually worse than

33) listening to the podcast without taking notes and

34) going to class and not taking notes at all).

I also found there was a skew in the bell curve: completely innocent, one might expect people to evenly distribute among the quintiles, but there seemed to be a skew, which has been repeated in other studies: the top students slightly under-rate themselves, but the bottom students significantly over- rate their abilities, so there's a huge bulge in the middle, but it leans to toward over-confidence.

Applying Bloom's taxonomy(1), there seems to be a tactile-kinetic element to note-taking, and there's critical thinking involved in choosing what to write down, because you can't just transcribe the lecture and the book. There's further synthetic thinking when you try to merge class and book notes, and there is further synthesis when you build those notes into that a pre-test crib sheet.

If I were designing school from the ground up, lectures would be 20 minutes.

(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blooms_Taxonomy>

<comment><USER15> _the top students slightly under-rate themselves, but the bottom students significantly over-rate their abilities,_

Sounds like what you would expect from the Dunning-Kruger effect (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate to sound like a hopeless optimist, but am I the only one that is a bit disheartened by the focus on studying/acing an exam, rather than actually, I don't know, learning something? As in, a focus on grades distracts students from the real point of an education.

I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't even be at university if you're not foaming at the mouth to acquire the knowledge. Sure, there are classes that you won't enjoy regardless, but tactics to beat them should be an exception, not the rule.

<comment><USER17> But how would you quantify the amount of learning that you've actually retained? Would it not be through some sort of question-answer based system on the material that you've covered, and using a weighted scale for each question depending on the difficulty of the question and how you applied the concepts?

As much as I enjoy learning about computers and circuits in class, how would I actually _know_ I understood how they all interact with each other something without testing myself?

Acing an exam easily is a pretty good indication that you've learned the subject material fairly well.

<comment><USER18> I've aced a fair amount of exams in my lifetime, and knowing what I know now about "knowing", learning and understanding, acing a majority of those exams were in fact a TERRIBLE indication of the amount (and quality) of learning that had taken place. For example, all those A's in my electromagnetism and thermodynamics courses, or calc courses -- completely unwarranted. I would say about 95% of it was mindless memorization of formulas and the application of the formulas mostly through the usage of algebra. Testing/performing on deeper conceptual understanding = virtually non-existant (which I can easily prove to myself by the lack of understanding I have at the moment when I actually try to apply the concepts).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If it was Quantum Mechanics, or at least Calculus, I'd be somewhat impressed. But Corporate Finance... The 50% pass rate and repeat failures probably evidence the proportion of students who take that class without understanding basic Algebra first.

</comment><comment><USER20> Am I alone in thinking that -- whatever their merit, generally -- these techniques will be far less effective in mathematics courses? You could write out a one page note compression for, say, calculus, but then still be unable to solve word problems or proofs unless you had also spent a lot of practice solving them.

<comment><USER21> I agree, and it's the same for all the engineering courses I have done. I could explain almost all of the concepts for a lot of my courses with hardly any study, but 90% of the exams I do are (essentially) just solving problems, and being prepared for that often takes a lot of practice in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is one of the best articles on the subject of rapid learning that I've seen in years. The point about knowing is being able to teach is particularly important. It's great if you have a patient friend or partner who is willing to listen to your half-baked explanations _qua_ explorations of a new subject; just be willing to honestly answer that you don't know if your listener poses a question that had not occurred to you. Even alone, visualizing yourself teaching or applying an idea is a very powerful technique.

Don't be afraid of moving slowly through dense material, even if that leads to multiple reinventions of the wheel during study. There are few things more satisfying than contemplating an idea, observing a problem or question arising from it, and developing your own solution - followed by finding that same issue examined in a subsequent page or lecture. Sure, you could have just kept reading and had the answer handed to you on a plate, but that's much less memorable.

The practice exam is just as important, though. You're probably familiar with the saying 'an engineer is someone who can do for ten cents what any fool can do for a dollar.' Learning is an enjoyable experience for smart and curious people, but without putting pressure on oneself to reproduce the information learned the practice can be self-indulgent, and in that case the material is not remembered as well as it might be otherwise. If we think of learning as a sort of knowledge engineering, then we can also think of time as the cost constraint that sets the skilled professional apart from the amateur. Constraints force compromises, and learning how to make efficient compromises is extremely important. Perfectionism is a luxury that few of us can afford.

</comment><comment><USER23> To be clear, although only 3.5 hours were spent studying for the test, many hours were spent learning the course.

<comment><USER24> The time spent learning the course would still have been spent, had one not used this special method of revision. Still a good point, though. The idea that one can magically learn for an exam in three hours or so is sadly not true...

<comment><USER25> > The time spent learning the course would still have been spent, had one not > used this special method of revision

Not necessarily true. He specifically lists learning and understanding concepts as they were taught as a part of his strategy (his principle #1). I adopted pretty much the opposite principle - not putting in too much effort during the term and learning it all at the end. So I would presumably have put in far fewer hours during the course than he did. So comparing my total revision time to his would not be a fair comparison.

Incidentally, this wasn't a deliberate strategy of mine, it's just how I liked to do things, but I think maybe having the full content of the course before I started serious learning may have been a benefit.

I also spent a lot less time on revision than many of my peers, so I don't think learning during the course is necessarily a prerequisite for minimising time spend revising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is very good for learning (and then using) knowledge quickly/in a short time frame. This is basically how I worked when at university.

However, my siblings don't work this way... they take a long time and work quite hard when it comes to learning. That is not to say that they are slow or unintelligent. In retrospect I envy them a bit. I can put on the illusion of being brilliant since I can pick something up in a few minutes... but ask me a year from now and I'll probably need to repeat that process. However, they are in medicine, so as ghshephard suggested, the effectiveness of this technique could vary widely by domain. If you take a long time to carefully understand the fundamentals of the human body, you probably won't need to learn too much more about it later. Not to say that you won't need to keep on up current practices, but you also don't need to deal with the "API for kidney function" changing anytime soon.

Also, I agree with the connection/analog process for quick learning and application, but you can only stack so many analogies before you're living in your own self-constructed world.

</comment><comment><USER27> The thing he didn't mention is will-power / the ability to focus / capacity for thinking. I think the vast majority of students fail to pay attention in class, but even when they do, they fail to think _hard_ about the concepts being presented. I see it in myself, when trying to grapple with a new concept, it's so easy to say to yourself 'just give up' and turn your attention elsewhere. Especially since you can tell yourself that your diverting your attention to something equally valuable (eg. reading the next page of the book, or listening to the next part of the lecture).

It's easy to mentally pat-yourself-on-the-back for doing X hours of studying, much harder to confront your cognitive limits by trying to integrate a new concept on the spot (as opposed to picking it up gradually through practice and experience).

Another thing to note though is that if you develop the self-discipline to hit the library for hours on end every day, that self-discipline will arguably serve you better in life than the A-A+ average you might have gained with better study techniques.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would like to see these methods applied specifically for a CS course.

</comment><comment><USER29> The claims that the article documents "one of the world's most efficient studiers" is very bizarre.

He studied 3.5 hrs studying for an exam, not counting any of the time studying the subject in the weeks and months before the exam. That sounds pretty normal. He's not saying he studied 3.5 hrs during the whole semester total and aced the course as a result.

I typically spent 0-15 minutes studying for exams because I was already prepared, always got A or A+ and usually the top score in the class at a renowned program at a top university.

I did well because most the students were not interested in design or engineering and were there because their parents wanted them to study it. These other students (by which I mean asians) would do things like get ahold of the test in advance (cheating) and get together and try to figure out the answers. But they were mostly clueless because they thought cheating would overcome their failure to meaningfully study during the semester. Cheating made their academics much worse because it was a crutch they relied upon rather than bothering to do the necessary work. But the poor results of the cheaters distorted the curve and made it relatively simple for others to get an A: it's not as if I got perfect scores. I remember one class I got something like 20% and that was the highest score in the class. Yeah, it was a difficult test, as it should have been, after all this was engineering school.

Me, I did the projects and read the assignments. Before the exam here are things you should do:

1\. Do not study or think about the topic at all.

2\. Drink a glass of wine the night before.

3\. Go to bed early and get at least 9 hrs sleep.

This assumes you have been keeping up. If you have not been keeping up, cramming won't do squat for you except make you tired and do worse than you would have from just getting some sleep and guessing on the test.

The only studying specifically for a test I would do is to casually flip through my notes a few minutes before the test, where I'd have notes in the margins about things that were easy to get mixed up and such stuff that I had specific problems with. These things I had already spent time mastering in the months or weeks leading up to the exam, I obviously don't bother trying to learn anything for the first time at this point, that's just silly.

One last tip - don't care about grades at all. If you care about grades you'll be motivated to get high grades, which means you'll be drawn to cheat and then you'll end up not actually knowing anything in reality. By not giving a rat's ass what grades you get, you have no motivation whatsoever to get involved in cheating clubs and groups, and will study what you want when you want, and you'll do great.

<comment><USER23> _These other students (by which I mean asians) would do things like get ahold of the test in advance (cheating) and get together and try to figure out the answers._

Wow, I feel sorry for any honest, hard-working asian who's ever crossed your path.

<comment><USER17> I'm asian, and my method of studying is the similar to the one in the article. But a couple of months ago, to my horror, my own father advised me to use that tactic. (trying to figure out the exam answers in advance using previous exams)

I still keep to my method, but I don't think any discrimination was intended from the grandparent post. It's fairly common for non-passionate people to try to achieve good results without putting in effort to learn the subject. It's a question of whether you value time or learning more.

<comment><USER23> There is nothing wrong with using previous exams to study for an exam. They are a source of good questions. In fact the article mentions using a test exam! It's the teacher's fault for being lazy about reusing test questions. Many student societies keep a filing cabinet of old exams and I've seen books of old exams published. How about all those SAT prep courses???

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is, in a nutshell, how to be mediocre at stuff.

It's a bit pointless going to college and spending 4 of the best years of your life doing stuff you aren't interested enough in to devote yourself to.

In fact, you could argue college itself isn't the best use of those 4 years.

I'm thankful for people like this because they leave all the outlier spots (best spots that offer the most rewards (financial, satisfaction, recognition, etc.)) to people willing to pick something they love and willing to work hard as hell at it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is very cool.

But, to be honest, I'm not that impressed. I can't recall ever studying more than 3 hours for a test (usually about 2 hours) and just graduated an Ivy League college with an ~A average.

Now I did usually start studying 2 weeks or so in advance in multiple 20 minute sessions. I did so because last minute cramming doesn't work for me, but it did result in high grades with not so much total time spent.

<comment><USER32> Lovely, now try scoring an A average at a top engineering university without studying all day everyday for the duration.

<comment><USER33> I did that. Computer Engineering at Purdue. The only classes I ever studied for were the ones that I didn't pay attention to in lecture. I never took notes (this drove my teachers crazy in high school). There were only a few classes in which I got less than an A-, and only one of those was an ECE class (statistics; I couldn't make myself pay attention). All I did was go to lecture and do the assignments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I never bothered with notes. They never seemed to work for me. I think and memorize visually or systematically. Having connected words or flat sheets of paper is no good to me. I also saw tests as of more of a nuisance and a disruption in building an understanding. To spend as little time on them as possible, I would figure out how the lecturer creating the test thinks.

The day before the test I would spend a few hours having an imaginary conversation with the lecturer and made sure my model of him matched all my recollections of him/her (if unknown, I'd just imagine a generic lecturer). The imaginary form would ask me questions that might be in the test and I made sure I could answer them. I usually found the actual test to be predictable and much easier. My GPA in college was among the top 1%.

I've tried to teach this technique to others occasionally, but with limited success. It usually fails on not being able to imagine a honest representation of someone else and only asking yourself questions you want to be asked.

</comment><comment><USER35> For me:

1\. Select the right course. Course with a lot of fact details to remember forget them, for instance, history, business law, biology, geography. Do calculation based course, typical a good foundation in maths is required.

2\. Choose the right lecturers. Some lecturers you just wouldn't be scoring an A off of. It's not you, it's them. "These nitwits didn't even comment their code right; there I'm taking 5%". <\-- Avoid. You generally look for someone who grade is skewing to the high percentage and is normally distributed[avoid bimodal distribution] . For your cores course you might not be able to avoid such lecturers, but kill your optional courses.

3\. Go to every class.

4\. Take notes at every class.

5\. Clarify anything you don't know right there and then. Think to yourself that if you don't know the rest of the class don't know either, and they are probably too shame to admit it. Never let shame stand between you and an A.

I think the key to the guy technique is simply to learn once. Whether everyone can do this is a little suspect.

<comment><USER36> In my experience as both a T.A. and a student, a bimodal distribution of grades wasn't uncommon in courses with a good professor with high standards teaching challenging technical material. What's the rationale for avoiding it?

<comment><USER35> I think the people who fall on the bad end of the spectrum will have a different opinion of the professor. I have an axiom to consider yourself average, even though you might be above average and make your decision from that perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I found the example complicated. Real _learning_ comes from simplifying. In the case of the provided example, it is trivial to simplify.

$100 is worth $121 after two 10% interest cycles. The PV formula asks the reverse: what is $121 two cycles out, worth today (what is its present value)? In reverse, we can calculate that by dividing $121 with 1.1 twice. That's pretty much what the formula is : FV/(1 + i)^N or $121/((1.1)^2) = $100.

kapish?

<comment><USER38> Idd, I was thinking the same thing, he takes an easy formula & creates weird pictures with angles from to, "to make it simple"

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That doesn't seem to be the case but I've met a lot of not-too-bright students that managed to get excellent grades by "optimizing" their study to answer precisely the kind of questions asked more frequently in tests.

</comment><comment><USER26> It would be helpful to have an actual GPA. I'm really not sure what a GPA between A and A+ even means. At my university there was no +/- distinction.

<comment><USER40> I think it differs but A- to A is usually 3.5 to 4.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Good grades come from hard work, researching the subject, being active in class,..

Saying you Aced an exam with only 3.5 hours of studying is just _retarded_..

It's the same as working in a Mc Donalds for 4 months, then taking a test about the contents of the hamburgers. And being able to recall every onion piece that's on a hamburger -- without studying.

Of course you would succeed, you where making hamburgers for 4 months...

Yes the strategies he mentions are good, but he leaves out the most important aspect. The main focus of the article should be on hard (yet efficient) work during the school year.

</comment><comment><USER41> Very useful article, can use some suggestions myself. But I'm not that impressed, mainly because he's talking about a dead simple finance course.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if this approach is any good at mastering technical exams like SCJP etc.

</comment><comment><USER43> tl;dr: Pay attention in class and studying is more like organizing and reviewing what you already know, which doesn't take that long. Duh.

</comment><comment><USER44> The most important steps he details require the same extraordinary intelligence that makes one an extraordinary student. The most difficult thing for a genius to understand is what it is like not to be quick minded. Most students could stare at the same material for days and not generalize the concepts the way this guy does as he listens to the lecture.</comment>


Facebook is Not the Problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-facebook/aa065a1ecc72

<comment><USER2> If you were referring to people bashing Facebook over the content apparent on it, you would be correct in calling it a people problem.

There are many larger issues related to the evolution of Facebook though that are entirely at the behest of the Facebook developers, staff, and the company as a whole. I think these platform issues (security flaws, design, poor execution, etc) elicit more criticism than anything else, and those critical insights are not unfounded.</comment>


Clinical use of lithium salts: guide for users and prescribers - <AUTHOR> https://journalbipolardisorders.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40345-019-0151-2 <comment><USER2> This focuses on the use of lithium for treating psychiatric disorders, as a mood stabilizer. However, in addition to this, there is lots of evidence[1][2] that trace amounts of lithium in general populations lead to lower rates of violent crime (and has general neuroprotective effects). I think this connection makes sense logically, if large doses serve to stabilize the mood of bipolar patients, small doses would likely have at least some effect on 'regular' people.

It is possible to buy trace mineral drops which contain such small amounts of lithium as to be safe for everyday use (as a bonus they also contain other useful trace minerals, like magnesium). I personally have been using them for years.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579)

[2] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263055240_Standard_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263055240_Standard_and_trace- dose_lithium_A_systematic_review_of_dementia_prevention_and_other_behavioral_benefits)

<comment><USER3> I used lithium orotate for years, and yeah, it worked far better than an antidepressant for me. I then got labs run, and my urine creatinine was elevated, indicating diminished kidney function. I was taking Lisinopril and creatine at the same time which 100% triggered it in combination, but it's still good to coordinate with your doctor and monitor things. Trace amounts can have an effect.</comment></comment>


Diffbot launches AI-powered knowledge graph of 1T facts - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/30/diffbot-launches-ai-powered-knowledge-graph-of-1-trillion-people-places-and-things/ <comment> d--b It's incredible people still try and do things like this.

This is such an over ambitious problem...

1\. Webpages are ladden with errors, how do you deal with this? 2\. Knowledge does not fit in a graph. It's asymptically a graph, as in: I can define relationships like: This recipe contains carrots. carrots contain sugar => this recipe contains sugar. Cool. But, what about this "sugar-free carrot cake recipe?" Well it still contains carrots, so still contains sugar... Contradiction? => requires human curating... 3\. It doesn't even solve a real problem... Look at IBM watson, it probably knows a lot more crap than diffbot, and yet, is a pretty useless piece of software...

<comment><USER2> Wanna thread other known attempts at this? Maybe someone will jump in with extra detail about how these approaches are different, or what extra value we'd expect.

\- OpenCyc [http://www.cyc.com/opencyc/](http://www.cyc.com/opencyc/) \- DBPedia [https://wiki.dbpedia.org/](https://wiki.dbpedia.org/)

<comment><USER3> Founder here. OpenCyc (as well as Freebase) are human attempts to enter and curate a structured knowledge base. Likewise DBPedia is a set of scripts that extract Wikipedia infoboxes (semi-structured data which is also human crowd- sourced).

The Diffbot Knowledge Graph is built by applying computer vision and natural language processing techniques to reading all the pages on the web (which can be in any structure and human language) and extracting it into a structured form, without the element of human annotation in the build pipeline.

<comment><USER2> Can you expand on major points of how this will make the content different, (for example, Wikipedia is curated and non-notable people pages get thrown out, so if you're reading all of the web, presumably you'd know about non- notable people) -- and why it's better?

<comment><USER3> Founder here. There are many differences in the result when you have an automated system building a Knowledge Graph vs. a human one.

Obvious one is scale, Wikipedia has on order 10M entities and represents the work of thousands of humans whereas the Diffbot KG has 10B entities and is discovering about 120M each day, and is largely limited by the number of machines running the algorithms in the datacenter. The properties and facts indexed about each entity are also a superset because it is not limited to those that would be worthwhile for a human to curate. Lastly, it can be more accurate than facts found in a single source because the automated system utilizes multiple sources of that fact found across the web to estimate a probability of the accuracy of the fact.

The result is that you have a Knowledge Graph that is more useful for work and business because they are the entities you interact with day to day, not the "head" entities that optimize for popularity and the constraints of human curation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mike,

fantastic work here! As someone who's really excited about a machine readable web and have been working on it, this is fantastic! Unfortunately, while the Semantic web was to tackle this, the real life proliferation of the Semweb has been, atleast to me personally, extremely disappointing.

So this is a fantastic initiative, personally for me to know about.

Is there a plan to expose this data via a dev API of some sort for enthusiasts like us?

Say a SPARQL or even (Open)Graph API perhaps?

My experiences consulting with and working with companies interested in the domain has been that monetizing this data is extremely hard both legally and quality wise.

"Nike Tanjun near me" is a query fraught with danger. People typing this query want to find a retailer in their vicinity that sells this Nike product, but where do we source that inventory list from and how do we get our cut?

Before people start talking about DSPs and SSPs, this is a very different problem at hand.

To know that Nike Tanjun is a shoe sold by Nike, an ontology needs to exist that captures this knowledge so that the user's query can be decoded.

How will that ontology be sourced? Further, for it to be usable commercially, Nike has to agree to that encoding. Therin begin the challenges. If we encoded Nike Downshifter to be Tanjun, by mistake, then the user bought them based off our results, disliked them expecting the Downshifters to be like Tanjuns, we have an issue and Nike could persue the matter because we mislead the customer and affected their branding.

My primary clients are search companies or companies that want to provide rich search functionality: Google, Bing or even DDG do a phenomenal job in this space and the barrier to entry is pretty high.

So knowledge quality, mainteanaanace, versioning and temporal resolution ("The President of the U.S.", "The iPhone" are different entities over time) aside, is diffbot going to monetize this knowledge only as a B2B offering/addon to their clients or are there other "bigger" plans to monetize this tremendous undertaking and keep it rolling in the future?

</comment><comment><USER5> What technologies are this built on? Something like Neo4j graph database?

<comment><USER6> We tried Neo4j, but it couldn't support the throughput we needed for injecting facts.

<comment><USER4> Upvoted. Have you given ArangoDB a shot?

<comment><USER3> We've tried Neo4J, ArangoDB, as well as many others to store the triples. Neo4J locked up at around 100M entities, and also the loading/injection times weren't sufficient build the KG at a regular interval. However, we are closely following any developments in these projects as they improve. There is more detail in this interview here: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-web-as-a- database-the-bigg...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-web-as-a-database-the- biggest-knowledge-graph-ever/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenAI API - <AUTHOR> https://openai.com/blog/openai-api/ <comment><USER2> Repost [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23489653)

</comment><comment><USER3> One disadvantage of an API is that OpenAI controls what the model is allowed to output. They're already working on a content filter in response to the latest wave of social media criticisms. (The head of Facebook AI publicly accused OpenAI of deploying an unsafe model, and said that it shouldn't be so easy to get it to generate racial stereotypes. [https://twitter.com/sama/status/1285985962250534912?s=21](https://twitter.com/sama/status/1285985962250534912?s=21))

I wonder if the content filter will become mandatory.

The flip side is that we're probably looking at the Apple model of AI software. The App Store was a repulsive idea when it was first introduced. Now it's a fact of life.

<comment><USER4> It's still a repulsive idea and I believe we should be actively telling our friends and coworkers that it's bad capitalism to use it.

<comment><USER5> I don't see anything wrong with the Apple app store - they just need to be forced to bring the Apple percentage down (they clearly won't do it on their own).

<comment><USER4> Famous last words before your app is banned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was really excited about this and applied around a month ago but still haven't gotten any indication of when I can get access. I was curious if others had much longer use case descriptions or were famous or something else to get early access.

<comment><USER7> Been waiting for few weeks as well... maybe @gdb will read this thread and can expedite the process for HNers.. :P

<comment><USER8> _waves_

Given the amount of demand, we're trying to prioritize folks who want to build a concrete application or integrate with a product.

Please feel free to email me (firstname.lastname@example.com) and let me know what you'd like to build — I can't guarantee I'll be able to accelerate an invite, but at the very least I'll make sure we're tracking your use-case internally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As far as I can see, this is the same announcement from 6 weeks ago - there's nothing new here, it's still in beta and you still have to go on the waitlist.

</comment><comment><USER10> Question from a non-ML expert: How can I be sure that my code working with one version will still be working after they update/re-train the models?

More specifically, for DOTA, they could track the progress and make sure there wasn't important regressions.. but this seems so general, how can they make sure it makes everyone' use-cases better?

<comment><USER3> You can't! :)

It's a fact of life. A different model will generate different outputs for the same prompts. And some of those outputs will be worse than they were.

But, if you use the same prompt with the same model, the output will always be exactly the same (content filters notwithstanding).

<comment><USER11> > But, if you use the same prompt with the same model, the output will always > be exactly the same (content filters notwithstanding).

Isn't this only true if you set the temperature parameter in a way that renders the model deterministic?

<comment><USER3> The temperature parameter controls a random number generator, which itself is controlled by a seed. I assume (or hope) you can specify the seed via the API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know exactly the project I would like to work on: "english to 3d graphics shader". The problem is, it can be difficult to express what the shader does in the first place using plain human english. ShaderToy currently lists approx 40K+. And their human annotated descriptions can be quite creative ;)

<comment><USER13> I'd love to see this and I'd work with you on this. There are probably other niches of procedural generation that GPT-3 might excel at.

<comment><USER12> Hit me up. Email in profile. Starting right away in building an encyclopedic library of GLSL shader code for training ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> @ the other comments, email greg brockman directly if you have a good idea and he'll speed up your access. I applied only a few weeks ago and I'm not famous (no twitter account), I just mentioned i'm a MS student and I had an idea of what I wanted to do

</comment><comment><USER13> I really want access to the API but I have no immediate use case and I'm not "AI community famous". I have vague ideas about prompting it to create 3D models (I work in games\graphics), but I have no idea if that will actually work given the data set.</comment>


Features are faults redux - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/features-are-faults-redux <comment><USER2> I've been imagining for some time an ideal system with just two languages: one compiled low-level one, one interpreted high-level one -- and absolutely zero runtime configuration beyond that. Anytime you want to change how a program behaves you would have to edit its sources. A whole system with the dwm[1] aesthetic, basically. Always keep sources close to programs, allow the entire system to recompile with a single command. Encourage people to micromanage precisely which image formats they want to turn on. The only thing that is interpreted at runtime is code in the high level language.

[1] "dwm is customized through editing its source code.." [http://dwm.suckless.org](http://dwm.suckless.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> > What's the first thing anybody does when they get a second computer? That's > right, set up a kerberos domain

tedu is a funny guy

<comment><USER4> No doubt, especially like this line at the beginning...

 _If you've never heard of OpenBSD, it's a free unix like system. So kind of like Linux, but better in every way. Totally unbiased opinion._

But the article is also really good, a cautionary tail of what can happen trying to please everyone. The links lead to a lot of interesting reading too. I especially liked this one. [1]

[1] [http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite- vim...](http://www.daniellesucher.com/2014/04/24/my-new-favorite-vim-tmux- bug/)</comment></comment>


Why hasn't Japan's government debt wreaked havoc (yet)? - <AUTHOR> https://voxeu.org/article/why-japan-s-debt-hasn-t-wreaked-havoc-yet <comment><USER2> This is from 2014.

Authors use Reinhart-Rogoff argument that huge government debt-to-gdp ratio hurts growth even if it's domestic debt. It had huge political impact and many government adopted austerity-policies.

It's the most famous errors in economics. There was Excel spreadsheet errors that completely invalidated the argument. The methodological errors became just a side show.</comment>


Intimacy 2.0 - a dress that flirts - <AUTHOR> http://www.pixelonomics.com/intimacy-dress-helps-flirt/

<comment><USER2> This dress seems like something straight out of Gary Shteyngart's _Super Sad True Love Story._ It's almost a cross of the 'onion-skin' jeans and the apparats that everyone wears.

If you haven't read the book (you should): Apparats: It's a wonderful invention that ranks everybody. When I enter a bar in downtown Manhattan, my entire history is broadcast to everybody, and immediately everyone knows I'm the eighteenth ugliest man in the room but I have the fourth-best credit rating.

[http://www.thenation.com/blog/162097/gary-shteyngart- intervi...](http://www.thenation.com/blog/162097/gary-shteyngart-interview)

The onion skins: [http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction- News.asp?NewsN...](http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction- News.asp?NewsNum=3395)

Or just check page 89 [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZKk8w8buCxYC&lpg=PA83&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER3> So cool yet so stupid at the same time. I wonder how much it costs to manufacture it.

</comment><comment><USER4> "What fascinates me the most is the materials used in making this dress possible - Smart foils, wireless technologies, electronics, LEDs, copper and more"

... and probably "Like" for becoming more transparent.

</comment><comment><USER5> Now, all we need is a flannel shirt version of this...

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the general idea that wearable textiles can change dramatically in real-time during usage is pretty cool.

Aside from the old temperature based slow changing material and a Neal Stepheson book, I haven't seen this idea implemented.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope, for the wearer's sake, that the dress' firmware has been thoroughly checked for exploitable bugs

<comment><USER8> because as we all know, once you have thoroughly checked for exploitable bugs your system is completely free from exploitable bugs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool use of technologies, but i think it's very objectifying and offensive as clothing. Could be good for curtains or cars tho.

<comment><USER10> As a female, I wouldn't necessarily wear this but I approve of the research and the appeal to sexiness to get attention. I'm not sure how more objectifying this is than a pair of high-heels? (equally useless but can be fun to wear in the right environment).

<comment><USER9> I meant it is offensive for men, not women. Using your clothing transparency to manipulate us so overtly so evilish ... yet so effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do women want this?

<comment><USER12> maybe not "this", but I can see a market for bio-feedback apparel. Brings a whole new meaning to wearing your heart on your sleeve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Make it Bluetooth to uplink to the smartphone so it can tweet your arousal levels based on time and map GPS coordinate. Also id like to track 50 other metrics about my body and wetware without me thinking about it.

I should get this, write an Android app and modify a Bluetooth headset to plug into it. Wire it up. Realtime Biofeedback apparel, ill be rich!</comment>


Writing Modular and Versioned GLSL - <AUTHOR> http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/glslify

<comment><USER2> Looks nice.

I had the problem of modularizing GLSL code myself and ended up writing a Require.js plugin which supported #include statements. Take a look at the shaders in here if interested: [https://github.com/felixpalmer/lod- terrain/tree/master/js/sh...](https://github.com/felixpalmer/lod- terrain/tree/master/js/shaders) and [https://github.com/felixpalmer/amd- three.js/blob/master/js/l...](https://github.com/felixpalmer/amd- three.js/blob/master/js/lib/shader.js)

While glsify has a bunch of nice features that my plugin lacks, one thing mine can do which (as far as I know) glsify cannot, is provide support for redefining #define statements from JavaScript. I find this quite useful if I need to have several similar shaders and want to tweak their behavior from JavaScript. Something like (see [https://github.com/felixpalmer/amd- three.js/blob/master/js/a...](https://github.com/felixpalmer/amd- three.js/blob/master/js/app/material.js)):

define( ["shader!simple.vert"], function ( simpleVert ) { simpleFrag.define( "faceColor", "vec3(1.0, 0, 0)" ); var vertexShader = simpleVert.value; } );

Do you have any thoughts on this feature, or even plans to support something like this in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, I'll check it out.

I don't think it supports anything like that yet. There is some talk about using glslify at runtime, to build "uber shaders" depending on particular needs, and it seems like this kind of feature would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Now, when somebody checks out your code, they can just run `npm init` on the > package and it will grab all the GLSL snippets you've saved as dependencies.

Should they run `npm install` here to get all the package dependencies? Not `npm init`?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, fixed.</comment></comment>


Learn how to code to get a dream job - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jobbox.io/learn-code-get-dream-job/

<comment><USER2> How can this be so cheap?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

Use coupon code HACKERNEWS at [https://stuk.io](https://stuk.io) and get 84% discount on the annual subscription. It's $49 for full access.

Have a great 2015! Joaquim @ Stuk.io</comment>


Twitter Predicts DOW - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1010/1010.3003v1.pdf

<comment><USER2> Great idea for a study.

I think there's a mistake with the early discussion of the efficient markets hypothesis though.

"There are two problems with EMH. First, numerous studies show that stock market prices do not follow a random walk and can indeed to some degree be predicted [5], [6], [7], [8]."

Any bets 5, 6, 7 & 8 have now been factored into financial trading models cancelling out the predictive advantage?

I think it only makes sense to think of EMH as a dynamic rule. With new information (/new ways of understanding old information) disrupting the equilibrium price which then converges to a long term equilibrium; at least until the next shock.

I'd apply this on every level from the technology arms race to new sources of info & analytical models (such as twitter + NLP).

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting paper, but the data set is poor, limited, and during the height of the crisis in 2008. I bet calm alert and happy were highly correlated to daily movements then. The model would have a much higher error rate if sampled from 2009 and 2010.

</comment><comment><USER4> If they really believed this could work, they wouldn't have told anyone about it. They'd have been too busy swimming in $$$.

<comment><USER3> The key is in the model, and besides general details, the paper doesn't explain much. This paper is a form of marketing if anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where is this published?</comment>


Diabetes Patients Are Hacking Their Way Toward a Bionic Pancreas - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/diabetes-patients-hacking-together-diy-bionic-pancreases/

<comment><USER3> There was an insightful reddit comment about this:

>As someone who sells insulin pumps for a living, in my opinion this article is slightly misleading. It makes it sound like the technology isn't there to do exactly what the father/boyfriend want to accomplish: essentially they want to obtain tighter control for the son's/girlfriend's diabetes. To be clear, we do currently have the ability to provide patients with a continuous glucose monitor (which is relatively accurate), and along with that, a model of pump which will stop insulin delivery if a patient's interstitial glucose goes too low. What we don't have (that's described in the story) is a pump which administers insulin doses automatically. But the reason for this is not because of lack of technology... It's because of liability, and that's an important distinction to be made. The boyfriend in the article who developed the auto-delivery system using algorithms for bolus insulin amounts is not doing anything new. In fact, most insulin pumps already have the ability to calculate insulin doses for patients. Instead, he is just doing something that the FDA will not approve of at this time. Every single diabetic responds differently to insulin, and formulas can not necessarily take those variables into account before insulin delivery. As a result, the amount of risk involved at the patient level is too great for the FDA to say "ok" at this time. Additionally, the insurance companies have no motivation to press on because of how costly the approved technology could be. In any case, the article is informative and does a really good job explaining in simple terms how diabetes works. I do believe that we will see a manufactured cure within the next few years (I.e. artificial pancreas) and potentially an organic cure within the next 10-20. Those people who have diabetes deserve that technology and I am confident we will provide it soon :)

<comment><USER4> In terms of the liabilities it isn't really any different to a pacemaker - <USER2> it fails, the person most likely dies. The difference here seems to be it's just solo hackers doing the work. Are any of the big medical companies looking into developing a device like this?

<comment><USER5> There aren't really practical alternatives to a pacemaker though. I guess the FDA would even push for the automatic control to be safer than patient control before approving it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a 19 year old hacker, who has been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes for 8 years, I always had the dream of continuous blood sugar monitoring. But in the real world, a lot of sick people don't have access to these opportunities. The sensors that monitor blood sugar are expensive. I don't mind checking my blood sugar 12 times a day, I hardly feel a thing anymore. The problem is that the insurance only pays for 4 checks a day. If they really want to solve the problem, they should implant the sensors with a surgical operation. Moreover the catheters(infusion sets) we have to wear for our insulin pumps are often faulty. When the needle hits a muscle tissue, it doesn't work, and you are subjected to high blood sugar levels and frustration. Finally, I have to add that, diabetes has been there for years. I was a child when I was diagnosed and my parents never came to check on me every two hours. After a while your survival instincts kick in and you start to feel when something is wrong. As a person who experienced a range from 22 mg/dl to 798 mg/dl consciously, I have to say continuous blood sugar monitoring could save us the excruciating hassle of being alert all the time. With all that technology, and all the money they ripped of from us, I think we deserve to get a secure treatment. Not a cure maybe, but something that would ensure us that we don't get any serious complications (like blindness per se).

</comment><comment><USER7> This is all well and good but there are significant safety issues here. Insulin will kill you if you get the dose wrong. Or more worryingly, won't kill you but will kill your child. As a children's diabetes doctor I know this more than most. This article suggests that the only people interested in fixing the closed loop are a bunch of amateur parents - there are large studies going on in several centres across the world looking at exactly this issue - the algorithms to match insulin to glucose are not straight forward: insulin absorbs slowly, with peak action at 2 hours, gone by 4 hours. In children absorption is less predictable - I have a baby on my ward now whose 'insulin-on-board' is 6 hours. The closed loop is the holy grail for T1 diabetes and there is a lot of time, intellect and money being thrown at it. While open source hacking from intelligent and able programmers is always welcome, experimenting on your own children is dangerous and ill-advised.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why no mention in the article of the actual "bionic pancreas" that has gone through at least one preliminary clinical trial and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine? Seems remiss of the reporter.

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1314474](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1314474)

</comment><comment><USER9> A system that aggregated CGMS data from multiple people and used Gaussian Processes to predict blood sugar would likely be the most accurate you could get today.

</comment><comment><USER10> Kind of weird the dude tried to hide his identity—is he doing anything illegal by treating himself?

<comment><USER11> Probably doesn't want to be harassed for his solution.</comment></comment>


My presentation from last night - Photoshop Rehab: Graphic Design with CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://attasi.com/refresh

<comment><USER2> Nice presentation. Requires webkit though.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm in the Bay Area. Anyone wanna grab coffee/beer? - <AUTHOR>

I'll be bouncing forth between PA, Mountain View and SF. Let's meet up. <comment><USER2> Come see us today in SF @Parisoma 11th Street/Howard (for the APIhackday we organize) Some coffee/bers, foods, hackers and entrepreneurs there

</comment><comment><USER3> Posted 17 hours ago. How did it go? Did you get to talk about interesting things?

</comment><comment><USER4> That's a tad broad wouldn't you say?</comment>