Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka Resigns - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/infosys-ceo-vishal-sikka-resigns/articleshow/60113725.cms <comment><USER2> A lot of criticism is valid however rather generalized. The talent pool at large-scale, low-cost services industry in India is comprised of people who were mass hired, trained on the job and dug through a single skill set for years. That being said, there are pockets within the organization which do really well. It is worth noting, that it can't be a million dollar business without actually solving a business problem. There was a time, when it did manage to fill a massive gap in western markets and even today builds/maintains large scale systems at lot of western enterprises.

In my opinion, it provides challenging opportunities around how to manage large distributed teams. It is not a place to seek technical growth or high powered teams.

As an outsider, I feel, Vishal Sikka, was attempting to change the culture from within but was clearly facing considerable resistance from promoters/founders. I admire the value system upon with the Infosys was originally founded on; they originally went out of their way for employees, however, over time the focus has shifted and I feel they have failed to keep pace with evolving landscape and business models both.

<comment><USER3> > It is worth noting, that it can't be a million dollar business without > actually solving a business problem.

Based on my interactions with Infosis, I beg to differ.

As best as I can tell, their business model is basically to convince clients that Infosys should take on IT projects at a fraction of the cost compared to the competition. Whoever gets them through the door gets hailed as a cost saving hero and is soon promoted. Meanwhile the projects that were given to them inevitably fail, and some new executive is sent in to pick up the pieces. At that stage the cycle may repeat with Infosys once again picking up the task of cleaning up its own mess.

They don't solve business problems, they just sell snake oil to organizations that have not yet learned to avoid them.

<comment><USER4> Just curious: did anybody here had a good experience with a project done by Infosys? There must have been good teams and good projects.

<comment><USER5> Infosys built the original iOS App Store. It's not perfect, but for something which operates at a massive scale, it isn't the worst it could be.

<comment><USER6> Bullshit. My team built the original app store in Apple.

<comment><USER5> I might be mistaken on this then. I think it might have been the dev center then, prior to the refresh? I heard this from someone who worked at Apple for years, they were set up in offices across the street from the team they interfaced with at Apple.

<comment><USER7> No, Apple doesn't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I used one of the body shops in India to move to the US on H1B. Then I switched to a reputed US company within months after landing. This is what every highly skilled Indian grads should do.

<comment><USER9> >Should do? How does ethics play out here? Promising an employer to work for them just to lure them and get an H1B visa and then ditching them? Doesn't sound ethical.

<comment><USER10> H1B visa jobs are supposed to pay the prevailing wage to the employee, if they did in fact do that how was OP able to find a better job so quickly?

<comment><USER11> I know h1bs who jumped to Amazon, Intel etc. The salary increase was significant, but they were relocating from low cost of living areas to the big cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No direct experience but I heard they are one of nastier of Indian body shops. Projects are full of the most appalling fail and 'just do it'. Line management are utterly clueless enforcers with bad attitudes. But then that does seem to be the go with these companies.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that those companies exists to fulfil a very different objective than what in-house developers are expected to provide.

You should see them as a Leasing system for Generic Development Resources: flexible and clear billing, fleet management, transparent reallocation of resources, economical and instant capacity to increase or decrease the fleet sizes.

Their line management reflect that, and their developers have to reflect that too. They are not in the business of delivering software or business feature, they are in the business of providing development hours in the most flexible and smooth fashion.

"Just do it" is what their client is buying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have a technical interview with this company next week. Anyone want to fill me in on the good the bad and the ugly of being a programmer at a company like Infosys?

<comment><USER15> I highly recommend you NOT to join this company as a programmer because you'd have no growth and also, they pay you peanuts and earn millions. They treat you like shit. You'll be just another fish in the sea.

The only good thing about joining this company is good work-life balance as there is no much work for you to do.

<comment><USER16> I find it weird when people curse Indian IT companies which were once their employers. Is it not true that once upon a time you were only fit to join them because no one else would have employed you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I find it really strange that people are down voting this comment.

Not only do these Big IT companies hire in mass, they also spend insane amounts of money and time training students who come out of college without exposure to real work.

Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But they likely give you the biggest break of your life.

People need to show some gratitude.

<comment><USER17> "insane amounts of money" is an overkill.

I have worked for a year in IBM. We had a two weeks training course on Lotus Notes, sub-contracted out to a training institute. In a dingy place, in an inner part of the city.

Even in companies like Infosys, most training is done in-house. So we are not talking about insane amounts of money. Additionally, if you need to really spend insane amounts of money to train freshers, then either you are hiring wrong, or you are dumping complex work on them. Either way, it's the problem of the company.

> students who come out of college without exposure to real work.

Of course, students out of college will not have any exposure to real work. There is no real internship system in India.

Also, training fresh students, just out of college is a process followed by literally every company on earth, which is hiring freshers.

> Yeah they pay peanuts and yes you would be just a face in the crowd. But > they likely give you the biggest break of your life.

They are able to do this because, there is a huge supply of educated engineers, and an acute shortage of jobs. Companies like Infosys mostly outsource mundane work, to hastily trained engineers (to join Infosys, it doesn't matter what your major is, Electrical, Civil, Mechanical, Aero, anything will do.), essentially using them as mules. Fortunately, unlike the coal workers of previous generations, the domain of work allows for natural skill development. So yes, a break in life, but not the biggest.

> People need to show some gratitude.

They do. There is a lot of gratitude. But also simmering anger at the failure of stalwarts like Infosys for failing to develop business to move up the value chain.

<comment><USER18> I like the last one. True, Infosys like companies started as a service company and never expanded their business to develop out of the service sector which is bad. My observation is, all these service companies only focus on their profits and never reinvest to expand the business out of it, maybe developing a product to start with.

<comment><USER19> Why do companies have to move out of service business? There are so many companies which would give complete product development to service companies because it is not in their domain of expertise.

Personally they should have improved upon the service business. All the present good frameworks etc does not need to be rewritten but has to applied in a better way.

<comment><USER17> Service companies developing products mostly happens for non critical line of business apps, and usually its just an extension to the apps already serviced by the company.

However, BigIT in India could have latched onto that work and move into core product development.

Two reasons they did not.

One, their cash cow is service and moving people into product development would hurt their bottomline.

Two, they failed to see the obvious growing threat of automation. This I think is their biggest failure.

When you see the threat to your core business, its your responsibility to plan for the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like Vishal and thought he was thoughtful and tried to make some interesting changes. Not surprised that this conflicted with the founders.

</comment><comment><USER21> Infosys needs a CEO: CTOs need not apply? [http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DCbAckNJOQA0J57CGkMuQK/Infos...](http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/DCbAckNJOQA0J57CGkMuQK/Infosys- needs-a-CEO-CTOs-need-not-apply.html)</comment>


Show HN: Are You A Brogrammer? Take the quiz and find out - <AUTHOR> http://areyouabrogrammer.com

<comment><USER2> -25 I'm a joegrammer. I think this meme is stupid, but this quiz is pretty damn funny. Well done sir!

</comment><comment><USER3> Dude! My bro brogrammed the sh*t out of this. He's my bro, for realz.

</comment><comment><USER4> Proud to have scored a solid -115 :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Let's go!</comment>


Fred Wilson's top referring domains for the past thirty days - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/.a/6a00d83451b2c969e20148c752cd8e970c-pi

<comment><USER2> Interesting that HN traffic seems fairly low quality (assuming Page Visits and Time on Site as measurements of quality - only Stumbleupon and Countermotions provide lower figures on those metrics). Perhaps this demonstrates that HN visitors read the article, then return here to discuss rather than exploring the site.

<comment><USER3> Could it have something to do with the reading speed of users?

I know that I read a lot faster than some of my old school friends. And not as fast as some old uni friends. But I'd guess the average HN reader was a fair bit faster reader than your average reader.

Though compared to the your average reader, I suspect Fred Wilson's are probably faster than average... so are HN visitors faster readers than average avc readers?

Original article: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/rss-continued.html>

<comment><USER4> On the Internet, reading speed becomes less important than the level of skimming. Even a very fast reader, if they really read an article, are going to be "slower" than most who approach the article, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure what the RSS/Twitter/Facebook flame fest is all about. Or I suppose more to the point, why any of us care.

Unless your audience is the extremely narrow TechCrunch demographic, nobody should be making strategic business decisions based on TechCrunch referrer stats.

I suppose this is just a good, old-fashioned brawl in the tech world echo chamber.

<comment><USER6> Sadly, I think it's because it gives people something to talk about, and that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is why I like the GetClicky / MixPanel approaches to bounce rate better. I might have the details wrong, but the idea is as long as the page is your active browser window/tab for more than N seconds, you will no longer be counted as a bounce (despite only performing one action).

They can constantly reping to estimate your time-on-site within the ping frequency.</comment>


Scalability, Part 2: Hypercubes - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/10/21/scalability-part-2-hypercubes/

<comment><USER2> As a side project, I've been reimplementing a large chunk of Ethereum PoC-5 in Haskell. Given all the stuff that's going on in that ecosystem, though, I've basically stopped development.

Bitcoin is held together by a delicate balance of cryptography, software design, and community involvement. Most altcoins are very conservative about the changes they introduce, keeping them as close as possible to successful designs and carefully monitoring the blockchain for stability. Ethereum, meanwhile, no longer bears much resemblance to the projects that inspired it. Even if Ethereum's core algorithms are sound -- and it's becoming difficult for anyone outside the project to evaluate that at this point -- there's no concrete evidence that it will be stable in practice, and they're already building many layers of code on an uncertain foundation.

I'd love for Ethereum to succeed; I've always been more interested in Bitcoin as a distributed system than as a currency, so it's great to see people pushing it in that direction. But it's gone past the point where I can evaluate all the new stuff that's happening, and I feel weird devoting time to a project when I can't see where it's headed. We'll see what happens once the dust settles...

<comment><USER3> Personally, this is why I find Ethereum so fun. I don't think anyone expects Ethereum to suddenly take over the world, but it's a really interesting testing ground for a lot of fascinating ideas. If we were trying to identify a spiritual predecessor, it would definitely not be something like the Apple II. We're much more in "Mother of All Demos" territory.

I would honestly be mildly surprised if I was actually making money programming Ethereum contracts in 10 years, but I would not be remotely surprised if I was doing something that owed its existence to the experiments the Ethereum team is doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Determining if that algorithm is secure against attacks which steal value is going to be tough. Even if the algorithm is secure, the implementation may not be. Building a general-purpose interpreter into a money system may not be a great idea from a security perspective. Could someone put hostile code in the block chain? Cause overflows? I don't know.

This is a really complicated consistent-eventually system. It's possible for parts of the network to be out of sync, possibly due to attacks. Eventually, the inconsistency is discovered when two out-of-sync subnets communicate. Then there's a complex dispute-resolution strategy which ultimately results in some blocks being invalidated. It's not clear how long this takes. Since the application is money transfer, a substantial delay may offer the opportunity to take the money and run, which is almost standard practice in the Bitcoin world.

(A long, long time ago I looked at a similar problem - keeping routing tables in sync in the presence of bogus data insertion. I never had a really airtight solution; the best I was able to do was to come up with a way to detect attacks. If there's now a good solution to that problem, perhaps it should go into a successor to Border Gateway Protocol, which has route forgery problems.)

Checking out the security of this thing looks like a PhD thesis sized project, with a really good crypto advisor.

<comment><USER5> > This is a really complicated consistent-eventually system.

So it is very complex and it is supposed to be trusted for monetary transactions, and failure means significant financial loss? This isn't a good combination to have.

It is great to have these types of really complex ideas, but something more elegant is likely to beat out this idea in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love to see a poll: will Ethereum ever launch?

I can't tell if this is all horseshit, or too deep for me to understand.

<comment><USER7> >I can't tell if this is all horseshit, or too deep for me to understand.

A mixture of horseshit and mildly interesting stuff.

Even though ethereum is technically feasible, it's plagued by developmental issues (including, IIRC, failed attempts at roll-your-own crypto), and even if it does ever get launched, the incentive structure doesn't make sense and the whole platform is essentially useless. It's absolutely no good for distributed apps; you still need oracles for those to do anything useful, and if you have oracles, you might as well put the apps on the oracles in the first place. It might be useful for digital contracts, but Bitcoin already handles those very well in the vast majority of cases.

<comment><USER8> It's not like they're coming up with their own encryption algorithms. The original parts are things that haven't been done before. Roll-your-own is the only option.

It's worth noting maybe that Ralph Merkle is on the team. [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25269r/dr_ralph_mer...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25269r/dr_ralph_merkle_of_merkle_tree_fame_just_joined/)

The only thing you need oracles for is getting information from the outside world. I can think of plenty of applications that don't require that. But even then you don't really need oracles if you use the Schelling mechanism they've been talking about.

<comment><USER7> >It's not like they're coming up with their own encryption algorithms.

I seem to remember something about a tree-based hash algorithm for mining purposes that turned out to be cryptographically insecure.

>The only thing you need oracles for is getting information from the outside world.

Or for having any effect on the outside world (i.e. the things that people usually want programs to do).

> I can think of plenty of applications that don't require that.

Besides financials/contract processing, what?

>Schelling mechanism

Do you have a link about this?

<comment><USER8> Schelling:

[https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/03/28/schellingcoin-a- minimal...](https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/03/28/schellingcoin-a-minimal- trust-universal-data-feed/)

[https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/06/30/advanced-contract- progr...](https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/06/30/advanced-contract-programming- example-schellingcoin/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tiananmen Square: China minister defends 1989 crackdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48489002 <comment><USER2> I wonder who asked the Tiananmen question to the minister from the audience in Singapore. That guy has some backbone, I like it. They should be challenged on the topic of their political repression more. And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to dismiss as western propaganda.

It's a pretty simple equation. Why would any state have to spend so much explicit effort on making no one mention it, if there was nothing really wrong with it?

It will forever be the giant elephant in the room, regardless of how big and successful China makes itself. Few westerners really understanding how completely thorough and effective it was. The near universal obedience seen among the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west. Which is in itself an interesting cultural question.

<comment><USER3> > And not just the typical American channels which Beijing finds easy to > dismiss as western propaganda. [...] The near universal obedience seen among > the population would seem very foreign to most people in the west.

You say that, but mainstream western media is very rarely _really_ critical of the government and especially the core policies of the government (which are the same regardless of whose government it happens to be). Yeah, mainstream media will take some potshots (which is an improvement over China) but very rarely will there be an actual critique of establishment politics.

Almost no mainstream media was critical of the Iraq war and the lie that Saddam had WMDs. No mainstream media is critical of the currently 5 illegal wars (not approved by Congress thus being illegal under the US constitution, nor an act of defense thus being illegal under the Nuremberg Convention) being waged by the US. No mainstream media was critical of the Syrian gas attack (used as justification to bomb Syria with America's "majestic" weapons) which may have been false, given the recent leak of an internal OPCW document detailing evidence that the gas canisters could not have been dropped from a helicopter and the attempts to cover it up[1] -- which was so ignored by mainstream media that I can't even find an article mentioning it. No mainstream media is critical of US interventionism nor modern US imperialism. No mainstream media is critical of the current narrative being pushed by the government about Venezuela or Iran. And that's just the war narrative!

[1]: [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw- chemic...](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/douma-syria-opcw-chemical- weapons-chlorine-gas-video-conspiracy-theory-russia-a8927116.html)

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't take Robert Fisk at face value here without some detailed citations of primary sources after he signed onto the "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" 9/11 conspiracy theory.

<comment><USER3> As I mentioned above -- I don't like that the only article I could find of any repute which mentioned the leaked OPCW report was the Independent (the other option was InfoWars). And yes, about half of the article does appear to be at least slightly bullshit. But the leaked report was so ignored by mainstream media there isn't even a mention of it in an opinion piece in more reputable papers like the Guardian.

Aaron Mate did a piece on this[1], who is definitely a more reputable journalist (though not mainstream). I also just found that (of all people) Tucker Carlson mentioned this on his show[2]. Then again, I have many other issues with Tucker Carlson.

[1]: [https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/25/opcw-syria-gas-attack- sta...](https://thegrayzone.com/2019/05/25/opcw-syria-gas-attack-staged- theodore-postol/) [2]: [https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/were-being- played-tucke...](https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/were-being-played- tucker-carlson-features-leaked-syria-chemical-attack-memo.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm reading this thread while in a hotel a block away from the square in China (not on VPN, because that has not been working due to political events). Of course the BBC article is blocked. The thirtieth anniversary of the event is tomorrow.

Interesting that HN is not blocked.

<comment><USER6> Let's test it: is this blocked? [https://outline.com/99a78v](https://outline.com/99a78v)

What about this (expires in 7 days, but does require an actual download. It is a FF screenshot of the BBC page): [https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxP...](https://send.firefox.com/download/0fc126b73012ee50/#o_bILCxPlonNXbETPbroRA)

I'm curious, because if they analyze these links (or even this message) I figure it would be easy to identify.

<comment><USER5> Neither were blocked.

<comment><USER6> Well then it looks like you can use outline to read things that are being censored.

<comment><USER7> For now, at least. The Chinese firewall may eventually whack that mole, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Man, this entry disappeared from the frontpage quickly! Anyone knows why?

</comment><comment><USER9> I am trying to understand what it feels like to Chinese people. As Americans, is there any past government action we can't criticize? I am sure there is some example but I can't think of it. Is there something similar for us?

<comment><USER10> I think it's actually quite simple. The Chinese fear the American government more than the Chinese government. Therefore they care more about the legitimacy of the Chinese government and are willing to elide whatever mistakes their own government may have made. That their government may or may not have told the truth about Tiananmen is immaterial.

<comment> frosted-flakes Why do they fear the American government?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sadly isn't news - authoritarians never admit their mistakes.

They unironically invoked Mao's pest campaign when the last time they did that they created mass famine because in the absense of chemical pesticides it is far preferable to pay the "sparrow tax" than have uneaten locust grubs eat everything.

The best they have for Mao is doublethink where they abandoned his views and suppress Maoists while refusing to condemn him and his mistakes for fear of it harming their "legitimacy".

</comment><comment><USER12> As of this writing, this post is 2 hours old, ranked #96 (4th page of HN), and has 117 points. I believe it was on the front page 30 minutes ago. This is a steep drop in ranking -- what are the factors in the HN ranking algorithm that could contribute to this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I posted for the long Kate Adie video in the article which I had not seen before.

The other reason is my concern at a defence minister even mentioning this event when everyone is aware of the state position already. It seems to be an expansion of the conversation from trade and market access to ideology which is unfortunate. There's enough to sort out with just market access, currency flows and IP.

<comment><USER13> As detailed in the article, he didn't "mention" the event but was replying to a specific question about it during an event in Singapore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I feel like China has learned from Perestroika and made a conscious choice not to go down that path, but instead focus on economic freedoms rather than political. To offer some perspective: the 90's were a dark time in Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking large chunks of deliberately decentralized economy with it, there was hunger, hyperinflation, deficit of basic goods (same shit you're seeing in Venezuela right now), and the poorer, older, less economically nimble part of society was disproportionately impacted.

This was, in large part, because people were given near total freedom (far more of it than you see in the US today) in one fell swoop, and _way_ before they knew what to do with it. Naturally, some people were much better than others at turning this to their advantage, opportunistically injecting themselves into the corridors of power, buying up previously state-owned factories for fractions of a penny on the dollar, swindling the common people out of whatever breadcrumbs the government threw to them during privatization.

This shit was allowed to run unabated for a decade or so, and ended up with Yeltsin hanging up his hat and apologizing on TV, before de-facto installing Putin as his successor. The people behind this were Siloviki: the powerful folks who run or otherwise control Russia's several security services.

In retrospect, given the amount of pain, death, and suffering inflicted on the general public, it could be that shooting a few hotheads early on would be an objectively better option. The country could then proceed to a much more controlled and measured liberalization, with law and order carefully enforced throughout, rather than a decade-long free-for-all (or rather "a few") that ensued in practice.

That's not to say that Tiananmen suppression was justified. I grew up in Russia, so I was a direct observer and participant of the events I describe above, so in the case of Russia I can tell you with a good degree of confidence that if the wild 90's weren't allowed to happen there to the extent that they did, Russia would be far better off.

Stuff like this also can't be judged by reading propaganda, foreign or domestic, so those who haven't been there at that time should refrain from commenting one way or the other. That'd be just regurgitating someone else's talking points: an entirely pointless exercise.

I'd love to hear from someone who lived in China at that time and for whom this is not something they've read about on the Internet.

<comment><USER15> Were you still a child/teenager during the 90s while living in Russia? Or were you already an adult and working at that point?

It's always very interesting to hear from someone who's directly lived through experience. Thanks for offering your perspective.

<comment><USER14> I was a student for most of the 90s (6 year MSc). But I was also working part- time. So I guess a little of both. Still remember it all pretty vividly 20+ years later. Not having any money to buy food for weeks on end especially (subsisted on eggs, potatoes, and pickles). I also remember converting all my ruble denominated savings into dollars on a whim 2 weeks before the 1998 default. That was a major coup for me: before the default USD/RUR was about 6, after - about 21, and most prices were revised upward correspondingly. Imagine losing 2/3rds of your money in the span of a few days for no fault of your own, just because the oligarchs are picking the rotting corpse of your country clean and can't be bothered to pay taxes (some of which would normally go to service the debts).

People still remember all of this. That's why Putin is so popular: he is widely credited (and rightly so) with pulling Russia from the brink of disintegration. I always voted for anyone but Putin, though: can't stand vote rigging, and he rigs every single election, even though he doesn't need to: he'd be elected by quite a margin anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meanwhile, the same thing is repeating in Sudan at the exact same day and nobody cares. Peaceful months long sit-in met with violence.

[https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SudanUprising&src=tyah)

</comment><comment><USER17> If you want to learn about the incident, here's a great documentary (NSFW)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5cYU70ujs)

<comment><USER18> NSFL might be more appropriate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Same sort of response I'd expect an American Government Diplomat to give if asked about what happened to the 82 men/women/children of the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX.

Governments defend their actions, usually.

<comment><USER20> Isn't the suppression of the event in media the key difference, though? The Waco massacre was widely discussed and publicized, and you can find plenty of information on it if you'd like - including people that defend the Waco standoff.

<comment><USER21> It seems to me like Orwell vs. Huxley difference. In the end thing is mostly forgotten in both cases.

<comment><USER22> Here is the difference: in one case it is forgotten because the government is actively imprisoning people who mention it; in the other, because people are apathetic and easily distracted and perhaps disagree that this is an event of similar import. It seems a rather important difference to me.

<comment><USER21> It is a difference but when I read what you wrote I have trouble deciding which is worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "That incident was a political turbulence and the central government took measures to stop the turbulence, which is a correct policy," he told the forum.

Gunning down protesters then grinding into a mulch with tanks and aocs, so that you can wash the remains down the gutters is never a solution.

Trying to push this incident into the background only shows how little change has happened.

Once more - this isn't a situation you can ever forgive a government for. There is no ifs, buts or collateral reasons for this.

<comment><USER24> Right. And it's not like the Dalai Lama can go home either. The only thing that's changed is they dictate more of the groupthink than they did in 89. The social credit system is probably going to be more effective than that tanks were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Crackdown", in 10 years it'll be "Trouble" then "Protest" then "Revolt"

</comment><comment><USER26> It sounds like the US government ministers who defended the 1992 crackdown in Los Angeles at the Republican National Convention and elsewhere. The US army marched in to quell the upset, and dozens were killed.

Although we do not hear much about that in the US other than praise of the army. Just endless rehashes of Beijing events before LA happened, in the middle of Trump's trade and South China sea war with China.

<comment><USER27> The 1992 Republican National Convention was in Houston and AFAIK no one died

<comment><USER26> I said Los Angeles, not Houston.

It was defended at the 1992 RNC as I said - [https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan199...](https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/patrickbuchanan1992rnc.htm)

In fact the Republicans have this speaker saying an almost word for word echo of what the Chinese minister said.

<comment><USER26> The two replies are completely puzzled about what I mean by the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992, with dozens dead in the wake.

It makes me think of people who are "shocked" that Chinese college students don't know about Beijing in 1989, and they say how the Chinese elite have suppressed events. But I talk about the US army marching into Los Angeles in 1992 and dozens dead in the wake, and it is a complete mystery to multiple people here, they have no idea what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER28> People probably don't know what you're talking about because of the way you phrased it. Generally people don't recognize "the 1992 LA Riots" but they do recognize "the Rodney King Riots", which I'm pretty sure is what you are referring to?

Also, saying that the military and police killed "dozens" is a bit disingenuous. While 53 people were killed during the riots, of those 8 were killed by police and 2 by national guardsmen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Matter Conscious? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious <comment><USER2> This seems to be the old homunculus argument in another form.[1]

As knowledge of how brains work increases, this will probably become a non- issue. A big question for millenia was "what is life?" This question continued through the discovery of bacteria, and later, DNA. As the lower level mechanisms of biology were understood, it stopped being a question. Bacteria are alive, and are reasonably well understood. The components of bacteria are not quite alive, but are also understood. (There's still some argument over whether viruses are alive, but that's now just an argument over the definition.) "What is life" is now a "go look it up" question, not a mystery.

"What is consciousness" will probably go the same way in time.

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

<comment><USER3> Suppose we build some robots with AI and send them to space, and they land on some planet.

Those robots can mine raw materials and build other robots like themselves.

They can learn, and teach, and improve their designs and invent new things.

Fast forward a few hundred years. The planet now hosts a civilization of robots, with their own culture, planning their own excursions into space.

To someone searching for Life™ and Intelligence™ in the cosmos, what would make our robot civilization fail to be qualified as such?

<comment><USER4> An external observer should realize that robots are self replicators (like people) that fend for themselves in the environment (like people, again), by a complex process of adaptation to external situations, moment by moment (yep, like us).

<comment><USER3> And yet, when we make them here, everyone will consider them to be only "artificially" intelligent, and they certainly won't be "alive" because, well, no cells and no DNA and stuff.

So the GP's comment about life being a "go look it up" question is debatable at best. Expect the definition to change over the centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see any advance in this debate since things that Dennett and Hofstadter wrote 20+ years ago (both independently and in their co-authored book "The Mind's I[^]"). It's surprising to see academic philosophers still using arguments like the "redness problem" described in this article. How can anyone with any knowledge of visual neuroscience or artificial neural networks be confused by a generative system producing a novel state?

And perhaps more controversially, I'm always a bit taken aback by the constant blase assertion that consciousness is a mystery. Is it really surprising that we have a first person subjective experience? We know that we are incredibly complex things, constantly integrating and acting on very complicated external stimuli. Such a system should have references to its own body and its own neural states, its train of reasoning should frequently include itself, its focus will drift forward and backwards in time... this is just how a system like this would work. If the system communicates about its state then its language should have referents to these internal states, referents like "experience", and "feels like", and "I understand". Is that surprising? Wouldn't it be surprising if it _wasn 't_ like that?

I think that Tononi's approach is a good approximation, but it can't be a full solution because the word 'consciousness' is too anthropocentric. One criticism of IIT showed that a seemingly uninteresting complex artificial system could have a very high IIT complexity quotient. The problem is that the things we use to define the term 'consciousness' are things that can be approximated to varying degrees by chimps or dolphins or generative adversarial networks or antfarms or thermometers. But behind our use of the word 'consciousness' there is still almost always a very slightly disguised dualism that uses it as a substitute for the word 'soul'.

[^]edited

<comment><USER6> It's "The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul" by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett

"The Mind's Eye" is by Oliver Sacks (who has almost definitely read Hofstadter/Dennett)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2081.The_Mind_s_I](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2081.The_Mind_s_I)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the title may mislead some and result in their dissatisfaction. This article (and comments) are more addressing the unknown nature of consciousness and matter. Specifically, how they seem to be circularly related. I.e. Our consciousness seems to have originated from our physical configuration, yet also the only way we perceive/understand the physical reality is through our consciousness/mind.

It also concludes with the fun statement "The possibility that consciousness is the real concrete stuff of reality". Which is quite a fun statement to truly unpack and understand, of which, I will not attempt to do now. :)

<comment><USER4> The article is referring to "idealism", the belief that world is primarily ideal (ideal = "of the same kind with ideas" = mental), not physical. It says that the world we perceive is just an internal state inside the fundamental substratum which is consciousness itself. It was in vogue in India 1000 years ago in the time of Abhinavagupta and appeared in many other places, even in Europe. Look for idealistic monism in the wiki.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin's "A Wizard of Earthsea," in which all things had a name, and knowing a thing's name granted power over it. At the same time it also seems weirdly suggestive of The Matrix.

<comment><USER9> Holy wow. I just finished reading the first of the Kingkiller Chronicle books, The Name of the Wind. I did not realize this central theme was so similar (and/or derivative). My exposure to sci-fi and fantasy is more deep than broad, a lot from the same authors instead of several from many. I think I must be somewhat blinded to how common this probably is.

<comment><USER10> I have read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy fiction. A lot. Very few stories surprise me regarding the broad strokes or philosophical system / theme as it relates to magic and world building. I always enjoy when an author teases a new perspective on a known theme or system. Sanderson is great at taking a "known" system and bounding it tightly and thus making it a great story telling device.

I always enjoy an author with a deep understanding of a subject like game theory and they weave it into the magic and story giving a view into something new. So "everything is derivative". And nothing is :)

<comment><USER9> I also just finished the first Mistborn book. I REALLY enjoyed that, much more than Kingkiller Chronicles (of which I've read two books). I'm moving onto the next one and am excited that there are a number of them I can consume in this same series/world.

I thought the magic system in Kingkiller was pretty neat, and I think the same of Mistborn. It really exposed further my narrow scope because I am very used to conventional, plain magics and they were both different and unique, and well-crafted.

<comment><USER10> This may be a little like cheat codes for fantasy fiction, but look up Sanderson's creative writing course lectures. It is meant for aspiring fantasy fiction authors but it has also made me a much more critical sci-fi and fantasy reader.

I pulled it up: 2013 Lecture 1: [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YydnShI45jSbRdMeyQ-S...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8YydnShI45jSbRdMeyQ- SiKJDKYaTeMe) start here. This YouTube account has all of the lectures. As an avid fanfic reader these lectures were immensely enjoyable especially as it is essentially one of the preminent authors of this era sharing his secret sauce freely.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the dialogue and information! I've bookmarked this and will make my way through it as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is actually one of the better presentations of this idea, and it gave me a better handle on it.

Here's one way to look at it. If you accept the claim, "My conscious experiences exist, non-physically," which seems true, you can reason to some interesting places from there. For example, it would be pretty weird if you were the only "conscious" person in the world, surrounded by zombies who only appear to have an inner life, so we can say that all brains have consciousness. Then, you can keep delicately applying Occam's razor to say that what we call consciousness could be just one manifestation of a more basic phenomenon, which fills a metaphysical explanatory void.

Even if we don't accept the claim, and we say consciousness doesn't really exist and we are merely projecting its existence, we could still discover new phenomena that seem just as real to us as the illusion of consciousness, despite not being clearly connected to physical laws. Maybe pretending that it's possible to have a "direct experience" of something can reveal that everyday consciousness is just one kind of direct experiencing.

</comment><comment><USER4> > No matter how precisely we could specify the mechanisms underlying, for > example, the perception and recognition of tomatoes, we could still ask: Why > is this process accompanied by the subjective experience of red, or any > experience at all? Why couldn't we have just the physical process, but no > consciousness?

The difference comes from context. It is one thing to have a feedforward network that detects tomatoes, another to have a reinforcement learning agent that optimizes for survival in nature.

The RL agent has a value function that assigns a predicted future reward to the current state and actions available. The value network, together with the sense data, is "what it feels like" for the agent to see the tomatoes. Maybe it knows that red tomatoes are good, or that red fruit are ripe, and they can give it a reward signal by reducing hunger. That makes perceiving red an experience colored by emotion. Maybe agents that didn't see red tomatoes as good, had less chance of survival and died off.

Also, the RL agent is not a simple feedforward net, but a loop: perception->judgement->action->effect in environment, and rewards. It is a dynamic process, evolving from moment to moment. In that continuous perception-action-effect loop, there is space for the inner world and all its complexities.

<comment><USER12> Why?

All of those could be feedback/computation systems without any experience.

Your answer only argues for why the system would have certain computational features, not a subjective aspect.

<comment><USER4> My answer explains why there would be an emotion attached to a perception. The subjective aspect is a result of the network being an agent, that has to fend for itself in the greater environment. The stake of the RL game is survival itself. Each new state it finds itself in opens some possible future paths and closes other paths. Some actions lead to rewards, other to losses. I think subjectivity lays in this space of values, options and actions. That places is where "it feels like something" to see red.

And if you're still unconvinced, remember what we are: a collection of cells, a protein based dynamical system that has computing and learning abilities. Why would it feel like something to be a protein-based computer?

<comment><USER12> You've missed the question: why is there a perception at all for red to seem like that in?

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by 'perception'?

<comment><USER12> That there's any subjective experience, that there are things I perceive or experience.

The question is how do I explain having a subjective experience _at all_ , and do toasters have one?

<comment><USER4> Toasters are not self-replicating systems like living things, so they don't share the same problems. An organism has to fend for itself and reproduce in order to exist. Perception appeared as a mechanism that allows organisms to adapt to changing external conditions. With experience, they learned complex behaviors by reinforcement learning. Every moment, it perceives the world, judges the value potential of possible actions (instinctively), then selects the action and executes it. This loop requires the agent to have an evolving internal state. This is 'subjective experience'. It's a mechanism by which organisms behave in a more adaptive way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's no reason to believe so.

Advancements in CS, AI, biology, and general models of intelligence are slowly bringing us to the point where consciousness is no longer a mystery to the enlightened. One of my favorite researchers in general AI is Professor Schmidhuber, who has pioneered some of the (currently) more practical areas of machine learning, too: [http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/)

Even when we create self-aware machines that can demonstrate generalized intelligence, I think most people will struggle to come to terms with what consciousness is (or more so, what it isn't). My spin on it: consciousness isn't real; it's a necessary perceived byproduct of 'everything else.'

I believe Schmidhuber said it more elegantly, describing consciousness as a result of data compression.

<comment><USER14> It's not like this viewpoint isn't known, it's just not accepted because it makes no sense. Consciousness really is unexplainable by what we know of the physical world, it's constancy is just odd. When were talking about the most advanced organ in the history of the universe, is it really a leap to consider that new physics would be involved?

<comment><USER4> > Consciousness really is unexplainable by what we know of the physical world, > it's constancy is just odd.

Consciousness is just you adapting to the world. You need consciousness in order to live in the world, with all its complexity and dangers. The brain has nothing magical about it, it is made of the same kind of atoms as anything else. What is happening is just perception, judgement and action in a loop, each supported by neural networks. Every moment, a full perception-judgement- action loop plays itself. It generates a stream of experience and emotion (which is just the value or reward intuited in certain situations and actions). This internal stream of perceptions and judgements is consciousness.

<comment><USER14> Amazing that every sentence you wrote is objectively wrong. I'm bored so lets go through them:

1\. Consciousness is just you adapting to the world

Since when did adaptation require consciousness? We're not even sure most animals are conscious, but they adapt to their conditions just fine.

2\. You need consciousness in order to live in the world, with all its complexity and dangers.

Where does this need come from? A self driving car could navigate the world without being conscious at all.

3\. The brain has nothing magical about it, it is made of the same kind of atoms as anything else.

Didn't say it was magical, but saying it's made of atoms moves this conversation along by zero percent. It's like saying computers are just a bunch of transistors, disregarding the millions of lines of code required for it to even just take my key inputs as I type out this pointless comment, and turn them into glyphs on the screen.

4\. What is happening is just perception, judgement and action in a loop, each supported by neural networks.

Where has this come from? We don't even know what goes on inside one neuron, let alone the billions of networks.

5\. Every moment, a full perception-judgement-action loop plays itself.

So what happens if I close my eyes and cover my ears? Now I am unable to perceive the world around me, and break the 'loop'. It's not like I shut down. I don't think you've thought this through.

6\. It generates a stream of experience and emotion (which is just the value or reward intuited in certain situations and actions).

Yes certain chemicals are released in the brain depending on your actions, but of course it's all chemicals; it's a biological system.

7\. This internal stream of perceptions and judgements is consciousness.

No, this is just a function of part of the brain, which we can be aware of through consciousness.

All in all, there is completely no depth to your explanation at all. The fact we haven't got a definite blueprint for the brain, does really mean it is currently beyond our understanding. Neuroscientists have died of old age trying to figure out the secrets of the brain, and it's because they were looking a bit more in-depth that it's just a bunch of atoms.

<comment><USER13> > Amazing that every sentence you wrote is objectively wrong.

As I mentioned in my original post, most people, like yourself, will reject these very non-intuitive conclusions, probably indefinitely.

Regardless, I'll point out that many of your counter-arguments to the parent comment are wrong (not saying I agree with all of his description, either).

> A self driving car could navigate the world without being conscious at all.

How do you define conscious? 'Feeling' just like you do? I think many modern AI's could be said to experience a different, simple form of consciousness as they process inputs. Granted, it's not useful unless you have an AI that is also more generally self-aware and communicates with us. But regardless, your hyperbolic example equated driving a car on streets with "living in the world," which you were replying to (which is an objectively ridiculous comparison).

> We don't even know what goes on inside one neuron, let alone the billions of > networks.

Considering what NN-based deep learning has accomplished with relatively small numbers of simulated neurons with relatively simple models, I think it's safe to say that a single neuron is not as complex and mysterious as you may think.

> No, this is just a function of part of the brain, which we can be aware of > through consciousness.

This is your idea of an objective truth? This is your opinion, which, someday, we may be able to prove is objectively wrong.

<comment><USER14> > How do you define conscious? 'Feeling' just like you do? I think many modern > AI's could be said to experience a different, simple form of consciousness > as they process inputs.

What an odd comment. So because we performed some clever math to make some basic neural nets, our AI is now experiencing a form of consciousness? This is just better algorithms that are more capable of fooling you, still running on the same microprocessor as before. Consciousness is described as a state of constant awareness, not of performing the act of perception itself.

> I think it's safe to say that a single neuron is not as complex and > mysterious as you may think.

Not sure if trolling or not? You should look up protein folding and protein machines at some point, basically there is a LOT going on at the nano scale that we still don't fully understand. Additionally tell any neuroscientist that the brains neural networks are the same as our computer version of NNs and you'll be laughed out the room.

And perception is a function of the brain yes, how is that an opinion? Your arguments really make no sense.

<comment><USER13> > What an odd comment. So because we performed some clever math to make some > basic neural nets, our AI is now experiencing a form of consciousness?

Yes, you keep re-hashing this point which makes it clear that you still (and probably always will) believe that consciousness is something 'more' \-- something mystical and unexplainable -- because it's so difficult and non- intuitive to wrap your head around (as it is for most people).

> Not sure if trolling or not? You should look up protein folding and protein > machines at some point, basically there is a LOT going on at the nano scale > that we still don't fully understand. Additionally tell any neuroscientist > that the brains neural networks are the same as our computer version of NNs > and you'll be laughed out the room.

Who said our models are the same? You're missing the point. Re-read the paragraph you're replying to, and look what we've accomplished with just _dozens_ of simplified neurons. The point is that the details beneath our high level understanding of neurons (basically just spiking and activation) are likely not important to consciousness. Just like a high school physics student can usefully understand the mechanics of rubber balls without fully grasping the chemistry at the atomic level.

> And perception is a function of the brain yes, how is that an opinion? Your > arguments really make no sense.

Here's the context, to remind you:

> Amazing that every sentence you wrote is objectively wrong.

>> 7\. This internal stream of perceptions and judgements is consciousness.

> No, this is just a function of part of the brain, which we can be aware of > through consciousness.

Just want to feel like you won an argument today? No need to turn this into a troll battle -- I'm actually trying to explain my viewpoint to you, if you're interested.

<comment><USER14> You are arguing that by performing the algorithms for perception, one is conscious. I am arguing that algorithms alone aren't enough, and that yes conscious is still some unexplained physics that takes the results of those perception algorithms in our brains and generates our awareness and experience from them.

I am not trying to win any argument, but it does annoy me when people argue with incomplete information and try to trivialize consciousness, because of what you know about some basic neural nets in computer science. Look at this video released last month, where scientists show a model for just 3 neurons [1], which they think is super important to consciousness. Only 3 neurons out of billions. There is just so much we still don't know.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5I-rUyDTA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5I-rUyDTA)

<comment><USER13> > You are arguing that by performing the algorithms for perception, one is > conscious.

Pretty close -- my argument is that for an entity to be intelligent, self- aware, and perceptive, it must also believe itself to be conscious, in the sense that it believes it has "experiences." Furthermore, and most importantly, if an entity _believes_ it is conscious, it _is_ conscious.

> I am arguing that algorithms alone aren't enough, and that yes conscious is > still some unexplained physics that takes the results of those perception > algorithms in our brains and generates our awareness and experience from > them.

There's so much undiscovered truth about physics that it's always possible there are important, still completely unknown properties of physics that play specific roles in consciousness. However, that's mostly speculation (like the article) and there's no real evidence for it, whereas it's becoming increasingly intuitive to some AI researchers and myself that such a 'Holy Grail of Physics' yet-to-be-discovered property does not seem to be necessary.

Many AI experts presume that by scaling and adding complexity to models that are pretty similar to today's AI models, we can achieve general intelligence. I think that this logically requires the intelligent agent to believe itself to be conscious, and therefore be just as conscious as any human, albeit in a different way. The combination of intelligence and self-awareness are logically incompatible with a lack of consciousness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This subject has been beaten to death by a lot of smart people.

I think it's well understood how consciousness works, (on a higher order level) the answer is just boring and somewhat demeaning to many who believe that they're something bigger than a sack of nerves.

<comment><USER16> "I think it's well understood how consciousness works"

care to expand on this at all? it completely contradicts most everything I've heard.

saying consciousness is just a neural reaction could be right but it's by no means an understanding.

<comment><USER17> We don't even have a proper explanation of how neurons themselves work; there are some processes we have no idea how they are possible (vast amount of ions passing through membranes) as well as some local protein computations that go against perceptron simplification operating on simple analog electricity.

<comment><USER15> >We don't even have a proper explanation of how neurons themselves work; there are some processes we have no idea how they are possible (vast amount of ions passing through membranes) as well as some local protein computations that go against perceptron simplification operating on simple analog electricity.

I think neuron function pretty well characterized. What about ions passing through membranes do we not understand?

The exact details of all neuron types and protein interactions are definitely not known but basic function is understood.

<comment><USER16> just because these things can conceive consciousness does not make them consciousness.

unless you can tell me exactly why and when in these processes consciousness arises, were not having the same conversation.

<comment><USER4> > just because these things can conceive consciousness does not make them > consciousness.

I like the car example. If I have a pile of car parts, they don't make a car. They have to be put in a special way in order to function. What is "car-ness" and where does it lay? In the parts, or in the configuration, or in the whole action of driving it?

<comment><USER16> great analogy. also does a good job pointing out the type of vagueness and subjectivity in meaning that makes it hard to pin down consciousness.

the vagueness- which parts can you remove from a car before you wouldn't call it a car anymore?

the subjectivity- which parts can you remove from a car before _I_ wouldn't call it a car anymore?

bald is another funny example of emergence (though not my own). how many hairs must one grow before they are no longer bald?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone interested in consciousness (even out of personal curiosity) is likely to love all the work of Kevin O'Regan. [http://nivea.psycho.univ- paris5.fr/](http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/) Interesting, sound, scientific.

For example his book "Why Red Doesn't Sound Like a Bell: Explaining the Feel of Consciousness (2011)". Author makes it available to download on [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/869531/OReganWhyRedDraft...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/869531/OReganWhyRedDraft.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> For a while it was common for folks to speculate that consciousness was self- organizing behavior of a chaotic assemblage of electro-chemical relations within the brain. The problem with that has been that self-organizing behavior adds nothing new. It merely reorganizes existing behavior/properties. This article proposes the existence of the fundamental "thing" that is organized in consciousness, that thing that is the primitive element possessing the property of awareness.

Seems good to me. In fact, it seems necessarily true.

<comment><USER4> > self-organizing behavior of a chaotic assemblage of electro-chemical > relations within the brain

That seems about right to me. Add that the organism itself is part of a complex environment, with all its sensations and reward signals, and that the organism has to adapt in order to survive/exist in the first place. With these constraints, the self-organizing behavior leads to consciousness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Another article that basically says "quantum and consciousness are both poorly understood; maybe they're related" in thousands and thousands of words.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't stand articles like this -- they bait you into reading poetry at the promise of science. So many words, so few ideas that are actually substantive. Consciousness speculation articles are a dime a dozen today, this is part of the noise. Even worse when they ramble on for what seems pages of periodic content.

<comment><USER16> I'm reminded of people talking about tripping. we don't really have the vocabulary or knowledge to talk about certain things and they end up sounding wishywashy.

but I don't think it means we can't try, or hypothesize...

<comment><USER22> It reminds me of Hamilton Morris talking to this guy who's been taking huge doses of PCP for years. He gets absolutely lit, and then does "art", which is highly meaningful to him, but... pretty much just to him. Some people never really learn the difference between the _feeling_ of profound understanding that can occur while dreaming or high, with profound understanding.

<comment><USER16> good point! I just don't want the false positives to discourage us from trying to share our feelings just because it's difficult.

<comment><USER22> Sure, and I'm for limitless sharing of feelings, but in the context of, "Here are my feelings on 'X'."

<comment><USER16> we're on the same page. and you shine some light on OPs point that I now see more truth to- poetry parading as science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been hooked onto UG for more than a month now. Articles like this would have piqued my interest earlier. Now they just bore me. I'm going back to learning CL.

</comment><comment><USER24> no

<comment><USER25> a. You're conscious.

b. You're composed of matter.

c. Therefore _some_ matter is conscious.

d. What's true for some matter might be true for all matter --- or not. That's the "hard problem" of consciousness.

<comment><USER17> For all we know, our brain can be just an interface to something else we don't know yet. Like when nobody knew what radioactivity was, miners thought some monsters resided deep inside Earth, illuminating caves and mines in green, and anybody that got nearby died soon afterwards. Quantum theory spawned a lot of scientism at the beginning of 20th Century, attributing consciousness properties down to atomic level, and this seems to be the case with each new generation, falling into the same though a bit more refined scientistic trap.

Just for fun:

If we play with the idea of Platonic Theory of Forms as a super-set of what we can perceive with our sens-es(-ors), under assumption philosophy/math is above reality, we can simply be plugged into some kind of a virtual machine with some API of sorts (of course undocumented) that is called by our brains when we think. Those who figured out some rare API calls on their own or by a secret tradition we call magicians, conjurers, gurus, Neo etc. Maybe words/thoughts could invoke some of those API functions, hence magic Harry- Potter-esque words and generally prayers in many religions. Similarly, what we call angels could be simply API services with highly intelligent behavior, preferably operating outside time, providing verifiable and expected outcome. Demons then are some intelligent services gone completely wrong, messing up with the rest of intelligent services that depend upon them, playing eternal asynchronous byzantine generals (by e.g. trying to upgrade all services to Windows 10 or flat interfaces with telemetry /s).

I think I should write a dystopian cyberpunk sci-fi "Services and Daemons" about this ;-)

<comment><USER26> >For all we know, our brain can be just an interface to something else we don't know yet.

This is a very old, but unproven hypothesis. You might have heard of it, it's called "soul". :-)

<comment><USER27> No, it's a novel idea called SaaS - soul as a service. The OP probably is already making money on it while you sit here posting dismissive comments.

<comment><USER17> Yes, indeed. We need to assume "soul" resides in the cloud. What we don't know is the soul ID - a very secret API exists only a few soul-hackers were able to find but soon demons causing madness were unleashed on them after each intrusion was detected. So only a few chosen services know IDs, allowing them a direct access to souls in the Great Hash Map of Souls, hence why knowing a name means having a power over a soul. Of course, soul ID is innately incorporated in each individual brain itself, but encryption is too strong even for bad services to break into, unless soul allows voluntarily to be possessed by calling a secret black magic APIs. The rest of services need to perform long and tiring searches in the Great Array of Souls (GAS) and match with secondary characteristics of the soul like virtues and vices, instead of ID.

Of course, we found a novel meta-parallel way to access souls in the GAS reducing the search complexity to O(Sqrt(n)), hence we make a lot of money exposing this API externally for a fee. Do you want to make somebody lucky? Arrange a life situation that looks like magic? Any enemies that should taste fear of damnation? Please visit www.soul-as-a-service.com to know more!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2013/11/07/ie11-for-windows-7-globally-available-for-consumers-and-businesses.aspx <comment><USER5> Since Microsoft only compares using the outdated Sunspider benchmark, I decided to find out how IE compares using modern, proper benchmarks. Here are the results:

Google Octane: [https://developers.google.com/octane/](https://developers.google.com/octane/)

(Higher is better)

Google Chrome 30.0.1599.101: 11337

Mozilla Firefox 25.0: 10127

Internet Explorer 11: 7631

Mozilla Kraken: [http://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/](http://krakenbenchmark.mozilla.org/) (Lower is better)

Google Chrome 30.0.1599.101: 2479.4ms

Mozilla Firefox 25.0: 2653.1ms

Internet Explorer 11: 4792.3ms

As you can see, IE11 lags pretty far behind both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox in modern JavaScript benchmarks. So, it would appear that IE is specifically geared towards the outdated Sunspider benchmark. That optimization coupled with the poor performance on Octane and Kraken is likely why Microsoft only ever mentions Sunspider.

Testing Notes: The above test was performed on a fully-patched (as of 2013-11-07) Windows 7 Ultimate x64 machine with antivirus and all other background apps disabled. Each browser was started fresh for each test and had no extensions/add-ons enabled. Hardware-wise, the machine is an Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 running at 2.4GHz with 8GB of PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM clocked at 400MHz (x2 = 800MHz) and an AMD Radeon HD 6700 running at 850MHz with 1GB of RAM @ 1200MHz running Catalyst 13.9.

<comment><USER6> I got very different results.

Windows 8.1 Pro x64 i7 3770k 16GB RAM

-Octane-

Firefox 28 - <USER2>

IE 11 - <USER3>

Chrome 32.0.1689.3 - <USER4>

-Kraken-

Firefox 28 - 1742.6ms

IE 11 - 2252.0ms

Chrome 32.0.1689.3 - 2241.0ms

<comment><USER5> You're using an unstable Dev release (aka alpha quality) of Chrome and pre- alpha build of Firefox whereas I'm using stable. That's why you got the same performance as I did on Octane with Firefox on your much-faster PC.

Additionally, I'm running Windows 7 and you're running Windows 8.1 so we're comparing different browsers. IE11 on Windows 7 is not the same browser as IE11 on Windows 8/8.1 (hooray for OS-tying).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good.

IE10 is awful and introduced weird regressions into canvas and _event.detail._

Canvas clipping regions are completely broken in IE10: [http://jsfiddle.net/simonsarris/8nNnb/](http://jsfiddle.net/simonsarris/8nNnb/)

Microsoft's reply was essentially "lol, next release" : [https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/782736/can...](https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/782736/canvas- clearrect-fails-with-non-rectangular-yet-simple-clipping-paths)

They're fine leaving it broken for IE10 for all time.

Event.detail never resets when you move the mouse: [http://jsfiddle.net/uDhwX/](http://jsfiddle.net/uDhwX/)

In fact event.detail doesn't reset _even after you 've reloaded the page_

The IE team closed that one as won't fix back in June: [http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/789773/ie-i...](http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/789773/ie- increments-event-detail-on-clicks-over-different-locations)

 _Both of these are just fine in IE9._

What's worse, these aren't the kind of things I can use feature detection to figure out. They're not missing features, they're features that worked in the last version that are broken in this one (IE10), that will remain broken in this one, and _may_ be fixed in the future.

So thanks for fixing one of those, IE11. Maybe you could get around to event.detail some time.

<comment>

The biggest problem I have with IE is disjointed updates. They don't care enough to fix the one thing they need to fix. And don't tell me they're doing automatic updates now, they need to _go back_ and fix all versions. Including on Windows XP.

In 2009 the IE team released IE8 on Windows XP. Some time before before that I set my parents up with Chrome 1.

Do you know what they're using almost 5 years later? Chrome 30. And they have no idea. And we're all the better for it.

Do you know what they would be using if it were not for Chrome?

It's not IE11. Or 10, or 9. Nevermind _automatic_ updating, plain old _updating_ isn't an option for my parents.

<comment><USER8> _> The biggest problem I have with IE is disjointed updates. They don't care enough to fix the one thing they need to fix. And don't tell me they're doing automatic updates now, they need to go back and fix all versions. Including on Windows XP._

Their claim is that it's impossible to provide modern IE for older versions of Windows, because IE is so deeply tied into the OS it requires features and libraries that are intimately tied to newer versions and don't/can't exist on (say) XP.

(Not saying I endorse that as a reasonable position, just explaining why they do things the way they do.)

<comment><USER9> That's not a reason - it's an excuse. Every other major browser works fine across Windows versions and MS claims they can't? It's a marketing decision. Microsoft is an OS company so tying their latest and greatest browser to an OS upgrade is compelling.

<comment><USER10> The other major Browsers on Windows do not solve, work-with, nor integrate with the metric-tons worth of enterprise and business issues, needs, and past + current solutions. Nor do they take backward compatibility issues seriously.

This is probably 50% of the game which makes Microsoft money with the Enterprise.

You're thinking of the Consumer market.

<comment><USER11> >Every other major Browser on Windows does not solve, work-with, nor integrates with the metric-tons worth of enterprise and business issues, needs, and past + current solutions. Nor do they take backward compatibility issues seriously.

the life would so much happier without all that enterprise software crap that works only on IE. "Works only with IE" is like a hallmark of usability/quality/performance one can expect from the hallmarked application. And is not just correlation, it is usually a strong causation as the real reason behind it is that the application was most probably produced by mediocre at best team using some enterprise framework treated like a black box.

>This is probably 50% of the game which makes Microsoft money with the Enterprise.

absolutely. I'm always fascinated by how user-candy MS ecosystem looks to an Enterprise on the first date (vs. say Linux) and how bad things become almost immediately once they move in together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Let's not miss the point here. IE11 will be massively easier to support than IE8 or 9. Old versions are disappearing relatively more quickly. There are fewer random impossible-to-debug quirks. Flexbox is becoming a viable option.

Microsoft is moving in line with the rest of the browsing world and we _get_ to complain about things like favicons and event.detail bugs. In a few years, you might not even have to write IE-specific styles at all.

So sure, get upset about idiosyncrasies. But at the end of the day, doing good development is getting _much_ easier.

<comment><USER13> Just to be clear, the rest of the browser world offers modern browsers across a wide array of operating systems. Microsoft can't even be bothered to offer a modern browser across more than two of their own Operating Systems.

Chrome spans at least 7(And that's a conservative estimate) Operating Systems. Firefox the same. And both update in a sane manner.

It's nice that Microsoft offers a good solution to the 5% of users on the cutting edge, but they are still ludicrously behind the curve.

<comment><USER14> >Just to be clear, the rest of the browser world offers modern browsers across a wide array of operating systems. Microsoft can't even be bothered to offer a modern browser across more than two of their own Operating Systems.

Keep in mind the rest of the two browsers aren't tightly integrated with any OS, thus can enjoy the flexibility what IE can't.

<comment><USER15> Maybe IE shouldn't be so tightly integrated with the OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now I know I'm running Windows in a VM, and that it is controlled by a network manager, but should I be getting a message stating that:

"Internet Explorer 11 is required in order to run this installation"

I'm not a fan of recursive installs.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does it support WebRTC yet? IE always seems to be roughly ~2 years late in supporting some of the most important and future-forward HTML5 features.

Maybe they'll push WebRTC in IE12 (not guaranteed), but then it will be some key encryption standard that everyone else has decided on and they're supporting, but IE12 will be lacking. They need to keep IE more up to date with the implementation of the standards.

This seems to show the same thing (not a perfect test, but gives a rough idea about how far behind the IE team is in supporting new HTML5 standards):

[http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html](http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html)

<comment><USER18> Because WebRTC is not finalized and I think Microsoft has taken an approach of not implementing the experimental features.

You can get the prototype WebRTCn as a plugin for IE through Microsoft's Interoperability Bridge here: [http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/prototypes/cu-r...](http://html5labs.interoperabilitybridges.com/prototypes/cu- rtc-web/cu-rtc-web/info)

A lot of browsers certainly chrome implement experimental features with vendor prefixes just to get high up in html5 tables such as those.

<comment><USER19> Microsoft absolutely does implement experimental features and use vendor prefixes when it suits them. See, for example, CSS Grid Layout: [http://caniuse.com/#search=CSS%20Grid%20Layout](http://caniuse.com/#search=CSS%20Grid%20Layout)

<comment><USER18> Implementing experimental layout techniques is less risky than implementing a two way communication protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take those JavaScript numbers with a grain of salt. Microsoft optimizes for and touts their JavaScript numbers using the outdated SunSpider benchmark only.

</comment><comment><USER20> The press release makes IE11 sound great, but as a developer I know it's going to be yet another version of IE I have to support :(

Does anyone know how true the claims of 30% faster JavaScript performance are? That sounds too good to be true.

<comment><USER21> I believe these claims are based on sunspider, which is not really considered a great benchmarking suite. Something like Mozilla's Kraken or Google's Octane may give better real-world results.

FWIW, I only recently understood what made a benchmark suite 'bad'. Basically VMs often speed up by identifying patterns which can be optimized. But there's a balance because this analysis itself has a cost and if the speed up is not much (or does not happen often), then it can slow down other apps. Apparently SunSpider has a number of places where it's easy to add special optimizations, but the result may actually degrade more common code execution.

All browsers optimize for SunSpider, but relying on those numbers alone can be deceiving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just logged into windows to test this update ( after long time ) .. why do I have to restart my PC before I can use my new browser ?

[http://i.imgur.com/SD7xrif.png](http://i.imgur.com/SD7xrif.png)

<comment><USER23> Because there are system binaries currently in use by the system being replaced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Well, I downloaded IE11 to replace IE10 on my VM, and all the issues I had with my current WIP are still present. I'm using `calc()` heavily for a quite complex responsive layout, and paddings are missing on some places and CSS transitions don't work properly while everything works just fine in Firefox and Chrome. I haven't been able to find what's causing these issues, but given IE's history, I suspect that a fix could simply be `zoom:1` or `min- height:100%` or whataver hack du jour you have to remember this time around.

So not at all impressed by this release so far. Will have to wait another year for IE12 and hope it can really compete with FF and Chrome, that means, opening IE and having no surprises.

</comment><comment><USER25> IE is certainly making good progress lately. However, when every other browser is releasing updates every 6 weeks, Microsoft could substantially benefit from not only a faster release cycle, but also automatic background updates.

<comment><USER26> Also they need to support XP. XP usage is still mind-boggling-high:

[http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share....](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0)

~1/3 of windows users are still forced to run IE8 at best. If Chrome, Firefox and Opera can run on XP why can't IE11?

<comment><USER27> Maybe because Windows XP is 12 years old now, and people who use Windows XP are mostly from third world countries who don't really care wether they have IE6 or IE11 installed.

<comment><USER28> There are, sadly, a ton of Enterprise clients still using Windows XP as well as a ton of home users in first world countries.

Windows XP still works "good enough" for most computing tasks. Having said that, since I'm used to more modern operating systems I find I'm lost on XP now but for people that never left it, it generally works "good enough".

<comment><USER29> "Windows XP still works "good enough" for most computing tasks."

Well... when those computing tasks increasingly involve using web services, then no, Windows XP doesn't still work "good enough".

<comment><USER30> What do web services have to do with XP?

<comment><USER29> If I reword that as "services on the web", does that make it any clearer?

<comment><USER28> That doesn't help at all. I _think_ you mean applications on the web that aren't compatible with Internet Explorer 8 which is the latest version of Internet Explorer that Windows XP can install. But that is negated by the fact that the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox work fine on Windows XP so that is not an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> IE 11 adds a pain for developers who now need to support IE 7,8,9,10,11 and quirks modes (see [http://habrahabr.ru/post/201172/](http://habrahabr.ru/post/201172/), use google translate if you don't understand Russian). The basic premise is that all those IE versions use different engines, with different bugs and supported features/workarounds.

<comment><USER31> Here is another article, this time in English, reflecting on a problem with IE[x]: [http://www.paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution- iex-i...](http://www.paulirish.com/2011/browser-market-pollution-iex-is-the- new-ie6/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Can anyone explain why Microsoft is persisting with IE as a separate engine rather than taking Chromium or Firefox and applying IE branding to them?

</comment><comment><USER30> IE back in the game... boggles the mind a bit. For many years I haven't allowed IE to run on any machines I've managed. There have been a few WTFs in my time in the industry, this is one of them. Like when Apple started selling risc/unix workstations and then intel/unix workstations, no?

</comment><comment><USER33> This is not true. I have windows 7, I check updates, nothing.

Also, IE out there is IE 8. And WebGL can't do what we do w/ DOM, so nothing of use in IE11, other than they still don't update IE8 users, so I still have to support old IE.

<comment><USER34> If you read the release info, they're rolling auto-updates out over a few weeks. You can go to the IE website and download now if you want though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Will IE 8,9,10 be automatically updated? Or just 10? Or just 9,10? Does anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER36> I bet they still don't support PNG favicons. :/

</comment><comment><USER37> Someone told me that "Browser mode" in the development tools has been removed from IE11 so I can't emulate IE8, 9 or 10. Is this true?

<comment><USER38> It was, but they added it back in a few weeks ago. Even does IE5 now. (I don't know how accurate it is)

<comment><USER39> In the first security update for IE11 for Win8 RTM and the RC for Win7 (based on the same codebase BTW) to be more precise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Still will have to debug the random svg crash I'm having with ie today because ie11 doesn't fix it. Classlist for svg is still not fixed.

</comment><comment><USER41> Now we all need to vow to stop supporting anything below IE10 so that we can starve this legacy support animal. Google already did......

</comment><comment><USER42> Still no support for getUserMedia as far as I can tell.

</comment><comment><USER39> Notice they ignored Server 2012.

</comment><comment><USER43> So Vista is dead, right?

<comment><USER44> It's been dead for a while now: IE10 can't be installed on Vista, Visual Studio 2012 can't be installed on Vista, etc.</comment></comment>