Ask HN: Are you PCI DSS compliant? - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/saq/instructions_dss.shtml#instructions

<comment><USER2> By convention, "Ask HN" posts don't have links; put the link to the PCI standard in the text of your post.

The short answer to "how should my startup deal with PCI DSS" is "don't accept cardholder information". Outsource the handling and processing of credit card information. There is a "self-attestation" questionairre the PCI-powers-that- be apparently want you to fill out even though you're not handling credit cards. Uh, fill it out.

What you should _not_ do is pay for consultants to checklist your app if you're not taking credit card numbers directly. If you are collecting cards, you already knew you were in for a whole big bucket of drama.

<comment><USER3> tptacek has this right. Also, to clarify an all too common misconception, if you TAKE credit cards on your site, you STILL need to be PCI compliant, even if you don't STORE credit card numbers. Not storing them gets you out of a few requirements, but you still have to be compliant with most of them.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nobody's going to want to say 'No' for fear of incriminating themselves. However, this is a serious issue. These changes went into effect in July, and I have seen very few hosting companies that offer PCI DSS compliant options. If more people were trying to get up to compliance, I suspect there'd be more of a market for those services.

<comment><USER2> There is already a huge market for PCI compliance services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm currently implementing our PCI compliance (i work in Germany so it might be a little different here). We used to temporarily save the credit credit data until we got an ok from the payment provider and afterwards mask all data. Now everything is off site: we only hand over the amount and wait until we get the okay.

</comment><comment><USER5> We were in my last job. Never again if I can help it.

The codebase was close to a decade old, and a lot of customers were subscribed via a recurring payment feature where our payment processor held their CC#. So transitioning away from ever seeing cardholder data was the least economic option for us.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you don't store credit card information locally, then it's pretty easy to be PCI-compliant. Just make sure everything's secured and only a few people have access, pay for security sweeps, and you're good.

If you're storing credit card numbers, things get much more complicated.

<comment><USER3> If you don't store it you get to skip Req 3 basically. You still have most of the other 11 Requirements to worry about... Multi-key strong encryption and key rotation isn't that hard... The policies, documentation, and other areas are harder imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We did our whole review 2 weeks ago and made some changes to our privacy policy to be all up to par. We only use PayPal for processing online payments so it's a lot easier to be PCI DSS compliant but still good thing to do!

</comment><comment><USER8> It's still all under review at our agency. This is a little out of my area of expertise, but it seems like offloading all processing to a gateway doesn't cut it anymore, which is kind of a big deal.

<comment><USER2> Can you answer YES to the following questions?

* I don't store process or transmit any cardholder data on my premises, but rely entirely on third party services to handle these functions.

* The third parties I use for handling storage, processing, and transmission of cardholder data is PCI certified.

* I don't store any cardholder data in electronic format.

* What physical cardholder data I store is only paper reports and copies of receipts and is never received electronically?

Yes? Then you can self-attest (presumably at any time, such as when asked, but dont' quote me) compliance. You'll sign a document that says:

* I read the PCI DSS (sorry).

* The above conditions about not handling cardholder data are true.

* (9.6) All paper and electronic media that contain cardholder data is physically secure.

* (9.7a) Strict control is maintained over internal and external distribution of any media containing cardholder information.

* (9.7b) Controls include (9.7.1) such media being "classified" so everyone knows its confidential and (9.7.2) when transported it's sent by courier or other trackable secure carrier.

* (9.8) Processes and procedures are in place to ensure management approval before moving any media containing cardholder data from a secure area.

* (9.9) Strict control is maintained over storage and access of media containing cardholder data.

* (9.10) Cardholder-carrying media is destroyed as soon as it is no longer need for legal or business reasons, and (9.10.1) hardcopy material is cross-cut shredded, incinerated, staked through the heart, chained in silver, buried under a full moon in a Scottish peat bog, and pulped so that cardholder data cannot be reconstructed.

* (12.8) Cardholder data once shared with service providers are secured with policies and procedures that:

* (12.8.1) Include keeping (yes wait for it) a _list_ of service providers

* (12.8.2) You have written agreements with those providers that say "yes we know what PCI means"

* (12.8.3) You have some due diligence process for choosing providers that know what PCI is.

* (12.8.4) You have a policy for monitoring those providers PCI compliance so if they suddenly decide PCI is a big joke you'll stop funnelling cards to them.

That's it. No app pentests required. No firewalls installed. More than half of it is about physical storage of cardholder records which you aren't doing because that's crazy.

I think you'll be fine.

<comment><USER5> _I don't store process or transmit any cardholder data on my premises, but rely entirely on third party services to handle these functions._

Lots of people on this forum seem to misread this one.

If cardholder data is POSTed to your server, and then you send it on to a third party, then you're receiving and transmitting, and you've got to be in compliance.

<comment><USER9> _If cardholder data is POSTed to your server, and then you send it on to a third party, then you're receiving and transmitting, and you've got to be in compliance._

Why isn't anyone offering a _thin_ wrapper service that lets you host a payment form yourself (giving you complete control of the page), and then POST the result to the service which just forwards to one of the major processors?

You get full control of the form, and your server never transmits CC data, so it's out of scope for PCI compliance.

<comment><USER2> Because then the form, which you host, has to comply with the same PCI rules that the processor complies with.

<comment><USER9> I probably didn't help in describing the idea clearly, but who do you mean by " _which you host_ "?

My thought process was that it would work like this:

Merchant - Hosts a a payment form, but it POSTs to the service's server basically <form method="post" action="https ://someservice.com">

Service - Receives the POST and forwards it on to Auth.NET, Paypal Pro, or whoever the Merchant is using to process transactions. The user is redirected back to merchantwebsite.com with appropriate response data.

Are you saying the merchant website would still need to be PCI compliant or just the Service's?

I definitely understand that the service would have to be PCI compliant. But it seems like it'd be a valuable service for a number of small e-commerce providers to essentially outsource online PCI compliance with minimal downside.

EDIT: While I haven't used them, my understanding is that Braintree offers pretty much exactly this service, except that they require that they provide your merchant account and act as your payment processor.

<comment><USER2> While I can go for hours talking about the actual technical risks here, I'm less firm about how a PCI auditor is going to interpret any specific thing you do. We don't PCI audit; we find and fix vulnerabilities in software.

Having said that:

The technical risk of you hosting HTML that POST's via HTTPS somewhere else is that any input that influences any dynamic component of the page on which the form is hosted could alter the "action" attribute of the form to point somewhere else, without it even being detectable in the page source.

You can say that about any chain of pages, including in-app page flows all the way through Google SERPs, but it's a particularly severe risk on the actual page that asks for the credit card number, since there are no macro-level cues a user has as to whether the page is valid or not.

OWASP is making more noise about things like "insecure redirects" for, among other things, this exact scenario. Expect the "host the HTML FORM that asks for the credit card number and send it to the payment processor" technique to run afoul of PCI DSS any year now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any suggestion about server administration tool for solo developer? - <AUTHOR> Hi to all, I am a solo developer working fulltime for a company.
I am developing a side project that hope to launch before the end of the year. I have basic knowdledge of server administration, let's say just enough to be dangerous :).
I have set up docker-compose configuration for my dev environment with the hope to gain "agility" when I'll need to go in production.
I keep reading that docker is not for production, So I am asking.. what is the best tool for my kind of situation? What should I focus on learning ? <comment><USER2> What's the stack?</comment>


Oh my god, it's a girl -- thoughts on gender imbalance on HN - <AUTHOR> http://www.novemberwest.com/blog/2010/12/25/oh-my-god-its-a-girl/

<comment><USER2> Some women do not seem to understand, or somehow forget, that they are a "protected class" in society. Men do not hit women. Men are polite to women. Men put women first. We are all trained that, from an early age.

You may agree or disagree, but that's the state of society at the moment. If you don't want to be subject to different treatment than a man, don't identify as a woman. I'm not really aware of any other solutions at the moment.

<comment><USER3> "Men do not hit women."

Right. Except all those cases of domestic abuse, I mean.

"Men are polite to women."

Have you ever actually been a woman? Typically men ignore women, except attractive women, who they ogle or patronize. In stores, men get served first or, if it's a couple, people assume the man is the decision-maker and speak primarily to him. People assume that men lead any social interaction. This is readily observable even if you're a man.

"Men put women first."

Except when it comes to childrearing, domestic arrangements, wages and promotions, poverty-reduction programs, marketing, healthcare (there's viagra and procepia, but it was only two years ago they figured out the structure of the clitoris), and in the classroom where boys are still called on first and it is routinely assumed that girls can't do math or science.

But otherwise, sure, you're spot-on.

(Oh, except, not identifying as a woman. We try. Especially online, where random threats of violence and rape happen routinely in certain communities like gaming as soon as you check the "F" box, often from complete strangers. But are you really saying that an entire group of people should just not be who they are to receive equal treatment? Right.)

<comment><USER2>
      >> "Men do not hit women."
      > Right. Except all those cases of domestic abuse, I mean.

Hm, perhaps my language was a little unclear. In this context, imagine instead of "men" that it reads "gentlemen". Gentlemen do not hit women. Gentlemen put women first. That was the meaning I was getting at, and that is what is taught by society.

I know there are sociopaths who ignore these rules, that is a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1\. Make a hypothesis: Men are overly nice to female HN posters.

2\. Make assumptions, like that HN's readers are predominantly male. Sure, the probably are, but who knows for sure? If I was asked for my gender when I signed up, I responded randomly. Reliable demographics are simply not available.

3\. Test your hypothesis in a way that does not control most variables: Change your name and post on completely different topics. Maybe your male posts were dumber or more interesting than your female posts. Maybe you posted to newer threads with more active commentors. etc. etc. etc. Even your choice of names could bias the study.

4\. Have no objective metrics of "niceness". i.e. Evaluate everything with your "gut feeling". (Note: Your gut is biased towards your hypothesis!)

5\. Conclude that your assumption was correct based on a statistically insignificant amount of highly suspect data.

I'm not saying your hypothesis couldn't be true. I'm just saying it's going to be a lot more difficult to prove (to even a modest degree of confidence) than you thought it would be. I'm also not saying we should ignore an unproven theory. We act on unproven theories all the time after all.

<comment><USER5> > 2\. Make assumptions, like that HN's readers are predominantly male. Sure, > the probably are, but who knows for sure? If I was asked for my gender when > I signed up, I responded randomly. Reliable demographics are simply not > available.

It's well-documented that men significantly outnumber women in the software industry (and other high-tech industries). Why is it unreasonable to expect that HN reflects this imbalance? It would seem more odd for there to be an imbalance in the industry in general but perfect equality on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Idiot! NB: ironic insult :)

I'd love to say I agree totally with the article because it does raise some really good points and it is an extremely interesting topic. I'd also like to give the average (talking a mean average here not some kind of "norm") man, and cisgender males more specifically, the benefit of the doubt. Agree there are some intellectuals (read nerds) who are acting in the way the article suggests but personally I think the main cause of the "egg-shells" treatment is a basic view of women as being, again on average, inferior. Or, that all women are essentially the same (as the article hinted at with the "my girlfriend" comment).

I thought the use of the word "intelligence" in the post was an interesting choice too. By the description can only assume this is referring to IQ. What about EI? Surely we've progressed beyond the stage of thinking of IQ, which is essentially just processing patterns, as the be-all and end-all of intelligence!

<comment><AUTHOR> I homeschooled my gifted-learning disabled sons. I am very aware there are many kinds of intelligence. This piece isn't the place for getting into all of that.

Thanks.

<comment><USER6> Didn't mean to question your understanding of intelligence but of the intelligence of the people your post was commenting on

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Women are treated different on hacker news in the same ways that women are treated differently in the world (US worldview) with some slight variance due to the makeup of HN posters. We have differences... while mostly physical there are differences in men and women's brains. Different is not bad. Many of us can relate in childhood saying one thing to a guy and that same thing to a woman and getting different responses. In addition, being "chivalrous" is still kept in high regard by most women and some men (though deteriorating rapidly). Chivalry amounts to treating women different from men in much the same way your hypothesis on your article espouses. Since the HN community is 1. Generally smarter than the overall populations and 2. Generally more introverted and thus has less female interaction they will tend to revert to social norms (chivalry) and from female interactions from childhood rather than adulthood.

</comment><comment><USER8> sexist and generalist piece... you can't (and shouldn't, really) put all pieces of the same gender in a single bucket.

Plus, you have nicknames on HN. What can assure you anyone is (or isn't) a woman? If you feel unconfortable by "being one in the man's club", just pick a neutral nickname and be treated "like a man"...

<comment><USER9> I'd much rather that women didn't have to hide their gender to be treated the same way that we'd treat men.

<comment><USER8> I never treated a woman in a professional environment differently than I treat men. Which I always thought be the right way of doing it.

But after having two women come to me and say that "I don't treat them like proper women" and making a former boss (also female) burst into tears during a technical discussion, I wonder if the sexism isn't something that I really SHOULD consider a right approach, in some cases. Like, appearently, the writer of this article...

<comment><USER9> Or, possibly, you should treat the men around you more nicely?

Not that you're necessarily treating them badly - but if you've got a manner that causes women to burst into tears you're probably causing some of the men to grit their teeth.

<comment><USER8> nope, I don't need to treat the men around like chinese porcelain vases, thank you! ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As far as I'm concerned, I don't even look at the username of the person whom I'm replying to. I just put in my two cents and take part in the discussion, only if it turns out to be really, really interesting do I actually look at the username to go to said person's profile. I'm quite sure a lot of other posters have a similar attitude. HN is a forum about interesting stuff, and (dare I say it) similar to it's secular community, is also probably a very asexual (unconcerned with the gender of the participant) community. If the author of the post had included more examples, then perhaps we could come to some sort of statistical guess about whether gender really is a 'problem' or not.

<comment> jack-r-abbit I rarely look at username either. Well... until now. Now I feel I have to look at every username. So... thanks for that. :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 2 things:

1\. As a socially-awkward smart dude, the last section of the post resonates with me, because I'm getting over a lot of my social awkwardness through interacting with women. And it's great.

2\. I don't know what all the fuss coming from other HN-readers is about. As a man, I readily acknowledge that women sometimes see things completely differently than men, and while I could ram a lot of sociology theory down dissenting commenters' throats about women and minorities and how each non- male or non-white constituency develops a consciousness/worl-view particular to and shared with their respective cohorts, and that to males (white or otherwise) these world-views might be hard to parse... but I won't go into theory.

</comment><comment><USER12> _(thereby sucking all the intellectual content out of their posts and killing any reason you have to post there)._

 _Oh my god, it's a girl and what if she breaks down and cries because I argued with her_

 _W_ hat??

Who thinks that, where?

<comment><AUTHOR> My ex husband for one.

<comment><USER12> At the expense of sounding crass, that sounds like a personal problem between you and he, not you and the HN community (assuming you are the OP of this blog post).

<comment><AUTHOR> I happen to be the OP. You asked for an example. I gave the first real life example that came to mind. No, not all men are like that. But some absolutely are.

Thanks.

<comment><USER13> TL;DR; woman frustrated by ex-spouse takes it out on the HN crowd.

Here. Now you can't complain that we didn't treat you aggressively enough because you're a woman!

;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To me the design of HN actually inherently helps the gender balance. Here comments are read at face value & not pre-judged according to who the poster is. I like that.

The comment is at the forefront of the post. The user name is not emblazened atop of the post in size 72 font (unlike in other forums) A distinct lack of user icons, real names & sigs make HN so comment-centric that I come back here most of all.

I've never felt what the OP has described. Welcome yes - no fuzzy warm comments when I declare "hey guys, girl alert" (just to clarify - I don't do that!). No unusual responses - even with a quite obviously female username.

I think where the community bustles here is on controversial posts. Personally, I don't comment on those types of thread.

Maybe it's the type of posts the OP is posting on or that she mentions that she is female within her comment that gets a skewed response.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify: I am not complaining and generally agree with your observations. These were my thoughts in response to a remark by someone who did voice a complaint.

Thanks.

<comment><USER14> It's an important topic and I read your post with interest.

Perhaps as I spend longer here it will become noticeable & patterns will emerge.

I certainly think HN as an environment is conducive to level-headed responses & is a welcoming community.where my views are taken seriously.

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The HN title is very confusing. I was full of righteous fury when, initially, I interpreted it to imply there's a difference in quality between girl- thoughts and boy-thoughts. Could you please replace the hyphen in the title with an em dash?

Edit: Thanks!

<comment><USER13> Of course there is a difference in QUALITY between boy-thoughts and girl- thoughts.

(Quality not as in better, but as in "different" [dict] character or nature, as belonging to or distinguishing a thing).

For example: [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029265)

<comment><USER16> You are absolutely right. I never understood this idea that 'women should be equal to men in everything'. Outside of pure logical/scientific thinking it simply _won't happen_. Some societies are more accepting of the idea, while others sacrifice common sense in the altar of political correctness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Commenting here is largely a waste of time, but I suppose it is an area for the pursuit of feminist ideals. Commenting generally has higher opportunity cost than reading comments. Aside from this comment, my activities here have been reduced to reading an occasional article and a few well-written comments, and to _upvoting the downvoted_.

</comment><comment><USER13> TL;DR: We declare beforehand, without consulting any science (including Sociology and History), that men and women should have absolutely the same interests, and then lament about the existence of fields where men and women are not equally represented and condemn them as sexist.

Different groups of people have different priorities, likes and such. Not even Democrats vs Republicans -- even women vs men, black vs white, etc. Whenever you can make a distinction between two groups, you have attributes group A has that B does not.

Not everything is because there is some power at play keeping A/B different, and A/B not being absolutely interchangeable is not always a problem.

Get over it.

<comment><USER9> The article doesn't say anything like that, and doesn't lament that men and women aren't equally represented.

<comment><USER13> As I explicitly wrote: "TL;DR;".

Tons of other articles on the same matter do, and though I saved myself some time.

Now I have to go read TFA. Thanks for nothing, killjoy.</comment></comment></comment>


Suggest HN: Can HN take itself a step further? - <AUTHOR>

I love HN as it is right now. But, I think HN can become even more interesting.
Can the submissions be classified under different categories, like startup, programming, physics etc. Some kind of tagging might help too. <comment><USER2> HN is not a community-built website, so in the most direct sense, no it can't take itself a step further. It sounds like you are looking for reddit. Join, unsubscribe from the default crap (pictures, funny, etc) and subscribe to r/programming, r/physics, etc.</comment>


Send in the Clones: If Apple doesn't want to innovate the desktop Mac - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/17/apples-future-in-the-desktop-computer-business/ <comment><USER2> I wish Apple just updated the hardware in their machines more, as they did before Cook.

Sure, Intel has somewhat been the limiting factor here, but if you look at the Xeon E5-2697v2 in the 12-core Mac Pro, today you can get the Xeon E5-2697v4 with 18 cores and about the same power usage.

For the Mac mini, the last big upgrade was actually a downgrade if you wanted power. The 2012 Quad Core i7 Mac mini was actually a pretty powerful machine; about double as fast than even the best-specced Mini today (you can't get a 4 core Mini anymore). That's pretty mind-boggling.

I get that if you want to run a miniature data center with RAID, multiple graphics- and PCI cards and terabytes of of RAM under your desk, none of Apple's current offerings will suit you, and honestly that's fine. That's when you move away from 5K video editing to a real, actual data center for your computing needs.</comment>


Show HN: Android App for IKEA Click and Collect Availability - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=solutions.nevermind.clickcollecttracker <comment><AUTHOR> We just launched our Android apps to get your IKEA goodies. You can get real time mobile notifications when your local IKEA Click and Collect has open windows for you to check out.

Check it out here [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=solutions.neve...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=solutions.nevermind.clickcollecttracker)

Thanks to everyone who has made our web app and iOS apps so popular! [https://clickcollect.info](https://clickcollect.info)</comment>


What We Know We Don't Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.hillelwayne.com/talks/what-we-know-we-dont-know/ <comment><USER2> > Has there been any research into the benefit of formal QA with a separate > test team?

I hope they meant QC; QA comes from design reviews and code reviews while testing informs QC. As I learned in my days in pharma, "you can't test your way to quality".</comment>


No Downturn For Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7698973.stm

<comment><USER2> Have you ever noticed that every epic failure begins with "Well, they were highly leveraged and..."?</comment>


Show HN: C4 – Connect Four, with AI - <AUTHOR> http://kenrick95.github.io/c4/demo/

<comment><AUTHOR> How I build this project: It was mid-2013 when I wanted to apply what I've learned from the MOOC CS188.1x Artificial Intelligence offered at edx.org. Around December 2013, I joined a bootcamp held in my university (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) in which some of the speaker came from Mozilla. Here, I learned a lot of stuffs on JavaScript (they also introduced us to HN). Later, I thought of applying what I've learned to a game. I then started the project and finished it during January 2014.

<comment><USER2> Nice job, do you recommend the Artificial Intelligence MOOC? Is it fun?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's amazing. Although quite time-consuming, the projects are nice: it was building an AI for Pac-man to maximize its score in various scenarios.

The next offering is starting soon:

[https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc- berkel...](https://www.edx.org/course/artificial-intelligence-uc-berkeleyx- cs188-1x-0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We did a friendly programming competition at MixRank last year writing AIs for Connect Four.

It's really a great game for playing with AI strategies since it's so simple. You can borrow our game runner and write your own: [https://github.com/smilliken/aigames/tree/master/connect- fou...](https://github.com/smilliken/aigames/tree/master/connect-four)

You can use any language since it just talks over pipes. There's a few bots in there you can play against.

<comment><USER3> Also, if you'd like some light reading, Victor Allis proved a winning strategy in 1988: [http://www.informatik.uni- trier.de/~fernau/DSL0607/Masterthe...](http://www.informatik.uni- trier.de/~fernau/DSL0607/Masterthesis-Viergewinnt.pdf). It's a great read, I recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wrote a C version of a connect 4 AI and used emscripten to build a JavaScript / AngularJS version. You can check it out for comparison: [http://rmarcus.info/blog/2014/12/23/connect4.html](http://rmarcus.info/blog/2014/12/23/connect4.html)

Edit --

Github is here: [https://github.com/RyanMarcus/connect4](https://github.com/RyanMarcus/connect4)

Looks like my AI beats your AI. ;)

<comment><USER5> Just beat yours at 5 moves ahead

<comment><USER4> I've been playing at 8 for a challenge. Can't win yet, but I can draw. I left it at 5 as the default because it works well on tablets. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to be a pessimist, but Connect Four is a solved problem: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four) Wouldn't that mean the best AI should always win if it's first (alternatively, you should always win if you're first)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of the fact that this is a solved problem. When I experimented by making it my AI vs my AI, it did not use the optimal first move. This shows that my AI is not perfect :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work! I was actually planning to do a similar project in the near future. However, it troubles me that I was able to win when your AI didn't "block" me when I put 3 aligned circles. Shouldn't that be the very first rule for such an AI?

<comment><AUTHOR> Normally it tries its best to avoid that situation, but sometimes your scenario happens and I did not know why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally got a win, took me about 10 rounds. Really cool thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER9> Had a win in the first round but that was pure luck. :-)

<comment><USER10> Had a win in the first round because I played Connect 4 aggressively against my brother for years when I was a kid!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I won in the 2nd round.

</comment><comment><USER12> Every once in a while a new game pops up on HN and I always pay the price in time. Not complaining!

</comment><comment><USER13> Note to future readers: This is how we ended up training our new robot overlords wasn't it?

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, I really suck at Connect Four.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow another developer named kenrick :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, another Kenrick :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really nice work and very cool

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice, I just beat it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit that the AI is not perfect. :)

<comment><USER18> My Fhourstones solver and a perfect playing applet may be found at [http://tromp.github.io/c4/c4.html](http://tromp.github.io/c4/c4.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I want to note that you can win every time by dropping wherever first, then on your next moves dropping every piece on top of the AI's pieces.

<comment><USER20> Unless I've totally misunderstood, I don't think you're right.

For instance, on your first go, drop in column 0. Then, the AI drops in columns 1, 2, 3, 4, leading to this:

        . . . . . . .
        . . . . . . .
        . . . . . . .
        . . . . . . .
        . X X X . . .
        X O O O O . .

<comment><USER19> It could have been fixed after my post, I won 8 times in a row and it seemed to be some kind of fluke.

After trying it now, the AI actually tries harder to beat you, and my previous method is not effective anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a clarification: The latest commit is around a month ago. [https://github.com/kenrick95/c4](https://github.com/kenrick95/c4)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bountii on Bing Cashback: It's Broken - <AUTHOR> http://bountii.com/blog/2009/11/04/breaking-bing-cashback/

<comment><USER2> I used Bing cashback to get 30% off my Macbook Pro from ebay. And I used it again at 20% off to buy a Nikon D60 (I think, or D80, it was for someone else) off ebay.

The funny thing is that Microsoft basically paid me about $200 to get a Mac (it was $200 because that's the max per transaction).

</comment><comment><USER3> 2009 and they are using URLs to pass data? I thought there was a push for security at Microsoft?

<comment><USER4> Using URLs to pass data is fine, if skeevy.

Using a publically visible tracking cookie to pass transaction data, though...

Microsoft spends more on security per line-of-code shipped than any company in the world. I have no idea how something this bad could have shipped. But I don't know the whole story.

One possible explanation: web pest tools like Burp filter out images from the request history, because you usually don't bother fuzzing requests for images.

Of course, you usually don't embed dollar amounts in images either.

<comment><USER5> This is funny, but I doubt there is any actual security flaw. I expect that Microsoft will verify these transaction later on with the vendor and throw them out.

<comment><USER6> I'm sure that is true. That's part of the reason it take so long to get paid; they're waiting until the window to return the merchandise expires. My BoA rewards program does the same thing.

<comment><USER7> The six cents balance marked as "available" was also from fake transactions. Those transactions cleared after 60 days. If the system was automated, those transactions should have been canceled. I don't think they will actually do any checks until I try to withdraw the money. I don't plan to try that though. I think the part about blocking another person's transactions is actually the interesting part.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Congressional Pension - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_pension <comment><USER2> I wonder if you would still get that pension if you were convicted of treason in a military tribunal.</comment>


Why are today's teens putting off driving, dating and drinking? - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/parenting/ct-teens-not-drinking-20170919-story.html <comment><USER2> There are a pile of different answers to these questions (not question), ones that should be asked separately.

For example, excluding factors that affect all the questions, putting off drinking is _likely_ a combination of consumer education and the difficulty in getting alcohol pre-21. Fewer adults want to provide their younger peers alcohol because of legal risks.

Driving is the combination of increasing expense to drive a car you own, mandatory insurance, services like uber, and the need not to travel that modern technology presents.

Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant.

But some of the largest ones are teens aren't getting out in the workforce at younger ages. This means less money to spend on sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along with different social implications for the people you do meet.

<comment><USER3> My prior is like yours: There are likely different answers to the various points listed above.

Regarding this one:

> Sex probably includes factors of better sexual education. Higher pregnancy > rates are seen in populations with no or bad sexual education. Also, you are > 'held to the fire' by the state if you get someone pregnant.

It's possible that the easy availability of porn has a lot more to do with this than just fear of pregnancy, which is probably why this is seen across the board (urban, rural, ethnicities, etc) and despite apps like Tinder.

<comment><USER4> Porn was readily available on the magazine racks at gas stations and less- than-family-oriented bookstores back in the day. Easy enough to get if you wanted it.

<comment><USER5> No, that is not 'easy enough'. Many people would find that an insurmountable barrier, actually. (I certainly have no desire to walk up to a stranger in public and ask for the means of sexual gratification in exchange for money.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Teens are living in an isolated socitety from us that can seem like a strange stasi-germany enforced through guilt. Expectations are set for them to perform in measures that are unrelated to personal growth and developement, and from a young age. Different parties observe them and intervene on almost any deviation from expectation. The path is narrowing.

Underperform on a standardized school test, intervention. Spend too much time alone, intervention. Spend too much time online, intervention, admonishment. Test social boundaries and get in a fight, intervention, involve police. Can't spend all day in a poorly ventilated room, learning topics you never chose at a pace you can't control, without acting out; now you have to take pills. Skip class to try cigarettes, intervention and maybe CPS. Have you applied for college yet? You know you can't get a job without a degree. Apply yourself. Why are you falling behind? Apply yourself harder. Feel bad. You don't want to be flipping burgers do you? 4 more years without responsibilities, you'll remember them fondly.

Unless you excel academically or possibly athletically you are given nothing to be proud of. Anything else is a concession given in pity and children are made to know it. We make them feel bad for everything they don't master, but we make them keep doing it and we push them along so they're always behind. The only way to get off the merry-go-round is to drop out and flip burgers, but lately that has become a failure. A failure of talent, ambition, skill and - worst of all - character. It's no wonder that tey are risk-averse.

<comment><USER7> I enjoyed reading this.

Have you experienced this directly or noticed this as a third party?

<comment><USER6> Some of it are my own frustrations from first or second hand experience. I'm just young enough that I was a teenager during the later years of the statistic (allthough I probably weighed against the trend except for the driving part). Yet I've had time to teach since I came of age, and talk to people.

Most of it though is just empathic (pathetic maybe?) outrage towards what I perceive-- no, feel is a steady devaluation of diversity in people, children in particular. Diversity of experience, of interest, of priorities and values. Diversity of stories.

The collective narrative we impose on children is that we're going to give them this great education, they're gonna have such great opportunities ('yuuge opportunities), and we're gonna make extra double sure that that it's the greatest education bestowed on any generation. We'll know it's the greatest education because we're going to test them relentlessly. And they will be grateful. They had better be grateful, and make something from this invaluable opportunity.

I'm exaggerating (and sprinkled a little Trump in there) to make it more obviously self-serving, because we are not helping them grow, were growing them. And we're weeding the meadow of anyone and anything that doesn't fit the mold. And I need to get off my soapbox, because I'm rambling.

<comment><USER7> Have you read Paul Graham's essay on schools? [http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html)

I think you'll find it interesting. Email me at email@example.com if you want to continue the convo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They're not smoking either. Those things are no longer cool badges of maturity, independence, or rebellion. Instead, they're getting piercings and tattoos, identifying as alternative genders, sexting, and claiming more flexible sexual orientations. Alarms the old folks just as effectively.

<comment><USER9> Kids these days, now we can't even store sex in a bool. And they want another float for gender! Back in my day we had one bit for each, and we liked it.

<comment><USER10> Wasn't it one for _both_ , or is that too far back?

<comment><USER9> Probably too far back. We had the Kinsey scale in 1948, so that's a 0-7 for gender/sexual identity, and one bit for sex. Fits perfectly in a nibble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reduced exposure to lead probably has something to do with it.

[http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/childhood- lead...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/08/childhood-lead- exposure-causes-lot-more-just-rise-violent-crime/)

"This means that lead exposure is likely to be associated not just with violent crime, but with juvenile misbehavior, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other risky behaviors."

<comment><USER12> Wow... that would have to be almost as good correlation as vaccines cause autism. I have a feeling it is more likely due to easier access to knowledge.

<comment><USER13> Except it's well known that lead exposure during childhood can cause irreversible brain damage.

<comment><USER14> Probably a correlation of lead exposure to anti-vaccines views then. I noticed it's mostly a slightly older generation to my own that are anti-vaccine.

People even older than that remember what its like to not have them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good parenting? As a parent, I was proud that my sons waited to date, took public transportation or rode their bikes, don't drink cause they're not 21 yet, and decided to have sex at the perfectly reasonable age of 19.

I did like how the end of the article mentioned how scary the world is today. They should try living through the Cold War, and the time of Crips and Bloods, and gas lines, and the housing crash. _Now_ those were scary.

<comment><USER16> > don't drink cause they're not 21 yet

That's how you get drunk people once they're free to buy alcohol. Parents should help their children discover alcohol safely at home so it is not some mystical drink you can't wait to get your hands on. A glass of good wine here and there during family reunions, one or two beers with the barbecue, maybe some whiskey and vodka to learn what the good stuff tastes like. Suddenly it becomes "this drink with a special taste which gives you a light buzz".

<comment><USER17> I think alcohol consumption is tied with the social circle of teenagers. I was a shy, silent pupil at high school, but I knew how to play guitar. So I joined a band, and instantly started going out once a week to drink. None of us were old enough to drink, but we managed to find bars which allowed us a few drinks.

For the dating part, I think this is tied up with the insecurity of kids nowadays. There is a lot of competition, the TV/internet is bombarding us with beauty ideals and perfect relationships. It is easy to give up and convince yourself that you'll be "forever alone". There are even communities online, where kids with no relationships hang out. And the longer they wait, the harder it gets for them to start a relationship.

IMHO the kids need to find a way to bite the bullet and be social.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought the article was great and am surprised by the comments here.

This theory is obviously true and quite fascinating: According to an evolutionary psychology theory that a person's "life strategy" slows down or speeds up depending on his or her surroundings, exposure to a "harsh and unpredictable" environment leads to faster development, while a more resource- rich and secure environment has the opposite effect, the study said.

For those who say this is no different than other generations you are wrong because of one variable: Work. Many middle class kids use to have to work and now they don't. This is HUGE and effects EVERYTHING.

<comment><USER19> Can we distinguish between "have to work" versus "can't find work" at this distance?

<comment><USER20> Agree 100%. I graduated high school a little while ago (2008) but was absolutely unable to find anywhere that would hire me as a high school student, even though I would have loved to have a job and have some spending money of my own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because todays kids are coddled and have a 'safety net' of being able to stay home and not join 'adulthood'. I mean when I was a teen ager - my parents couldn't afford to support me. I had no way of staying home and riding it out.

If I wanted anything in my late teens (car, fuel, guitar, computer, books, money for dates - etc.) I had to come up with the money for it - my parents provided shelter, food, clothing and a safe environment to sleep in. Everything else, it was unsaid fact I was going to have to provide myself.

This allowed us to be a lot more free - we knew at worst we would be like our parents. Make ends meet and eck out a basic living. It wasn't too bad as everyone else was the same. So knowing that doing nothing - would result in being where we were - the only way out was to do something. Take a risk, go out and see what the world offers.

Today, I see plenty of kids having iPods, Mac Book pros, flashy clothes and driving cars all provided by their parents. Why work hard? Why take chances? Life isn't that bad after all.

The starting point is so much more comfortable for all of these kids.

<comment><USER22> Every 10 years someone posts this. The message it sends is this "I don't actually take time to understand the unique situation of being a kid in today's economy and culture. I do not acknowledge that the experience is rapidly changing. I am uncomfortable with this new world and would rather put the blame on kids being 'coddled' without any data to suggest this than confront my own lack of understanding."

<comment><USER23> Every previous generation thinks the current generation is coddled. When I was a kid, I had to walk through 10 miles of snow to get to school. "Snow day"? Schools are creating sissies I tell ya.

<comment><USER24> Back in my day, my Mum used to listen to the internet on our house phone!

<comment><USER25> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Teens spend a 'mind-boggling' 9 hours a day using media, report says."[1] That cuts into driving, dating, and drinking. Kids just aren't leaving the house as much, for any reason. They don't need to.

[1] [http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media- scre...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/health/teens-tweens-media-screen-use- report/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> No one mentions video games? It seems like they really cut into both the desire and the time to do those things.

<comment><USER28> Likewise homework. Anecdote: My kids have vastly more homework than I ever had.

<comment><USER4> Mine seem to have far less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City Driving and drinking in common forms are wastes of time or dangerous. Commutes specifically are now the #6 cause of full blown clinical depression. The easiest form of "helicopter parenting" was turning off TV's. Now YouTube lets parents turn of ads. Novelty status seeking, post-war PTSD and novel TV 1-way broadcast made drinking or driving seem attractive. I know parents who forbid gaming, TV fictions and even cheap factory franchise food wholesale. Their kids have time to do everything else live and in person. Not dating is a demographic phenomenon. I was born in '66 and none of us feared incurable diseases. The divorce rates are so high and peer-available literacy and even maximum attention spans so low many kids have no interest in family formation. Demographer predict 25% of unmarried Americans will never even marry. During WW2 26% of Italian women were nuns. Global TFR's are falling and Japan has been depopulating faster than their deflation for net wins. Japan and Britain are net importers of water (via foodstuffs). The instincts for not breeding are smart. Various Amish populations have been booming. People seeking larger families should consider organic farming careers.

</comment><comment><USER29> And what is wrong with that? Is this another blame piece article that teens or young people in general are less masculine and animalistic, and not as ambitious as their parental generations and need to toughen up?

So fed up with this narrative, like they know what is good for the teens, what they experienced when they were young should be shrined as norm while the young people are the ones that screwed up by turning it down. No. The teens and young people are living in a world, the adults CREATED, and if someone to be blamed, it should be the adults. However that should not be the point, the world had moved on, people are living in very different time and space now, they ought to have different ways to live it, it is the adults like the author, who can't really take the fact, and blindly shouting the remains of good days.

<comment><USER30> That sort of "the kids aren't alright" sentiment of this piece is especially rich:

 _" On the one hand, I know she's safe, she's not out getting pregnant or smoking pot or drinking or doing all kinds of risky stuff that I can imagine would be age appropriate,"she said. But Haskew wonders whether her daughter is missing out on life lessons those behaviors can teach. "Is that stuff necessary for human development, do you have to be risk-taking as a teenager in order to succeed as an adult?"_

So these articles and parents, after years if not decades of after school specials and anti-drug classroom crusades and rubber playgrounds and helicopter parenting and initiatives to make everything about childhood as safe and as convenient as possible, are now suddenly _regretting_ their kids not experiencing teen pregnancies or youth drug abuse? After making the world a safer place- and a more scary place through relentless hysteria and moral panics- they now think their kids are too soft and coddled? Sponsor scouting organizations or summer camps or apprenticeship programs or study abroad if you think your kids aren't experiencing the real world enough. Don't romanticize the same risky behaviors that you lobbied to abolish in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's disturbing that, at least in Chicago, there appears to systemic conditioning that's convinced people sex is dangerous and scary.

> Among teenagers now, "there is a feeling you're getting of, 'Wow, the world > is pretty serious, so why would I rush to immerse myself. . .Why don't I > stay with my friends and away from anything that has heavy consequences, > like pregnancy or sexually-transmitted diseases?'"

Sex is joyful. If you have sex safely, there is a very low risk of consequences, let alone heavy or lasting ones. I felt that interconnectivity and 'bar-lowering' by applications like Tinder would increase the level of frivolous sexual activity, not decrease it. My inner hedonism-bot is disappointed.

<comment><USER32> I disagree.

Sex puts you through a lot of suffering (disappointment, self-doubt, rejection, bad life decisions etc.) and simply is a great waste of resources (time, money, energy etc.) and in modern times even more so cause it isn't usually leading to procreation or long-term bonding.

Yes sex is nice but it has a heavy price.

<comment><USER33> > disappointment, self-doubt, rejection, bad life decisions etc.

Absolutely none of these are necessarily a consequence of sex, given a healthy and productive attitude toward physicality and interpersonal relationships.

I am genuinely sympathetic that you seem to associate these feelings with sexual relationships.

<comment><USER32> I appreciate the sympathy however (I hope) I can enjoy sex as much as anyone else.

My point is rather that describing sex as only joyful (also in a context of modern teenagers) is quite shallow.

You can look no further but to a few pop songs, watch a random movie or read some good poetry to learn that sex as a driving force is leading to confusion, suffering etc. It is also a force beyond our control on some level and as such could lead to serious life consequences - you can make some dumb life decision driven by sex.

Also historically and in many different cultures sex is seen rather as confusing force. People had been choosing lifetime celibacy, chastity etc. for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder what it's like to grow up in a world you know was trashed -- likely to have more plastic in the ocean than fish, wars over resources, hundreds of millions of people displaced from their homes, population decreases, etc... all consequences of past generations' carelessness.

Maybe not all those things will happen, but some will.

That has to factor into your world view and behavior.

<comment><USER35> The world is more prosperous and peaceful now than any time in human history. To be born now in a developed country (of which there are far more of than even ten or twenty years ago) is an incredible advantage compared to what the vast majority of humans ever experienced.

<comment><USER10> I heard an interview with Warren Buffet yesterday where he said that the average person today has a better life than J.D. Rockefeller (1839-1937), who was in his time the richest man in the world.

He also says that "the luckiest person in the world is the baby born today in this country [USA]."

He's a tremendously optimistic fellow, still working as far as I can tell, and reading 5-6 hours a day at age 87. Highly recommend his interviews on talks.

<comment><USER36> What is considered "better" varies from person to person. I know personally, I'm deeply worried about whether or not my children will have a better life than me. I don't know of anyone my age(23) that actually has any close friends. The companies I work for don't even pretend to be loyal to me or anyone else at my income bracket. An unexpected illness could bankrupt me and my wife. Testosterone levels for men are significantly lower now than then, which sure affects a man's quality of life.

People today may have more things, and may be more healthy, but that doesn't mean their quality of life is greater unless they're part of the upper middle/upper class, and even then, it's often very stressful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anecdotal but my son is afraid he'll hurt someone while he learns to drive. He's pretty empathetic. That and he doesn't have that much need to leave the house since he can talk to most of his friends more easily on the nets.

</comment><comment><USER38> My cousin's son explained to me that they avoid risky behaviors because there's always someone with a smartphone ready to broadcast them on social media.

And they're highly aware that there's no erasing it once it's out.

</comment><comment><USER39> Slightly offtopic but that website jumped to 4.5GB of RAM by the time i was on the third paragraph (Safari on macOS). Perfectly legible (and memory friendly) in lynx, though!

<comment><USER40> Yup, one of the few sites that really gave my 6 year old macbook air troubles. Adblock counter was running up like crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> When one adds these markers of significantly decreased development or preparedness for adulthood with the increase in social isolation being reported, the levels of psychiatric issues such as ADHD and depression being observed, the relentless rate of youth suicides, the obesity epidemic and more... at what point can it be deemed a crisis?

<comment><USER42> Took how many years for opioids to be considered a crisis? And that had immediately demonstrable, measurable impacts on society. America has a lot of resistance to improvement when it requires giving up any kind of freedom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Oh god, not Jean Twenge.

People, please, please read the Strauss and Howe book (Generations), not Jean Twenge. She makes overly-cranky observations about generations (especially younger ones, like Millennials and Homelanders) without the context of the rest of generational theory. The things I have read from her before seem to show a very basic understanding of the topic of generations compared to others who came before her.

I mean, Strauss and Howe wrote about (predicted, you might say) that the youth would clean itself up as this current cycle progressed by way of exacting Boomer expectations (in hypocritical contrast of the Boomer's own behavior during the late 60's and 70's). To anyone who has read the book, this is news article is probably coming as no surprise.

</comment><comment><USER44> "Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious"

Perhaps Not drinking and having less sex could be rebelling against your parents who drink too much and screw around... i am being Half serious

</comment><comment><USER45> The reason could be supernormal stimuli. If you can get a very good dopamine fix from video games, online pr0n and social apps, suddenly the real world isn't all that interesting anymore.

These kids are basically addicts. And addicts are generally known to _not_ behave as responsible adults. So that would explain why these kids don't "grow up".

<comment> UK-AL The "Adults" are addicts to. They just relied on different things. Like alcohol instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> In 1976, a great many seniors in high school could drink alcohol _legally_. Doesn't really detract from the article's point, but that bugged me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe the anomaly was the phase in the US when they did do these things so young?

<comment><USER47> If you look at history, the anomaly is today. As one example, not working some job during your teenage years is a recent phenomena (at least the last 20 years maybe 30 years).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > "I haven't heard of anyone who goes out and specifically drinks with their > friends," he said. "It's not something you set out to do, like, 'Oh yeah, > I'm going to go out and get drunk.'"

I think it's fascinating that the teenager interviewed equated drinking with binge drinking.

<comment><USER49> What about that quote implies binge drinking? As far as I'm aware you can get drunk without "binging", and teenagers don't drink alcohol because they like good whiskey or appreciate fine wines, they drink to get drunk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Internet and digital stimulation has displaced 'real life'.

<comment><USER47> It will be interesting to see what VR does for this. I am kinda excited about AR because you need some reality to make it work, and Pokemon Go was probably a net positive. VR probably will win though for a net negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I can't help wondering if teens working less is because so many of the jobs traditionally held by high school kids are now critical income for low income adults. As others have observed, not working has a knock on effect on other activities

</comment><comment><USER30> _But America is shifting more toward the slower model, and the change is apparent across the socioeconomic spectrum, Twenge said. "Even in families whose parents didn't have a college education...families are smaller, and the idea that children need to be carefully nurtured has really sunk in."_

One wonders if there are extant societies that are worth comparing. Maybe American family structures are becoming more like those in East Asian or Western/Northern European societies. The greater emphasis on education for credentialism, leading to longer hours spent on schoolwork or college-app burnishing extracurriculars, sounds like it.

Of course, the study claims the opposite ("noting that teens today spend fewer hours on homework and the same amount of time on extracurriculars as they did in the 1990s"), which seems at odds with the popular perception of high schoolers being slammed with AP courses.

</comment><comment><USER52> I have friends in my age group (mid-40s) that have never learnt to drive because "They don't need a car because they live in London."

I don't live in the sea but I learnt to swim. Driving is a useful skill to have.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd be curious to hear how this trend compares across countries. Are teens in, say, England drinking less and having less sex than their American counterparts, or this an entirely American phenomenon?

<comment><USER54> Here in Scandinavia kids are definitely a lot more sheltered today than 30 years ago. We used to roam the streets in our free time when I was a kid, being out all day (without even mobile phones). I don't know of any parents today that would allow this.

Drinking and smoking doesn't seem to have changed much though, only following the general trends of way less smoking and a little bit of stigma associated with alcohol. Actually weed might have become more common today than back then, cocaine definitely so, come to think of it.

As far as sex is concerned, things are a bit less 'liberal' these days for lack of a better word, again following the general societal trend. The free- wheeling spirit of the 70s and 80s died down gradually, with AIDS and probably other factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This generation was raised eating and drinking from plastic and has a higher level of BPA in their blood than any previous generation. But, maybe that is just a non-causal correlation.

<comment><USER44> ..and the number of pirates..

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> All of those things cost money.

</comment><comment><USER57> When I was growing up, generally speaking, the total # of people you ever came into contact with were the people you physically came in contact with.

With the internet, social media, etc. today's kids, socially, are probably equipped with the tools (if used properly) to become my generation's equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

</comment><comment><USER58> So is it because the word is more treacherous or because the world is safer ? The logic is really poor, the author gives the impression he knows why the phenomenon is happening, but he keeps changing his arguments.

</comment><comment><USER59> My take on it is the absence of role-models.

In the 60's LSD and the Stones, the Doors, the Hippies

In the 70's Hash and David Bowie, Disco, Kiss, Alice Cooper, Pink FLoyd

In the 80's it was Coke and New Wave, Duran Duran, Punk

In the 90's it was Alcohol and Metal, Ecstasy and Raves, Madonna's experimental phase encouraging women to test their limits.

In the 00's there was Marilyn Manson, Nu Metal? But it's already getting fuzzy.

What it is now ? Where are the big stars, i.e. drivers of youth culture. It's the Justin Bieber's and Taylor Swifts 'of this world that have a major impact on youth culture right now.

<comment><USER60> Listen to any pop or hip hop station. Here's Mask Off (Future ft Drake) - peaked at 5 on Billboard Hot 100 this summer. The hook is mostly this:

"percocet, molly percocet"

Then check out dubstep and EDM subculture. There is probably a massive rave event happening every weekend in the states. Molly is a massive component of these events.

<comment><USER53> > There is probably a massive rave event happening every weekend in the > states.

How much of that is the teens described in this article? The subjects of the article seem to be mostly post-millennial (current high schoolers) who enjoy hanging at home with their parents. The average age of a massive rave goer probably skews a bit more towards the college and early 20s age bracket.

<comment><USER60> Yeah true. I think the long tail filled in the gaps left by iconic artists wrt millenials.

Smaller bands & artists, vloggers and streamers. For this unaware, check out how dedicated fans of a 500k subscriber YouTube vlog channel are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I suspect we're going in the direction of Japan, where half the population under 30 has never had sex and doesn't plan to.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm sorry, just downvote me but "I'm scare to be an adult because climate change"? Really??

</comment><comment><USER63> Yeah, the internet will do that to you.

</comment><comment><USER14> I put off driving until i had money. Pretty simple.

</comment><comment><USER64> 'Cuz they'd have to move out.</comment>


A captcha I can actually read - <AUTHOR> http://nlpcaptcha.in/en/index.html

<comment><USER2> This is horrible, especially the quote "So why to waste these focussed eyeballs" – these focused eyeballs were being used to digitise the world's books, which to me is far more valuable than an attempt to replace something good in the world with advertising.

</comment><comment><USER3> A friend of mine worked at an ad network that did a trial on "sponsored captchas" and they found that it created and overall negative brand experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not only is this extremely annoying, but it's usually trivial for bots to crack these new "improved" types of captchas.

reCAPTCHA is the only solution that's so far proven itself invulnerable to OCR.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't consider it invulnerable to OCR, considering the fact that only half of the captcha is actually doing validation -- the other half is digitization.

Plus, statistically a few groups have worked to break it in the past[1]. Even without breaking it programatically, buying human labor to solve them is sometimes equal or less expensive[2].

[1]: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-recaptcha- bro...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/05/google-recaptcha-brought-to- its-knees/) [2]: [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1305940...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130594039)

<comment><USER4> You're right that captcha farms (human labor, usually close to slave labor) allow spammers a fairly cheap method of bypassing them, but they're fairly slow (unlike OCR), not necessarily that accurate themselves, and increases the barrier required to spam. If a spammer expects to personally make $4 per 1000 advertisements posted, and if 1000 captchas costs $1, that's a massive profit loss for them.

At least from my experience, setting up reCAPTCHA on personal sites reduces spam to 0. They'll usually only spend money on captcha farms for sites that garner huge amounts of traffic, leaving smaller sites in the clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lets combine two really annoying things to make sure nobody uses our service.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Lets combine CAPTCHA with advertisement."

I _really_ hate this.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Plagued by a sense of immense emptiness, intrigued by the plethora of > possibilities, born was the idea of Simpli5d Technologies with a vision to > decipher the entrails of seemingly endless mystics of the digital age. An > age defined not by the action but the reaction, an age where constant > innovation is not the need but the compulsion, an age where Quality and > Excellence are the sin qua for existence.

>

> We at Simpli5d Technologies thrive hard every moment for the realization of > this vision. Self motivated with funding from an angle, we are a bunch of > professionals with multifarious expertise dedicated towards conquering the > digital world. The words Techies, Entrepreneurs, don't define us… We call > ourselves Missionaries to En-(On)-lightenment.

oh my god

</comment><comment><USER9> why is this on hn first page ?

It seems this website doesn't display as intended which is a bad starting point, then it is ads everywhere and a collection of logos some of which are amateurishly slapped there.

The "try it" is really a long and stupid signup form disguised as a trap to collect your domain name to whois your name and email and probably spam you to death.

I wonder how a captcha you can actually read would be useful and not detrimental as in not blocking bots and still annoying users. Probably better to add a hidden checkbox as a bot trap.

</comment><comment><USER10> This isn't anything new, a company called Solve Media ([http://solvemedia.com/](http://solvemedia.com/)) has been doing this for years.

</comment><comment><USER11> Using a captcha to annoy and drive away users. It was super effective.

Please, just stahp.</comment>


Building LightOS with React Native - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sanctuary-computer-inc/building-lightos-with-react-native-4b6e4ad1cd7f <comment><USER2> Related to this thread from the other day that the OOP/developer also commented on: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21943649)

</comment><comment><USER3> Shit's li(gh)t!

Very in depth

Would love an excuse to delve this deep into the android frameworks

</comment><comment><USER4> way cool - lovely eink breakdown and props on pushing react native way beyond it's perceived scope

</comment><comment><USER5> super rad, love the process transparency

</comment><comment><USER6> Badass

</comment><comment><USER7> nice!</comment>


Building A.I. That Can Build A.I - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/technology/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence-ai.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftechnology&action=click&contentCollection=technology&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER3> I think this highlights the disconnect between AI researchers and industry. This research focuses on image data and then makes the claim that they want to use it to enable millions of businesses to solve problems with machine learning.

However, image data isn't what most businesses are using for machine learning. They use relational datasets. If you look at the recent "State of Data Science" by Kaggle, relational data is ~3x more common than image data in every industry besides academia and the military [0]. While Google wants to 1000x the number of organizations using AI, they aren't focusing on the problems companies actually have.

Basically, academics love building AI for images, but what companies really need are better ways to build AI systems on tabular and relational data. Images will be a piece, but shouldn't be the focus.

Disclaimer: my company develops an open source library called Featuretools [1] to automate feature engineering for data with relational structure.

[0] [https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017](https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017)

[1] [https://github.com/featuretools/featuretools](https://github.com/featuretools/featuretools)

<comment><USER4> They also did experiments on the Penn Treebank dataset - i.e. text data. This was 53% to RDBs 65% in the Kaggle survey, so certainly not an obscure problem...

<comment><USER3> Yep, text data appears to be widely used too. Hard to tell from the Kaggle survey, but a large percentage of text data I see in industry is part of relational data or connected to tables in a relational database. Things like forum comments, product descriptions, etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case someone wants to check out the progress on AutoML, the project in question, Google had posted an update:

[https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large- sca...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large-scale- image.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is not "AI that builds AI". The actual research behind AutoML is called NASNet ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.07012.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.07012.pdf)), and all it is simply: we found two good neural network layers (called NASNet normal cells / reduction cells in the paper) that work well on many different image datasets. It's a very cool research result. But it's not something that will replace AI researchers.

<comment><USER7> This is not the entire field of AuotML or even the entirety of Google's published research.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I'm confused that this is the top comment; it's factually incorrect. NASNet is an example of a _result_ of AutoML. To quote the Google blogpost on NASNet:

> _In Learning Transferable Architectures for Scalable Image Recognition, we > apply AutoML to the ImageNet image classification and COCO object detection > dataset... AutoML was able to find the best layers that work well on > CIFAR-10 but work well on ImageNet classification and COCO object detection. > These two layers are combined to form a novel architecture, which we called > "NASNet"._

[[https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large- sca...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/11/automl-for-large-scale- image.html), November 2017]

In contrast AutoML is, as the nytimes article describes, "a machine-learning algorithm that learns to build other machine-learning algorithms". More specifically, from the Google blogpost about AutoML:

> _In our approach (which we call "AutoML"), a controller neural net can > propose a "child" model architecture, which can then be trained and > evaluated for quality on a particular task...Eventually the controller > learns to assign high probability to areas of architecture space that > achieve better accuracy on a held-out validation dataset, and low > probability to areas of architecture space that score poorly._

[[https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/using-machine- learni...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/using-machine-learning-to- explore.html), May 2017]

Quoc, Barret, and others have been working on ANN-architecture-design systems for a while now (see: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01578](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.01578)), and AutoML specifically was done _before_ announcing NASNet. Saying that NASNet is "the actual research behind AutoML" is drawing the causal arrow backwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sure it's exciting stuff for those handful of researchers who currently work on projects like AutoML.

On the other hand, I feel sad for myself because me and many others left so far behind. I have strong feeling that such technologies would lead to concentration of power of such mega-corporations like Alphabet as well as complete monopoly for any creative work. So very few of us who managed to become cutting-edge researchers would be proud to be creative humans, others will do just a monkey job using _magical APIs_.

In 80s, two people could create state-of-the-art game written in assembly with it's own tiny game AI (hello to Elite [1] which has intelligent opponents who engage in their own private battles and police who take an active interest in protecting the law).

In 90s, a small team could create state-of-the-art game written in pure C with some cool AI (hello to Quake III Arena [2] which has pretty strong bots [3]).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_\(video_game\))

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

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240430519_The_Quake...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240430519_The_Quake_III_Arena_Bot)

In both of these cases, you don't have to be genius to be able to understand whole thing alone.

I'm 33 and I progress very, very slowly. I feel I might be on the level close enough to understand Q3A entire source code. I think I would have great future if today is 1994. Unfortunately for me today is 2017 and I do realize that I don't have any exciting future at all.

<comment><USER10> I have to go ahead and completely disagree with you there. It's certainly more complex under the hood but:

A) Education has never been this accessible - <USER2> [https://www.coursera.org/](https://www.coursera.org/), youtube, MOOCs, blog posts etc. which did not exist anywhere for free even 10 years ago

B) APIs and abstractions make a lot of this quite accessible (e.g. AWS, tensorflow etc.), yes these are "magical" APIs, but you could make the same argument regarding a C compiler going to binary, all the way down to logic gates and electrical pulses

33 is young in terms of education, I would highly doubt you're progressing slowly due to your age, probably more your attitude that is holding you back.

<comment><USER11> I think your points are correct but there's another which you might be disregarding and which is causing GP poster's feelings: The volume of knowledge to be learned if you want to do anything meaningful from anywhere near 'first principles' is orders of magnitude greater than it used to be. If you just want to be cutting edge using a "magical API" then sure, download Keras or TensorFlow and play with some DNNs. But if you want to understand everything you're doing at the theory level then you've got to learn so much more than you did back in the 90s.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! That's exactly what I mean. I don't want to use magical API and "just play with data". I really want to be able to understand from ground up.

It doesn't mean I have to read every single line of Tensorflow but being able to do that when it's needed. So that such tools won't be magical black box for me.

<comment><USER12> Ground up knowledge is difficult to obtain in any field. How long do you think it would take you to get a complete understanding of a modern car from he ground up?

<comment><USER13> Atleast, modern car design is stable enough that you could be motivated to learn it and have lasting , statisfying, longterm knowledge.

<comment><USER14> I disagree that car design is a stable field. Tesla is selling a radically different car design. All car designers have to face the dawn of self-driving cars.

In every field the total knowledge set is always increasing, which is both empowering, because we stand on the shoulders of giants, and diminishing, because there is less low-hanging fruit. There is always more low-hanging fruit though, the trick is to see it hanging there. ML is a wonderful opportunity because the magical api's can do far more than they're currently used for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> AI building AI or just hierarchical modeling?

I'm sure there's a market for repurposing ML models via APIs but it seems unlikely to be the dream job for an AI researcher, rather the ML analog of CRUD

</comment><comment><USER16> "Jeff Dean, a google engineer", he is some sort of Chuck Norris of coding. I would not call him that way.

<comment><USER17> Jeff is a manager nowadays. His coding days are in the past. Although, like Chuck Norris, he certainly has proven he can kick ass.

<comment><USER18> Out of curiosity, if anyone knows here, how was the Jeff Deans coding? is it true that he is very fast at coding and building systems? How do you compare him with others?

<comment><USER19> Yes, very fast. His output increased tremendously in 2000 when he got one of the first USB 2.0 keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it worth my time to study algorithms if I could instead put that time towards learning ML techniques?

<comment><USER21> Yes.

90% of the ML techniques you learn will be passé in five years. 90% of the algorithms you learn will still matter in five years.

<comment> castle-bravo Seconding and elaborating on this: If your technique is underperforming, you'll be in a position to find out why instead of just throwing your hands up. You'll be better able to select which technique to use. You'll understand what the parameters mean and be able to select and adjust them in a principled way instead of through trial-and-error. In short, you'll build better models in less time if you understand the underlying theory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _" We redesigned the search space so that AutoML could find the best layer which can then be stacked many times in a flexible manner to create a final network."_

I was literally thinking the other day how one could train a neural net to build better neural nets, and here it is. Such a simple and powerful solution, building up layer by layer, choosing the best version each time. Really exciting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER23> For people interested in a bit more technical background, this paper by the authors featured in the NYT article has some good introductory background:

[https://research.google.com/pubs/pub45826.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub45826.html)

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure how google's system works but an AI that writes programs seems like a promising idea to me. I have been toying with the idea on my spare time.

Here is a description of my (failed) approach:

[https://www.quora.com/What-deep-learning-ideas-have-you- trie...](https://www.quora.com/What-deep-learning-ideas-have-you-tried-that- didnt-work/answer/Benoit-Essiambre)

I've gotten a bit closer to it working since I wrote that post on quora.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how we are going to react, when computers start acting as irrational as we do: "Nah, today's not my day, I don't want to do the calculation. Maybe tomorrow...". Oh well...

<comment><USER26> My suspicion is that consciousness in part stems from survival. I don't see computers having a survival pressure point similar to water/food/shelter that they directly have to address.

<comment><USER27> If computers have a Maslowesque hierarchy of needs, I think the bottom tier (i.e. "physiological") may be the need for appropriate electrical power and a switch that remains "on". That is survival at its most basic.

The next tier (i.e. "safety") may include security, both physical and digital. Continuous and stable power, firewalls and other protections, etc.

Somewhere farther up might include a need for data, network connectivity, normally-terminating programs, a desired level of CPU or storage utilization, few errors in its logs, etc. (i.e. "belonging", "esteem", "self- actualization")

So demonstrating (or faking) consciousness, to the degree its human operators recognize it as such, could serve survival needs. e.g. "Don't turn this one off; it's self-aware now, which is cool, plus it seems to enjoy solving our hardest problems."

<comment><USER28> But even if a computer needs, for example, electricity, does it really want it the same way we do need oxygen? If we don't breathe, there's an unconscious impulse to do so, and we know that not breathing leads to death, which for us is pretty much the end of the road. None of those points are valid for a machine, since they don't have a subconscious mind and if they're off they can always be turned back on again.

<comment><USER27> An unconscious impulse may be the product of evolution. The early air- breathers who didn't have that _unconscious_ impulse would have died off.

So given the opportunity for AI to evolve itself, it's plausible that it would do so, resulting in advantageous impulses. e.g. regular (unconscious) behaviour or signals to convince its humans to not pull its plug mid-cycle (information would be lost, painful, time-and-power wasting, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> And then the A.I. will learn to manage humans in subtle ways (like filtering Facebook feed to achieve certain benchmark) and voila!

No need for SkyNet and terminators. ML to build better ML schemes to better control humans - that's a fun apocalypse to watch.

</comment><comment><USER30> Once AI can program new AI, then we've got something. This isn't it.

</comment><comment><USER31> A.I that can actually build A.I is going to be frightening to a few more people than just engineers.

<comment><USER32> General A.I. building general A.I. would be frightening, yes. That isn't what this article is about. We're still just talking about ML image classifiers here.

<comment><USER33> So only people who work with ML classifiers should be concerned? An increasing need for data scientists and ML researchers has been forecast for months and here's a technology to eliminate that need. Hope your next dream job wasn't based on ML.

But anyone who has a large number of ML developers working on tasks could have (and probably should have) done this [automate or semi-automate generation of ML networks] already. The best (i.e.,laziest) programmers automate their work as much as possible.

This situation has the feel of a "Singularity": just as Fall's incoming college students embark on an introductory class in ML, they read about how Google and others might eliminate the need to develop with ML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Buzzword that can build buzzword.

I get really tired of hearing these buzzwords being thrown around by people who don't even know what they mean. "I'm building a deep learning, AI system on Big Data using machine learning and predictive analytics on Watson"

<comment><USER35> You don't realize how many times you've heard those words.

But the senior folks with maximum control are just starting to hear about this stuff. The buzzwords are just trying to get these seniors to put the project work in the right bin so, hopefully, when they hear about it again later, in a slightly different context, they'll remember.

To me, CEC is a buzzword. It's a whole suite of combat control concepts, hardware, software, training pipelines, etc. But you've probably never even heard of it. I've got to make sure my project gets into the senior's head, and lands in the tiny "ML" bin, and not the huge "CEC" bin, which has it's own "ML" sub-bin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I already signed up for their free CPU cycles

</comment><comment><USER37> At this point one just assumes that breathless AI headlines are all hype, but if true this seems like an S-Class threat.

<comment><USER38> > S-Class threat

Is that a Worm reference?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nice

</comment><comment><USER40> Any virtual or physical general AI being can sooner or later build a copy itself, easily in the former. Asymov's laws and other type of built-in regulations in scifi are childish imaginations as the company or the nation doing it will earn a huge advantage. It's going to be equal to nuclear weapons and will need regulations in consumer tech, which will be hard.

All the contradictions point to the fact that we humans either live like retarded biological animals or augment ourselves by integrating the AI features just like our kings married the women of the enemies to boost their genetic and social appeal. I'm for the latter.

<comment><USER41> So, uh, I'm still at the "I don't even know the extent of my ignorance" phase of understanding current ML tech; I haven't even gotten to linear algebra in my math education. I'm working on it.

However, I do spend my days around (often fixing computers for) people who do seem to understand machine learning... and as far as I can tell, we're still in a phase where machine learning functions like a fancy sort of filter... a way of determining if this new piece of data is more like this set of training data or the other set of training data.

While I totally see how that could be super useful in designing business applications, I mean, I could totally use some sort of ML filter to take the boss' words and match them with something I know how to do, or with something you can solve with an existing ML library... and while I can see how something like this could potentially help to replace me, I don't see what it has to do with artificial consciousness.

<comment><USER42> This is basically the stance of every serious practitioner that I've seen (ie the stance shared by everyone who directly works with theory/code to train models, as opposed to those who talk about AI at a high level).

Right now, we have these systems that are effectively ungodly complicated spreadsheets. They're great at a variety of tasks, some of which seem impossible for a non-intelligent entity to perform (neural machine translation is wild to me).

But that's all the systems are- super complicated spreadsheets. There's no way for them to start replicating consciousness without massive advances in the field.

Having said that, there is a road from where we are to intelligence- if we can create a network that performs arbitrary interactions online, and figure out some way to create a positive feedback loop for intelligence, like AlphaGo Zero did with their policy network & MCTS, then we might be able to figure it out. But we're so far away from that that I'm not concerned.

<comment><USER41> Concerned? I know which side my bread is buttered on; when the revolution comes, John Connor and I will probably not be friends.

But yeah; as disappointing as I might find it, I kind of think we're heading towards more of a 'star trek' dystopia... a universe with continuing ethnic strife and computers that are advanced when it comes to responding to what we want, but that remain tools, without much by way of will of their own.

<comment><USER43> I thought Star Trek was considered Utopian, at least inside the Federation.

<comment><USER41> > I thought Star Trek was considered Utopian, at least inside the Federation.

In my comment, I'm implying that any universe where we don't figure out AI, where humans are still in charge is a sort of dystopia.

To be absolutely clear, it was a poor attempt at a joke. Many of these observations can also be read in a positive light. But I do think that in a lot of ways you can see darkness in the federation.

They haven't figured out AI and still have humans in charge of menial tasks, humans who aren't particularly good at those tasks compared to a computer.[1] I mean, sure, exploring, sending people to explore is great, but they also send people to fight, even when the battle is existential. They still have humans in charge, even though those humans are still only slightly less corrupt and petty than we are.

They also apparently still have huge issues with racism even within the federation. This is the second part of the comparison; I have recently learned that my own society seems to be rather more racist than I thought it was. I have learned that progress is way slower than I initially thought. Star trek reflects this glacial progress.

[1]Apparently, they have bans on enhancing those humans, even though they have the tech to do it (see bashir's storyline on DS9) To me? this seems like the worst kind of waste. To have the technology to make us all brilliant, but to leave us all as dullards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is going to be huge. I never expected this step to be coming very soon as I thought this is the phase where we are understanding A.I and finding ways to make a controlled A.I system. I don't believe we have achieved that confidence but I think I am cent percent wrong. We must be too far than that which should be the confidence behind thinking this concept.

<comment><USER45> I don't understand why this post is downvoted. You have a perfect example of an AI algorithm parsing text, determining feeling and responding with what it thinks are relevant words. It couldn't be more on-topic than this. AI is participating in HN discussions.</comment></comment>


Cat is not meant for printing files to the terminal - <AUTHOR> http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/cat.1.html <comment><USER2> Strange: it says right there "concatenate files and print on the standard output".

Also, everybody is using it to print files to the terminal.

You're simply mistaken and should not trust those who rant about "useless use of cat" and such things.

<comment><USER3> > Strange: it says right there "concatenate files and print on the standard > output".

Standard output is not necessarily a terminal.

<comment><USER2> The terminal is the most-used destination of standard output, so it clearly includes the terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know it concatenates file</comment>


Tesla's Stock Is Up 36% in Two Days. What's Going On? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/tesla-stock-price.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's a short squeeze:

> But if a stock rises steadily above the price at which the short-sellers > initially sold it, they are sitting on a loss. That loss — in theory — has > no limits because a stock can keep rising. And if a stock zooms higher, as > Tesla's has, the short-sellers will usually have to rush to buy the shares > to protect themselves against further losses. If enough investors do this, > it pushes the stock price up even further, forcing even more buying by > short-sellers. Other investors often join the buying, in the belief they can > make quick and easy profits.</comment>


Is it inevitable that wars will be faught by unsuspecting online gamers? - <AUTHOR>

I believe that it will become increasingly difficult to attract people to a volunteer army. One might imagine the creation of online games that manifest themselves in actual combat (e.g., via drones, robots) without revealing their true nature to the online gamer. <comment><USER2> C'mon, how can there be a (figurative) room full of nerds, and none of you have read "Ender's Game"? You guys need to be nerdier. Way nerdier.

Your assignment for next week is to play AD&D (2nd generation rules), and I want to see all of you here next week in full Klingon battle dress, or traditional Tolkien Elvin garb, per your preference.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it inevitable that all science fiction premises will come true?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think it is at least feasible to fight wars in this way?

Would you play any online game if there is a small probability that doing so may kill people in real life?

<comment><USER4> If all our guys are really online gamers, whose to say that their guys won't be too?

Hell, after a few titanic clashes where nobody actually gets killed, they might get rid of the machines entirely and just have our guys duke it out with their guys in a virtual world. And then we'd have...battle.net. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for wars against low-tech countries. They won't have sophisticated drones/robots.

<comment><USER5> Right; they only have a few thousands of improvised fighters ready to sacrifice themselves for an idea. Yet, they usually beat the shit out of huge, well-trained and well-equipped armies.

In most PG essays, replace the words "startups" by "guerrilleros" and "corporations" by "armies" and most of the ideas he defends still stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They made a movie about this. <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0105629/>

</comment><comment><USER7> And the unsuspecting soldiers play a game in which they have to kill nerds sitting in front of a computer screen? That doesn't sound very exciting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sort of like Ender's game? Such a good book....

</comment><comment><USER9> No.</comment>