chris5745

May be a strategic move by FB to cultivate relationships in the political ecosystem. FB doesn’t seem to have quite the free market clout it used to, and will likely rely on these relationships for many reasons in the future. By giving politicians a free pass, the election losers will blame FB, but the winners will credit them and be in a position of power to perpetuate the system that got them there. It’s a win-win for FB.

You could try talking to people in the industry you want to enter.

>He said this will mean young adults will soon start to move away from buying “Apple devices, craft beer and Chipotle burritos” and instead spend their savings on big-ticket items such as houses and cars.

Where is this “savings” I keep hearing about? Is it something you’re born with?

I imagine if accelerometers were sensitive enough they could be used in place of GPS, once a device was calibrated with position and orientation.

You’re saying even if police/security had all that power, and they abused it, the public wouldn’t care.

I’m saying they absolutely would.

We sure cared about Rodney King, and that was the result of a video of a public event that occurred before a smartphone was in everyone’s pocket. You really think we don’t have the tools to watch the watchers today?

These agencies want encryption back doors, not elimination of encryption. Think about that for a minute. Think about it for an hour.

What if there was no encryption at all? What if there was a decentralized blockchain of hashes or whatever that resulted from “Johnny in Tucson AZ visited the New York Times at 11:41PM EDT on January 21, 2019”? Reconstruction of any other event wouldn’t match.

Serious question: If they were able to see all communications legally, and had all the snooping powers they seem to desire, would we be better off in the long run? There’s probably an implicit belief - on this site and elsewhere - that these agencies can’t be trusted with such power. Even if this were true, wouldn’t any abuse of power be ferreted out by the public sooner or later? Wouldn’t the truth eventually come to light, and everyone better off overall?

Wonderful piece, thanks for sharing.

Have you ever heard about the Law of Attraction?

If all belligerents had access to robots for fighting each other; if only robots could be used in warfare; and if the outcome were to have no effect on the welfare of the people, then the people would be impartial as to the outcome. If the outcome didn’t matter, there would be no reason to even manufacture the robots, let alone send them to fight each other. Because only robots could fight, war would be moot.

My point was that unless people change, the causes of war will remain.

“No fate but what we make.” -Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Wars happen due to material and ideological differences. If country A engages country B in a robot war and all the robots die, the humans and the differences will remain.

It’s not impossible. We always have a choice.

According to my understanding, the current US patent system is often summarized as “first inventor to file” meaning the named inventor must believe herself to be the original inventor.

Prior art is still relevant WRT patent prosecution. The AIA made several changes to patent law, perhaps most notably making the effective filing date the determining factor for purposes of applying prior art, instead of the invention date. This means interferences no longer occur. There are also now different post-grant procedures for challenging patent validity.

Source: am a patent agent Disclaimer: this is not legal advice

It may be useful if they published biological sequence information, where available.

I like your probing. I think it is going to take a variety of viewpoints for you to begin to arrive where you want to be. Which is great - it’s a path as good as any. Some are born and are told and are happy with that. Others question, and may end up somewhere entirely different from where they thought they were going...nonetheless becoming who and where they need to be. I fall into the second camp.

My view is only one viewpoint, and it is like a little painting I’m working on as I progress through life. I’ve shown a part of it to you, and it has some elements that may be imperfect. I think no matter what I do, there will always be those axioms and initial conditions which you (or I, or anyone) can question. When will the painting be finished? When it is perfect, or when it is beautiful? It may never be finished by me or anyone in this life. But we’re working on it. I think that’s saying something for us and life in general.

You’re ambitious, which is great. You’re respectful, even greater. I do, however, believe it is beyond my individual right and ability to attempt to provide an explanation for God, such as the causality of God’s existence. I do not know if such a thing can even be known, at least in the sense you seem to seek.

I feel God in my life, as real as the sun, grass, and breeze, but this feeling is always just beyond my complete and total understanding.

Honestly, I think love is the answer. I also think more will be revealed, my friend.

I do not know.

These questions are wonderful to ponder.

I view the will of God as the “why” and the physical laws of nature as the “how”. When people say “everything is connected” I interpret that to mean while it’s true that physical causes and effects behave according to natural law, the will for a desired outcome is provided by a higher intelligence.

To answer your question, the universe exists because God wills it to exist.

While we’re on the subject, many believe in a hierarchy of supernatural intelligences (e.g. angels and demons). A scientific explanation for this hierarchy may be living beings that occupy dimensions other than our own (e.g. “higher” dimensions that operate on “lower” dimensions).

See, e.g., https://m.phys.org/news/2014-12-universe-dimensions.html

I was thinking similar thoughts. I imagine a lot of efforts are duplicated in all industries. New players have to make many of the same mistakes established players made, and this is part of the barrier to entry.

Someone could potentially make a killing managing a marketplace for buying and selling failed industrial results. We learn from mistakes. If it were cheaper to learn from others’ mistakes than make them anew, this could have huge benefits for everyone. But it would have to be very enticing for the established players.

If other freelancers are messing up projects on those sites, I would see that as an opportunity to enter the market with a quality service, if the customer needs the quality. If it’s a race to the bottom and you want no part of it, you could start a side business selling something unrelated to programming.

So what do software inventors in these countries do with their inventions?

Edit - It seems to me that there’s clamoring about software patents without suggestions for alternatives. Were software patents always disallowed in these countries? If not, what was the overall effect of “ending” them? Was there innovation and business activity, before and after?

Edit2 - https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2470358C2/en

If software patents were “ended”, what would replace them? Trade secrets? Everything out in the open under a use license?

The Secret Doctrine [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Doctrine

SEEKING WORK | Philadelphia, PA | Remote OK

U.S. patent agent with experience drafting and prosecuting patent applications pertaining to biotechnology, consumer devices, and electromechanical inventions. Additional experience independently writing software.

Offering tech writing and consulting, medical writing, and patent application drafting.

Mention HN for a discount!

Web: www.bitworks.tech Email: contact AT bitworks.tech

Reminds me of the anonymizing suits in “A Scanner Darkly”.

Math is big. A good place to start building your intuition may be by learning proofs. I‘m currently revisiting math by working through Chartrand [0]. As a non-mathematician, I would recommend this text as a foundation, and a possible bridge to advanced subjects.

[0] Mathematical Proofs: A Transition to Advanced Mathematics https://g.co/kgs/stSmxJ

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” -Thomas Jefferson

Everyone seems to talk a lot about governments, but at some point we may need to explore whether being informed about non-government entities may be just as important in this context.

I would argue that being informed about government is important for preserving a democracy, and being informed about industry is important for preserving a free market. Information inequality threatens the integrity of any system that relies on a group to make decisions, whether it’s a town hall meeting or a shareholder event. By the vote or by the dollar. It creates inefficiencies that are exploited by the information-wealthy.

As regrettable as it is to think this way, I am not sure there is a technological solution to the problem of misinformation. In the very near future we may only want to connect to the internet for entertainment, irrespective of truth. Critical thinking will still be alive, but anyone who engages in it truthfully will probably limit their thoughts to people, things, and events in their immediate surroundings.

Later, when we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll have another chance to be honest with each other.

IMO Xubuntu is a no-frills, simple and reliable Linux distro that is good for daily use on middle-aged and newer machines, but also good for giving older hardware a chance to feel snappy and responsive even as it ages. Device drivers are available and “just work”. I don’t need a fancy UI and window animations. The low overhead and relative simpleness of the OS are it’s best features.

I don’t have a lot of fuss that wouldn’t also be had with many other Linux distros. The occasional manual fix and stack overflow search for some minor issue, the aging repositories that may or may not be maintained anymore, etc.

Xubuntu has been a daily driver for me for a decade. The donation link is good to know about, thank you!

Also, may be good to check out their list of “officially endorsed” products, which seems to help the project too. Not sure how this stacks up compared to a direct donation of course.

https://xubuntu.org/products/

I see the financial data is validated by Stripe, but how would this compare to, for example, a 10-Q or 10-K? Is the Stripe data a complete representation of the financial state of these businesses?