dj-wonk

Re: "Every society with inflationary money eventually grinds to a halt and crumbles."

Would you like to support this claim and/or clarify what you mean?

Some food for thought...

What if a large group of developers banded together and said "We'll only interview with companies that offer us a range of choices on the interview process, because we want to be able to choose option(s) that suit our strengths. We do this because not only because we want to put our best selves forward but also because this helps nudge companies to explore the space of various interviewing methods, which ultimately makes the companies better off as well because they get better long-term matches."

This is a complex issue, but one key component is this the relative bargaining powers of the parties [1].

Supply and demand in the job market is only one component of the bargaining power. Social norms and many other factors play in.

The field of Organizational Ecology [2] also can offer some metaphors about what is happening. Both herd behavior and organizational inertia are significant factors that explain how companies interview.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_of_bargaining_power

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_ecology

Re: "So perhaps people should quit criticizing bitcoin for its energy intensity and start criticizing states and nations for still providing new industries with dirty power supplies instead."

Three responses:

(1) The author has introduced another unrelated claim, presumably to distract from the main point. See the informal usage of "non-sequitur" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy

(2) This is a false choice. The two arguments are separate.

(3) There are better alternatives when it comes to energy efficiency: (A) in the current cryptocurrency space; (B) in the financial transaction space; (C) in the (open-ended, what might the future hold) software design space.

...

The article misses the point. If we're talking energy, the main criticism of Bitcoin is its efficiency. I mean "efficiency" as defined in the engineering sense: useful output / input. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency

If we define useful output as one Bitcoin transaction, how much input energy does that require?

According to [2], "Because of all that calculation, the energy cost of Bitcoin is high in comparison with that of conventional financial transactions. For example, according to one estimate, processing a bitcoin transaction consumes more than 5,000 times as much energy as using a Visa credit card."

According to [3], "Bitcoin's power consumption is extremely high compared to conventional digital payment, and one transaction now uses as much energy as your house in a week"

[2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/the-ridiculous-amoun...

[3] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mi...

...

Finally, here's my personal perspective. I have relatively little confidence in a simple, generalized idea of cryptocurrencies. As far as the basic computer science, I like blockchain technologies roughly as much as I like Merkle trees. I'm also open to see where alternative forms of transactions can go.

That said, these forms have design constraints that the technologies must address. I would like to see particular innovation in the design of particular cryptocurrencies that make them suitable for particular uses. For a system that hopes to scale up transactions for a broad user base, I think per-transaction energy efficiency is an important metric.

To fuse some snippets from Fortune and the New York Times:

"Cisco has agreed to buy Duo Security, a 700-person strong cybersecurity startup based in Ann Arbor, Mich., for $2.35 billion in a combination of cash and stock." [1]

"Duo was last privately valued at $1.17 billion after a $70 million financing round in October. Cisco participated as an investor in that round." [1]

"Cisco has a long history of buying security startups. Some of its acquisitions in recent years include Sourcefire, an intrusion detection tech firm (2013); Threatgrid, a malware analyzing firm (2014); OpenDNS, a domain name service provider (2015) and Lancope, a network monitor (2015)." [1]

"Duo’s technology allows companies to provide employees or customers with remote access. Its software verifies the identity of users, scans their device for security weaknesses and then lets them connect, a kind of supercharged username-and-password. Cisco said it would integrate Duo’s technology across its network, device and cloud platforms." [2]

"The acquisition is part of a trend in which cloud providers and cybersecurity companies are trying to bolster the services they offer." [2]

"But Cisco has hardly been the only buyer. In the past 12 months, Oracle acquired Zenedge, Amazon purchased Sqrrl, VMWare struck a deal for CloudCoreo, McAfee bought Skyhigh, and Symantec acquired Skycure." [2]

"The pace of such deals — particularly in identity management, like Duo — should only pick up over the coming years as companies try to strengthen their defenses against cyberthreats, Mr. Ives said." [2]

[1] http://fortune.com/2018/08/02/cisco-buys-duo-security/

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/business/dealbook/cisco-d...

For a more pointed perspective:

"But the worry here is that Cisco is going to murder the golden goose—and, as a former Cisco customer, I’m struggling to feel anything but dread about all the ways in which this acquisition might kill everything that’s good about Duo." [3]

"In my opinion—which is informed by my own anecdotal experience—Cisco belongs on the same shelf as Oracle when it comes to businesses that exhibit a profit-above-all-else mindset. From my point of view as an enterprise customer, Cisco consistently came across as unswervingly committed to maximum revenue extraction at every single point in its relationship with a customer. The company’s per-feature licensing was (and remains) so expensive and so complex that the whole product portfolio seemed designed around creatively separating customers from their capital first and actual network/SAN administration a distant second." [3]

[3] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/08/heads...

I'm sorry to hear you've been banned from so many places. I would be interested in your story. Do you want to make a post about it?

It seems to me that you've gone off topic here without offering detailed support of your arguments.

Re: "Conservatives have a far, far lower bar to censor people than Twitter, et al. (i.e. /r/The_Donald on Reddit)" This is a generalization with only one example for support.

The goal of this proposal seems worthwhile but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

Humanity benefits when the broader impacts of technology are factored in. Who does this, with what influence, is arguably one of largest themes in human history. This particular proposal is just one of many options.

I don't find this article particularly compelling. Having a requirement for a social-impact section is a blunt instrument; it might become just a pro-forma exercise.

I think I would be more interested in encouraging (not requiring) journals with strong ethical foundations let authors opt-in to discuss social impacts. If they do, I would expect these social impacts to be vetted by social scientists, philosophers, ethicists, and so on -- areas where computer scientists often have large blind spots.

Yes, I know what you mean. In my opinion, the connection to the System 1 / System 2 theories did not add much depth to the paper. I think the intended purpose was to bolster the argument that both learners and solvers (operating in different ways) are both useful forms of intelligence. However, this point can be made in other ways as well.

In any case, I look forward to more scholarship and experimentation at the intersection of these topics.

Re: your P.S.: If a touch keyboard could give haptic feedback that let us distinguish between a "correct" keypress and a missed one, it might work. Perhaps a pleasant haptic vibration in proportion to how close to center your finger strikes would work.

Sure, there are downsides to the touchbar (I get it), but I'd suggest we ask this question: where does Apple want to go with the touchbar? Instead of focusing on where it is right now, think about what it could be.

With haptic feedback and perhaps different locations/placement, it has the potential to augment or even transform the ways we interact with the computer.

Put another way, the current problems are not insurmountable. Changing habits is not easy. What if there are better options than current keyboards? All I'm saying is consider what might be in the works.

To be clear, I'm not saying that we should blindly accept anything Apple does. But we should not blindly assume that their decisions are based on the worst intentions, either.

In your view, what would it take for the big players to "get their [act] together"? I'd like to hear a bit more of how you see it. What players would need to work together or coordinate? What are some more-or-less realistic paths forward?

Fair enough. Your article makes a lot of good points, for sure.

Here is a quote from the article I want to mention: “Trying to learn the board game 'from scratch' without explanation was absurd, right?”

No. It is hardly absurd. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. It is a great starting point, if nothing else. So, I wonder if we have different ideas of what ‘absurd’ means.

I agree that we’re in a period of hype. It requires careful work to write clearly without too much zeal or oversimplification. My opinion here is that your attempt to ‘balance’ the debate uses a lot of language that I (and others) perceive as exaggerated.

The article's use of the word "flaw" is overstated.

For background, here are some selected quotes from the article:

> "The first part, which you're reading right now, will set up what RL is and why it is fundamentally flawed." > "In the typical model of RL, the agent begins only with knowledge of which actions are possible; it knows nothing else about the world, and it's expected to learn the skill solely by interacting with the environment and receiving rewards after every action it takes." > "how reasonable is it to design AI models based on pure RL if pure RL makes so little intuitive sense?"

To summarize, the article claims that this particular aspect of RL is a "flaw".

I'd suggest it is more useful to call it a design choice. In many cases, this design choice has beneficial properties.

Of course, there are other ways to build learning agents. The field of RL is certainly open to alternatives, including hybrid models and/or relaxing this particular assumption.

I've seen a good number of (popular) articles about RL making rather broad claims, like this article. It appears to me that many of these articles attempt to 'reduce' RL to a smaller/narrower version of itself in order to make their claims. I hope more people start to see that RL is a set of techniques (not a monolith) that can be mixed and matched in many ways for particular applications.

"We need to understand, too, that our capacity for storing to-be-learned information or procedures is essentially unlimited. In fact, storing information in human memory appears to create capacity—that is, opportunities for additional linkages and storage—rather than use it up." (page 420)

What are the sources and/or studies that justify this claim?

What counter-measures exist? (e.g. an audio detector listening above 20 kHz?)

I enjoy the paper as a starting point for discussions. However, given the varying definitions of technical debt, I think it is important to see additional elaborations and examples of real-world trade offs in production systems.

Perhaps the best overall wisdom this paper tries to impart is this: build awareness, culture, and tooling around your ML systems, both upstream and downstream. Never stop exploring and improving. Relentlessly try to slim down your models, simplify your pipelines, and bring people together to talk about all kinds of dependencies.

Why do people say "X and Y aren't comparable" and then proceed to compare them? :)

I'm not (only) trying to be pedantic here -- I'm just pointing out the loaded language. In both business models and product recommendations, people use the word "comparable" to justify their conclusions, rather than to explain their comparisons themselves.

It is all about framing a decision for a particular use case at a particular price point.

I guess you could say I'm the kind of person that can't help but notice that modern communication seems to be fraught with this pattern: let's state our conclusions without much justification and then choose our language minimize the "rationality" of alternatives. I think we can do better, as a community.

Would someone please share a quick image that shows a visual example?

I interpret "society needs to care more" as a challenge: what can we do to make society care more? Put another way, I view this as a collective action problem.

There are big problems with BMI. Here is just one article on the topic: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php

Another, broader question is this: what are the health impacts of various body compositions?

See also "Medical Myths Doctors Believe":

https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Doctors-Believe-Michael-Ancho...

Thanks for sharing; this line of thinking is too often overlooked.

From the abstract:

> National and international health organizations have focused increasingly on a perceived obesity epidemic said to pose drastic threats to public health. Indeed, some medical experts have gone so far as to predict that growing body mass will halt and perhaps even reverse the millennia-long trend of rising human life expectancy.1 In response to such concerns public health agencies across the world have sprung into action, searching for policies or incentives to mitigate the alleged ‘disease’ of obesity.

> Yet even as the volume of alarm grows louder, a growing number of researchers, drawn from a broad array of academic disciplines, are calling these claims into question. The authors of this article come from this latter group. In our view the available scientific data neither support alarmist claims about obesity nor justify diverting scarce resources away from far more pressing public health issues. This article evaluates four central claims made by those who are calling for intensifying the war on fat: that obesity is an epidemic; that overweight and obesity are major contributors to mortality; that higher than average adiposity is pathological and a primary direct cause of disease; and that significant long-term weight loss is both medically beneficial and a practical goal. Given the limited scientific evidence for any of these claims, we suggest that the current rhetoric about an obesity-driven health crisis is being driven more by cultural and political factors than by any threat increasing body weight may pose to public health.

A serious issue lacking a clear solution does not clickbait make. (There are plenty of other pieces of content that deserve the clickbait title.)

I've worked for UPS delivery before, a long time ago, though only briefly. I liked the physicality of it. I can't speak to an Amazon fulfillment center, but I will say this: stress isn't only about physical demands. I think many people would prefer pure physical exertion (within limits) to long-term stress about job security. I think medical professionals can back this up.

One more thing. Often people's argument around these issues seems to end with: "it's better than no job at all". We can frame the issues in more constructive ways, don't you think? We should aim to find ways to adjust the system to better achieve the goals we want: innovative technology, fast delivery, fair pay, good benefits, subject to the complexities of the world.

You say that journalists are "just trying every way possible to create an anti-tech sentiment". You are implying motive here, it appears. On what basis?

I view it from this lens: journalists have both a professional code and a desire to have people read what they write. As a result, many journalists want to surprise and even shock people. It doesn't mean what they write is pleasant or what you want to read.

There are many other factors in play. For example, cities across the US are scrambling to offer (quite dubious, in my opinion) incentives to Amazon. I really value different perspectives that show the kinds of jobs that Amazon creates.

Lastly, I read your last sentence as getting it backwards. It is precisely because of noise that we have to focus on what matters. What you call noise may be someone else's signal. Noise makes it harder to sort through information, that's nothing new. Asking for less journalism in order to get less noise seems backwards. Journalism, to the degree to which it investigates, analyzes, interviews, helps offer different ways of viewing the world. To do so is hardly what I would call noise; rather, good journalism shows researched, sometimes novel perspectives on reality.

Yes, intensively competitive companies like Amazon sometimes press workers hard. Without endorsing nor assigning blame to the company (which faces pressures from globalization and shareholders), there are many potential approaches to the problems:

1. Amazon could build a brand around treating workers better (UPS has at times had this reputation) and thus differentiate themselves and justify the cost of better pay and benefits.

2. Government regulations could require a certain standard of job creation or insurance coverage. These could be coupled with incentive programs.

3. Workers can organize. (i.e. into unions)

4. Consumers can vote with their dollars.

5. Investors can vote with their dollars.

There are many more variations on these themes.

If these kinds of solutions don't work, workers tend to get squeezed. Due to the complexities of our economic and political systems, in practice, certain companies end up treating human resources (people) as expendable assets to exploit. Sometimes they do so for a long time. That is why other power centers (government, labor organization, consumer activism, investor activism) are necessary to achieve broader goals.

I'd be interested to see if people would candidly unpack their rationale a bit more in this area.

Before I get into that part, forgive me, but I must admit that I've begun to tune out when I hear the "make Datomic open source" commentary. Still, this particular line of commentary returns from time to time, so I'll weigh in.

This reminds me of "meta stories" that take over the original story. On Hacker News, I'd much rather hear about technical commentary, lessons learned, or interesting domains and applications used in Datomic projects.

I tend to be less interested in hearing armchair quarterbacking around what business model would work better for Datomic, particularly when the arguments seem:

1. largely motivated by self-interest. Open source is often perceived as "free" to software developers. It is relatively easy to say "I would rather not pay for this software, why isn't this open source?" Of course, open source is not necessarily really free, due to integration and maintenance costs. In the cases where open source projects are abandoned, projects face substantial risk and transition costs.

2. not framed around the long-term interests of Datomic (at least the arguments rarely seem to make suggestions from the perspective of Cognitect, which invests in the product and makes income from sales)

It is easy to say "make it open source". It is harder for a company to find a business model that works. It seems that Datomic's business model is working. There is a free tier and paid tiers.

I know that I cannot properly summarize all perspectives with the ideal amount of nuance. Perhaps some people think it is really in Datomic's interest to be open source.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that many arguments people make are somewhat unexamined. Let's go a level deeper.

May I ask this: How many of Amazon Web Service's offerings are based on open source software?

I ask that question because there are four follow-up points I would like to make:

1. People use AWS quite extensively.

2. AWS is based on closed source software.

3. I don't think it is a coincidence that AWS is so successful.

4. It seems totally reasonable (and arguably the smartest thing to do) for Datomic to stay with a closed source model.

Also, I have no affiliation with Datomic, but I have used it on projects.

The choice of values (what to measure) certainly has many subjective components. That said, a good chunk of people tend to value (to some degree or another): cost of ownership, reliability, fuel economy, performance, appearance, seating/cargo capacity, and resale value. Many of these criteria can be measured, more-or-less, in objective ways. Some criteria tend to vary more across individuals (such as appearance or driver "feel").

I mention this because if a person states their preferences across the attributes they value in a vehicle, it is quite feasible to have a detailed (if not "objective" then at least a rather neutral-point-of-view) discussion about the matching set of vehicles and what they offer across the dimensions.

First, a question for you: What values would you like your "social decision system" to embody?

Second, I advocate for increased awareness because awareness is the first step towards rational thought. Many psychological manipulation techniques work best on the irrational parts of our brains, so often a useful first step is to engage the rational mind. That said, I'm not claiming awareness guarantees systemic change.

In standard / common usage, selling and marketing an umbrella to someone is not "manipulation".

Your definition of "manipulate" is not what most people mean in these contexts. Your use of "manipulate" in such a way muddies the waters and distracts from the core issue.

Putting word choice aside, the core issue here is _not_ about people's preferences (e.g. many people don't like to get rained on). Rather, the core issue is about unknown and unwelcome influences, particularly influences that operate on parts of our minds that are hard to combat due to human nature.

Facebook's manipulation of our attention is conceptually related to how casinos trick people into staying longer than they would otherwise.