Hacker News Reader

itpon 100 prisoners problem

This point was obvious once pointed out, and is definitely the reason this link clicked for me and the Wikipedia explanation did nothing.

itpon IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

I'm sure you're right about the why, but I don't believe this was a judgement call, I believe it was wrong. The current headline is misleading (if the purpose of a headline is to provide information about the contents of the full post).

Questions about whether the entire article is misleading should be addressed via discussion in the comments or, if it's egregiously wrong, flagged/downvoted/removed.

itpon IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

Exactly this. I've been uncomfortable with this trend for a while now, where everything gets labeled "clickbait" and there's a thread of resentment if an article does anything other than lay out dry facts as efficiently as possible.

The pendulum has swung too far. This wasn't clickbait, it was a fair and accurate summary of the full piece. Flag the entire post if you think it's inherently inflammatory, downvote, ban it if you're an admin, but this title had no business being edited.

itpon IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson (2016)

What is the point of changing the headline of an article like this? The headline was an accurate summary of the contents ("THE FRAUDULENT CLAIMS MADE BY IBM ABOUT WATSON AND AI"). Maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But the current headline is just wrong.

From the article:

> I will say it clearly: Watson is a fraud. I am not saying that it can’t crunch words, and there may well be value in that to some people. But the ads are fraudulent.

That's what this is about. Not "Claims made by IBM about Watson and AI."

itpon Apple open-sources FoundationDB

Of course. FDB thinks about read and write conflict ranges, which are functions of the keys, not the values (or lack thereof). A read of a non-existent key conflicts with a write to that key. A read of a range of keys conflicts with a write to a key in that range, even if that key did not have an associated value at the time of the original read.

itpon Apple open-sources FoundationDB

> That API is gnarly.

The Will Wilson I remember was not prone to such understatement. That API (and the corresponding semantics) was a nightmare.

itpon Apple open-sources FoundationDB

As an end user it's absolutely better. I'm just torn between pride and embarrassment thinking about how it was implemented.

itpon Apple open-sources FoundationDB

Speaking as the original author of this monstrosity of a build system, please be careful before offering praise here. To be clear, there is a top-level, non-recursive Makefile that uses the second expansion feature of GNU make, translating Visual Studio project files into generated Makefile inputs that are transformed into targets to power the build.

Although it starts by running `make`, it's about as in-house as a thing can be.

itpon Apple open-sources FoundationDB

I have nothing specific to add to this either other than I also spent years working there, and I'm unbelievably happy about this.

itpon Zulip 1.8: Free software Slack alternative with email-style threading

(worked at FoundationDB)

Me too.

Back on topic, I really enjoyed Zulip as well. It wasn't perfect, but it very much did feel like they were actually getting the marriage of email and chat closer to right. Slack just feels like a shitty chat client that uses all of my RAM.

itpon Talk to Books

I'm curious where this narrative that Google dropped "don't be evil" comes from.

At the time of the Alphabetization, there was some shuffling of the code of conduct document, but everything lives on.

The Google code of conduct[0] still begins with "Don't be evil."

The Alphabet code of conduct[1] opens with "Employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates (“Alphabet”) should do the right thing."

And yet I repeatedly read the claim that Google has secretly abandoned "don't be evil"—presumably on the down low so that they can now do all the evil they want.

[0]: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html [1]: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct.html

itpon Police chief said Uber victim “came from the shadows” – don’t believe it

A problem I foresee is that even if we could determine them to be as good as a human, they will still be different from a human. People will live that would otherwise have died; people will die that would otherwise have lived. Members of the second set will tend to get far more emotionally involved.

As good as humans implies that over one million people would be killed by robots every year. Some of the families, loved ones and attorneys of these people would be able to make very convincing cases that they would not have died if a human were driving. This is a hard problem to overcome.

itpon BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

Without necessarily (or completely) disagreeing, I'm curious if you can further justify your assertion of the strong path-dependency. I am personally amazed when I contemplate the Apollo program or the Manhattan Project, and specifically the number of technologies that did not exist at the time. It strikes me that there's a clear observational bias here. Particularly in the modern era, we really only have a single data point around the development of any given technology (given how trivial communication and coordination are). Are there any examples from history of the same technology being developed independently with different dependencies?

Possibly relevant, given your choice of fusion as an example, is the somewhat famous graph from the 1976 U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration report on nuclear fusion[0]. We're obviously looking at a number of projections and can't know whether they were right or wrong, but it is noteworthy that we're not even pursuing a plan we believe will ever lead to nuclear fusion ("fusion never").

[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi...

itpon In field tests, device harvests water from desert air

Unless I'm missing something, (s)he didn't switch any units. The original article as I am reading it clearly just says "millimeters" without any associated area or timeframe.

itpon Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica situation

This feels strange to those of us from technical spheres, but much of the world works without formal verification of facts. There are in theory severe penalties, both implicit and explicit, that ostensibly act as deterrent to bad actors.

This is usually only noteworthy when it fails, but by and large it works. The friction involved if we did not generally accept someone's (signed, notarized, appropriately formalized) word as bond would cause our world to grind to a halt.

itpon Previewing Android P

I'm torn about this. Every time an app has used this API, it's been a delight. And yet I hesitate to encourage more people to use SMS as auth!

itpon Counterintuitive Properties of High Dimensional Space

I suspect you're wrong, and that the connection between video and parent was that they were both Numberphile videos. An expanded comment might have read something like:

"Not only is today's Numberphile video potentially relevant, Numberphile actually directly addressed the article's exact topic several months ago."

itpon Stigler Diet

Note that that's $1000/person-year for 1300 calories per day, vs. 3000 calories on the Stigler Diet!

itpon Hands-On with the Nokia 8 Sirocco: Reviving Nokia's 'Dream Phone' Concept

Nokia 6 will be available in May, according to CNET.

https://www.cnet.com/news/nokia-6-your-mission-is-to-get-the...

itpon Donald Glover Can't Save You

Fascinating to me that you picked Thriller as an example, as MJ even demonstrates a 2&4 clap during the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&t=5m0s

Curious what you mean by half the claps? Would this involve clapping only on every fourth beat, only on every second beat, or am I completely misunderstanding?

itpon The “Oh-My-God Particle”

It would be interesting to look at the impact of this on, e.g. cancer rates among people living at sea level versus cities with high elevation, e.g. Quito in Ecuador.

It is interesting, and there are some studies exploring this and related issues. The results are not always immediately intuitive!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4113517/ is one good place to start.

itpon Donald Glover Can't Save You

One of my favorite Harry Connick Jr. moments is when his audience is clapping along on 1&3 (frustrating) and he smoothly transitions them to 2&4. Extra fun to see how happy his drummer is with the change (visible cheering arms behind Harry after one of the camera angle switches).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=26&v=--qv9SI6vws

itpon The eastern coyote, a wild N. American canine with coyote-wolf and dog parentage

There's a Nature documentary about the Eastern Coyote/Coywolf called, appropriately enough, "Meet the Coywolf," available on pbs.org[1]. It was surprisingly non-fluffy for a Nature documentary and if you're interested in learning more, it's a good place to start.

You can also probably find it elsewhere if you're not a supporter of your local PBS station, but I'll leave that search up to everyone and their conscience.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/coywolf-meet-the-coywolf/

itpon EBay to Ditch PayPal for Dutch Payment Processor Adyen

Elon bought x.com back from PayPal in July 2017.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/884580654117076992

itpon Allstate uses social media to check claims

You wrote:

you know Allstate isn't going to be looking for social media information that HELPS your claim.

But from the article:

As for use cases for social media during the insurance claims process, Carpe Data cited two examples. The first one was where a customer was paralyzed. A social media search helped confirm the information more quickly through pictures of the customer in a wheelchair, which ultimately led to the claim being settled and paid out faster.

It's presumably in Allstate's interest to identify fraud, but also to process claims as efficiently as possible, no?

itpon Fermented Shark, Anyone?

Everything about this writeup resonated with me until the last sentence, which made me think I deeply misunderstood the geometry of the spherical earth.

5 hours from the east coast of the US sounds right, but Seattle to Reykjavic is over 7 and closer to 8.

itpon Continuous low-power music recognition

It's not sent anywhere or even stored locally on the device. Some people view that as a missing feature, actually, so there are apps that add this functionality[0], so you can review the songs you heard and find it later.

[0] http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/26/add-track-id-history...

itpon Continuous low-power music recognition

I've just recently set up a Pixel 2 XL straight from factory a few times over the last couple weeks, all in the US. Every time I had to opt in to the background music detection feature, even in the US.

itpon Legends of the Ancient Web (2017)

Were you there to hear it in person? Even just reading it online, I found it really, really well done. Both in terms of content, but also structurally as a presentation itself.

itpon Legends of the Ancient Web (2017)

I'm not an expert at all, but your response made me curious as to why that (presumably humorous) aside would have been thrown in.

Anyway, my research, such as it is, took me as far as the Wikipedia article on Ecclesiastes[0], which maybe provides soft support for the claim?

The presence of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is something of a puzzle, as the common themes of the Hebrew canon—a God who reveals and redeems, who elects and cares for a chosen people—are absent from it, which suggests that Kohelet had lost his faith in his old age.

Anyway, I hope that this won't discourage people from reading the entire thing, which I thought was well written and well worth the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes#Canonicity