johnvschmitt

If this gets too hairy, just shave with Occum's Razor.

The premise is just so unnecessarily complicated, and assumes too much about the particular character of the malevolent AI. Must the AI be benevolent or malevolent? Or, can it be indifferent, like physical laws? It could be 1,000 different flavors of malevolent, not just the one that proposes blackmail in this way.

They didn't launch any protocol. They launched a site to get (paying) members to come up with a protocol. Big difference.

I'm not too hopeful yet. Maybe it's just their ".aspx" website that has a proprietary flavor to it, when we terribly need an open standard here.

We do need an open standard, so each inventor just needs to implement their idea, & not spend 90% of their time building the whole supporting architecture, and trying to train the customers in the differences in the setup. The wearables/IoT ecosystem will continue to flounder until the equivalent of W3C arises.

A welcome change. But, for this to work, the violators (even past) can't be allowed to bypass the rules.

For example, how many of the top apps that explicitly allow kids, violate some or all of the COPPA standards?

Clash of Clans is just one example, ages 9+, but allows custom usernames and p2p chat with very little filters. Those social features are key to long term engagement, even of 9 year olds.

With millions of games released, we've essentially been conducting a wide experiment into what methods (free, IAP, free/pro) is effective (at getting in the top categories for revenue & downloads).

Now, we see that the top charts are dominated by games like this. Free, with IAP to accelerate. That's what the market evolution bore.

If we don't like it, we can try to ban practices, but unless Apple (as a gatekeeper) bans these things, they will persist, as that's what millions of apps across billions of downloads/players have evolved to, & will evolve back to.

To change the dominant business model, we'd need some new mechanic to supplant it, not just trying to tilt at windmills & complain.

"Phone" Such an anachronism.

When the device is used for phone calls <1% of the time, can we now call this something else? Maybe:

"Pocket Internet System"? PIS?

If you use your phone for actual phone calls more than 5%, let us know.

That's the most valid perspective IMO, but it's going to be useless to the audience, when they can't even understand what a "median" is, much less a centile.

The lack of transparency explains most of this.

Investors expect the Hedge Funds to have some inside info.

For example, I've heard some hedge funds have "friends" who are staffers for congressmen. It's quite profitable to know what laws will change before everyone else does.

The investors may be recognizing that hedge funds are profiting from political corruption, & choose to look away from the ugliness & pay the fees in order to get in on the deals.

Since the article was short on answers, here's one possible answer as to "why we don't eat swans":

Their numbers are too small to get into volume "manufacturing" (CAFO's).

15,000 swans. That's cute.

We harvest 10,000 kiloTonnes of cattle per year in the USA alone. That means, our CAFO'S produce about 2 million pounds of beef for every 1 swan we could harvest.

Our food system loves repeatable processes & volume efficiencies that wild game can't provide.

Note: I may be nearly vegetarian, & eat only local organic meat rarely. But, the facts of CAFO's dominate the market.

In their defense, when the SnapChat founders were on Colbert awhile back, they were emphatic about saying, "There are many ways it can be saved!" And, were warning users that it's just a convenient thing, not any true protection.

But, yes, users can be easily confused, and they (intentionally?) got more downloads / users because people mistakenly believed that the images were 100% deleted.

For the HN/Techie audience, we of course never believe anything digitally transmitted to a recipient can be 100% deleted by the sender. Nothing will ever prevent brute force things like "having a camera over my shoulder, recording my screens".

Has anyone A/B tested the different language choices around Net Neutrality? Or focus groups?

For example, Frank Luntz did lots of focus group studies to figure out how to persuade people, simply by choosing the right words. "Estate Tax" became "Death Tax" for example.

Rather than just "be creative", we should put those different creatives through the data-driven approaches (A/B tests & focus groups) to find what will resonate & persuade the audiences outside of the HN-insider / reddit-insider cohorts.

Great results.

If only we could somehow rephrase other critical issues into something the SCOTUS could 9-0 agree with.

This one got 9-0 because it phrased it as:

1) Trolls lose

2) Whoever wins, wins bigger.

Some of the Supremes are known for liking the morality of "Might is Right". (If God let this person attain power, by whatever means, then God must favor this winner.)

Can we phrase Net Neutrality this way? Perhaps we need to phrase it as "Winner/Billionaire's next startup needs to get online without paying fees?" We're not getting as far with the "scrappy startup needs to get online without fees" bit.

Good point. Yes, let's prioritize personal things on a personal platform.

However, ~30% of the "top stories" in my newsfeed (anecdotal of course) are public URL's that my friends share. And, those don't look like ads or promoted posts, but they sure could be!

That said, in the past, we'd promote a business by trying to get email signups, then trickle monthly updates to our users to engage them more. (That still works!) Now, email is seen as "unsexy" & we're told to go social to get viral, & make everything have a Facebook share (+pinterest/etc). That's just not as effective as email, sorry. I just wanted to share my experience about what works best for startups.

Facebook Ads are a real shakedown scam, & getting worse.

After reading up on other's experience, I ran an experiment last week:

I started a stupid comic blog (http://omgcmon.com). I made a facebook "page" for it too.

I posted an link from my stupid comic blog to the facebook "page". I posted the same link to my personal status.

The posting didn't even show up in my OWN news feed, unless I changed it from "top stories" to "most recent". (All other posts from me, show up in my "top stories" at least.) My friends & family didn't see it either.

But, when I took the same image in the blog post, & put it in facebook as a "Photo", then people saw it, commented, liked, etc.

So, it sure does look like Facebook knows that the link was on a "page", & then used it's secret algorithm to suppress it, as it knows that will, over a large population, cause more ad dollars to be spent to boost "pages".

So, the money/profit will flow well, but not forever.

Run your own experiments if you doubt it. It's not hard to get this data yourself.

Before I choose to build using a new feature, I'd love to see a clean breakdown of which features "cost" more (performance) on devices. For instance, does "real time global illumination" kill the framerate on iPhone4?

If there's already a checklist like this somewhere, please share with the community, as I'm sure there are many other Unity3D devs here.

Sorry, that just still looks like glossing it over.

I mean, when the NSA & other actors do NOT submit their data to this guy, they can say, it's complete now?

It just stinks to me like it's complacency. Just change your passwords & patch, & then don't worry, share everything again, it's private. In 2014, I don't think we're safe & private anymore at all. I can take the downvotes. I don't like it either.

Really? If there are caveats or disclaimers, they are very well hidden.

For most people reading this actual article, I think they will come away with the impression that it's a complete account.

There are many hackers who do not reveal their exploits.

This is an overly optimistic account of who knew what when.

And, how can we protect? Patch? Yes, that's necessary, but not sufficient. We have so many other protocols we rely on that are fragile & intercepted. Self-censorship sucks, and can't possible protect everything either. What to do?

"Trust us".

Yes, I trust that you revealed your real position.

Gaining marketshare is more important to you than user data privacy.

Got it!

Yes, the "social contract" is a very vague term indeed, & has been applied in bad ways in the past.

Here, I'm applying that there is social give & take & expectations/norms throughout our society. Yes, any social norm/contract/expectation is, by definition, constraining/conservative & thus counter to any progress/disruption.

These are not absolutes, as any difficult moral argument is usually balancing competing, legitimate concerns.

We do have an American social "contract" that is eroding: Things like "If you're born poor, and good in school, study hard, work hard your whole life, stay clean, then you have a great chance of getting out of poverty".

Yes, it's not new, & yes Uber is doing well in connecting supply & demand with a great UX.

For Uber to be worth its high hype & valuation, it's going to essentially expand these types non-employee situations. That's why I'm "mixed" feeling about this, as I like great UX, smooth marketplaces, & know many people who want part-time work, not full time.

But, I also know many folks who had "decent jobs" (nothing special, but they can raise a family) driving UPS trucks or other things like that.

Mixed feelings on this. It tends to expand the recent meme of "Everyone's a contractor, nobody's an employee".

There's no minimum wage or other worker protections if you sign contracts for services.

The social contract is never signed, & it's getting abandoned more & more.

I always thought the best random number generator was:

Take a large Pseudo random #, & add that (in hours) to your current time. Pick a large enough pseudo space to cover 10+ years. Then, read that combined time in microseconds. This combines a real randomness (your current microseconds) that spans all space.

That would cover a very large space in a very random fashion.

The attacker would have to know your computed time to narrow it down, but couldn't narrow it down much at all, since it's combined with the large pseudo random #.

The problem with most Pseudo's is that they are sparse, leaving too much space unhit.

It's not really a big deal. I mean, if you have a LinkedIn account, you likely get a bit of spam already.

And, if someone really wanted to get in contact with you, they can. (Phone directories still exist.) And, of course, just send them an invite. Most accept.

I wouldn't trust a browser plugin like this though.

Rather than attempt to get millions of people to manually change fonts, just make "Skimpy Print" a layer that fits in between the print button & the printer driver?

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Skimpy_20Print_20Default

BTW: More ink is saved by image detection & changes than fonts. And, this is all half-baked.

This is just ridiculous on so many levels.

So, should we start debating whether UPS should pay for roads directly in each city?

Are our roads going to start being "content aware" & extorting delivery service vendors?

TL;DR: For those asking, "WHY?" : It's about control.

Background: Every time there's a new forum site, people often ask, "why not just create a subreddit or facebook group, etc". That would save much code, debugging, & traffic/marketing.

However, the reason people still create 3rd party forum sites is not out of foolishness. Rather, they are trying to control the community, & harvest the benefits of the community over time (by either influencing the community, or selling to the community, or both or more).

I like HN because it's better quality. The harvesting/controlling forces are very benign, & the community here is great at keeping things relevant.

It is a huge challenge, though, to build up a quality community anywhere.

Yup. And, it can't be "idea to demo day" in 3 months for those hardware issues where iterations take weeks (or at least days) compared to hours/minutes for compile-time on software.

I love the change in focus to be more bold, real, rather than just chasing easy things like software/apps/games. But, the model must change too. I think Sam & team are up for that challenge, & will adapt, so don't think of this as a permanent shortcoming in any way.

I think you nailed it. Yes, the algorithms can't figure out all the proper tuning yet.

For instance, the lowest frequency (among the strongest amplitude candidates) is often the bass line, & thus the chord. However, those type of general rules are common, yet often broken to make the music more interesting in the first place. Esp. when notes are "left out" to open things up & let you mind fill it in.

It really varies widely depending on how you use fonts:

Fonts for PRINTING: You need tons of sizes, really high definitions, as it can be printed 4" high at 300dpi. 3MB for a TTF? OK.

Fonts for iPad Games: You need TINY file size. <200KB, & won't need as high-res at all, esp. variations. You're fighting hard against the size for your game download, to get under the 50MB limit for mobile vs. wifi-only with most US carriers.

Fonts for Web: You need to ensure browser compatibility, size (for download times, which kill UX if it's slow). Too often, devs forget their homepage assets are cached, & don't see the critical first time user experience with their site as slow.)

Someone with better #'s can correct me please, but:

With so many emitting bodies in the universe, wouldn't we expect to receive the complete works of shakespeare from ~1 remote body/month?

I mean, you could find the "WOW" signal in PI somewhere too, right?