Hacker News Reader

sweetjesuson Norway to become first country to switch off FM radio

What they should do is turn off the spectrum a bit each year ranging from the top frequency down. That way people can adjust, stations can move on the dial, and there is no cold turkey. In the US this might mean I could hear my favorite Top-40(tm)songs only 24*60mins/4mins/40songs times a day, (and who knows if I would be willing to buy [obnoxious furniture store ad] furniture any more at that rate) but it would be a resonable way to do it.

sweetjesuson Google reveals secret test of AI bot to beat top Go players

if their goal was to reveal what they were doing to the world, this is a fine way to go about it and build some anticipation and get a PR splash.

if their goal was to train the best go-bot, they could have had it play not to win but to go down to the wire with very strong players but frequently lose.* Experienced players might have identified it as a bot, but would have dismissed it as "not good enough yet"

*especially as per the recent story that children don't learn when they win, so trains yourself without training your opponents :)

sweetjesuson Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People

Unless you're talking about the Nuremberg Rallies, you've got your history screwed up: "just following orders" is NOT a defense against war crime accusations, and punishing those who commit war crimes "trying to get by as best they can" is completely appropriate, was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Principles#Principle...

sweetjesuson Chinese warship stole US underwater drone

> is insulting much as if Premier Xi in China started having friendly chats with the governor of Hawai'i or Alaska while publicly pouring scorn on DC

speaking somewhat loosely, actually there is no "much as if" in this sense. The Chinese have a "face saving is the most important thing" culture, and the US does not. Think of it more like the tribal regions of the -stans: China is metaphorically ready to do some honor killing over this in a way we can't grok. Doesn't mean we should acquiesce of course. I'd perhaps make the analogy that everybody in the Chinese government is as thin skinned as Trump. (I'm exaggerating to make analogies here, no need to jump all over me, of course it's more nuanced.) Meanwhile, our neighboring Mexican politicians publically pour scorn on the US all the time and it doesn't particularly affect our relations (not sure if Trump can take it tho)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)

In any case, it would not actually bother the US all that much if China talked to Hawaii, nor does it bother US that China talks to the Philippines; it would be to our benefit if China and the Philippines resolved their differences mutually, and the same with Taiwan; it does bother US that the Philippines would make short-sighted unwise bargains inasmuch as we get the sense that we will be involved in cleaning up the mess later, and inasmuch as it reinforces China's belief that they should throw their weight around more WRT the Biển Đông (the East Sea, off the coast of Vietnam;)

sweetjesuson Elementary proof that e is irrational

when I read it it wasn't clear to me either, so I looked at what was written and saw that the fractions on the right side were clearly getting smaller and smaller fast because each successive denominator consisted of the multiplication of a clearly increasing number of clearly increasingly large integers so within a matter of seconds it was clear to me that within that small number of terms that each additional term would have a vanishingly small effect on the (alternating sign) summation so what they said was had to be true.

So, I do sympathize with your overall point, but this isn't really a good example of it. It's less clear to me what they said about the left side of the (in)equality because that expression to me is much more eye-glazing...but it doesn't take long to convince yourself of that one too. I think it's fair for them to say it's "clear", but you have to not let yourself be put off by the large number of algebraic symbols strung together.

sweetjesuson Why a Post-Nuclear World Would Look Nothing Like “Mad Max”

> With Trump elected, Europe is turning to itself for its defence...

wait, what?... Europe wasn't paying for its own defense before Trump, because why, they just liked the US presidents?! Was it something about them, or were they just these big suckers and Europeans were like "hey free defense!"? Quite frankly, you're making Trump sound better.

sweetjesuson How the Singapore Circle Line rogue train was caught with data

imho his TL;DR is better than yours, but your improvements could be made to his. In my education we was taught that in science and business, the abstracts should tell the whole point of the story; the "spoiler" should not be saved till the end even though that makes for more fun; this is to allow a busy person to get the takeaway quickly and assess if they need to read all the detail. Whether anybody agrees with that or not, it's been burned into my way of looking at the world, so even when reading this article, all the way through I was gritting my teeth thinking "I wish I had some clue as to what I'm reading about."

so to add in your point, to his TL;DR I would put in "the intial dataset included only the trains that had suffered the fault, but as the fault was caused by a functioning train, a more comprehensive dataset was necessary to find the problem; had it been provided initially, less detective work might have been necessary"

sweetjesuson When Einstein Tilted at Windmills

an anxiety disorder can increase the difficulty of making decisions, appearing as a trait like "perfectionism"

sweetjesuson Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Invest in Crowd-Sourced Quantopian

from 2008... as the market has been up and to the right almost the entire time

Was there a time that the market did not go to the right since 2008?! Where's Dr. Strange?!

something learned during the recent campaign was where Donald Trump's inherited money originally came from: the Yukon gold rush! but not from gold, it was bled from all the people chasing after the gold, most of whom lost their meager investments. This is the business model A16Z et al is pursuing here. And if gold is discovered, they'll be first on the scene.

sweetjesuson 4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles

well, not only is it true that--(if a sentient AI is possible with nothing more than software...), but also if you assume that we don't lose our enthusiasm for building simulations of ourselves, and for helping our little sisters with their projects, then you must conclude that with all probability we are actually living in such a school project simulation made of cardboard and marbles!

see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-...

It can't be proved that "it's marbles all the way down", but the odds are overwhelming that one of the layers is. Then once you accept that you have to accept that in all probability it's at least a layer of marbles every so often all the way down...

thought experiment: In how many of those layered universes is there a cardboard and marbles Peter Thiel funding quirky ideas? Is it Peter Thiels all the way down?!

sweetjesuson 4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles

this calculator nicely illustrates an insight that I feel gets lost the way most people learn and reteach some simple CS concepts:

"two's complement" is not a different system for arithmetic that includes a "sign bit", it's just a different encoding or labelling of states which happens to have a bit that reflects the sign. So, inputs to this calculator can be said to go from 0-15, but more interestingly it can also add numbers in the range -8 to +7 (and therefore, it can also subtract, though it can't negate so you'd have to manually do that to your input by performing a different encoding table lookup).

(edit: now I'm realizing you could negate by performing a two's complement multiplication by -1, performed using this calculator via a sequence of 3 (shift+adds) of your input number to itself... that's correct at least up to some fencepost)

And then by extension, you could test "what about treating the range as -10 to +5", would that encoding succeed or break down? for starters, you would no longer have a sign bit...

sweetjesuson Jay W. Forrester, a pioneer in computer models, has died

more memorably (ha ha you'll see what I did there) for the majority of people here, Jay Forrester invented core memory which revolutionized computers of that generation. Prior to core, memory schemes were bizarre and klugy, like storing information on the screen of a cathode ray tube, detectable when you scan across it again; or sonic vibrations in mercury which you wait to emerge from the other end.

Primary memory is still called core by old timers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory

sweetjesuson Ask HN: What simple tools or products are you most proud of making?

next week: looks like mk4p hasn't showed up... time for somebody to break in and feed his puppy?

sweetjesuson My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

my point was not about where emotions or thoughts or logic comes from, nor do I think that's particularly relevant to the "My subconscious is a better developer" idea. My point was that conscious thoughts are (1) the result of many unconscious thoughts and (2) driven/influenced much more by emotion than people realize. To add that underlying it is neurology is like saying underlying that is chemistry and quantum mechanics. In this context, so what?

sweetjesuson My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

fwiw, I was describing in layperson's terms what is going on in the brain, in response to which, you are being too reductive. It's like you're telling a chemist to stop talking about what we know about chemistry because it's all quantum mechanics, or a chemist telling a biologist that it's all chemistry. Well, sure it is, but I only post when I have something to add to the conversation. The average person is unaware of how much in the brain is unconscious thought, and the average person believes that emotions are separate from thoughts. I think my presentation was perfect and succinct to achieve that goal, and I contributed to a greater understanding.

I hope you don't imagine that consciousness in the human brain would be possible without integrating all of the unconscious thoughts and emotion-thoughts taking place under the hood. I'm certain that you are not aware that it was your emotions driving you to reply to me, and not logic.

And building a computational brain neuron by neuron? sure, as long as you throw in 20 years of cyborg childhood too... let us know how you're coming with that.

sweetjesuson A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

I'm too late to edit my own comment, so I reply:

Haidt's video "keynote at American Psychology Assn" is a very good succinct presentation too. synopsis: how left wing people need to be a little more open minded wrt right wing people.

sweetjesuson A Confession of Liberal Intolerance

look up Jonathon Haidt videos on youtube, I think it's one of the TED talks. He talks about moral psychology, and conservatives do not rank significantly lower on empathy.

Conservatives do rank higher on several moral scales that liberals are close to zero on.

sweetjesuson My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

You seem to have nothing to say on the topic of emotion, except that the 1000's of people who study it in universities, clinics and hospitals around the world have nothing correct to say...

I am certain that your emotions on the subject are clouding your judgement. But to be the consistent razor of occam as you present yourself, shouldn't your term be computational neuro? what does physiology have to do with it?

sweetjesuson My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

100 years ago, the proponents of the "plum pudding model" and "ether" were still alive and kicking. Good science takes time, and must account for all the evidence. Psychology won't be reduced till we achieve "computational neuroemotional physiology". Don't let an enduring discomfort with human emotions give you a scientific blind spot to human nature, otherwise your AI will have trouble finding its way out of the uncanny valley. ;)

sweetjesuson My Subconscious Is a Better Developer Than I Am

This is going to be difficult to accept probably, but fwiw here's the gist of what modern psychiatry has to say: the brain is not divided into conscious thought and unconscious thought; rather, all the brain's work takes place unconsciously, on all topics, all the time. What we then call consciousness is a product of the fully occupied and engaged unconscious mind.

So in terms of the headline, your unconscious is not a better developer than you are; your unconscious is your only developer.

Furthermore, [while emotion and logic both exist] there are not logical thoughts and emotional thoughts, emotion is engaged in thought all the time. You will actually form different "logical" conclusions on the basis of your mood, emotional state, etc. (As an example in grossly stereotypical terms, this is what you might imagine happening "so clearly" in a PMSing woman; the fallacy is that men are not doing the same thing all the time, they are.) So, to the blog poster's point, his unconscious "better developer" is actually the emotional preoccupations of his consciousness getting in the way of his being able to get to realize what his uncounscious developer is capable of. [Didn't mean to overstate that: in the case where he notices his unconscious mind coming up with good work, sometimes it just takes more time to create/uncover a good solution; just saying it's the same portions of the brain continuing to chew on the problem, conscious or not.]

For people interested, the brain science book "Thinking Fast and Slow" is very good, it will convince you that your brain does not work the way you think it does. It doesn't necessarily say all what I said above, some of that comes from psychiatry. Freud's enduring contribution to the field was his realization how much unconscious thought was taking place. BTW the term "unconscious" is preferred because historically in the field, "subconscious" is a term associated with Jung's "collective unconscious".

sweetjesuson U.S. judge rejects World Chess bid to block websites from airing moves

They stole the data!? What did the phone company do when it no longer had the data for their phone books?! ooooh, you mean they made a copy which the court ruled was ok to do.

Your post is good (but your link is broken, please go steal a better copypaste) and informative, but the point I'm making is that it's easier for people learning about this to see the underlying issues that courts grapple with if we stick to less loaded terms.

sweetjesuson Show HN: DevFreeBooks – A collection of free books for developers

I don't think PP worded his point as clearly as he could but I think he meant something more along the lines of "a small list of free books that is vetted for quality is much more valuable than a big list of many more free books that includes duds". There is an intersection between that point and the point you made/and responded to which is, "some books (and therefore vettings) are so valuable they might be worth paying for over a less good free alternative" ... of course weighted for the amount of disposable income a person might have.

sweetjesuson Silicon Valley Investor Peter Thiel Wins Bet on Trump

PP said there was no evidence that the preponderance of the voters hold those views, and you respond with what PP called "the mainstream narrative", so you two aren't really talking about the same things; it's as if his comment is actually in response to yours, your comment was the "3. repeat, 1. lather" to his "2. rinse".

I think in your mind, if a candidate says things that egregious, nobody could vote for him who didn't agree, amirite? I don't think the middle sees it like that. These campaigns seem to be about people on the two ends of the bell curve yelling extremities about each other, and they can't seem to grasp that people in the middle are interested in the same topics but don't see everything as so black and white.

sweetjesuson U.S. Accuses Tech Firm of Bias Against Asian Software Engineers

| and now reside at Microsoft

I always wanted to hear Jesse Jackson say, "You say Mi-cro-soft; I hear Jim-Crow-soft"

sweetjesuson Zen Stories

I send this message to the current YC batch this afternoon:

Don't Read The Zen Stories

- Zen-sama