War Is a Racket (1935) - pmoriarty
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
======
pgnas
I read this and I think of the courage that it must have taken to write,
however, I quickly realize that my thoughts are based on today's mindset where
questioning the government gets you labeled a conspiracy nut or traitor.

We have been warned by many about the military industrial complex, yet, it
doesn't sink in.

Our current president was elected on promises of ending these wars and somehow
he will go down in history as the champion of military occupation and
perpetuating conflicts in places we don't belong.

Truth is that peace doesn't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of
industry, the difference is that where is the industry? It used to be that the
US would at least benefit from the industry through employment and tax
revenue, but what if the production is no longer in the US? Who benefits then?
I can tell you with accuracy who doesn't ..

~~~
mathattack
_Truth is that peace doesn 't make money, it doesn't grease the wheels of
industry, the difference is that where is the industry?_

I will start by saying that I hate war. And war is VERY anti-capitalist. The
only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-industrialized
enemies. People have realized that war is very costly to trade and industrial
elites outside the military-industrial complex. [0]

But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most evil
people? Perhaps we can say "Let Europe handle itself" in 1915, but can we
really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit that
there are some things worth fighting over?

This isn't to defend the current war-mongers running for President. It's just
to say that a 0 wars policy doesn't seem to stand up to reality.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexus_and_the_Olive_Tree)

~~~
hartpuff
> The only time war makes countries money is when they pick on non-
> industrialized enemies.

Maybe you're making a different point to this but the United States and its
corporations came out of WWI and WWII (wars against an industrialized enemy)
far richer and more powerful than before WWI and WWII, largely at the expense
of Britain/the British Empire.

The USA essentially replacing Britain as the world's economic superpower after
WWI and military/imperialist superpower after WWII.

> But... Can we really say that we can turn a blind eye to the world's most
> evil people? Perhaps we can say "Let Europe handle itself" in 1915, but can
> we really say that in 1941? Even if 1941 was caused by 1915, can't we admit
> that there are some things worth fighting over?

WWI started in __1914 __, not 1915 and WWII started in __1939 __(or 1937, if
you want to take it from the Japanese invasion of China), not 1941.

1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by _1893_ and
the invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of the
US empire to be there in the first place.

"Let Europe handle itself" is a simplification of what the United States was
thinking and doing before being forced kicking and screaming into finally
_doing the right thing_ by Japan and Germany - even after Pearl Harbor, the
USA _still_ did not declare war on Hitler.

I doubt it's taught in American schools, but it's no secret that American
companies (ie, capitalists) were supporting, supplying and working with the
Nazis _even after the start of WWII_.

People in US do seem to be taught that lots of charity was doled out to
Britain. In fact Britain (and its Empire countries), standing alone against
the biggest threat to democracy in history, was forced to hand over its gold
reserves, its advanced high technology, and even territory to the US, in
return for American help.

Not loans at this point in time, of course, because the US believed Britain
would fall to Hitler (just as the US had sat back and watched other
democracies fall) and therefore would not be in any position to pay the US
back.

You're right that some things are worth fighting over, and you're right that
WWII is an example of a justified war. It's just a pity that the United
States, for all the effort it put in when it finally joined (when Germany's
defeat was already a foregone conclusion due to Barbarossa), acted before,
during and after WWII with complete self-interest.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> 1941 (Pearl Harbor) was not caused by 1915 (WWI), it was caused by 1893 and
> the invasion, overthrow and annexation of Hawaii that led the military of
> the US empire to be there in the first place.

Caused? No.

It wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941, but the US
takeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.

~~~
hartpuff
> It wouldn't have happened if the US didn't own Hawaii in 1941

Which is what I said, except I put it more honestly: it would not have
happened had the US not _invaded, overthrown and annexed_ Hawaii. The US
'owned' Hawaii the same way Hitler 'owned' the Sudetenland.

The point being the roots (ie, cause) of Pearl Harbor stretch back to 19th
century US imperialism, throwing its weight around, and generally being in
places it shouldn't have been.

> but the US takeover of Hawaii was _not_ the _causus belli_ for Pearl Harbor.

I didn't say it was a _casus belli_ (no U), did I?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
You said "caused". Not "it would not have happened" (that is, it was one
essential factor), but "caused" (that is, _this is what made that happen_ ).

To see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893,
but does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else
militarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably
not, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of China.

On the other hand, say the US doesn't "invade, overthrow, and annex" Hawaii.
It merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.

~~~
hartpuff
> You said "caused". Not "it would not have happened" (that is, it was one
> essential factor), but "caused" (that is, this is what made that happen).

I said "caused" because I was _copying the statement and style of the previous
poster_. His point (I believe) alluded to the commonly held belief that the
roots of WWII lay in WWI; my point, since he used 1941, was that the roots of
Pearl Harbor lay closer to home.

> To see the difference, do a thought experiment. The US takes Hawaii in 1893,
> but does not end the sale of oil, rubber, metal, and everything else
> militarily useful to Japan in 1937. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Probably
> not, because the US is not signaling opposition to Japan's invasion of
> China.

Okay, I say in this fictional version of history that it still does happen,
because the US is still in places it should not be, due to its late 19th
century imperialism, and still poses a military threat to Japanese ambitions
in the region.

> On the other hand, say the US doesn't "invade, overthrow, and annex" Hawaii.
> It merely negotiates for a naval base. Does Pearl Harbor still happen? Yes.

Why does it still happen? If the US is acting peacefully in this imaginary
situation, why can't Japan?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Based on US Navy interviews with Japanese officials after the end of WWII, it
seems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of Hawaii
per se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there, and about US
actions to oppose Japan's attempts to conquer China and the Dutch East Indies.
So if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan
wasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless you're
postulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking China and the
Dutch East Indies.

~~~
hartpuff
> it seems immensely improbable that Japan cared about the US takeover of
> Hawaii per se. They cared about the US fleet that was based there

Nobody is saying otherwise. Perhaps you have forgotten again how and why the
US fleet got there in the first place: violent American imperialism and
expansionism in the late 19th century. It's fairly pointless to imagine
situations where that didn't happen, when it did.

> So if Hawaii were independent but the US had a fleet base there, no, Japan
> wasn't going to act peacefully in that imaginary situation - not unless
> you're postulating an actually peaceful Japan, one that isn't attacking
> China and the Dutch East Indies.

Why not? You're postulating a mythological United States capable of
negotiating peacefully with Hawaii (and presumably the Philippines, and Guam,
and Cuba, and Puerto Rico?). If such a US ever existed, why would it be
impossible for it to also come to a peaceful understanding with Japan?

I mean, what are we supposed to be doing here, simply coming up with _just_
the right amount of convenient historical changes to prove your point?

------
pmoriarty
_" But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill"_

I'm not sure how it was in Butler's time, but I've read that the overwhelming
majority of casualties in modern warfare are civilians. It would seem to me
that they are the ones who pay "the biggest part of the bill".

Not that I would deny that the people doing the mass murder can themselves
become the victims of war. But I'd personally have more sympathy for civilians
who are not trying to murder others but are themselves murdered.

~~~
sandworm101
>> born July 30, 1881

So yes, he didn't witness a truly modern war. 19th century conflicts were
brutal, but weren't exactly the city-destroying conflict WWII was, nor the
guerrilla wars of modern times.

~~~
fleshweasel
He participated in WW1, which by any reasonable standard was a truly modern
war.

~~~
sandworm101
It is and it isn't. The explosive capacities of WWI were generally directed at
the front, at the soldiers. While cities were involved, the civilian v.
soldier death toll is not comparable to say, modern day Iraq. And nothing in
WWI involved the literal desruction of large cities as was seen in WWII.

Now go back a couple hundred years, back to when cities were occasionally put
to the sword, but that is beyond even this guy's memory.

~~~
jonesb6
Didn't "the Rape of Belgium" depict German conquest and occupation during WWI?

------
ghouse
"The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6
trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and
expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting" \-
Washington Post, March 28, 2013

~~~
chishaku
> At the outset of the Iraq war, the Bush administration predicted that it
> would cost $50 billion to $60 billion to oust Saddam Hussein, restore order
> and install a new government.

> Only one economist, William D. Nordhaus of Yale, seems to have come close.
> In a paper in December 2002, he offered a worst-case estimate of $1.9
> trillion, “if the war drags on, occupation is lengthy, nation-building is
> costly.”

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/washington/19cost.html?_r=0)

~~~
Pyxl101
Do we have better accounting and estimation methods now, to advise current
commanders-in-chief?

The next time a president wants to take the USA to war, or enter any armed
conflict, I'd like to see that announcement be accompanied by (or followed
shortly thereafter by) a GAO or similar accounting report estimating probable
outcomes and costs. The same report should include an appendix that summarizes
recent similar reports delivered in past armed conflicts, analyzing their
accuracy with known actual costs. (E.g., that appendix should report this fact
about the Iraq war and the updated estimate for the new war should take into
account the sources of inaccuracy that led to the underestimation).

In software engineering, at least part of the job is doing something new every
time. If it wasn't new it wouldn't need a human - it would just be a machine
doing something repeatedly. I imagine that war is to some extent the same way,
in that no opposition force is exactly the same; yet a lot of war must be
loosely similar in cost, barring major technological changes. (E.g., cost per
square mile of territory held by infantry or cost per civilian population or
cost per enemy combatant; cost per square mile of enforced no-fly-zone, etc.)

Say, where are all of the data scientists? You'd think that you could draw
some interesting conclusions analyzing data about the costs of war, assuming
it's publicly available. For example, a histogram of dollars spent month by
month per province of occupied territory - is such data public? I don't think
I've ever seen much in the way of interesting visualizations, outside of the
occasional flashy news article.

~~~
p4wnc6
It's super easy to defeat this kind of constraint. Just claim that if we don't
act immediately, the bad guys will kill freedom. There's no time for a GAO!
You want to jeopardize the eternal fate of freedom and the triumph of evil
because you want a budget proposal!?

Put that on CNN and Fox News. Now the old people want war. Smart people are
caught wasting their time in an engineered debate about whether there is or
isn't time to first plan a budget. While everyone is riled up, Congress side
steps the whole thing and we just begin with whatever military operations they
wanted.

~~~
Pyxl101
It takes a while to go to war or enter armed conflict at scale (on smaller
scale, certain force units like Marine Expeditionary Units and certain
commando teams can move pretty quickly). The President should have the
authority the Constitution gives him to do that.

I'd just like to see the GAO rushing alongside that process to prepare
expected financial outcomes, to be shared with American citizens and press who
will be evaluating the pending action.

------
chishaku
> Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they?

A couple notes on the war drum:

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force [0] targeting the
perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks has been invoked to deploy US armed forces to
Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia and Syria. [1][2]

A new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force [3] targeting ISIS,
"its associated forces," and "any successor organizations" is arguably more
open-ended.

The author of the proposal, Lindsey Graham (Senior Senator from South
Carolina), seeks to grant the next president "the ability to go after ISIS
_without limitation to geography, time and means._ " [4]

[0]:
[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-107sjres23enr/html/BILLS-107sjres23enr.htm)

[1]:
[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/aumf-071013.pdf)

[2]:
[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R43760.pdf)

[3]:
[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/sjres26/text)

[4]: [http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-
budget/congr...](http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-
budget/congress/2016/01/22/mcconnell-nudges-grahams-aumf-forward-us-
senate/79171192/)

------
p4wnc6
My understanding of many of the most recent military engagements by the US is
that they are basically sandbox experiments for prototyping new warfare tech
and tactics, especially to study things like asymmetric urban warfare in which
the distinction between combatant and civilian is difficult.

We enter the conflicts under whatever pretext is popularized in the media, but
the real reason is to fuel warfare R&D efforts, grow surveillance
infrastructure, and collect data that reflects situations our military leaders
forecast to be important.

Large contracting firms profit. Soldiers lose time, often also money, often
their mental health and family relationships, and sometimes their lives.
Taxpayers lose money. Foreign civilians lose their lives. Few benefits are
ever given to soldiers or foreigners, if they are even paid lip service with
promises of benefits at all.

It's basically a string of smaller scale proxy wars to fuel tech,
surveillance, and population control between larger, "actual" wars.

I fear we are already past a point where democratic process could stop it. I
think by now it would require almost an actual revolt from U.S. citizens on
U.S. soil, and that it would be bloody, and that part of the military
engineering being studied is exactly how much civilians will tolerate before
being pushed to the point of revolt.

As long as you can watch Netflix on your iPad and put it out of your mind,
then while it might ruffle your feathers, you won't actually take action that
could jeopardize your creature comforts. Even things like Occupy Wall Street
seem like they are more data collection opportunities than anything else. "OK,
so they will protest via X, Y, and Z, but too few of them can be pushed to do
A, B, or C for us to care."

It's a very depressing feeling. In the meantime, just like everyone else, I
have to worry about money, family, life goals, comforts, health, and all my
biases push me to ignore the military industrial conflict, because already
giving it maybe 1/100th of my overall bandwidth is exceedingly depressing.
Something close to 40% of the country believes in young earth creationism.
Open up to a highly-visited YouTube video and scroll down to the comments and
behold the inanity of how we use our time and what our priorities are.

How could enough people possibly coordinate beliefs and actions around
humanity-affirming rebukes of the military industrial complex? Of course they
won't, so then I guess I'd better put my brain towards how to live in a world
where they won't, which is too depressing to think about... and the cycle
continues.

I'm sure it has been articulated even earlier than the early 1900s. It's just
goes on and on.

~~~
galtwho
This. We are all played for suckers.

This is partly why I wish for Trump to get the top job. The amount of window
dressing in society will come down drastically as the clown makes
misjudgements at every turn and contradicts himself by the hour.

~~~
mikekchar
Just like what happened when Bush got the job? Obama won the Nobel peace prize
before he was president because people believed so strongly that the problem
was Bush. "If we just get a sensible president in, he will fix everything!"

American politics goes from yin to yang every 8 years because that's was
people expect. The media polarizes every thing. Your average person laps it
up. "Those damn conservatives/liberals are ruining everything. How can they be
so stupid/naive?". We must make America great. We must make America whole. :-P

People believe that it is their duty to vote: we must keep the
democrats/republicans out of office! Or you could waste your vote on someone
who can't win. As a measure of protest, perhaps. Or maybe if they _did_ win
once... then you would have 3 parties. Then 2 would gang up on 1. Or the third
will split the vote.

If you wish to stop war, don't get sidetracked on people. That's how you will
be defeated, because it's easy to swap people around like a game of 3 card
monty. Concentrate on the issue, not on people, parties or politics. Don't
simply cast a vote and say, "Well, I tried". That's how you lose.

------
Terr_
> "[It's] peace, not war, that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers
> possession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is
> bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again. [...] It's a
> wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money
> of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it."

\-- "The Curse of Chalion", by Lois McMaster Bujold

------
Animats
Butler is famous, but not for his US military service. For his military
service with the United Fruit Company and duPont.[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler)

~~~
noxToken
> _Butler is famous, but not for his US military service._

I can hear the collective shouts of every Marine begging to differ. Two of the
most recognized names in Marine Corps history are MajGen Smedley Butler and
SgtMaj "Dan" Daly. Among other things, they are 2 of 19 men in US military
history and the only two Marines to receive two Medals of Honor.

~~~
Animats
He was a great Marine. His complaint was that the the USMC wasn't fighting for
the United States, but was being misused on behalf of the United Fruit
Company. That's where "banana republics" (not the Gap subsidiary, the Central
American countries) came from.

~~~
noxToken
This fact isn't so much drilled into heads during bootcamp, but anyone who
reads from the Commandant's reading list (or any light research into MajGen
Butler for that matter) will have known this. I was specifically addressing
your first statement though.

------
carsongross
For those who are interested, a good book on the history of opposition to war
is:

[http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-
War/dp/1568583850](http://www.amazon.com/We-Who-Dared-Say-War/dp/1568583850)

It was written by a leftist and libertarian/paleoconservative working
together, so you will likely find something you love and something you hate in
it, as with all good books.

I very much regret my early support for the Iraq war.

------
mxfh
While Butler was quite spot on with his early 1930s post-mortem assessment of
WWI, a less isolationist approach might have possibly lessened the scale of
WWII.

Some aspects of it's stance, like home territory limited military presence and
exclusive zones of interest are simply obsolete in an era of ICBMs and
satellites.

For some context and general description of sentiment in the 30s:

[https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-
be...](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of-isolationists-before-world-
war-ii/)

[https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-
isol...](https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isolationism)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nye_Committee)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Acts_of_1930s)

------
Cieplak
Reminds me very much of Eisenhower's farewell address from 1961:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower's_farewell_address

------
nihonde
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually
degenerates into a racket. — Eric Hoffer (paraphrase)

------
ForcesOfOdin
I love Smedley Butler! Good link. Always wiki - the business plot to see how
corporate america tried to get Smedley Butler to lead a military coup of
mercenaries against the US government during FDR's presidency.

------
yourapostasy
If you liked Butler's perspective, then you will probably also like Garet
Garrett's [0] oeuvre. He was an outspoken critic of WWI, and of America's
entry into WWII until after Pearl Harbor. His position against an imperial
America delivers a wider context to Butler's field experience as handmaiden to
American power elites' ambitions accomplishing just that outcome.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett)

------
0x99
While it is hard to argue with the points in the article, there is this
concept of 'global influence' or influence on global politics, which is hard
to put a $ value on.

Hasn't this global influence played a huge part in maintaining USA as a global
superpower ?

~~~
hsitz
You think blunders in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere contribute to
U.S. status as global superpower? I'm pretty sure a stronger case could be
made that they've detracted from the status and influence the U.S. could have
had.

~~~
Pyxl101
It's hard to know what exact effect our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has
had on the world. I'm sure there are people at military academies and
universities getting PhDs on it.

Whatever the answer is, I don't think we should let the analysis fall prey to
populism. As much as I'd agree that Iraq seems to have been a disaster, and
that we haven't managed to accomplish much in Afghanistan, consider the wider
implications. The USA has managed to navigate itself to the point where it put
significant pressure on Iran through sanctions, has agreed to dismantle its
nuclear weapons program, and is beginning to re-enter the global economy
amidst a lessening of tensions. Presumably at least partially as a result, the
price of oil is down to $40, which is lower than it was in 1985. (Consider
where Iran is on the world map relative to Iraq and Afghanistan.) For all we
know in the general public, that was the strategic goal the entire time. (Yes,
I know, that's probably giving the government too much credit. Then again,
consider the skill of sabotage like the Stuxnet virus, and imagine the same
skill applied to long-term global strategic thinking.)

Perhaps the empire would be much stronger if not for those blunders, or
perhaps Iraq would still be a dictatorship and Iran a nuclear threat. As much
as ISIS is annoying, it doesn't seem to be an actual strategic threat in the
way that nuclear powers with long-range ballistic missiles are.

Just to be clear, I don't know what to believe. I'm playing devil's advocate
and primarily arguing not to prematurely conclude that things are simpler than
they seem. Consider, for example, the layers of subtlety involved in executing
Nixon's Madman theory:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory)
\- given the crazy things that actually have happened in our world and
politics, I would not be especially surprised if the government knowingly went
to war with Iraq on a pretext, specifically to put pressure on Iran and take
geo-political control of the region (perhaps even to destabilize the region),
with a "fall guy" planned out ahead of time in the way of "no one really
believed there were WMDs". The story that, "We thought they had WMDs and were
wrong" is a lot easier for the public and world to accept than, "We are
strategically invading Iraq and Afghanistan to put pressure on Iran."

Granted, I agree with you that these situations are total clusterfucks. I'm
just saying let's look beneath the surface.

~~~
venomsnake
The US was at its most powerful at the end of WWII. Its GDP was more than rest
of the world combined. Military and industrial capacity - unmatched. And the
only power with nuclear weapons. At the end of the war they were barely
scratched compared to the total devastation in Europe and Asia.

USA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.

So ... especially after the first oil shock - you could view US in a state of
relative decline. With a short blip during the 90s when they were reaping the
spoils of winning the cold war.

~~~
ionised
> USA could have literally taken over the world with no one to oppose them.

This is so far from true. One nation occupying the world in any meaningful way
is completely unrealistic.

------
griffinmahon
I read an _NYT_ article a while ago that made the argument that the effect of
people who did not support the Vietnam War evading the draft was a military
that was, twenty or so years later, when the people who did join became
senior, very conservative or willing to wage war. Along the lines of the
critical theory idea that some of the Left have become ineffective by not
involving themselves in actual politics, I think it's important to not be
deterred by this idea of war, as the only way the military-industrial complex
will change is if people with better values come to make up more of the
military. Maybe this will come to be the case as younger people see decreasing
future job prospects and turn to the military as a career.

~~~
puppetmaster3
Interesting that you imply that Left would like less war.

It seems to me that the progressives main thing is to tell and enforce how
others should live and behave, that is the core of the left, the other ideas
are just branches. Evidence is the congress votes in USA by Left to start wars
and votes by Taxed Enough Already (TEA) to defund the wars.

If you are anti war, I invite you to check out the Right, Libertarian POV.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
The left main thing is mostly about making sure there is a "floor", meaning
that even if you are poor and on min wage you don't die on the street or
bankrupt at the first opportunity.

Usually, countries where the right is in power (take the US for example) have
a terrible living for their poorest population.

And this is not something you want because the guy having the shitty min wage
job might tomorrow be you, one of your kids, your best friend, or someone in
your family.

------
kingkawn
War allows populations that don't share markets to still develop markets in
relationship to each other for weapons, infrastructure repair, etc.

------
arca_vorago
I have read through the comments, and it strikes me that I dont see more
combat vets on here. I knew some really smark hackers while I was in the
Marine Corps, even though I was just a bullet sponge grunt in OIF/OEF.

It also gladens my heart just to see my favorite Marine, Smedley Butler, get
some "air time". It does dissapoint me that so many in the comments are making
escuses for war as a profit or r&d center, or for war crimes prosecutions of
what are essentially pawns on a grander chessboard.

In the Marine Corps, a lot of people have a hardon for Chesty Puller, but the
phrase I used to use is "If you like Chest more than Smedley you do the
country and the Corps a disservice." Why? Because not only did Smedley Butler
wake up and realize the true nature of the part he played, but he spoke out
against it, and beyond that, something I havent seen mentioned yet but
something I think is of the utmost importance is his thwarting of the business
plot. His convressional hearing testimony is vital to understanding the modern
racket of war, and now we have the unredacted version, (though still not his
full testimony, because it was heavily edited before even entering the
record). If you havent read the unredacted testimony, I highly suggest it.

All that being said, war indeed is a racket, and it continues to be. The WFA
(waste fraud and abuse) I saw in Iraq by contractors is barely the icing on
the racket cake. There is a reason that something like the richest three
counties in the US are in Virginia. The true racket though, is much larger
than the contractor world, and primarily involves banking and resource
oriented interests.

I spent a long time voraciously reading anything I thought could help me
understand the bigger geostrategic/political chessboard, and my primary
conclusion about the wars were that resource wars are on the horizon, and the
wars were destabilizing measures designed to contain China and Russia by
prevention of resource pipelines being built to them. Take a look at the maps
of resources and their pipelines...

The other factor is that the traditional nation state actor threat model is
being upended by texhnology, to the point that the military industrial
congressional complex isadjusting very quickly.

My primary problem with this is how much the people of the US have been lied
to and misled. If the United States has some interest in destabilizing an
area, I would prefer that this just be said and the case be made outright,
instead of sending young dumb warriors like myself to die for causes they dont
understand and are lied to about. You want to know where I feel like the
primary failure lies at? Every O-5 and above officer who just went along with
it and didnt pushback against the Cheney, Bremer, Wolfowitz, Rumsfield bunch
of Chicago school Straussian neocons backed by Kissinger and Brezenski. When
you cant tell me what my fucking objective is, how can I be expected to
accomplish it?

In truth, where we are headed currently is a return to the tripolar world, but
in this move, I think we will never fully understand the almost complete
subversion of our government that has happened at the behest of the
globalists. Smedley Butler caught a glimpse of the beast and had the courage
to fight against it openly. He will continue to be my favorite Marine until I
die.

Oh, and for any of you touting the economic benefits of war, I hope you never
are on the ground on either side when that benefit is being extracted by blood
and corruption...

------
basicplus2
War is always connected to money... here is an example..

[http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwa...](http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php#axzz42DJTMMFQ)

~~~
notahacker
>it is important to remember that prior to the creation of the Federal
Reserve, there was no such thing as a world war.

> Although pre-war Germany had a private central bank, it was heavily
> restricted and inflation kept to reasonable levels... So, in the media of
> the day, Germany was portrayed as the prime opponent of World War One

The invasion of Russia, Belgium and France might have had something to do with
it as well.

> as early as 1933 they started to organize a global boycott against Germany
> to strangle this upstart ruler who thought he could break free of private
> central bankers [poster of "Judea Declares war on Germany" headline]

Come on HN, we're better than this sort of nutjobbery.

------
345218435
i am surprised butler got this far on hn. read this before the next elections.
before the next assad. before your friends and relatives go on tours with the
troops.


Show HN: Ligify iOS App – One-Tap Save or Share Your Live Photos as GIF or MOV - hboon
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1048863900
======
hboon
I created an iOS app called Ligify that lets you one-tap convert your Live
Photos to GIF/MOV for easier sharing. It was previously called Lively. I also
wrote a little story about the idea behind the app and why it was renamed:

[http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or-
share-y...](http://hboon.com/story-behind-ligify-one-tap-save-or-share-your-
live-photos-as-gif-or-mov/)

Couple of promo codes:

JYHHJTA4EXJY

63636APWYTPP

Y43P4MJ66J79

PPFFYTPKLKE4

J9J6ARKPKHFJ

KMT7PXW4F6W4

PJRP7A4P6M3H

FLY9XX3JKXEW

J63HJP973AL9

JEK6F94AAKRA

~~~
revorad
Thanks for the promo code!


Hunting down Ken's PDP-7: video footage found - bsdimp
https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2019/10/video-footage-of-first-pdp-7-to-run-unix.html
======
folkhack
Man stuff I love stuff like this - what a trip. Reminds me a lot of Xerox's
mother of all demos (in the same year 1968). These animations/graphics have
such a wonderful feel to them that are still compelling and interesting in
2019 =)

What an amazing video.

~~~
maartenh
Are you referring to Doug Engelbart's demo of the Online System (NLS) [1]? He
was at SRI at the moment. The things that happened at Xerox after that were
inspired by NLS, and build by some of the people that worked on it.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos)

~~~
folkhack
That's the one! This early stuff gives me chills man - I'm so into it.
Pioneers of a new era =)

------
acqq
"this film features the song "Daisy" sung by a computer, a plot point that
would feature heavily in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey."

The mentioned Bell Labs film is apparently from 1968, but it seems that the
Daisy song inspired Clarke already in 1962 and 2001 was already made before
that film and released in April 1968:

[https://kottke.org/06/04/hal-daisy-2001](https://kottke.org/06/04/hal-
daisy-2001)

"In 1962, Arthur C. Clarke was touring Bell Labs when he heard a demonstration
of a song sung by an IBM 704 computer programmed by physicist John L. Kelly.
The song, the first ever performed by a computer, was called “Daisy Bell”,
more commonly known as “Bicycle Built for Two” or “Daisy, Daisy”."

------
14
Wow what a video and the whole time I was saying this is 1968. Incredible. So
many things I forget half of them. A digital stylus on a CRT display with real
time input able to change the program on the fly and run simulations to test
said programs. I saw what really reminded me of the Matrix drop text effect
however it was on the horizontal. Computer speech and programing the various
sounds. And Finally, at 14:27 in the video someone please chime in here are
they showing a QR code back in the day? They show what looks to be a QR code
while talking about how computers will allow us to communicate visually in
ways we can yet to imagine. Very cool video I recommend the short watch.

~~~
bsdimp
It's not QR code, per se, but something quite similar...

------
dijksterhuis
I really enjoyed that video. Soundtrack was brill

------
vaxman
<sniffle>


If there was one thing you could tell your 21 year old self, what would it be? - vinod_s19

======
ascendantlogic
1) Be smarter with your money 2) Corporations are not your friends, don't kill
yourself for low pay expecting them to "get you back" 3) You don't really need
that 11th beer.

------
tjr
Buy stock in Apple instead of that 12" iBook.

------
kjs3
Don't marry her.

------
JoeAltmaier
Ride your bike every day


My view on the current situation of Bitcoin and the Blockchain - chejazi
http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/02/22/my-view-on-the-.html
======
pash
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote a blog post [0] today that gives a
very different take on things. He criticized Bitcoin Core's development team
for their poor communication with the community, for their inhospitality to
new contributors, and for their repeated rejection of practical and simple
solutions to Bitcoin's immediate scaling problem. He advocated adopting
Bitcoin Classic's short-term fix for full transaction blocks and wrote that it
is vital in the long term to foster an environment in which multiple
development teams can compete to introduce new features and improvements to
the protocol.

There are many people in the Bitcoin ecosystem who, like Brian, feel strongly
that if Bitcoin is to survive and thrive, then not only must the blocksize-
limit be increased, but the exclusive power to decide the future of Bitcoin
must be taken out of the hands of the Bitcoin Core team.

0\. [https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-
satoshi-...](https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-
roundtable-6c11a10d8cdf#.xw7emyjhh)

~~~
fsiefken
Yes, but there are also people - like Bram Cohen - who view Coinbase, Bitcoin
Classic and others as a hostile agents attempting to take over control. Also
see: [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-
brink-o...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-community-on-brink-of-
insanity/)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11228807)

~~~
notlukejr
Bram Cohen has always hated Bitcoin.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hate...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41exno/bram_cohen_hated_bitoin/)

Which makes it strange how in 2015 he suddenly took an interest in Bitcoin and
(1) supports everything Blockstream is doing (2) writes blog posts attacking
long-time Bitcoin contributors like Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen.

Perhaps Bram Cohen is "consulting" for Blockstream? They admit they spent over
$10m+ in their first 12 months of operations in 2015 which is a high burn rate
considering how few full-time employees ("founders") they had during that
time.

~~~
nullc
Bram Cohen doesn't hate Bitcoin. He's fascinated by it and someone skeptical
of its future; when you attack people for having moderate views that
acknowledge real risks and limitations you increase the perception of Bitcoin
as a ponzi scheme.

Bram, like almost all other technical experts holds a collection of views that
you disagree with. He's never been paid by Blockstream.

Your claim with respect to blockstream's finances are incorrect, and you know
they are incorrect since you were previously corrected on them; I can only
assume that you're continuing to repeat them in an effort to intentionally
defame Blockstream. You should stop.

------
adrianmacneil
I feel like that's giving the Bitcoin Core developers a bit too much credit.

> When asked "can you scale this?" They said, "we'll do the best we can." That
> wasn't good enough for many, especially those who don't understand the
> architecture or the nature of what is going on inside of Bitcoin.

The larger issue is that some of the core developers don't want to scale
Bitcoin at all. They would rather have a more decentralized, less widely used
Bitcoin. There is no right answer here of course, but many companies and VCs
bet their future on a widely used, less decentralized version of Bitcoin (i.e.
one where it's hard to run a Bitcoin server on a home internet connection,
much like SMTP today).

> Many people call them "Bitcoin Core" as if they are some sort of company you
> can fire or a random set of developers with skills that you can just train
> others to acquire.

They called themselves Bitcoin Core, and even went so far as to create a
separate website and have started branding the reference client as Bitcoin
Core.

> It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust, the
> ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made
> and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable.

The real issue is that Bitcoin has no "official" governance, so it's resulting
in design-by-committee and stalemate on key decisions. The project needs a
BDFL, but since it has none it will fail to keep pace with innovation in the
space. Unlike most internet protocols, the consensus layer prevents anyone
from effectively forking the project, without creating a whole separate
blockchain (unless they can convince 100% of the community to follow them).

Luckily, we are starting to see more innovation and competition in the
blockchain space, with Ethereum being by far the most interesting newcomer IMO
(and run by a competent team with a clear governance structure).

~~~
zanny
> the consensus layer prevents anyone from effectively forking the project

This isn't true, as soon as 51% of clients are trying to push "new" blocks not
recognized by the old client old clients cannot recognize them and the chain
forks. This has happened several times in the past, but we have never seen
anything like Classic where it was a version increment out of the Core tree
that is set to break old clients.

~~~
ikeboy
Several times in the past?

AFAIK there's only been one hard fork,
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0050.mediawiki)

That was accidental, and was reverted as soon as people realized. Someone
pushed through a $10,000 double-spend in the meantime.

Other than that, I don't think any hardforks have taken place.

~~~
makomk
There was technically a second hard fork a couple of months after the
accidental one in order to carry out the change that caused the first one in a
more controlled and planned manner. Sticking with the existing code was not an
option for technical reasons: "This would be an issue even if the entire
network was running version 0.7.2. It is theoretically possible for one 0.7.2
node to create a block that others are unable to validate, or for 0.7.2 nodes
to create block re-orgs that peers cannot validate, because the contents of
each node's blkindex.dat database is not identical, and the number of locks
required depends on the exact arrangement of the blkindex.dat on disk (locks
are acquired per-page)."

Also, there was technically also one way back in 2010 to fix an integer
overflow bug that allowed large amounts of BTC to be created from thin air:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0)

~~~
ikeboy
I've seen bitcoin developers saying that wasn't really a hard fork because the
previous behavior wasn't well defined.

The second is a soft fork, not a hard fork.

------
Animats
The impressive thing about Bitcoin is that it works well despite many attempts
to break it. That's so rare in computing. The basic concept was well worked
out.

Some of the people in the financial community just want a shared ledger
between the big players that doesn't require a separate organization to run
it. That's simpler than creating a shared trusted organization, like the
Depository Trust Company. Those systems are consensus ledgers where known
parties each have a vote. There's no proof of work, and it's not a currency
system. That's unrelated to Bitcoin, but it's taken seriously because Bitcoin
hasn't been broken.

The "current situation of Bitcoin" mostly seems to involve a dispute over
block size. At the moment, some denial of service attack is creating large
numbers of tiny transactions and causing a transaction backlog. Transactions
which specify a higher fee get through OK, apparently.

The "core developers" think they have a voice in how Bitcoin works, but in
fact, the three top mining pools in China have well over 50% of the mining
power and decide what happens.

Too many Bitcoin exchanges are still run by crooks. Anyone knowing the
whereabouts of "Big Vern", Cryptsy's CEO, should contact the Silver Law Firm,
which is suing him.

And that's Bitcoin today.

------
woah
Reading this, it seems that the author does not understand Bitcoin,
blockchains, BFT consensus, or indeed computer programming. He acts as if the
people working on Bitcoin are some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that
nobody else has. They are simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed
database.

~~~
schmichael
> some kind of mages with arcane knowledge that nobody else has. They are
> simply well-versed in a very quirky distributed database.

Being well-versed in very quirky distributed databases absolutely makes you a
mage with arcane knowledge.

Edit to expand: being an expert in bitcoin requires understanding distributed
databases, distributed consensus, cryptography, bytecode interpreters, and
having some knowledge of economics probably wouldn't hurt.

Being an expert in any one of these things is more than enough to get you a
great career. Being an expert in all of them operating cooperatively is...
pretty arcane knowledge.

~~~
lazaroclapp
To be fair, most bitcoin developers are likely to be experts in one or two of
those things and just reasonably conversant in the others. Satoshi's paper was
pretty clear on the consensus and the crypto, but sort of hand-waved the
network, for example. It is my understanding that there have been significant
improvements to the security of bitcoin's P2P network since then...

------
api
"They often view the people working on Bitcoin as a bunch of crazy
Libertarians who came up with a cool idea but believe that a bunch of hired
guns could put the same thing together given enough money."

This is my favorite point.

There's a _lot_ of people out there who think "sure, yeah, hacker types can
prototype creative stuff but anything they do can be done better by Serious
People with Serious Degrees."

The history of the original PC revolution is the history of that being proven
wrong. In the 70s and 80s all the Serious People with Serious Degress from the
Right Schools worked for IBM, HP, and other mainframe vendors and made 2-3
times as much as the hackers who drove them into the ground with radically
cheaper and eventually better products.

Due to its low capital costs, IT/CS is an inherently radically meritocratic
industry. Someone with no college degree can show up an expert by actually
_delivering_ something superior... if they can, that is, and there are enough
who can that it happens fairly often.

If anything the pattern that I see in this industry is that the indie hackers
are ahead of the curve. They're the ones who prototype the hard stuff and
solve the hard problems. The Serious People take up the rear, coming in later
and building out and scaling what's already been done. They're the regular
army, not the special forces. Serious People run the Internet now but they
didn't build it... if it had been left up to them it would be a byzantine OSI
network run by telcos and we'd still be using text terminals (with limited
graphics maybe) for $1/minute.

------
fsiefken
I read: "It feels like while the Bitcoin Core development community is robust,
the ecosystem of stakeholders and the understanding of how decisions are made
and information is shared is still fragile and vulnerable. I fear that the
communication and now emotional rift between various key groups and
individuals is wide right now, but I believe it's imperative that we try to
bring the community together and focus on executing on a shared technical plan
that represents our best shot at broad consensus from both a technical and a
practical perspective."

It reads like a response on the Bitcoin situation describted in the Jan 14
Medium article by Mike Hearn on the "Resolution of the Bitcoin experiment".
Problems resulting in the rift between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin
Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited. [https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-
of-the-bitcoin...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-
bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7)

He seems to suggest Ethereum and Bitcoin alternatives cannot yet replace
Bitcoin Core as it is robust and battle tested as he writes: "If you're
serious about security and stability -- and you should be -- Bitcoin is almost
the only choice with the largest bounty, and largest community, with the most
practical modern experience deploying to a broad and active network in the
real world."

But is Bitcoin the only choice and are the bitcoin stability problems outlined
by Mike Hearn and others an "idee fixe" or just a dispute over blocksize?

------
mathattack
Is it correct to call it a $6.5 billion bounty? Once Bitcoin is hacked, the
value of all the coins go to 0, no? Who would accept them knowing they could
lose them so easily.

~~~
detaro
What do you mean by "once Bitcoin is hacked"?

~~~
schmichael
Using context from the article I think the commenter and article author are
both referring to attacks (like a 51% attack or an unthought of new attack)
where coins can effectively be stolen.

~~~
chejazi
Good point, attacks on mining were probably what was being referred to here.
Specifically because one of the counterarguments to the blocksize increase was
that it promoted centralized mining, increasing the odds of a 51% attack.

I'll leave my other comment in this tree as food for thought, because Bitcoin
has definitely driven research in cryptography. But it's the least likely
attack vector.

------
danbruc
Bitcoin is a solution in search for a real problem that it can solve better
than other solutions. That's the situation, IMHO.

~~~
ChemicalWarfare
I'm mixing merchant's and end user's perspectives here - no chargebacks, low
tx fees, no need to share sensitive data with anyone, easy p2p transactions,
no cross border tx fees, few other things.

~~~
sanswork
No chargebacks - this is a huge negative for users

Low tx fees - most users currently don't see tx fees with most payment
systems. Bitcoin puts them on the user.

Sensitive data - if you consider a credit card number sensitive you are doing
it wrong. They are designed to be easy to replace if compromised and even then
new technology is making single use numbers common.

Easy - which is why sorryforyourloss is a thing. Bitcoin is confusing for most
people and difficult to secure for everyone.

Cross border - unless you need local currency

~~~
Natanael_L
Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators.

Payment channels.

No need to worry about replacing any numbers, your software does it for you.

Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority of
losses.

~~~
danbruc
_Multisignature transactions with mutually trusted arbitrators._

Why then mine in the first place, you just reintroduced trusted parties?

 _Hardware wallets, etc... Use your brain, common sense prevents the majority
of losses._

If you are careful enough, everything is fine almost by definition. But a
good, i.e. user friendly, system is one that lets you make mistakes without
hurting you too badly. Therefore asking what to do in order to be fine is kind
of the wrong question, one should better ask with what kind of stupidity you
can still get away.

~~~
Natanael_L
Because they only need to be trusted until the transaction is complete. Banks
must be trusted in perpetuity. The trust model is much stronger when any
breach of trust can lead to instant reaction, moving all funds away in seconds
and blacklisting them.

That's why friendlier hardware and software wallets are being developed, and
protocols to automate most of the tedious work.

Look at for example the payments protocol with the ability to verify the
identity of the seller (via TLS certificates), transmit your delivery address
and get a digitally signed receipt in one click. With support for extensions
it can even do things like silently negotiate for who to use as a trusted
arbitrator and the time period for settlement (after X time without it being
contested, the seller can withdraw the money without need for interaction).

Bitcoin can emulate everything banks do, and still have far stronger security
guarantees.

Banks simply can not do the same without adopting public cryptographic logs
like that of Bitcoin.

------
guelo
The reason I sold all my bitcoin is that the blocksize impasse started
smelling like corruption to me. The interests of Chinese miners seems to have
undue influence. If Bitcoin Core doesn't have the interest of the whole
community then there's no trust. And without trust the whole scheme falls
apart.

------
davidw
As someone who is a curious outsider to the whole bitcoin thing, the more I
read all the bickering, the more I think "I'm going to stay away until they've
got things figured out". After all, I'd be getting in to use the technology,
rather than attempt speculate on its value.

------
my5thaccount
It's ironic that a currency designed to solve the problems of currencies
controlled by human beings is now suffering the very same problems that caused
all the fiat currencies before it to fail.

Human beings are the problem.

~~~
cortesoft
All fiat currencies before have failed? I am pretty sure ere are lots of fiat
currencies that are doing just fine (like the dollar, which has never failed)

~~~
my5thaccount
Right, yes, I always forget about the dollar! The dollar will be the one to
prove them all wrong!

~~~
cortesoft
How long does something have to last before it is considered a success?

------
Houshalter
The other day I was alarmed to learn that bitcoin may be killing as many as
one person every day.

That's based on this gwern estimate of the number of deaths caused by the
folding@home project:
[http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping](http://www.gwern.net/Charity%20is%20not%20about%20helping)

If you assume that bitcoin uses 10x more computing power than folding, and it
uses most of it in China which has far worse pollution, than the estimate
comes to 340 deaths per year. That's just direct deaths, who knows how much
damage is caused by indirect damage and the long term impact of those wasted
resources.

~~~
CyberDildonics
Imagine how many people per year air conditioning kills?

Surely you don't really buy into such an enormous logical fallacy?

~~~
Houshalter
How is it a logical fallacy? Do you see any errors with my math? Are you
saying that it doesn't kill people?

It is true that air conditioning kills people and contributes greatly to
pollution. That's why there have been a lot of attempts to reduce its use. But
bitcoin is way worse. Fortunately far fewer people use it than air
conditioning. According to this article, a single bitcoin transaction uses as
much energy as a 1.5 households use in a day:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-
unsustainable](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable)

~~~
CyberDildonics
How many people per year does your computer kill?

------
baconizer
I can relate to author's opinion on block chain VC hype, but not so sure about
comparing Bitcoin to the Internet, at least yet...


Harvesting rare-earth metals from the moon will happen this century, NASA chief - pseudolus
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/18/nasa-chief-bridenstine-on-harvesting-rare-earth-metals-from-the-moon.html
======
PhilWright
Earth: Dig a hole in Australia/China and process it to get rare-earth metals.

Moon: Use multiple rocket launches to boost equipment and people to the Moon.
Dig a hole and process it to get rare-earth metals. Send people and metals
back to earth.

Hard to see how the Moon version could ever be price competitive. Even if you
could pick up rocks of pure rare-earths I do not think it would be cheaper.
Still, makes for an easy headline for a NASA chief I suppose.


‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died - sindhiparsani
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/mathematical-genius-shakuntala-devi-no-more/article4640134.ece
======
shared4you
I feel that she was a child-genius like Ramanujan, but was unfortunate to be
not "discovered" by a mentor like G.H.Hardy. She had great memorization skills
and logical thinking, so obviously excelled at writing puzzles' books. It's a
pity that her contributions to modern mathematics is zilch. I still wonder why
didn't she take up number theory. She went into astrology (yea, not
astronomy), which is still debated as a pseudo-science. She could've done so
much, but alas it's too late now. But well, each person to his own, each
-ology to itself. RIP.

~~~
ceejayoz
I don't think astrology is _debated_ as a pseudo-science.

~~~
fareesh
+1, astrology is the poster child for pseudo-science.

------
wging
>Rated as one in 58 million for her stupendous mathematical feats by one of
the fastest super-computers ever invented —the Univac — 1108 —, Ms. Devi
believed in using grey cells to silicon chips.

This is somewhat unclear. Wikipedia clears up what's probably meant here:

>In 1977 in Dallas she competed with a computer to see who give the cube root
of 188138517 faster. She won. At an American university she was asked to give
the 23rd root of
91674867692003915809866092758538016248310668014430862240712651642793465704086709659
3279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305
620821016129132845564805780158806771. She answered in 50 seconds. Her answer
of 546372891 took a UNIVAC 1108 computer a full minute (10 seconds more) to
confirm that she was right after it was fed with 13000 instructions.

~~~
scoot
Did she ever document her mental process for these sorts of feats? I mean, I
doubt I could come up with the correct answer given an unlimited time, a ream
of paper, and a pocket calculator, so I'm fascinated how she did. Was she very
good at complex math, or did she leverage a huge working memory to split the
problem up into a larger number of simpler calculations, or some other
combination of factors?

~~~
ArikBe
This is somewhat related. I remember watching an episode of "Stan Lee's Super
humans" on the Discovery channel. They were with a man who was also able to do
lightning fast calculations, not of the complexity as described in the
article, but he could easily recall dates, multiply 5 digit numbers faster
than someone with a calculator etc.

They put this man under an MRI scanner while giving him problems to solve.
What they noticed was an unusually high activity in a part of the brain that
is responsible for eye movement. So – perhaps not very scientifically
responsible – the neurologist offered the explanation that he was using a part
of his brain that is normally used to solve complex mathematics subconsciously
in order to position our eyes properly throughout the day. Apparently this
motor movement is very complex and he was leveraging the ability of this area
to solve these arithmetic problems and engage in pattern matching in order to
recollect past dates.

~~~
Leszek
So like GPGPU, but with specialised parts of the brain instead? That's pretty
cool.

------
arocks
Shakuntala Devi had also inspired an entire generation to read and understand
her books about recreational mathematics. Her books like 'Puzzles to Puzzle
You' were used to prepare for interviews in IT companies which used to have
several rounds of puzzle solving.

She would probably be the last human (that I am aware of) who could beat a
computer in arithmetic.

------
manojlds
I was enthralled as a child reading her books -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi#Books>

~~~
ramblerman
"The World of Homosexuals"

What's that one about?

~~~
manojlds
Ha Ha I didn't read that one as a child, but I gather it is a very small book
which is more of an interview.

------
fractallyte
It's ironic that the article got her year of birth wrong: 1929 instead of
1939.

~~~
gngeal
That's still a better uptime than any computer I've ever seen! (Come to think
of it, with my health and with my luck, that's a better uptime than my mortal
solenoid is probably ever going to have... :/)

------
gcanyon
Calculating 23rd roots is a different story, but finding the day of the week
for any date isn't actually that hard. John Conway came up with a manageable
method, which was improved a few years back. I think I've simplified it a bit
further: [http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-
calc...](http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calculate-
the-day-of-the-week/)

------
aut0mat0n1c
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion....

~~~
nerdshark
It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed...

------
Alex3917
Would she have been eligible for James Randi's million dollars?

~~~
saalweachter
James Randi is looking for the supernatural, not the superhuman. Usain Bolt is
also not eligible.

------
mstdokumaci
and non-human computers are still alive. so

------
hawkw
I hope they weren't running any mission-critical software on her...


Is graphene a miracle material? - fun2have
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm
======
CoffeeDregs
Graphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have
something-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or
structures that have also been spun into important applications for just about
every vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the
next 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40.

The article focuses a bit on whether graphene can replace silicon, which I
think kind of misses the point. The material will enable exciting _new_
applications rather than merely transforming existing ones.

I'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile
in the US. This is high-ass-tech and is probably an area in which our oil
companies could play a very large role with their competencies at running
large, highly complex, raw material production systems.

~~~
SwellJoe
Reading this article brought to mind this scene in _The Graduate_ :

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin: Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

So, I'm wondering how and where I should be investing to take advantage of
this materials revolution. Seems like a pretty obvious bet to make, but it
seems to be spread across many companies and with an indeterminate schedule
(some say 5 years, some say 10, some say "we don't know"). And, more
importantly, so many of the companies involved are too big for one product or
even one line of products to make a huge dent in their bottom line. I've
invested in IBM and Intel in the past based on research in the pipeline, and
while the products did come to fruition and did prove to be good for the
companies bottom line, the stock market didn't respond as much as one would
hope (but probably about what I should have expected, had I really done the
analysis of how it would effect their bottom line).

I'm not sure I follow you on the oil companies, though. Sure, they've been a
major player in the plastics pipeline forever, but, if graphene isn't made
from petroleum derivatives, I'm not sure it is a natural fit for oil
companies. I would say the folks building LCD panels and other silicon-based
products are the obvious candidates for some graphene products (and Samsung
seems to be near the front of the pack in products based on graphene)...but
maybe it'll be some other segment altogether (solar panel makers like Sharp
and Kyocera, perhaps?).

Whatever happens, I want in, at least as an investor. So, I guess next time I
review my portfolio (which currently contains GOOG and nothing else) I'm gonna
do some more research on graphene. It's probably not a big rush to find the
right companies...since it'll be a very long bet, anyway.

~~~
CoffeeDregs
Actually, The Graduate was exactly what I was thinking as I was typing my
comment. ;)

Edit: didn't reply to the bigger point about oil companies. I kinda threw that
out there as a quick thought and agree with you that the semiconductor, semi-
co materials, or LCD guys might be better positioned. That said, few companies
are as good at gathering, refining, processing and shipping gigatons of carbon
as the oil companies.

~~~
jerf
"That said, few companies are as good at gathering, refining, processing and
shipping gigatons of carbon"

That's abstracting too far. The food industry ships around gigatons of carbon
too, which is just as "graphenic" as oil, namely, zero. Pencil manufacturers
_actually_ use graphene, but it seems unlikely they're going to lead this
drive either.

~~~
nazar
I thought pencil manufacturers actually use graphite. From the article I
understand that graphene pencil is only useful to write on steel sheets.

~~~
jerf
I had been led to believe by previous articles such as [1] that graphite
contains graphene, albeit in small quantities and not in a useful state. The
process of trying to produce a link to substantiate this has left me less sure
whether it "contains" graphene, or if it merely can produce it under the
circumstances described in the article. Given what it is and how much carbon
gets around on this planet, it is perhaps hard to say what "contains" graphene
in the first place, in much the same way I'm often a bit annoyed when someone
counts every oxygen and two hydrogens anywhere in a compound as "water",
regardless of how tied up they are.

[1]:
[http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_702926...](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_702926.html)

------
FleursDuMal
I have an encyclopedia from the 1950's at home with a page entitled "Asbestos
- the new wonder material".

~~~
mkramlich
I was thinking similarly. Based on past history, I expect them to rush to find
all sorts of short-term profitable applications for it, build new products
around it, and not really look at things like negative health or environmental
consequences. There just isn't as much money to be made by finding reasons not
to use it as there is in finding reasons to use it.

~~~
rcxdude
well, it is basically graphite, just with more consistent microstructure. I'm
having a hard time thinking of ways in which it could be worse than graphite
in terms of health or environmental concerns.

~~~
dfox
Although it is not exactly proven, one can assume that asbestos' toxicity is
related not to it's chemical properties but to physical geometry of particles
of asbestos dust which seem similar to dust that you would get from carbon
nanotubes. On the other hand, there is quite significant question whether this
actually is problem (even in asbestos case) given right uses and technologies.

------
Sapient
Optical computers, genetic catalogs, nanorepair modules--forget all of that.
It's when you see a megaton of steel suspended over your head by a thread the
thickness of a human hair that you really find God in technology.

* Anonymous Metagenics Dockworker - MorganLink 3DVision Live Interview

~~~
MrJagil
I hate to be that guy but:

"megaton |ˈmegəˌtən|

noun

a unit of explosive power chiefly used for nuclear weapons, equivalent to one
million tons of TNT"

~~~
Bud
You're being that guy. Plus, you're wrong.

Mega- is a standard SI prefix, and the use of "megaton" to denote one million
tons is entirely correct. Yes, it's also true that "megaton" has a second
meaning. This fact does not invalidate its other meaning. In fact, if you
bother looking this up in actual dictionaries, you'll find that the normal
mass definition is often listed first, and the explosive definition is listed
second, for what it's worth.

~~~
MrJagil
Wow, sorry man. Didn't mean to waste your time/bother you. I just looked it up
in the dictionary I had handy, as the wording seemed strange to me.

In any case, I am glad I learned something new today!

~~~
mattmanser
It's also a quote from the computer game Alpha Centauri.

------
CognitiveLens
If IBM can make a 150 GHz graphene transistor, why does Dr Phaedon Avouris, of
IBM, say that it cannot replace silicon? Isn't clock frequency a measure of
the transistor's ability to turn on _and off_ quickly?

~~~
ori_b
There's so much more than clock frequency. The place silicon shines isn't so
much it's material properties for producing individual switches - they're
good, but there's better out there.

It's the raw manufacturability that silicon has. It's by far the easiest
material to work with. It's abundant, cheap, and easy to obtain. It's got
properties that lend it to easy junction doping and easy annealing. It's easy
to deposit new layers on top of etched silicon. It's got a lattice that
matches up nicely with the materials you'd want to use for contacts.

In short, the advantages of silicon aren't in it's ability to make
transistors. It's in it's ability to make transistors while on a high volume
assembly line.

It's going to be a while if we see whether graphene can match silicon for
that.

~~~
redthrowaway
How much of the ease of using silicon is due to its inherent properties, and
how much is due to the many billions that have been sunk into R&D?

~~~
Unseelie
I'm going to hazard that a lot is based on inherent properties. probably
'most' of the ease. They were mucking around with silicon computers with
basically hobby chemistry sets back in the fifties and sixties, where today,
with some of the best materials science we have, we're only able to manipulate
graphene on the nanoscale..

------
schmittz
It's weird that this article mentions the problem of graphene lacking a
semiconducting form and then fails to mention carbon nanotubes at all. I don't
do research in this area, so I'm unaware, but it seems that much more work is
currently being done with CNTs than graphene.

------
FrojoS
There is currently a 1 billion Euro proposal for a grant on graphene research
in the EU. [1] But the decision will not be made before the end of 2012.

[http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.html)

edit: Sorry, not to much new information here. They also mention it in the
original submission.

------
SeoxyS
I want clothing embedded with sheets of Graphene. Imagine the protection! I
ride a motorcycle, which is one of the most dangerous daily activities one can
do, and something that exhibits these properties could save me a lot of pain
in wearing armored gear etc.

There are also a range of applications in the military and security
industries.

~~~
icegreentea
Isn't most of motorcycle safety designed to a) make sure no part of you
catches the ground and b) spread out the energy as much as possible (spatially
and temporally)? Cause I don't think just sheets of graphene would be very
good at dealing with energy dissipation. You might not be able to break the
graphene sheets, but the energy would just transfer through to your body.

~~~
SeoxyS
If the sheet of graphene can't be pierced, it would protect from the most
common mild injury in motorcycle accidents: road rash. (Right?) It'd prevent
direct contact with the road, it'd prevent your clothing being ripped off and
your skin being turned into ground meat.

Not that I really know what I'm talking about, but that was my line of
thinking…

~~~
hugh3
A sheet of graphene is one atomic layer thick. It's _very_ easy to tear apart
or pierce with any macroscopic object.

~~~
geon
A "sheet" doesn't neccesarily refer to the molecular structure. In this
contex, it would mean several layers composited together.

~~~
hugh3
Several layers of graphene put together is graphite, and it's pretty non-
magical.

------
cagenut
Coincidentally, news out today of some impressive research results on using
graphene in li-ion batteries:
<http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/05/chang-20110521.html>


Show HN: Quick apply to any online job application - thekyle
https://jobs.hoxly.com/
======
thekyle
Hi HN, A few months ago I was applying to internships and noticed that most
online job applications are rather tedious and repetitive. They often involve
creating an account, uploading your resume, and then copy and pasting
different parts of your resume into a form (education, work history, skills,
certifications, etc.). I assume this is done so that the hiring manager never
actually needs to look at the uploaded resumes and to making automatic
screening of candidates easier.

Some job search sites offer “Quick apply” where you fill out all of your
information once and then apply to participating jobs with one click. However,
the number of supported job applications is quite limited and there’s a good
chance jobs you’re interested in won’t support the feature.

So that’s why I created Hoxly Jobs which offers universal quick apply to any
job application available online.

------
CoreFailure
Really cool idea! Good revenue model too, I can easily see $1/job being an
easy value proposition.

One thing that gives me pause as a prospective user is that I don't know what
will happen if there's any "essay response" style questions in the job app.
Given that the jobs I'm paying to apply to are probably jobs I'm interested
in, I'm less likely to risk using it on an interesting looking job.

That said, I really dig the minimal look of this website. The gifs are a great
way to show program flow and are much easier to read than a jumbotron.


A Geometric Intuition for Linear Discriminant Analysis - OmarShehata
https://omarshehata.github.io/lda-explorable/
======
BernardTatin
A very good and pleasant lesson!

~~~
OmarShehata
Thank you! It's the sort of thing I wish I knew when I was first learning
about it, but didn't have the time to investigate deeper at the time, so I
hope it reaches those who need it.


LinkedIn Hits 300 Million Users - talhof8
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/18/linkedin-hits-300-million-users/

======
bhartzer
More like 299 million fake and unused accounts and 1 million real accounts.


A new way of rendering particles - plurby
http://www.simppa.fi/blog/the-new-particle/
======
CyberDildonics
This is extremely unlikely to be a good technique (and it isn't new) but here
are two alternatives. Even in the demo video, beneath the lens flares and
other excess, the particles are aliasing like crazy.

First of all, particles like this are usually only a few pixels in size, so
the shape doesn't really matter as much as the area. Because of this, I don't
think there is much gained, but there is a lot lost since it aliases so badly.

Renderman actually creates particles as two bilinear patches that make up the
same shape as the intersection given by these two triangles. You could do the
same thing with a quad strip, which would still also take only 6 vertices. The
gpu will deal with the quads itself, possibly by creating two triangles for
each quad. This is very unlikely to be a performance hit since it does not
affect shading.

A second way of creating a semi-transparent particle would be make a triangle
strip that rotates around one center point. The center point has an alpha of
1, the outer points have an alpha of 0. The interpolation takes care of
gradient transparency to the edges, and even with 5 outer vertices the shape +
gradient should easily look good enough to hold up while taking up around 16
pixels.

Shadows - the best way in these situations to control shadows is usually to
scale down the particle (or hair). Remember that the shape or look on a micro
scale doesn't matter as much as the integral of the area * integral of the
transparency.

~~~
DominikD
"The gpu will deal with the quads itself, possibly by creating two triangles
for each quad. This is very unlikely to be a performance hit since it does not
affect shading."

No modern GPU (or API in fact) deals with quads. You can't guarantee all
vertices to be coplanar when dealing with floating point values so you're much
better off pushing triangles and not forcing driver to do conversion for you.
Also if vertex data bandwidth is scarce in particle-heavy scene (so you
actually care if it's 3 of 6 or whatever vertices), just push one vertex and
expand it in GS like everyone else does.

~~~
CyberDildonics
I would love to see a case, even contrived, where planar quads produce
artifacts from floating point precision but I think it would be extremely
difficult to demonstrate it even on an enormous ground plane quad, let alone a
subpixel quad.

I'm not sure why you would say no modern API deals with quads, what would you
call the ability to draw quads and quad strips from gpu buffers in OpenGL?

Geometry shaders should work well, what I described is an approach for lower
tech situations.

~~~
DominikD
Pretty much any set of 4 fp vectors that don't share z coord will end up non-
coplanar at some point (if you insist on going barycentric for texture
iteration or if you plan on using halfplanes to do intersection or whatever).
That's why HW tends to use fixed point internal representation in such places.
But yeah, whatever, it's almost 1am and I shouldn't be spending time
convincing people online that GPU developers know a thing or two about GPU. :)
But at the very least trust me on one thing: quads are dead. They've been dead
for a long, long time now, low-end or high-end, quads make no sense at all.

------
zeta0134
Seems like a very simple expansion on this technique would be to keep a
rolling framebuffer, and blend the last particle draw with the current one.
This would remove the flickering, display the fake alpha properly for still
screenshots, and work for variable framerate.

Assuming your GPU will let you hold onto a previous frame's draw result (of
just the particles) and blend it relatively cheaply with the new one, it
wouldn't cost very much to implement. One full framebuffer blend should be
much, much cheaper than blending the individual dots.

~~~
CyberDildonics
You could do that for the whole frame though. The reason it isn't done is
because it is essentially a blur and it makes the motion streaky. You might
think this would be ok for particles, but the issue won't be particle motion
as much as it will be camera motion.

------
lux
This is really cool. I'm curious how this will look on a Gear VR, since those
run at 60fps and require every optimization they can get to maintain that on a
cell phone.

------
BatFastard
I have been looking for a better particle. Thanks! One strange advantage to
putting new feature off, better way of doing them suddenly appear.

------
emcq
I really like this. It would be nice to see some benchmarks versus a quad
based solution where the quad is tessellated in a geometry shader with a
fragment shader drawing the particle or using a texture. My guess would be
that the bottleneck might be pcie but my knowledge of the gpu performance is a
little outdated.

------
fizixer
How is it any different from the idea of voxels?

~~~
fsloth
A particle is a free 3D coordinate. Particle rendering refers to several
visualization techniques to visualize a volumetric system which focus on
minimizing per particle work load:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_system](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_system)

A voxel is a value in a 3D lattice.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel)

A particle system could be used to visualize a voxel field, of course, but
their application range is far wider.

------
Danieru
If this sounds interesting to you I suggest also checking out TXAA. It
exploits a similar concept to get high quality cheap AA.

------
deepnet
This brilliantly insightful heuristic will work well for showing off point
clouds in WebGL.


The Web's next act: A worldwide database (discusses Semantic Web) - _pius
http://gcn.com/Articles/2009/11/09/Linked-Government-Data-feature.aspx

======
_pius
It's worth noting that Department-level CxOs in the Federal government read
this publication.


Show HN: Julia Observer – Package Browser for the Julia Language - djsegal
http://juliaobserver.com
======
ericjang
Is anyone else concerned that despite being an open-source project with
permissive licensing, the formation of the Julia Computing group has made
Julia's development a bit of a walled garden? I don't mean this in the sense
that Apple or Matlab are "walled gardens", but the for-profit company, of
which many core developers are founders/employees, develops a number of tools
and services that are not open-source AFAIK.

I believe the group also implicitly controls what packages are
allowed/disallowed from the packages list. At the same time, I also recognize
the need to support the core developers and the business model makes a lot of
sense. Thoughts?

~~~
n00b101
I really wish they had implemented Julia in C++11, instead of C. The source
code seems to be very difficult to comprehend for anyone who is not one of the
original developers. [1]

[1]
[https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/src/julia.h)

~~~
chappi42
Julia is mostly (> 65 %) written in Julia. There's some C (20 %, bootstrap
etc.), some C++ (8 % llvm interface), some scheme (4 %, parser). I think it's
one of the main points, that Julia should be strong enough that such things
_can_ be written in itself.

Go was initially written in C. I think many consider C++ to be unnecessarily
complicated and avoid it at the lowest level.

Btw.: Do you know the developer documentation? Just in case:
[http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/#Developer-
Documentation...](http://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/#Developer-
Documentation-1)

------
spv
I don't understand why Gadfly is the top repo. I always found it to be very
slow and having too many dependencies. Last I remember it installs more than
20 packages as dependencies. Its also not a supported backend in Plots.jl

~~~
ViralBShah
Gadfly was one of the first Julia packages, and the first plotting package.
That is probably why.

------
Xcelerate
I really like the user interface for this — very smooth and modern design. As
someone who has a lot of Julia packages installed, this looks great for
searching and finding new ones.

~~~
djsegal
Thanks!

Here's a couple features you might like:

\+ You can view all Julia developers sorted by commit count at
[https://juliaobserver.com/users](https://juliaobserver.com/users)

\+ You can include unregistered packages by checking a box in settings
(accessible through the navbar dropdown)

Happy hunting

------
RyanHamilton
Cool site, thanks. As part of learning julia I created a similar resource for
the browsing the built-in functions. e.g.:
[http://www.jlhub.com/julia/manual/en/function/rand](http://www.jlhub.com/julia/manual/en/function/rand)
It allows browsing the functions that exist by function group and I added
examples for the functions that I was playing with. Lately I added the ability
for users to submit their own examples, as this is something I found very
useful from the php documentation. Submissions welcome!

------
ultrahate
I'm really anxious for Julia to start taking packaging more seriously. Pkg2
situation is pretty terrible imo, and the pkg3 whispers just sort of strike me
as offputting, since there's basically no timeline of when they'll make it to
a stable 0.x release and the 1.0 is just a "when it's ready" situation.

Julia is one the most pleasant programming experiences I've had otherwise.
It's the Lua I've always wanted, with just the right mix of Scheme, but not
too much that it tastes Haskell-y.

But yeah, current packaging situation is awful.

Oh, that reminds me though, Julia has a lot of really incredible packages
already. It's mindblowing how quick Julia went from "new technical computing
language" to "general purpose, performant language with a ton of useful
packages readily available and they actually work"

Leveraging the technical computing open source community turns out to work
really well!

~~~
dnautics
the metaprogramming resources in Julia are very slick. I wrote a DSL that lets
you write functions in that are then turned into synthesizable verilog
modules. Implementing combinatorial logic (I haven't gotten to sequential yet)
took about three days.

~~~
ultrahate
Yeah, meta is something I always struggled with in Lua, as you're completely
constrained to the table structures, but just that little extra power of being
able to metaprogram over whatever data I want, is absolutely incredible, and
it's a bit easier to think about imo than Scheme macros just in the sense of
trying to macroexpand in your head.


Google Fails at Figuring out who the Turkish Prime Minister Is - smallegan
http://www.google.com/search?q=prime+minister+of+turkey

======
smallegan
It shows Muammer Güler as the Prime Minister of Turkey instead of Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan. This seems like a pretty big fail.


Theoretical Motivations for Deep Learning - rndn
http://rinuboney.github.io/2015/10/18/theoretical-motivations-deep-learning.html
======
chriskanan
There is a recent 5 page theoretical paper on this topic that I thought was
pretty interesting, and it tackles both deep nets and recurrent nets:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101](http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08101)

Here is the abstract:

This note provides a family of classification problems, indexed by a positive
integer k, where all shallow networks with fewer than exponentially (in k)
many nodes exhibit error at least 1/6, whereas a deep network with 2 nodes in
each of 2k layers achieves zero error, as does a recurrent network with 3
distinct nodes iterated k times. The proof is elementary, and the networks are
standard feedforward networks with ReLU (Rectified Linear Unit)
nonlinearities.

------
arcanus
1) I am curious about learning more about the statement: "Deep learning is a
branch of machine learning algorithms based on learning multiple levels of
representation. The multiple levels of representation corresponds to multiple
levels of abstraction. "

What evidence exists that the 'multiple levels of representation', which I
understand to generally be multiple hidden layers of a neural network,
actually correspond to 'levels of abstraction'?

2) I'm further confused by, "Deep learning is a kind of representation
learning in which there are multiple levels of features. These features are
automatically discovered and they are composed together in the various levels
to produce the output. Each level represents abstract features that are
discovered from the features represented in the previous level. "

This implies to me that this is "unsupervised learning". Are deep learning
nets all unsupervised? Most traditional neural nets are supervised.

~~~
joe_the_user
The whole presentation seems very hand-wavy, which I think is pretty much the
level most motivational discussions of deep learning are at.

I think the presentations by Yann Lecun and Leon Bottou are more interesting -
and tend to involve more uncertainty and fewer pronouncements.

see:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878047)

~~~
arcanus
This was fascinating and greatly informative. As you said, the authors were
not afraid to show the real warts and bleeding edge, as a good scientist
should. Thanks for the link.

------
dnautics
I wonder if "lots of data" is wrong. If I show you say twenty similar-looking
Chinese characters in one person's handwriting, and the same twenty in another
person's handwriting, you'll probably do a good job (though maybe not an easy
time) classifying them with very little data.

~~~
webmasterraj
Because I've seen lots of other handwriting, even if in another language. I
have very strong priors.

The problem is that a computer comes in without knowing anything about
tangential phenomenon. So it needs lots of data to catch up to me and my years
of forming associative connections about other handwriting I've seen.

If I showed you alien (ie not human) handwritten samples, you'd probably
stuggle too.

------
ilurk
What tools did you use to make those nice pictures?

(didn't read it yet though, will do when I have time)

------
memming
Nice. Very well organized.


“Hitler Tamed by Prison” – The New York Times, December 21, 1924 - 1and2equals0
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1054087/pg1

======
davidgerard
WELL, THAT DIDN'T WORK OUT SO WELL, DID IT


Interviewing is a noisy prediction problem - amrrs
https://erikbern.com/2018/05/02/interviewing-is-a-noisy-prediction-problem.html
======
jaabe
I work in a Danish municipality with 7000 employees where we replace around
2000 people each year of which half are education-interns[0]. So I think it’s
fair to say that we have a good deal of experience with hiring people. I’ve
been involved with quite a few of these processes, and I’m truly fascinated by
how many resources and how much effort Americans seem to put into hiring.

Our data shows that if you filter by education, then it’s actually relatively
easy to hire someone who will perform well. If you get 100 applicants and pick
the best 10 based on their A4 sized application letter, their education
results and their CV, then you’ll typically end up with a pile of at least 10
people who are going to be good enough. Hell once you build that pile of 10
people, you don’t even have to read through the rest of the applications
because it really won’t matter.

I say this fully aware that hiring the wrong person is the most expensive
mistake any manager can make. It’s just that people aren’t really unicorns,
and good enough is good enough.

Part of our success is how we onboard people. Because we do use resources on
hiring people, we just save them for when people are actually hired. We try to
make sure people get the best start they possibly can, because we have found
that achieving great employee performance is our responsibility more so than
the fresh hire.

As a result our interview consists of 30-45 minutes of small talk where we try
to find the person with the best chemistry to fit in their coming team. Don’t
get me wrong, once in a while we do get an interviewee who flunks completely,
but it’s very rare.

We have tried a lot of the tricks by the way. We’ve done code reviews, we’ve
done whiteboard algorithms, we’ve done live code and it really, really didn’t
help us get better workers but it did waste a tremendous amount of our time.

Our process is a little different when we hire managers. They get to go
through a more standard HR process with personality tests and such. I’m not
personally sure it helps though, but I don’t have any data to back that last
statement up.

0: I’m not sure what they are called in English, they work for half a year as
part of their education.


Cool Augmented Reality App for Fixing Cars - mishmax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn-zvymlSvk&feature=player_embedded

======
elblanco
What's neat about this is that it essentially takes a skill, and packages it
up, and allows anyone who can turn a wrench to do the same job with extremely
minimal training.

Not enough Marines in the motor pool to fix all the broken trucks? No problem,
augment them with some cooks.

~~~
ippisl
I wonder if with this and some other stuff( for example, diagnostics using car
computer) , people could easily fix their car on their own?

------
lutorm
So how do these systems work? Do the goggles have some sort of position
measuring devices or do they work through image recognition of what's in the
field?

~~~
sailormoon
It must be positional; image recognition would seem a little too good to be
true.

Would be delighted to be contradicted, though!

~~~
jmah
I've been looking into augmented reality technologies lately; vision systems
are getting really good. There are some good ones here (click twice to load
Flash videos, or download AVIs):

<http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~bob/research/research_ptamm.html>

~~~
sailormoon
Thanks for the link. Fascinating stuff, makes me want to quit and go jump into
AR.

------
callahad
Can anyone explain the importance of reducing overall head movement?

~~~
drhodes
Maybe it's a rough indicator of how much looking is required to locate a part.
Maybe it reduces the odds of cracking One's head on large metal objects.

------
RK
DIY, internet guided surgery here we come.

Seriously though, there seems to be some very interesting potential for this
type of augmented reality.

------
pmorici
This seems like is might be awkward for mechanics who were all ready good at
the job.

~~~
lutorm
It seems to be aimed at military in-field repairs, though, in which case it
probably makes sense.

------
akc
neato. I did some work in his lab 10 years ago. Back then the AR getup looked
something like the Ghostbusters backpack.

------
sailormoon
With these maintenance tasks seemingly pretty well-defined in terms of
movements and actions with 3D objects in a 3D space, it doesn't take much
imagination to see a suitably equipped robot could be doing this kind of thing
pretty soon.


Ways to Stop the Next Pandemic and Limit Covid-19, Dr Cassidy Nelson - wiggler00m
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/cassidy-nelson-12-ways-to-stop-pandemics/
======
wiggler00m
_" At the moment, the most common types of testing are PCR testing, which is
polymerase chain reaction, and it allows you to detect a pathogen that has a
certain section of its genetic code match this test that’s very limited in
terms of anything new that comes out. You always have to know about the
pathogen beforehand, have to have designed and validated a test against that.

In the last few years though, some new technologies that have come out that
are based on metagenomic techniques, which are pathogen agnostic diagnostics.
So you don’t need to know anything about the pathogen beforehand. You can put
a clinical sample on and it will tell you all of the DNA that is in that
sample. And so you’d be able to do things like bioinformatics testing on this
and be able to actually work out, “Oh, it matches against my RSV or CMV or
other known viruses, or this is completely new and it doesn’t match anything
in my bioinformatics data set…

It sequences everything. So you’d imagine like 98% of it is just human DNA,
but bioinformatically you just push that out and you usually don’t care about
the human DNA, and then everything that’s left over you’re able to analyze…

This would mean that not only would you be able to have a reliable diagnostic
from the get-go before an outbreak begins and then for those first few cases,
you might actually be able to instead… on average globally, we have about a 20
day lag in between first outbreak cases and detection of an outbreak for new
emerging diseases. That’s way too long. If you could detect those first
handful of cases of a new disease, you’re much, much more likely to be able to
contain it...

Robert Wiblin: Is this affordable?

Cassidy Nelson: So this has started being used in places like in 2014 in West
Africa when there was some diagnostic conundrums going on in the Ebola
epidemic going on there. Metagenomic sequencing, especially based on nanopore
technology, which is a fascinating way to do this is quite expensive in terms
of the reagents that are being used, but the costs of that are coming down and
the accuracy of it is going up. I personally think though that these platform
agnostic ways of looking at pathogens is really the only way forward if to be
on top of diagnostics. There’s really always going to be a one step behind
type picture if we have to wait to characterize a new pathogen and then design
a new test for it based on PCR type methods today.

Robert Wiblin: So the idea is we would just make this the normal way of
diagnosing people with contagious diseases. So people come into hospital,
they’ve got symptoms and you’d do the sample and you try to sequence
everything. You see all the viruses that are going through there. And then you
can see whether any of them are weird and whether there’s a pattern of some
new disease showing up, hopefully really quickly.

Cassidy Nelson: Yeah, and there’s been great studies that have come out
looking at like fever in return travelers, for example: 60% of them never get
a diagnosis, but there’s something causing their fever. People have gone on
using metagenomic techniques and have gone, “What is the pathogen here? What
do we actually have”, as well as other diagnostic conundrums. So people have
been starting to do this. It hasn’t been adopted on a wide scale yet, but I’d
love to see this adopted and you’d be able to have this in all healthcare
settings. So you could have this in your emergency department. You may first
limit it to just severe cases. So if you have a severe case of pneumonia or
another disease, you don’t have any etiology that you’ve been able to find,
you’re able to do these types of tests.

Cassidy Nelson: This would mean that not only would you be able to have a
reliable diagnostic from the get-go before an outbreak begins and then for
those first few cases, you might actually be able to instead… on average
globally, we have about a 20 day lag in between first outbreak cases and
detection of an outbreak for new emerging diseases. That’s way too long. If
you could detect those first handful of cases of a new disease, you’re much,
much more likely to be able to contain it."_