Hacker News Reader

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

You watching the news?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

No. Med tech should be as abundant as can be. But with AI there too many unknowns we're still figuring out. How to defend networks against AI attacks, hardening in general, how to handle the containment problem, the proliferation of deep fakes, deep truth and decerning between the two. And what that means at different levels. What are the critical points? What's the optimal path?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Hardware asymmetry is one of the things that secures your advantage. 10th generation chips vs 5th generation chips gives you asymmetric advantage, just like 5th generation fighters vs 3rd generation fighters are no contest. The ability to design and manufacture your own chips guarantees supply and the control to optimize and scale production capacity as demand requires.

We invented the microprocessor and SV has 40+ years of accumulated knowledge and hard-earned experience built into every chip. When an adversary is 40 years behind and has not yet developed the capability to make their own chips, that's significant. We rode that curve from beginning to end, and catching a ride on an exponential rocketship gives you a massive a head start -- a secure long-term advantage, one that's almost insurmountable if you don't give it away. So let's not do that. There's an optimal path. Let's find it.

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Funny you bring up the meds thing.

One of the problems that just surfaced in the news yesterday is the realization that almost all prescription meds are manufactured in China. The risk that poses to the US population and DoD is incalculable. How do we get off China meds?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

This is not a FB thing -- It's a technology transfer thing. An economic thing. A trade thing. A national security thing...

There's a ton more going on in the news and behind the scenes beyond the Thiel NYT post.

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Many people have eyes on this. This is not about an investment.

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Some things are more significant than others. Like giving someone fire for the first time. Epochs mark the era before and after. Gifting the gap changes the game.

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

How many NYT op-eds has Thiel written? He's only written one tweet [1].

It's rare. The significance of that should tell you something.

[1] https://twitter.com/peterthiel

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Yes, especially when other armies were still on horses, food was fast to spoil and foodlines were hard to maintain. Planes were too, so were satellites. Still are. Any sufficiently advanced technology gives you an advantage and serves as a deterrent, especially when no one else has it. Giving it away is giving away your country and your allies' hard-earned, time-tested, long-term advantage. But that's just part of it, there are other factors to consider too. Huge unknowns on the horizon. The question is what is driving this play?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

This is not about NIPS proceedings. It's about advanced nextgen chip hardware capability, something China does not have. It would be like giving someone a rocketship when they don't know how to build and pilot a plane. Inorganic technology transfers -- phase shifts like this -- are ripe for disaster. Without internal time-tested checks and balances, gifting the gap is a recipe for chaos -- NOT a recipe for containment. How long will the chaos last? Hard to see. Does anyone have a model for that? It could lead to their undoing, and others' too. Haven't we learned that lesson yet?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

China currently does not have the capability to design and make advanced hardware microprocessor chips. The Google/IBM OpenPOWER Foundation is simultaneously researching nextgen chips and teaching China how to do so.

Giving China this capability, i.e. gifting the gap, will give China an advanced hardware capability they do not have and did not earn. It will undoubtedly be used by the Chinese military. The supercomputer labs is the primary target.

The AI race is already a big unknown, and the Chinese government internal checks and balances are inorganic and not yet tested. Remember the tenets, be slow to speak and be wary of unearned wisdom. What is the point of accelerating this?

espeedon Good for Google, Bad for America

Eric Schmidt chairs the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) [1], the US government knows about the Google/IBM China relationship.

One big concern is with the China/Google/IBM OpenPOWER [2,3] collaboration. Advanced hardware chip technology is one big thing China currently does not have.

The US doesn't want the Google/IBM OpenPOWER Foundation to hand China the keys to the kingdom in the form of advanced microprocessor chip technology and know-how, thus giving away the US hardware chip advantage, i.e. gifting the gap...

~> IBM Venture with China Stirs Concerns (2015) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/business/ibm-project-in-c...

~> China has never had a real chip industry. Making AI chips could change that (2018) https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612569/china-has-never-ha...

[1] https://innovation.defense.gov

[2] https://openpowerfoundation.org

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation

espeedon Knuth on Huang's Sensitivity Proof: “I've got the proof down to one page” [pdf]

NB: Proof announcement thread from a few weeks ago...

Sensitivity Conjecture Resolved https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338281

espeedon GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

Not all of it is US sanctions [1]. The US will protect its networks and will not allow a foreign adversary to use US platforms to target US citizens, but the US has no incentive to restrict the Iranian people's access to information or communications or ability to speak. Most of Iran's cyberspace restrictions are coming from within...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran

[1] "Iran's Rulers Speak Of More Cyberspace Restrictions As Conditions Worsen" https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-s-rulers-speak-of-more-cybe...

espeedon We Aren’t Here to Learn What We Already Know (2016)

Why? is the hyperlink of the mind -- the unifying link between domains of knowledge know-how and true understanding. It's the most important question in the world.

Truth is optimal, and why? is how you get there.

espeedon Google reveals fistful of flaws in Apple's iMessage app

Not only is it encrypted -- in transit and at rest -- Google uses its own silicon and has its own fiber.

espeedon Powers of Two in Lexicographic Order

Phi is hiding in there too ...

  succ(x)  = (x^2 + 2x) / (x^2 + 1). Newton's method [0]

  ~> Decimal expansion converges quadratically 

  0.618... = [0;1,1,1,1,...]. Continued fraction grows by (+1)/
   
  0.618..., 1.0, 1.618..., 2.618.... Powers of Phi.

  φ^2  = φ + 1

  e^iτ = 0 + 1. Euler's identity (τ version) [1]

  ~> The complex exponential of the circle constant is unity.
  
  Geometrically, multiplying by e^iθ corresponds to rotating a
  complex number by an angle θ in the complex plane, which
  suggests a second interpretation of Euler’s identity:

  ~> A rotation by one turn is 1.

  √φ ≈ 4/π. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. 

  0.283... = 2 * (π - 3.00)

[0] phi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Alternative_forms

[1] tau https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto#sec-euler_s_identity

espeedon Powers of Two in Lexicographic Order

How does that work? ... Explanations invited.

Hold the 1 fixed. Notice in both sequences the remaining numbers are 3 interleaved ordered sets, in multiples of 2. Then watch this (just happened to post it two hours ago too)...

"Times Tables, Mandelbrot and the Heart of Mathematics" [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbuKbxJsk8

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20558797

NB: And once again we find cycloids hiding underneath it all.

espeedon GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

See comments in this previous thread from 31 days ago [1]...

Google Safety & Security Blog: An update on state-sponsored activity (2018) ...

Detecting and terminating activity on Google properties

"Actors engaged in this type of influence operation violate our policies, and we swiftly remove such content from our services and terminate these actors’ accounts. Additionally, we use a number of robust methods, including IP blocking, to prevent individuals or entities in Iran from opening advertising accounts."

---//---

[1] "An Open Letter to Google and Apple: Stop Hindering Iranian Entrepreneurs"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302547

espeedon GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

Yes, some of it is. See previous thread...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20302844

espeedon What Is Gaussian Curvature?

Yes. He wrote The Cuckoo's Egg for one. My uncle gave me the book when I was a kid. The first Java program I wrote was a sequence generator for the Morris Number Sequence [2] given to Stoll by Robert Morris Sr at the NSA: "What is the next number in the sequence 1, 11, 21, 1211, 111221?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg

espeedon Surprisingly popular

Notice the relationships between Dempster–Shafer theory -- AKA the theory of belief functions / evidence theory -- for reasoning with uncertainty...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dempster-Shafer_theory

espeedon Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

During periods of transition, it can help to take the meta perspective. Fox began its remake first. It began during the Obama administration. Hollywood is being tested now. Some have been late to get the memo.

espeedon Wind is outpacing coal as a power source in Texas for the first time

Texas has its own grid too. In the summer it's hot, and air conditioning consumes a lot...

"Power demand is highest in summer, primarily due to air conditioning use in homes and businesses. The region's all-time record peak hour occurred on July 19, 2018, when consumer demand hit 73,259 MW. A megawatt of electricity can power about 200 Texas homes during periods of peak demand."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection

espeedon Submit Your Claim in the Equifax Breach Settlement

espeedon CanvasKit – Skia and WebAssembly

The docs say it uses WebGL [1]. And I found a "fixed" pull-request saying it too [2].

   WebGL context encapsulated as an SkSurface, 
   allowing for direct drawing to an HTML canvas.

However, I just discovered this project a few hours ago so I don't know if there's any "gotchas" -- hopefully someone more knowledgeable or on the chrome/skia team will chime in.

[1] https://skia.org/user/modules/canvaskit

[2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/skia/issues/detail?id=8378

espeedon CanvasKit – Skia and WebAssembly

See the Skia/Flutter note below. Skia has been open-source since 2008 -- it's the wasm bit that's new.

https://skia.org/dev/flutter

espeedon CanvasKit – Skia and WebAssembly

It means you can now include Chrome's Skia vector graphics rendering engine as part of your custom code in WebAssembly (skia/wasm in Chrome or elsewhere).

See the Slug thread from earlier today for context...

Slug: Dynamic GPU Font Rendering and Advanced Text Layout https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20475111

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skia_Graphics_Engine

espeedon CanvasKit – Skia and WebAssembly

Here's one of the Skia Path Ops videos referenced in the Presentation section -- for some reason it links to slides but not the videos...

Skia Path Ops : High Performance Set Operations for Geometry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmfliNQsk88

espeedon Slug: Dynamic GPU Font Rendering and Advanced Text Layout

> webgl and WASM

I just found this...

Google's CanvasKit - Skia + WebAssembly

https://skia.org/user/modules/canvaskit