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gone35on Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?)

The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not...

(Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't afford to support or harden the feature, as some in the bug tracker suggest [1]. This is Google we are talking about, not some tiny open source project!)

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=333943

gone35on Slowing Down a Stock Exchange with 38 Miles of Cable

Related paper:

Edwin Wu. "Intentional Access Delays, Market Quality, and Price Discovery: Evidence from IEX Becoming an Exchange." SEC. Feb. 7, 2018. https://www.sec.gov/files/07feb18_hu_iex_becoming_an_exchang...

gone35on Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

I started working through the exercises and saw a dramatic drop in panic attacks. (https://i.imgur.com/P29BSRC.jpg)

That's an impressive, likely clinically significant effect, congratulations! May I ask what is the x axis in the graph?

gone35on Einstein, Symmetry and the Future of Physics

As others have commented, lots of physics errors and misunderstandings in this article. The author, K.C. Cole, has no business explicating physics she doesn't understand to the public. Expected more from Quanta Magazine...

gone35on Crustacean has never been seen away from Lake Merritt, but it's not from Oakland

"The science funders of the world have not lined up to support a Chilean expedition solely to establish the origin of an anonymous beach hopper."

How much would such an expedition cost? Surely something could be figured out --even if crowdfunded or something.

gone35on The Future of Nuclear Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World

Full report here:

http://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/The-Future-...

Bottom line is, as Forbes rather clickbaitily puts it [1], the main reason nuclear reactors can cost twice as much in the United States and Europe than in Asia is not regulation (or rather, not only regulation), but rather dumb stupid preventable factors like project/construction management failures, inexperienced subcontractors, starting construction before the design is complete, and so on --or so the study claims.

If so, then making nuclear cost-effective may be a stone's throw away, after all...

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/10/01/3-reason...

gone35on What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

Accept your data. According to one PI, success depends more on the people doing a project than on the topic of study; some people make their project work no matter what the topic is. Others block their own way to success because they require too much evidence. I, for one, have always been excessively critical of my own data. Although I am a meticulous experimenter, whenever my results seemed to confirm my hypothesis, I was afraid to accept them because I knew I was biased (it’s funny, I know). I was spending too much time looking for alternative explanations instead of accepting that I was on the right track and moving on to the next step. We have all heard about the reproducibility crisis — and I am not advocating the reckless publication of unverified data, or recommending being so careful that you end up publishing nothing — but there is a difference between being reckless and shooting yourself in the foot.

And this, fellows, is how you end up with the reproducibility crisis. Incentives are just all messed up.

gone35on Visual Quantum Physics

My two cents (as someone a bit more familiar with this stuff):

I don't think there is a single universal skill at play. Much like reading code, I think it depends on your familiarity with the specific 'programming language' in which the code/argument is written: show, say, Lisp to a Javascript-only programmer, and they would likely get stuck as well.

In this particular case, I happen to be familiar with this particular dialect of mathematical physics (and its style of argumentation), so I was able to follow along. But show me, say, some crazy algebraic number theory stuff, and I would be totally lost.

Going back to your question, then, I suggest getting familiar with the particular mathematical 'dialect' (and, I cannot emphasize more, style of argumentation) you are interested in.

For example, in this particular case, I would read up on --and, ideally, develop some 'muscle memory' for-- (some) differential equations and multivariate differential calculus using, say, Khan Academy.

(A bit of familiarity with the somewhat non-constructive style of argument of 'modern' classical mechanics wouldn't hurt either.)

gone35on Visual Quantum Physics

If you want to skip to the more visual stuff, see the gallery of videos:

http://www.visualquantumphysics.org/?page_id=397

This one, in particular, I find amazing:

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

(Even if you have studied this stuff before, 'seeing' the solutions in this way is pretty cool IMO.)

gone35on An Illustrated Theory of Numbers (2017)

Why no full e-book version, if I may ask?

gone35on Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings? (2017)

Lots of "talk about feelings" in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BC); or even the Old Testament, for that matter...

Such a disappointing article.

gone35on The Bookish Life: How to Read and Why

Crudely, I guess you could sort of track the "Bayesian surprise" you get by reading a book by measuring changes in skin conductance --essentially tracking how many "frissons" you get while reading maybe? (I really don't know tho...)

gone35on A step toward systems that can assess competence using neurological data

Thank you! It may be of interest to lots of people here in HN (and elsewhere) with similar phenotypic profiles; so if you ever have a chance, please post more details if you don't mind! It could benefit a lot of people.

gone35on A step toward systems that can assess competence using neurological data

Interesting. What specific mutation/SNP[s] is it?

gone35on David Patterson Says It’s Time for New Computer Architectures and Languages

Bad performance isn't really a software design problem; it's an economics problem (ditto for security).

Why do you say so?

gone35on David Patterson Says It’s Time for New Computer Architectures and Languages

As part of one of those "45 hardware startups" (in stealth mode) trying to tackle the problem, I think nevertheless there is plenty of fat to trim just on the software side still... I mean, just look at that very page: 200 MB [edit: in memory consumption] for a single static article!

Information-theorically at least, I bet that is another 10-100x speedup opportunity right there (and next multi-billion dollar industry, perhaps)...

gone35on How Mammals Maintain Symmetry During Development

Original article:

Roselló-Díez A., Madisen L., Bastide S., Zeng H., Joyner A.L. "Cell-nonautonomous local and systemic responses to cell arrest enable long-bone catch-up growth in developing mice." PLoS Biol. 2018 Jun 26;16(6):e2005086. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2005086

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

gone35on A Failure of Academic Quality Control [pdf]

[W]e could find no evidence that physicians ever used electromechanical vibrators to induce orgasms in female patients as a medical treatment [for hysteria].

I always thought that whole "Victorian physicians used vibrators to treat female hysteria" thing seemed fishy...

We examined every source that Maines cites in support of her core claim. None of these sources actually do so.

I wonder if, when NLP is sufficiently robust, one could automate this fact-checking process en masse...

gone35on Ask HN: How to do branding as a non-designer?

See maybe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17139224

gone35on Global Center for Advanced Studies

See also the Chicago Theological Seminary [1]; this article by Adam Rang of E-Residency [2] on "Virtual Institutes"; and this old NSF initiative [3] on "Science Across Virtual Institutes". (Just thinking on global/distributed alternatives to traditional institutes of advanced study / research institutes...)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Theological_Seminary

[2] https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/could-virtual-institutes...

[3] https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121825

gone35on Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job

Yeah: the account 'for friends' is called "frinsta" (or something) nowadays.

gone35on The Humanities Are in Crisis

> [student] debt

I think this (more than even perhaps the Great Recession itself) is the determining factor in the 'crisis'... And probably a socioeconomic time-bomb to boot (from [1, caveat lector]):

> [...] Both "solutions" to the higher education crisis from the conservatives and the mainstream liberal consensus are in fact not solutions at all. The right wants to give up on educating the working and poor classes after high school, whereas the liberal position has become increasingly dangerous to the economic future of the younger generation via student debt.

I'm betting the next global recession will be student-loan driven. And with serious, non-trivial sociopolitical consequences (at least in the US).

[1] Creston Davis, "The Education Impasse in the USA". Counterpunch. August 21, 2018.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/21/the-education-impass...

gone35on AI at Google: our principles

So true. I'm increasingly finding myself having to 'play' the recommendation algorithm strategically, just to keep my own political sanity...

gone35on A guide for how to talk to a developer

And an API is not quite "A set of rules that developers follow to create software that can interact with an external system or application" [emphasis added]... (Gives the impression of a design pattern or something, IMO)

This is awful.

gone35on Write Emails Faster with Smart Compose in Gmail

[H]ighly anonymized global corpus of consumer email.

What do you mean by "highly anonymized"? What specific privacy notion are you using, and what is the (demonstrably unavoidable) tradeoff you are de facto threading between utility and privacy?

gone35on Causes and consequences of the Sicilian Mafia

They do [1]. That's just a summary.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w24115

gone35on OpenAI Charter

Very briefly though, because it's way easier to leak code than to obtain source material and tools to weaponize a deadly virus.

True, but perhaps AGI would require substantial, non-trivial supercomputing resources as well...

gone35on OpenAI Charter

*She ---but yeah, as a first-order approximation, that's in the vicinity of it. Thanks!

gone35on OpenAI Charter

No, not quite. I strongly suggest you familiarize yourself with the gain-of-function bioethics literature and recent debates, to get a better sense of what I'm trying to convey.

gone35on OpenAI Charter

Wow; I would strongly recommend you to re-think your position! Think of it in terms of, e.g., gain-of-function research in virology (cf. [1]).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/