Hacker News Reader

helllllllloooon Bitcoin at 11k in 2019 versus Bitcoin at 11k in 2017

Buying just because the market is going up fast is a bad idea for anything so if you didn't already hold bitcoin buying now because the market is going up is foolish. You'd be buying in at the highest price for a year. Doesn't really matter what the underlying driving force is.

Either way the article is pretty worthless and anyone holding BTC would obviously like to encourage others to buy and drive up the price.

helllllllloooon Bitcoin at 11k in 2019 versus Bitcoin at 11k in 2017

Here come the articles trying to pump the price up even higher. Buyer beware.

helllllllloooon Google rejects plans to fight sexual harassment and boost diversity

Within this context the removal of the policy for contractors helps protect them from sexual harassment by increasing the potential downside for those doing the harassment.

helllllllloooon There is no general AI: Why Turing machines cannot pass the Turing test

It's still incredibly complex. Reliably handling an area like downtown SF requires a robot to detect, understand and predict a lot of diverse human behavior. All the edge cases lead me to think there will be a supervisory driver in the car for a long time unless we constrain the environment further.

helllllllloooon There is no general AI: Why Turing machines cannot pass the Turing test

Industrial robotics are very well constrained and the environment can be adapted to them which is why they're successful. Was thinking more about consumer robotics of which robo vacuum is the only real autonomous product right now.

IMO the answer is that it's very hard to build reliable robots + AI even in simple environments and AVs are still very dependant on the driver. The size of the potential market if it pays off is huge but removing the driver completely is going to take a long time.

helllllllloooon There is no general AI: Why Turing machines cannot pass the Turing test

Sure. I get the value proposition. Just seems strange that we don't have more examples of constrained autonomous robotics products beyond factory/warehouses and vacumns. IMO the answer is that it's very hard to build reliable robots + AI even in simple environments and AVs are still very dependant on the driver.

helllllllloooon There is no general AI: Why Turing machines cannot pass the Turing test

Hasn't the Turning test been discredited as a test of general AI?

Overall from reading the abstract it seems like a pretty obvious conclusion. Same applies to robotics where the only successful cases are very constrained.

It has recently occured to me to ask why we have decided to try solve autonomous driving before solving any other seemingly easier robotics problems. Other than robo-vacuums, which aren't particularly complex, we have jumped straight to trying to solve one of the hardest unconstrained robotics and AI challenges in automotive environments.

edit: Getting downvoted, if you disagree could you reply with why?

helllllllloooon The average person’s reading speed is slower than commonly thought

My issue is concentration. Once an article looses my interest I find it very difficult to keep reading without skipping chunks. Do others find it easy to read things that they aren't interested in but have to read for work etc.? As someone who used to have to read a lot of academic papers for my PhD I found my mind wandering a lot and often impossible to make it through some content.

helllllllloooon Uber data reveals motoring slower than walking in many cities

The number of times I've seen people in the US wait for their Uber/Lyft to pick them up exactly where they are instead of crossing a road that would make it easier and faster for the driver astounds me.

People here seem to optimize for low effort more than their time. Same reason why people stand on escalators. If they cared about time they'd walk up it.

helllllllloooon When Boris Yeltsin Went Grocery Shopping in Clear Lake

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/werner-herzog-gorbachev

Recent Werner Herzog interview talking about interviewing Gorbachev. He discusses a little about the Yeltsin years following and puts Putin's popularity in context of how bad things were during Yeltsin's term. Worth a listen if you have 20 minutes.

helllllllloooon Naked mole-rats: A case study in biological weirdness

"They don't age" but what causes then to only live only until "30+ years old" in a zoo?

helllllllloooon Third fatal Tesla Autopilot crash renews questions about the system

Imo the cases where autopilot fails should be a subset of where humans fail. If it's failing in places where humans wouldn't then there's an issue.

helllllllloooon Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

Where does it say an employee has to have fixed 8 hour day? It's a false dicotomy.

helllllllloooon Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

That doesn't address the point.

helllllllloooon Uber Drivers Are Contractors, Not Employees, Labor Board Says

Why does "freedom and flexibility to work on their own time" have anything to do with whether they are employees of the company or not? Both can easily be true together.

helllllllloooon Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name (2015)

Tried to use Apple's email client on a friend's phone to send and email to myself and 1 other person. I entered both emails with a space between them and it didn't handle it considering it a single email address. Tried to go back to add a comma between them and I could no longer select the space. Finially added a comma and the client didn't recognize it as a delimiter. In the end I deleted the addresses and started again finially figuring out what it wanted. Generally I'm confused by Apple's great reputation for design.

The back button being furthest place away from the thumb on the iPhone was another thing that never made sense. I think ppl just get used to it but a lot of the good design is really good marketing.

helllllllloooon Catheter navigates autonomously inside hearts in preclinical tests

OPs HN title:

> Autonomous Driving Inside the Heart

HN title is different from the article and frankly terrifying given the state of autonomous driving

helllllllloooon Twilio Super SIM

Any idea what the approximate pricing per GB is and how it scales with more devices?

helllllllloooon Facebook: Breaking Up Facebook Is Not the Answer

Written by Nick Cleg, who now works for Facebook - the Lib Dem party leader in the UK who destroyed the party for ten years by making a deal with the conservative government to enable them to implement an unpopular adgenda while acheiving nothing he promised to his voters.

For anyone from the UK, using Nick Clegg as a representative to help improve FBs reputation seems laughable.

helllllllloooon U.S. regulators approve the Long-Term Stock Exchange

Sure. But how do these rules prevent speculation?

helllllllloooon U.S. regulators approve the Long-Term Stock Exchange

I agree. I just don't understand how the rules described in the article actually incentive it. I get that they're small step towards it but they don't seem enough.

helllllllloooon U.S. regulators approve the Long-Term Stock Exchange

Exactly. To make it a long term stock market there needs to be some incentives that make it so and imo the ones stated don't seem enough to deter short term thinking. Maybe there are some other rules that aren't listed in the article.

helllllllloooon U.S. regulators approve the Long-Term Stock Exchange

I don't really see how the rules mentioned will change things that much.

> asking companies to limit executive bonuses that award short-term accomplishments.

Why would I care as an investor? I still want the stock to go up quickly. Executives own stock and without a cash bonus wouldn't this incentive trying to get quick increases in stock value.

> more disclosure to investors about meeting key milestones and plans, and reward long-term shareholders by giving them more voting power the longer they hold the stock

Seems relatively minor vs the benefits of a stock jumping significantly in a short time. As a minor stock holder I have no interest in voting power. There still isn't a downside to short term deals.

helllllllloooon Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

Would be very interested to see the economics if drivers could set their own pricing.

helllllllloooon Creating an Institution That Lasts 10k Years

Fair enough, if you think mere symbolism is more important than putting the money ($42M) towards tangable things like childhood education which has an actual 70 year impact. Having so much time and money to spend on symbolism is pretty obnoxious when there are actual long term issues we can actually solve for real people.

helllllllloooon Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

Obviously not. They're striking.

helllllllloooon Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

> but this is a gig / 'work only when you want

This is not 'a work only when you want' job. People do it full time to feed their families and after doing it for years find it difficult to move to a different role for a variety of factors. I'm sure they would go get a better paying job elsewhere if it was easy.

It used to be a 40 hour job when they joined but Uber/Lyft have gradually reduced earnings. Now it's 60-70 hour a week job. That's the problem. The gig work/contractor aspect of Uber/Lyft is a smokescreen to avoid paying minimum wage. The drivers are doing it because they have to but the work conditions are pretty bad. Hence the strike.

helllllllloooon Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

Is the plan for the original investors to sell their stock to regular investors before the whole thing tanks? They make their money and whoever followed is left holding the cheque. Seems like a Ponzi scheme as it's been clear for years these companies are not going to be profitable any time soon.

helllllllloooon San Francisco proposes “IPO tax” on eve of Uber offering

Supply and demand issues can be addressed at both ends. The US is a large place and only a few cities have these issues. What's wrong with the jobs being elsewhere in the US in cities with more capacity if people are moving to the jobs anyway?

helllllllloooon San Francisco proposes “IPO tax” on eve of Uber offering

People move to SF to work. If companies decide to start elsewhere it spreads out demand for housing.