projectant

You're a talented designer. You should work for Apple or something. They need you! :)

So creative, Martin! Is this inspired by those 'futuristic' human machine interfaces in movies, such as 'Minority Report'? Was this inspired at all by small devices, like Apple Watch?

caveats: no external images, no custom fonts, no other iframes ( but this can be a positive as it removes ads ). Try it on google search result page, github, bloomberg, etc. It produces a 'text only' image of the page -- only inline images included. pages with lots of external stylesheets take a while ( 10 - 15 seconds ). some sites ( youtube, flickr ) just give a mostly blank page.

caveats: no external images, no custom fonts, no other iframes ( but this can be a positive as it removes ads ). Try it on google search result page, github, bloomberg, etc. It produces a 'text only' image of the page. big pages take a while ( 10 - 15 seconds ). some sites ( youtube, flickr ) just give a mostly blank page.

https://imgur.com/sHWA4kp example image of search results

you can also save your github repository as an image https://imgur.com/1fqrCt2

i think this, learning of hierarchies, could be the start of something relevant to unlocking more workable language modelling

https://blog.openai.com/learning-a-hierarchy/

No offence, but with a megabyte of text per speaker I feel I could do better with word n-gram Markov models (even bigrams), and random path choice.

I think deep learning is great and all ( and I'm meaning to learn it ) but shouldn't it be able to do far better than Markov models, or other simple things?

Image captioning? Incredible. Deep Mind winning video games? Incredible. Style transfer? Incredible. With one exception ( I saw on HN ages ago, sorry I have no link -- it basically generates novel text using deep learning, across all sorts of genres, such as "academic paper", "math paper", "novel", "film script" and I found the results remarkable and interesting ) I question if many text applications are doing better than Markov.

I think the issue is there is something fundamental and sophisticated about human language which our current deep learning models, with all their omniscient benevolence ( or whatever ), are missing. There's something deep about the structure of language that we are not modelling yet in deep learning as far as I've seen. When we do .... boom ... computers that learn from the internet and amaze us all. Then we'll have something to shine, smile about or fear.

Sorry for the digression and what may be inapplicable comparisons. I can get impassioned about this topic.

Ah, provenance! So cool, thanks :)

OMG. That is really hilarious.

Reminds me of the "self-guided smart slug" from Cory Doctorow's Down and out in the magic kingdom, p.17 [0]

Incredible live-fire test video of bullets changing course mid flight to hit moving targets. [1]

[0]: http://craphound.com/down/Cory_Doctorow_-_Down_and_Out_in_th... [pdf]

[1]: http://www.military.com/video/ammunition-and-explosives/ammu... [video]

Trying to achieve the trust you are is very interesting.

I put up a simple, installable, progressive offline app of this crypto here: https://semocracy.com/

This app doesn't yet contain the mediations you talk about of checking the sw code against a 3rd-party reference and warning when an update doesn't match the reference.

Even considering the limitation you discuss when the new worker terminates async requests of the old worker, checking a public log is useful -- do you have any code or boilerplate I could plug in to achieve that?

Also, would the following be useful? The worker stores the 3rd party log / reference at intervals in local storage, and then when updatefound occurs, it doesn't need to make a network request, it can check (not perfectly) if the new sw code matches the stored reference. Sometimes there will be false negatives because the reference updated before the sw checked, but I think there would be no false positives. As long as the new worker can't get to localstorage before the old one checks, could be okay.

Usual caveats for home-made crypto apply.

TL;DR - treat this as you would home-made beer from someone you don't know. You'd probably hold it at arms length, have a smell, and maybe try the taste...but you wouldn't start selling it in your hip bar without knowing anything about it!

Anyway, hope others interested in crypto can enjoy this. I am not a crypto-expert, just a moderately-talented-at-crypto-hobbyist, or somethin. Code: https://github.com/dosyago-coder-0/dosycrypt

Running down the list of attributes was a really interesting historical look at the design trajectory of HTML.

There's some good ideas in there, that nevertheless became obsolete.

Many things I didn't know, such as: datasrc, datafld and dataformatas attributes for declaring dynamically generated content.

Yeah it's not clear. Sorry about that.

The form is just a mailto form to test how mailto links are handled in your browser / setup.

The real purpose is to use the bookmarklet at the bottom of the page on GMail.

The real question is why didn't I just change it and make it more clear? I don't know. I like mailto / protocol forms. They're pretty cool. Sending data from browser to almost anywhere, not just HTTP POST and GET. I really like that. One reason is it signals the vast affects you can have with something so simple as plain old HTML.

Ok, I'll make the font-size of the Bookmarklet bigger. Done

Edit: I also noticed the Runkit site is slow sometimes. Here is a CodePen version in case anyone needs it: https://codepen.io/dosy/full/aLMOBQ

This is the type of crime, that by definition, nobody who has the power to investigate wants to investigate.

This most likely was payback for exposing someone's offshore holdings, and the response was chosen to send a message: "Do not expose", and was done in such a bald-faced way that this crime's occurrence presupposes the existence of the very corruption needed to facilitate getting away with it, that any investigation would need to uncover.

TL;DR - that a crime like this, which requires corruption to execute and get away with, can happen, presupposes the investigative apparatus is unable to investigate it, with high probability.

Hatha yoga.

Maybe it's about cutting costs for new project ramp up, or maybe they are trying to get rid of leakers / security threats / bad eggs, or both.

- Accumulation of many titles, not always held by the General Secretary. Sometimes this is Xi gaining a title of an already existing leadership group, sometimes he has created new groups, such as the "Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development" ( which is about funding military industries, sort of like the US military-industrial model ). Titles like this mean he has effective policy control over many branches of China's administration. His ability to create new groups shows his ability to reform the bureaucratic hierarchy.

- Anti corruption campaign, restore legitimacy in party with regard to people's opinions, level some playing fields, purge the party of corruption and also strengthen ideological and political support for Xi.

- Xi has been called "The Core", this term was only ever used for Mao and Deng.

- Anti-corruption has also focused on military. Result seems to be Xi has greater control of and greater loyalty from the military.

- The PLA garrison in HK broke tradition this year to address Xi as "Chairman", instead of "Commander" --a first. Perhaps this reflects that while usually the leader also Chairs the Central Military Commission, as Xi does, Xi's power is less figurehead and more effective.

- Xi has achieved many things internationally that have not been done by China ever: first overseas military base, in Africa; taking control of disputed islands in its coastal waters in defiance of neighbours; creation of the ambitious, "One Belt One Road", infrastructure, trade and investment project, to expand China's influence along a "new silk road" Westward; and exercised tighter control over old and new media, with very effective online censorship.

- In summary, he does a lot, has made many changes, is always in the news cycle as an effective leader, and has presided over a very successful period for China both with regard to domestic growth and stability, and international standing and ambitious expansion.

What, like a--a Puppetberg?

You're right I do think there is great harm from wrongspeech. A lot of people think this as well, and there is already alot of social pressure ( good term ) used to police speech on Twitter, blogs, IRL, etc. And there is already some legislative allowance to police narratives that cause harm, specifically, I think regarding hate/terrorist speech ( I'm thinking UK ).

I don't think the risk is zero, the risk of getting any of this wrong is catastrophic. But I do think the risk is manageable. The reason it's manageable is because we can keep revising our notions through keeping the conversation going, as is currently happening. And we can keep mitigating effects through checks and balances.

So I think all this is very good, but it's not enough. Why?

To become truly effective, we need to spread from minority-awareness to majority-awareness of these issues. We need to start debating and discussing these ideas en masse. We already have "people in power" ( social power ) deciding the best way to speak, and now that these notions have moved out of the fringe and academia and into the mainstream, and are being applied to ordinary discourse IRL, we need to have everybody getting in on the conversation and debate. Otherwise how can these concepts truly become effective? These norms have to apply to and reflect and get buy-in from everybody, not just people who are working to change society. And the law is how you apply a norm universally.

Second to this, I think it's good optics. It shows we ( in the West / in America ) have the courage of our convictions, and crucially, I think, it sets a good example for the rest of the world, showing that America still has moral authority, by crystallising some of the paramount achievements of its social justice and security movements in delineating forms of speech that cause harm. It could be helpful if these people are rewarded and supported by the institutions which have for so long disenfranchised them, by having their hard work encoded in legislation. Some progress is already being made in places like Canada and Sweden, and especially in the UK. So I think your view that we are still in the "social pressure only" period is a little naive. It's already happened. It just isn't complete yet. All I'm really advocating for, I think, is that we use the already shifting tide toward legislative remedy to increase debate converation and engagement on these issues across society.

So in a sense, the controversy and discussion we are having about these, even in this thread on HN, is exactly what's needed.

I agree there is a disconnect with many on HN, or in SV, or in USA on the specifics of these issues, even tho these demographics are predominantly liberal ( I think ). We still have campus sexual assault, workplace sexual misconduct, and then there's always the not so harmful stubborn libertarians in tech. But I think there is alignment on the heart of these issues. So I'm trying to address the resistance to that. I mean, maybe the majority still doesn't see the value in policing of wrongspeech even after years of social justice activism and engagement, but that's why more work needs to be done.

I think that it's still a hotbutton issue, and there is still social inertia to discuss it openly because of how uncomfortable it can be, so I think that people who support these issues are staying silent on this thread. Also this discussion is quite meta so people may not be sure how to come into it, even if they are normally active in social justice or social safety. And if HN really disagreed with these notions outright, I'd except dozens of downvotes and it to be flagged into invisibility. There have actually been upvotes and downvotes, and the down has won narrowly. Maybe that means majority HN disagrees, or maybe we're still just uncomfortable to talk, or it could just be a small sample?

But even if HN is against this in the majority, the trend outside HN is clear. Social pressure is widespread, legislation is already happening, now is the time for mass social engagement, discussion, and debate. People need to feel involved in the conversation in order to buy-in and for these notions to become effective and applied universally.

Look, at the end of the day, maybe I'm absolutely and totally wrong. And maybe Orwell foresaw our future with all its nuanced and intersectional issues and complications. And maybe everyone on this side who are already tirelessly policing wrongspeech online and IRL are wrong, too. Maybe we'll all look back and cringe, or laugh, or whatever, at this time. But that's why we need to expand the conversation. Wrong and right will be decided by the collective. Maybe we can't say how this will play out.

I get the innate resistance to policing wrongspeech, but there's also a lot of existing buy-in to these ideas we can work with already regarding this demographic ( geek feminist code of conduct for OS projects, for example ) and I think for this demographic there's actually more to like about it than it seems at first. I put a lot of the gut rejection of this trend to the easy association with 1984, and how that prematurely suffocates thinking and debate, "Oh my god, it's like 1984 Orwellian dystopian nightmare, run!" But if we don't create a more fair and safe society by policing the speech that supports violence, hatred and harm, don't we end up with our own kind of nightmare? Maybe no genius lit dude has written that dystopia famously, but it might be just as scary and as horrible a place to be. At least I think so.

I just want to apologise for the length. Sometimes I find it takes too much effort to condense and maintain meaning. I'm really sorry.

> No it is not.

It really is. How else can we move forward without discussing these things as a collective? It's no good if just one group decides the rules for everybody. Laws need to reflect society's norms.

> just unrealistic.

I'm sorry but I don't accept that we ought to abandon progress because it seems unrealistic. Self landing reusable rockets seemed unrealistic. International flight seemed unrealistic. Even progress on women's or PoC's issues seemed unrealistic.

If you're okay with letting people get hurt while things proceed at the natural, ambling pace of society, or whatever, because it's too hard to do otherwise, I get that, but I'm not okay with that. I think we have a duty to make things better for people. And there's no way to do that unilaterally, it has to be inclusive of the diversity of our societies, and build on the work that everyone before us has done, otherwise we're just reinforcing the existing power structures and narratives.

This kind of legislation, supporting the work people are already doing in their lives and online on places like Twitter, and Reddit, etc, would be ground breaking. And it's really not off topic, because it's the exact same type of legislation as deciding, as a society, which materials, or speech, or narrative are too harmful to be consumed or propagated. Material and speech that supports oppression and structural disadvantage is harmful, isn't it? As is material and speech that supports terrorism and violence. Maybe these things don't affect the majority, or happen all the time, but that's sort of the point.

I understand it's not easy, I understand the hassle, I understand the gut instinct to avoid anything that seems to impinge upon freedom, but some of our seeming "freedoms" are actually based on unsustainable practices, such as when our "freedom" to express a particular idea, only reinforces oppression, or normalizes violence, that ultimately hold everyone back. And policing some forms of speech, or narrative, or information as unacceptable helps make a free and just society. We shouldn't tolerate everything, especially not things that harm us. Take an example from biology, cells have walls for a reason, they are permeable, but they don't just let everything in.

I agree things move slowly. But that's why strong efforts are needed. And I also agree that so many people have become involved in this work, and I think that's why legislation needs to take some of the burden. I mean, the groundswell is an indication of a norm, no? And thank you for giving your consent for me to reply here, but as this is not just a conversation between you and me, I don't think that's appropriate nor required, because other people are reading and interested in what we say. It was good to talk! And I respect the way you made your points. I think they are a good way to live, but probably not a good way to progress society.

Looks a bit weird in Edge.

First, that things have "always been" one way does not mean they should remain so. And "people are people" is not excuse for bad behaviour. People can choose to be good or bad.

Second, there are a really big bunch of clear rules about how to talk and the things it is okay to say and think that are being worked out right now. It doesn't equate with talking "nice". I'll give some examples:

- Use the name and pronoun and non-binary person requests you use, [1]

- Don't ask a transgender person what their "real name" is. [2]

- Stop Using Diminutives [3]

- Do not say racism is over because we have a black president. [4]

- Don't say #AllLiveMatter, nor that you can where whatever you want, nor that black culture is disrespecting women [5]

- Don't think reverse racism is a thing [6]

- Don't say things that suggest physical contact or simulated physical contact [7]

- Do not say, “Hey baby,” or “Hi cutie.” [8]

- Acknowledge your privilege [9]

- Do not center yourself, tone police or victim blame [10]

For twitter examples of people policing ways of talking and thinking ( but bearing that burden without legislative support ), see: and [11], and [12] for some examples, and see [13] for it beginning to happen with the help of law enforcement at the intersection with civilian-enabled speech policing.

This is not fascism because this was created by the American and UK left, these are the same people who railed against Trump, drive changes in the civil rights and social justice movements, and love freedom. This group clearly has the best chance of contributing significantly to the debate about rules and laws for right and wrong ways for people to think and talk. If you go against that, you're pretty much in the wrong. And they've already making progress on getting this accepted across society.

What I'm saying is that, the work is currently being done without legislative backing, and starting a formal, whole-society debate by beginning to introduce legislation is, I believe, the right way forward.

[1]: https://www.transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding... [2]: https://www.glaad.org/transgender/allies [3]: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/07/5-ways-men-can-respect-... [4]: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/08/23/99-ways-to-respect-bla... [5]: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/things-white-people-stop-sa... [6]: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/melody-moezzi/ten-things-whit... [7]: https://geekfeminism.org/about/code-of-conduct/ [8]: http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/male-allies/ho... [9]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-lawrence/how-to-be... [10]: http://www.guidetoallyship.com/#the-work-of-allyship [11]: https://twitter.com/search?q=thanks%20for%20mansplaining&src... [12]: https://twitter.com/search?q=check%20your%20privilege&src=ty... [13]: https://twitter.com/search?q=racism%20report%20%40metpoliceu...

It's a very good question.

As to a condition required for this to operate safely, I think it depends on having a clear set of morals and values in society that we agree on. The West has lost that after the boom post WWII. Maybe it will find its way back, and "moral authority" will be something people mostly agree on again. I think the way we get there is by debate, so we need to be able to openly talk about and criticise a whole range of ideas, nothing should be off the table during the debating phase.

As to the operation of it with supervision, hopefully, for those of us in democracies, it operates in the same way that our democracies operate, where the guards of the people are guarded by the people. At least, that's the idea, right?

It's a compelling-sounding point, but it lacks nuance.

While I don't think many are advocating for a "fantasy land" with magic oracles to give us Perfect Truth, we can certainly approach the truth of guilt or innocence, using the courts and their accreted layers of checks and balances, such as appeals, standards of proof, and revisionable legal doctrines.

And when we reasonably dispense with the requirement of "Perfect Knowledge" we are left with the imperfect but practical and broadly satisfactory result that when the courts have adjudicated someone is guilty, they most likely are. This guilt "beyond reasonable doubt" means the system is able to express and satisfy what you ( I think ) rightly say is the sense of a decent chunk of people that death is appropriate for some crimes ( not saying I agree with it being so ). That we can approach truth "to within some epsilon" seems even more correct regarding the death penalty in the US, where, at the end of death row, you've now been through many appeals ( I think, I'm no expert ).

So shifting things back from your analogy to adjudication of which materials are "extremist" (or whatever language the actual proposed bill uses), I agree ( and I think few would dissent ) that we cannot magically know for sure whether it is or isn't so, but I want to expand your thinking to encompass the idea that we can approach the truth of whether it is or isn't, with a reasonable deal of accuracy.

And given we ought to be able to approach such a judgement reasonably accurately, I feel a system like this will be able to express the notion that: censorship or banning or punishment for propagation or use of some materials and information is a reasonable punishment, because those informations are so harmful.

So, not perfect, but mostly effective, is how I would wrap that up.

A second, more general, point this leads me to is that our systems do not begin as perfect, they evolve, and we must be prepared, as a collective of people, to take risks in order that we have progress.

When new laws and so on are introduced we are not experts in them, and there is fallout, and we make mistakes, and innocent people get hurt, but society makes progress. I think the risks we are prepared to take ought to be proportional to the reduction in harm achievable, and with things like terrorist propaganda, we are talking about significant harm, and the chance to reduce it. So, to risk wrongful imprisonment, is not perfect, and it's a tragedy to innocents, but I think it's an acceptable risk given the consequences of a failure to intervene.

It would certainly be nice to ensure zero harm is ever done, but in practice, we do not have such magic oracles to tell us how to achieve that, so on the road to progress, and getting results that improve us, we fuck up and people get hurt. It's not to condone in any way that this happens, but we must face the reality that this happens, be motivated by that reality to improve those false positives, and recognize that as we make introduce new laws and norms and make efforts to intervene and improve society, there are risks, just like with any new technology.

Ultimately I think society decides whether the risks are worth the potential improvement.

I fail at many things everyday, but I did not fail in the way you meant because I did not use 1984 as a neat metaphor.

What I meant was people use it as a neat metaphor, by likening anything that smells in anyway similar to 1984 with something bad, and unworthy of further consideration, thereby prematurely stunting critical debate.

Hilariously, such blinkered thinking, and confinement to a limited set of goodthink far afield from anything they could paint as similar to 1984, is the very rigidly-controlled result those people, who prematurely shutdown debate by invoking 1984, pretend to be against!

My only failing here is conveying this to you clearly. I'm sorry.

Which state? Because China's rise is corroborated by governments and press worldwide. Not sure if you're suggesting they're all in on your conspiracy. But even if they were it would probably take a lot of money and influence to buy them all off as mouthpieces, so either way, China rose. If you still doubt it, visit & see for yourself.

Yes, and China is doing very well with regard to economic planning, infrastructure, GDP, development and raising of the middle class standards without democracy, and has done for 70+ years and the Chinese have a long history of being able to govern competently.

I tend to agree.

Just come out at the start honestly and say, "All 3 billion accounts affected at Yahoo", or whatever.

I feel angry when I see the numbers gradually going up, I think one reason is because I see it like they're trying to dupe us, or "cook the frog slowly".

I understand they have to protect "shock" to their stock price, or reputation, or prevent panic, but honesty is still valuable, right?

When you have a natural disaster, surely there are experts who have already mapped out such situations and they can say, roughly 20,000 homes will be destroyed in an event like this. Wouldn't it be good to start off at a big estimate and then revise down?

I hate to think this is to some extent driven my the media's need to "drip drip" out a story, instead of giving people the truth.

I think theoretically more not less sounds technically correct, the problem is we seem to already been enveloped in too much information. So there has to be some filtering, and filtering is basically editorializing, so who decides?

I don't know if I'm right. And I don't know if I'm advancing even a coherent idea about this.

I think in reality people do justify violence by the narratives they are exposed to. I think they see other people justifying hate and violence with these narratives, and they think to do it as well. I think narrative can give a concrete form to a pre-existing hate, frustration, anger or disatisfaction, and narrate a villain responsible for that feeling. These narratives inform and shape a person's worldview and their notions of who or what is responsible for how they feel and things they see happening. Narrative is an incredibly powerful way to guide people's actions.

Observe this: your narrative about the weakness of narrative in determining action, guides us to believe we ought not regulate narrative. You're shaping reality using the very tool you are saying cannot be used to shape it!

Double-think extraordinaire! No offence to you, just trying to (en)lighten this up.