Hacker News Reader

tekni5on This AI Boom Will Also Bust

The talk mentions that there is a physical law to how many cores you can add to a CPU before it becomes useless, even with parallel computing.

tekni5on This AI Boom Will Also Bust

Very fascinating talk, and easy to understand.

Have there been any solutions proposed, in particular to the limitations of adding extra cores.

tekni5on Fidel Castro has died

The principles of communism aren't that different from capitalism, you work and get rewarded, the same way it happens right now. Communism is simply a system that places limits on individuals so that they do not exploit others and so they do not own the means of production. To avoid a concentration of resources/wealth for a small group of the population, because by just pure ownership and wealth such individuals can enslave humanity.

In my personal opinion, I don't think that if communism ever emerges it will be through forced means as it was before, I think it will occur naturally where Capitalism will simply fail in certain areas and the system will need to change.

For example say in 100 years, climate change causes enormous damage worldwide in various aspects of life. At this point perhaps governments will realize we can't just exploit raw resources, pollute and allow people to do what they want, so new economic systems emerge that utilize central planning and needs based production and distribution as to avoid harm, it will no longer be simply market driven. Just a rough example, of what could happen.

tekni5on Fidel Castro has died

It's more like everything is owned by society, people do what they can based on their ability & all their needs are met.

The initial concept is very theoretical, there are many gaps left.

tekni5on Fidel Castro has died

Just want to mention that actual communism has never been implemented on any significant scale, the Soviet Union for example never reached communism, arguably never even really reached socialism.

Marx suggested that communism will only emerge after the failure of capitalism. Every single communist regime has ignored this idea.

While I agree that many countries who have followed communist ideas have done some horrible things, the same can be said for every other system, including the current system we have now.

Furthermore pure capitalism has never really been tried either, because it begins to fail and government intervention is needed very quickly.

Actual communism doesn't really mean dictatorship, I think we might see a comeback of ideas related to communism & command style economies in the future. Especially if we start implementing Strong AI to better manage resources and trade. I could see a future where free market may not exist in the form we have it now, instead there might be a system focused on harm reduction managed by various planning systems, better and more careful resource allocation, etc.

Let's not forget that communist ideas also allowed many countries to industrialize rather quickly.

tekni5on Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

I just want to point out I'm not a Trump supporter, in fact I'm in Canada so I cannot vote in the US election. My original comment was just a general observation.

tekni5on Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

There are multiple factors addressed in the links I posted, loss of manufacturing jobs, employment opportunities, job quality, etc. I think you are getting hung up on semantics, when I made a fairly general statement, which might have been a little too broad but I don't feel it is an incorrect generalization about the current situation in many Western countries.

Speaking from my experience (note, I'm not even from the US, I'm from Canada) what I said appears to hold true, for example just the other week our finance minister told people get used to the job churn as the employment field has entirely changed. Recent graduates aren't able to pay off their student loans either, and the government as of today (November 1st) is issuing student loan payment halts on incomes below 25,000. On top of that the housing market in Canada is going insane, prices skyrocketing in multiple major cities for detached housing, while interest rates and growth is stagnate. If that's not a sign that things are getting worse, I'm not sure what is. As far as I can tell the news in other Western parts of the world is just as bad.

tekni5on Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

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

http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/05/01/in...

http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/working-paper-domesti...

https://www.amazon.com/When-Good-Jobs-Globalization--unioniz...

http://www.ledevoir.com/documents/pdf/CIBC-eqi_20150305.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/twec.12238/full

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/halshs-01301803.html

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-...

https://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/econrev/pdf/13q1tuzem...

https://www.princeton.edu/ceps/workingpapers/172farber.pdf

tekni5on Barack Obama: Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive

I agree that more funding in science and technology is what we need. But Barack Obama had more in common with the status quo than with what his commentary is suggesting.

There also seems to be a disconnect between what is being said in this article versus the reality. Yes there have been improvements in crime and poverty perhaps, but the quality of employment, the quality of general life for the average person in the West seems to have only degraded in the last decade or two.

I would also argue that the pace of technological advancement has decreased. Despite on-going advances in computer science, we have stalled in many other fields since the end of the cold war, in particular space.

tekni5on [dead]

This is the only issue that really worries me, Clinton might actually attempt to get some leverage over Russia as she says. In such a bold move, Russia will feel so cornered that it may break out into a major war, with possible use of limited nuclear weapons.

The western world doesn't understand the mentality of Russia, they have had two regime collapses this century already. Putin believes that everything needs to be done to avoid a third one.

I'm not even in the US, but have been following the election closely. What a circus, both candidates are horrible choices. But Clinton's foreign policy is what scares me, at least based on what I have heard so far.

Another concern is some type of civil unrest after the election.

tekni5on The way ahead

I think the last decade is a sign we are living in end stage Capitalism, perhaps it’s just the beginning and we will only see further economic stagnation, lower productivity, fewer jobs and a further increasing wealth gap. Finally there will be a series of economic failures, causing governments to make fundamental changes to the global economic system. Reassessing the parameters that define progress, productivity and advancement.

I envision that a new system will no longer rely on speculative market forces, but instead go back to command style economies powered by artificial intelligence. There might even be a rise of a new monetary system, which integrates harm reduction in some form.

tekni5on Cheapest Solar on Record Offered as Abu Dhabi Expands Renewables

Under 2.5 cents per a kWh is very cheap, but I'm guessing there are other costs like storage on top?

Anyways will be interesting to see for the future if solar actually becomes a more dominant source of energy worldwide.

tekni5on Microsoft will solve cancer within 10 years by reprogramming diseased cells

Bold claim, hope it's true.

I wonder if health related research will get a huge boost in funding and research in the near future, as tech billionaires get older and try to escape age related illnesses or death.

tekni5on [dead]

So where exactly is this scientific evidence?

All I see is incomplete arguments.

tekni5on Rock in the USSR: New photos of the Leningrad underground during perestroika

Still insanely popular among 20-30 somethings, was at a party the other day and someone started playing one of the songs on guitar probably 80-90% knew the lyrics and were singing along and these are Russians living in Canada.

tekni5on Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

Interesting, how do you heat the plate?

tekni5on Canadian surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes

I use one of these bristle brushes because I didn't know better, I've also even seen a few bristles fall out before & had me a bit concerned.

However I always end up microwaving for 30 seconds after, because by the time I've let the meat rest and turned off the grill my food isn't as warm as I want it.

So maybe I've been lucky, as I figure there would have been a reaction if there was metal in the microwave.

Anyways now I'm looking for an alternative, I'm thinking of using a large wooden spatula and let it conform to the grill overtime.

tekni5on Facebook rolls out code to nullify Adblock Plus’ workaround

Because if facebook blocked adblock users, then they would lose users that create free content for them, slowly but surely people would begin to abandon facebook.

tekni5on Facebook rolls out code to nullify Adblock Plus’ workaround

Would be funny if we eventually end up with some artificial intelligence algorithm that processes content on a webpage and modifies it for the end user to remove any content they don't want to see.

tekni5on Ask HN: What did your 'Show HN' project turn into?

Xibalba was fun, just beat it at 3 am.

tekni5on QuakeWorld by John Carmack (1996)

Something about reading about doom or quake development, that gives off so much nostalgia.

I hop back on QuakeWorld servers every few years, but the gameplay is just too crazy from what I remember, the people left playing it are simply too good.

tekni5on IBM is not doing "cognitive computing" with Watson

What is with the poor grammar and spelling errors?

"Recently they ran an ad featuring Bob Dylan which made laugh, or would have, if had made not me so angry."

"Ask anyone from that era about who Bob Dylan was and no one will tell you his main them was love fades."

"Dog’s don’s but Watson isn't as smart as a dog either."

etc

tekni5on What we learned in Seoul with AlphaGo

And written language is just a string of squiggly lines...

Are you seriously failing to understand the implications.

tekni5on Croteam releases Serious Sam Classics engine under GPL

That's great news, hopefully we will see projects/engines in the future using this, similar how Doom/Quake stuff is still being worked on.

I'm not familiar with the engine, is it any good and how does it compare to others?

tekni5on Gimp 2.9.2 Released

Are there any famous/popular graphic designers that use GIMP?

tekni5on Tesla owner drives 452 miles on single charge

I'm guessing you didn't watch the video or read the article, they didn't do anything special, just drove super slow on a very straight road.

tekni5on Russia now selling home-grown CPUs with Transmeta-like x86 emulation

I was doubting your comment, but after looking into it seems like all the Russian sources claim it to be around 200,000 rubles.

Does anyone have any idea why an average consumer, would even consider buying this at this price?

tekni5on Hand-picked space wallpapers for desktop and mobile

Nice collection, but please don't watermark wallpapers. Also would be nice to see the exact source of these images and the license.

tekni5on Shapeme – Evolve images using simulated annealing

Very cool, easy to test as well.

tekni5on The Anti-Facebook

It would be cool if someone in the neighborhood could purchase a device that would setup a local nextdoor type of service. It would show up as a wireless connection, once connected when they try to visit a website it would give them an explanation what this service offers and allow them to setup a profile. Only people within a certain distance would be able to connect, the network could be expanded with multiple devices. It would allow, decentralized networking based on geographic location. Users would also be allowed to create a backup of their profile and interactions for record keeping if they wish.

It could be very helpful for local discussion, community awareness, emergency communication (if the access points are kept off the main grid) and possibly even direct democratic voting for small local issues.

Sort of like a PirateBox, but more sophisticated non-anonymous local private social network. Not entirely sure if the technology exists to allow this to scale affordably to at least a block or two.