terryf

As a foreigner who travels to the US on occasion - and therefore doesn't actually have an US zip code - what's up with that? If you have a keypad installed anyway, then why the hell not accept the chip reader with pin code? Not complaining or anything, but it's quite baffling. Nowhere else in the world that I've seen, they don't restrict payments to locals....

Sales also has a different culture than development. Sales really is brutal and soul wrenching in a completely different way than software is (yeah, I've been on both sides, less on sales part).

The measurability of money has two sides - one is that you can argue for a commission, the other is that it's very easy to point to numbers that say you didn't really sell anything this month.

In sw dev, if you're mildly competent, you can coast for many months, if not years.

So, essentially it comes down to different risk/reward profiles . Which of course selects for the right kind of people and the cycle feeds itself.

They do. Video here from 7 years ago that talks about it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/click-crash-course-moder...

Basically, they do speculative execution with register renaming to get quick turn-around if the memory is available in cache.

It really is quite crazy how much faster the cpu is than memory and what tricks it pulls to get around that problem.

Exactly - consciousness is clearly an emergent phenomena of these kinds (and possibly other kinds) of interactions in your brain due to the large scale.

In order to reason about the emergent phenomena, you have to "zoom out" - look at bigger pieces, not the individual atoms or neurons.

The tricky part here is that it seems that there is no particular reason for the bigger pieces to be separated into easy to reason about "modules". It could of course be the case, but I don't really see the evolutionary advantage between a "mess of wires" that works well enough and a system that is modularised.

So, if the brain is a modularised system, then there is hope of understanding it, as you can understand a computer that another commenter mentioned as well.

But, if not, then it might be the case that indeed a human brain will not be able to understand it by itself. If there is an underlying structure that's just intermixed with the other parts, then perhaps with the help of computers we can separate them logically.

There is of course the possibility that modularisation is simply not possible, because of (almost) full connectedness and interactions. Mr Penrose for example suggests the case of quantum entanglement leading to consciousness and if that really is the case, then there is essentially no way to "understand" why a certain decision was reached by the brain.

"But if you use a rigid ruler, all of its atoms would hold on to one another tightly (with electromagnetic forces), and the ruler would stay the same length, allowing you to notice that more space was created."

This is the part that I don't really understand - how does the electromagnetic force "know" the true distance?

Basically, there is an equation that determines the strength of the field that depends on the distance from the centre of the particle, or rather the "particle" creates a ripple in the field. The ripple still has a length though.

So, the question then becomes - somehow the fact that the field has a bigger differential between two spots in space, keeps from more "space" appearing between those two spots.

Yet where the field is zero (or whatever the lowest energy value is) more space can be created within the field. So, it seems that there is a "space field" and a number of other fields, that interact with each other and can influence the properties of each other.

This kind of makes sense, essentially if the "space field" can have values attached to it, that in effect would determine "distance" from our perspective, then the interactions with other fields can influence the change in distances.

IANAP, so if you are, would this be a correct line of thinking?

Interesting. I thought they would do register renaming for thread switching as they do for speculative execution. Is this not the case?

wow! Very cool explanation! I wonder what happens at the point that it changes direction - is the change instant or is there a curve? I suppose that because photons/waves don't have mass it can be instant, but that still sounds weird.

No, a feature of a drill bit are the hard-alloy super-sharp perfectly aligned cutting edges.

The drill bit by itself does not make holes. You can use it (combined with another tool) to make holes.

A feature is something that the product itself does, not what you can do with the product.

Very good point - I guess it could work of someone somehow invented an economy in there that allowed for people to exchange time for money (as in work). No idea what it could be, but in theory - why not, right.

The fact that I'm going to die. It's really annoying.

Also, ageing effects on the body, like brain plasticity reduction and various other bits that really suck when you get up in the morning and remember how easy it was 20 years ago.

Life is so totally freaking awesome, I want more of it.

Yes, of course they aren't free. I also live in a house, that's more expensive than an apartment because I like it more this way.

I often don't buy the cheapest food, but the food that I like.

I don't want to force cars on anyone - it should be an individual choice of course. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of reasons people want to own cars.

It's the choice between working with the existing system to make it better versus demanding that everyone adapts to a new system that you claim is better.

Maybe it is, but getting the whole world to change at once to a completely different and in many ways harder system is very un likely to happen.

> Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to.

I'll take that one.

Because I love my car - not the car itself, although I really do think it's beautiful - but the freedom that it gives me. I can get in it right now, without any planning or waiting and drive almost anywhere using exactly the route I choose. While sitting behind the wheel, I'm forced to not be able to do anything else than driving. That is a very nice time to think and just be. Some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen was in places where the nearest public transport option was a hour's drive away.

I can leave stuff in the trunk if I buy it one day and then need it the next day. I also do grocery shopping weekly - carrying 5 bags of food by hand gets old really fast.

The car is also where my younger kid's car seat is. I'm pretty sure nobody else would put their kid in there, the shape of the chocolate and cookie crumb mountain is exactly the shape he fits in you know.

So, yes, you can do what you described. In fact, you can do it already today, but having a car? There's a reason people buy and repair and like them.

I do believe in increasing personal responsibility of people and having less of a nanny state, so I do tend towards that answer, but it's really not that black and white. On highways and places where pedestrians and bicyclists are not allowed - yes, no speed limit makes a lot of sense (and is available in Germany for example)

In cities and suburbs where kids can run into the street in unexpected places - more thought is needed what is the best solution.

I've actually gotten a speeding ticket because I was going 35km/h in a "construction" zone with a temporary 30km/h limit on a freaking Sunday with nobody around. That is also clearly ridiculous.

So you like the fact that the police know exactly where and when you drove? Because the licence plate tracking cameras require that, you know.

Also, the notion that there is some universal speed limit that makes driving safe on a particular road is silly.

Two scenarios with speed limit of x: 1) sunny day, brand new porsche, new tyres. I'm driving at a sped of x+5 2) windy, snowy day, nissan sunny from the 80s with almost worn out tyres. I'm driving at x-5

Pick the safer one. I doubt anyone would think option 2 is safer, yet 1 is illegal and 2 is perfectly fine.

Have you looked at the spec? If you do, then you'll understand.

Imagine a file transfer protocol that defines the command to list files in a folder, but does not specify the format of the response other that it should be human-readable.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt LIST and NLST commands for example. No way to get a standard list of files with sizes and modification dates. yay!

Oh, and the data connection that is made from the server to the client. That works wonders with firewalls of today.

It was an ok spec when it was invented, but today it's very painful to operate.

I'm sorry but it isn't that black and white. To be honest, I wish there was a way to put in my HTTP request headers the fact that I'm going to use an ad blocker - then your server has enough knowledge what to serve me exactly - if you wish, the text without adds, if not, then a notice saying that the text if for pay.

That'd be perfectly fine. Many sites already do this - detect my adblocker in javascript and then deny me access to the content. This is also perfectly fine - I fully agree that circumventing this forcefully is immoral/unethical.

In essence - the seller (content provider) should have the option to not give me content if I have an ad-blocker. If this is possible, then I don't see anything immoral about me using an adblocker. Do you?

And in fact, it does seem to be possible - wired for example does this. And I certainly don't try to circumvent this.

Many sites manage to work around and still show me ads. I dearly wish there would be some way for me to indicate "I'd rather be denied access to the content than be shown ads." Unfortunately that doesn't technologically exist easily yet.

Maybe that's exactly what they want you to think and they really are just out to get the potatoes, which they don't like!

Governments indeed have the requirement to use the least costly bid. I wonder if that's actually part of the problem.

Although, I really don't know how to make the rules better.

Anyway, from personal, anecdotal experience, I have hired building contractors, first time around I took the cheapest offer, then two years later I needed the same work done for another room and then didn't take the cheapest offer (the one I took was about 25% more). The result could not have been more different. The cheap room has cost me more than 2x the original price, because I've had to redo most of it during the last 7 years and the second room shows no signs of needing any more work anytime soon.

So, taking the longer term view, sometimes it's better to pay more upfront to get more quality. Except that quality in this sense is really hard to quantify and put into rules.

I like the freedom that monetary success gives. I've seen it briefly and it was freaking awesome.

The only reason it gives that freedom though is derived from inequality. The world is an extremely complex system and complex systems have weird emergent and unpredictable behaviours.

Also, some people contribute more than others. I'm certainly not saying that I'm the biggest contributor, but I do know people who can code circles around me (yes, I used to be a software developer, hey, this is HN you know) and really can do things that I could not, because they depend on fundamental understanding of complexity that I'm simply unable to comprehend. There is no way I could have come up with Paxos for example and clearly it has been extremely useful technology. Also I'm sure the inventor (Alan Kay, IIRC) makes a ton more money than I do and he deserves it!

There is no fundamental equality, because people are not equal and peoples contribution to society is not equal.

Bezos already has paid more taxes than I will ever pay - so he has in fact contributed more.

Sorry for the long time to reply, this is one of the best conversations I've had on HN yet. It's always fascinating to talk to someone with a radically different opinion on things! Thank you for that!

Your argument seems to be that amazon could and would have run just as well without Bezos. The counterargument for that is - why isn't any other company in the same line of business nearly as successful as Amazon then? Clearly, if the concrete people don't matter and the only contribution of the leader is capital, then there is no particular reason why another, as-well-capitalised company shouldn't be as successful as Amazon? Yet none are. Why?

My argument is that a good manager can bring 10 people who separately would each be capable of making 1 abstract thing per month together into a team and create 100 abstract things per month.

There is a saying - a person is smart, crowds are dumb. What Bezos and other leaders bring is the ability to make crowds smart and work together towards a goal.

So, if a good leader can effectively make the difference between a successful company and a broke company, then I do think he deserves 100x or a 1000x more than some guy who's looking for every possible opportunity to slack off and do as little as possible.

Also, you argue that he has already contributed all he can and is now just reaping the rewards from his previous efforts. Doesn't the same apply for any pension scheme though?

I can vote, just as everyone else :)

So, the problem here is that I don't understand why you think Jeff Bezos is a "leech" exactly. The guy built a business and became very successful. What the heck is wrong with that?

I'm building a house for me and my family. I mean literally building it myself, not hiring people to build it for me. It's fun - sometimes. Other times it's hard and frustrating.

I've also been involved in building three companies so far. That has been fun - sometimes. Other times it's hard and frustrating.

If one of those companies is/was successful, would I also be a "leech" by your definition?

Good luck trying, you're not getting it :)

ok, so what exactly has Jeff done wrong or what he should do differently?

What difference is there between 1000x and 1,000,000x ? Should there be a cap somewhere? I just completely fail to see how this is anything other than being jealous of someone elses's success. Please do explain.

I beg to differ. Here are a few examples that you might have heard of: ESRI Oracle

Part of being effective is leveraging your abilities via managing other people. An effective manager can make 10 people each perform 10x more effectively when working towards a goal. You could argue then that one person's effectiveness increases the whole organisation's effectiveness 100x

Of course with bad managers it can easily go the same amount in the other direction, but it seems that Bezos has extremely effectively leveraged his abilities in management and built a very successful company because of that.

So where's the line?

I was born and grew up under an actual communist rule. It was terrible. Also, it didn't really work due to fundamental human nature.

What human nature you ask? Well, mine for example. I'm working my ass of so that I can have more than you have. So that I can leave my wealth to my children (three so far) so that they can continue from a better position than where I started from (almost nothing, except the education my single mother gave me) to get an edge in life.

You want to take that option away from me? Sorry, not gonna work.

Yes, 100% yes - I now only shop at the supermarket that gives you scanners. The system is genius, works like this:

  - swipe loyalty card, get a hand-held scanner
  - walk around the shop, scan items as you put them in your bag
  - when walking out, stick the scanner back into the holder
  - swipe your loyalty card, pay with card, leave

It's unbelievably convenient, mostly because you only have to put items in your bag once, when you're picking them up from the shelf, not twice when you have the usual self-serve kiosks.

Obviously it's trivial to steal items and they randomly sometimes check the bag contents on checkout, but this is extremely rare.

Basically, they're assuming their customers are not aholes. And it works beautifully.

> Whatever goals the AI has, it will certainly be better at achieving them if it can stay alive. And it will be more likely to stay alive if there are no humans around to interfere.

This is a sequence of deductive reasoning that you brought up there. Quite natural for human beings, but why would the paperclip maximiser be equipped with it?

Seriously, the talks specifically argues most of the points that you brought up.

Shit is complicated yo. Complicated like the world is - not complicated like an algorithm is. Those are entirely different dimensions of complicated that are in fact incomparable.

> tell me which people you know, in which industries, have outright 'lost their jobs' due to some AI or machine?

I have literally seen a room full of people that lost their jobs because of software I wrote (admittedly, not alone, but still). The software was almost ready by that point and it was quite a disturbing experience that still bothers me up to this day to be honest.

It had nothing to do with AI and was quite a long time ago, but I still remember it very vividly.