thanosnose

> I expect it is quite more nuanced than his description of dead/not dead and summing up the material on both sides.

It is a bit more nuanced. There are heuristics ( breadth and depth searches ) which assigns positional values and also opening and end game database searches. Using remaining material values is the most basic form of chess engine. If that's all stockfish did, most chess players would beat stockfish.

I built a very simple chess engine for my AI class. I started off with the basic "material values". Then added basic heuristics. Then added database lookups.

Now with neural networks and machine learning, chess engines are even more sophisticated.

> Have they ever not been?

The mongol conquest of china?

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

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

> I think through history China always have been a superpower (with some short exceptions).

China has never been a superpower. They were always a regional power. There has only been 1 real superpower in human history ( the United States ). The next closest empires to the title of superpower are the mongols, british, soviets, etc, but they never dominated the globe the way the United States has. But as with everything, I guess it all depends on how you define the term.

Also, "china" as we know it today is a relatively recent phenomenon stemming from mongol china ( aka yuan dynasty ). Before then, it was series of dynasties constantly shifting borders. The borders that modern china ( and taiwan ) claim goes back to the yuan dynasty. Even the capital of china is beijing because the mongols made it the capital of china.

> Anyone bashing the GDPR for being too hostile towards startups and smaller businesses should read this. Looks like the fine was almost a bit too low in this case...

You make it seem like that's supposed to be assuring? Essentially, small companies and startups are left to the whims of bunch of bureaucrats.

The fact that they have to make the fine "almost a bit too low" just shows you what a terrible thing GDPR is.

> And these "news" are not fact-checked by any authority anymore.

Yes. Because when the ministry of truth is in charge, things are so much better. /s

The problem is that "fact checkers" are some of the most biased people around.

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/new-yorker-fact-checker-ice-t...

I'm always amazed that people will rant about "big brother" one moment and then appeal to an authority figure the next. You think Trump should decide what "truth" is? Is that your argument?

> These news channels had some commonly shared values, operated within those values.

What values? Is the iraq war that value? The NYTimes was created by a banker. The WashingtonPost was created by a racist pro-south democrat. What is this "common value" you are speaking of?

> So yes, I strongly believe that social media is hurting our democracies massively.

In what way? 10 years ago, it was the right wing bigots whining about social media because it got obama elected. Now it's the left wing bigots whining.

This should be the HN motto:

"If you aren't paying for it, you are the product".

Also, VPN isn't a magic cure for the disease of privacy violation. You are just choosing to trust the people running the VPN service over the people running your ISP. Should you trust a VPN company more than your ISP? I really can't say, but VPN isn't a magic fix.

> Something needs to change, the same way Reddit’s ranking algorithm was changed based on Randall Munroe’s public suggestion.

That was a long time ago. Reddit ranking is even worse than HN's now and is manipulated by political and news organizations now with the help of reddit employees. Reddit is a highly biased propaganda site. It's not a platform anyone should be using. In many ways, reddit is worse than facebook.

I stopped using reddit once I could predict what I was going to see on the frontpage day after day. Sadly, I'm starting to be able to predict what's going to be on HN's frontpage now.

> p.s. Please don't get offended that I said Japan was a tick too small for me. It doesn't have to fit me, I don't live there. I was just making an observation. :)

Why would anyone be offended? If you are 6'3", no place is accommodating for you. No train, bus, airplane, car or homes are built for you since you are not close to the average anywhere. This goes for whether you are too short or too tall or too fat or too skinny. Everything nowadays is built for the average. So you wouldn't feel comfortable anywhere.

> Does anyone know how effective incognito mode is at preventing data and privacy abuses like this?

Incognito mode really doesn't do much. It only prevents storing browsing data locally on your computer. Your ISP, your search engine and the websites you visit can store your info on their servers.

> but I imagine there may some clever ways of tracking even across incognito sessions (or between incognito and regular).

Browser fingerprints, IP address, etc are used to track you. Your ISP doesn't even need to be clever since you are dependent on them for your internet connection. There are ways to "hide" yourself from websites, search engines, etc but it's nary impossible to completely "hide" from your ISP.

> I wonder if there are similar courses on CS algorithms for people who didn't study CS in college.

This might be a bit more challenging and less hand holding than the nand2tetris course but if you are up for it, why not go with the best? Sedgewick Algorithm book has been one of the standard algorithm books in universities for a long time.

https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2

> I believe US foreign policy will potentially have very large changes due to their new found energy independence.

It's possible but I think corporate interests, rather than our energy independence, will be the driving force of US foreign policy as it had been in the past. As long as banks, oil companies, etc stand to make a lot of money in the middle east, our foreign policy won't change much.

Agreed. I like 12 monkeys better as a movie ( just my style of movie ) but brazil is a far more realistic dyspotian reality. Dystopia by the mundane and the bureaucratic rather than a mad genocidal scientist.

Fear sells. And the news sell fear.

Something is always tearing america apart. We are always on the brink. The past few months, it's facebook tearing us apart. Last year, it was putin and the russians tearing america apart. The year before that, it was trump/hillary.

> Without their content what will Google search? Wikipedia, blogs?

I hope so. The internet was better when news was an afterthought.

> Without news content google search users will not get news context about their search queries so the search engine will lack a critical perspective and become lower quality,

News content is low quality content. It's toxic information pollution.

I wish google/youtube, facebook, reddit, etc would simply ban news company links. It would go a long way to increase quality content and lower toxicity.

> Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership.

I guess anything is possible but I highly doubt it. Do you really think culturally, linguistically, militarily, politically and even economically china is going to lead the world? Every major international instution in the world from the UN to the ICJ to the WTO is in western nations.

> Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China.

Sure. But they are also working to contain china as well. You really don't understand politics in a local or a global setting if you think china is going to be leading in asia, let alone the world.

If you think the likes of india, japan, korea, vietnam or even iran will let china lead, then you don't understand geopolitics. And lets not forget russia with their thousands of nukes along china's border.

The day that the US doesn't control the world is the day regional competition and violence begins as 2nd rate powers vie with each other for influence within their regions. Nobody, especially china, is going to replace the US as the leader of the world. Once we are done, it'll be back to regional power plays.

That used to be a good idea 4 or 5 years ago. Sadly now aggregators are echo chambers themselves due to publisher pressure.

It's clickbait "news" and "studies". So much of the media and "science" is useless people doing useless nonsense just to make money.

"Why you shouldn't work remotely". "Why you shouldn't drink coffee". "Why you should drink coffee". "Vaping is better than cigarettes". "Vaping worse than cigarettes".

It's a never ending assembly line of garbage because they need to push out garbage every day.

"Publish or perish" has ruined academia, much of science and the media.

Also, anything can be "overrated". It is a subjective term. The article doesn't tell us anything of any value. What did we learn? Someone thinks standing desks are overrated. Okay. Who cares? Is that worthy of an article in the nytimes?

Even kids with allergies benefit.

"—Among children with some reaction to peanuts on the skin test: Only 11 percent of peanut eaters developed an allergy versus 35 percent of abstainers."

There is a significant portion of developers ( particular web and app ) and IT staff who never studied computer science in college but instead moved into programming/IT mid career. Most of them probably never heard of or seen assembly code.

However, I would be shocked if anyone who went through a CS program wasn't aware of assembly programming.

Israeli scientists have already shown that early childhood exposure to peanuts can prevent these allergies.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-kids-help-prove-early-...

Also, peanut allergies hardly affect anyone. As a society, why waste resources on such endeavors when we have diseases like cancer that affect millions every year?

> Facebook applying for patents on distinctly creepy inferences from photos is hardly a hit piece.

That one is by buzzfeednews, not the nytimes. I know it's hard to tell the difference between news companies today. There are 3 hitpieces on facebook on the frontpage. 2 of those are by the nytimes.

There is a 4th by the businessinsider trying to make it's way to the frontpage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18465553

But the ones I was referring to were from the nytimes only.

Another interesting watch is the TED talk by SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell earlier this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dar8P3r7GYA

Say what you will about Musk, but the guy is truly ambitious and willing to shoot for the stars ( or mars at the moment ).

There are a bunch of rules - mostly protecting QBs from high and low hits and protecting receivers from contact and vicious hits.

http://www.realclearlife.com/sports/nfl-rule-changes-created...

https://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/cam-newton-tom-brady-sho...

Why is this even a story? Most computer science student don't want to work period. They don't want to work for any company.

Most CS grads would like to win the lottery and spend their days pursuing their own interests, contribute to open source or starting their own companies. I know that was my dream and my classmates' dream.

But when graduation comes and the offers come, they'll work for any company that'll pay well.

There are journalist students who don't want to work for the nytimes. Is that a news story?

I'm failing to see what is newsworthy about this story. Where is the line between creating news and reporting on it?

The nytimes could manufacture the exact same story about itself or microsoft or google or any company in the US. Go to any campus and you'll find someone who doesn't want to work for microsoft or google or apple or [insert company name here].

> But if "all a man is, is what others say of him," then by watching the news, Assange is just a Russian agent.

One of the most interesting aspect of the assange story is how the news industry celebrated assange in the early part of the 2010s and then started to demonize him in the past few years. It was all so sudden as if someone flipped a switch and everyone got on the same message.

It's also interesting how sexual assault accusations were used to take down assange just like it was used for kavanaugh.

> I can't help but be drawn into the idea of "superhuman" feats and statistical outliers that always seem to permeate major sports.

Because sports is just as much entertainment as it is sports. These leagues need someone to be the face of their product in order to draw crowds and make money.

Jordan and the bulls were such a product of the 90s to save the NBA from the end of the lakers-celtics dominated 80s.

Gretkzy, like montana, was part of a super team through with the NHL and NFL built their brands and generated interest in the 80s.

Brady and a bunch of QBs were beneficiaries of the NFL's move toward more passing and increased scoring to generate interest. The NFL found out that most fans love passing and scoring while the few purists loved defense and the running game. So they changed the rules to handicap defenses, especially against the pass. Now every year, we get superhuman passing records being set.

Look at the curry, durant and the golden state warriors today. Beneficiaries of NBA's move to handicap defenses and allow more scoring - which is what NBA fans, especially fans overseas ( particularly china ) like.

The days of the dominant center in the NBA or the running back in NFL is over, until the climate shifts and the they need to rebrand the product.

All these "superhuman" statistics are a result of "sports" + "entertainment". It's partly earned through athletic prowess and it's also manufactured by rules changes, refs "managing" the game, etc.

Was gretzky that much better than messier ( his teammate ) or lemieux as the stats seem to imply? Absolutely not.

Was jordan that much better than pippen ( his teammate ) or dominique wilkins as the stats seem to imply? Absolutely not.

But someone has to be the face of the product the leagues are selling. And the NHL before gretzky and the NBA before jordan was facing problems which was magically solved by gretzky and jordan.

People in power love to censor. When the religious right had the power, they tried hard to censor what they didn't like. Now it's the left that is in power and they are trying to censor what they don't like.

The fight for free speech is a neverending one because one side will always be in power. It's why the founders made it an inalienable right, not given to us by the government, but by "the creator".

Free speech isn't a privilege provided to us by the government. It is something we are born with.

It doesn't hurt to have hands-on experience, but it definitely isn't necessary.

The job of a department head is to navigate government bureaucracy and attain the budget, gather resources and hire experts for his department's needs.

The value of a minister of anything is his contacts/professional network, knowledge of government bureaucracy and his ability to marshal them for his department's needs.

It's why in the US, we've had Secretary of Defense who have never fired a gun or been in the military. Obviously most have had military experience, but it isn't a requirement.

People are mistakenly thinking that a minister of cybersecurity is a cybersecurity job. It isn't. It is a government bureaucratic job.

Given a choice between a cybersecurity expert ( with no bureaucratic experience ) and a bureaucratic expert ( with no computer experience ), it's a no brainer to go with the latter as minister of cybersecurity. Ideally, you want bureaucratic expert who is also a cybersecurity expert. But you only have 24 hours in a day.

It's a bit unfair to blame the entire species when 2 countries are responsible for most of the nuclear tests.

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

Most likely the shareholders will be wiped out ( equity collapse ) and bondholders are going to cut their losses and simply walk away. It will be rate payers ( customers ) and taxpayers ( both state and federal ) who will be footing the bill. But that's the worst case scenario which I don't think is likely.

What about option 3?

3. New Republic and the rest of the MSM decide what is reliable and how you think?

Isn't that what this is all about? The mainstream media and the power brokers behind the MSM wanting control of a major means of communication?

Isn't that why they attacked google and google news? Isn't that why they attacked reddit? Isn't that why they attacked youtube? Isn't that why they are attacking facebook.

I think most people want option 1 and were happy with 1. But the MSM is trying to force option 3.