"Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)'s iGAN Laboratory led by Prof. Haiding Sun and other institutes in China recently developed a new three-terminal diode that can both emit and detect light."
Considering the topic of a new photo-diode, the professor's name is perhaps unfortunate.*
We aren't even clear about what the difference is between AI and intelligence. These are just loaded words with no clear definition.
Given that we don't even fully understand how the human brain works we can't even specify how close or how different these things are to the way we think.
Articles like this aren't really open minded. How can you claim AI is a mirror when you don't even fully understand the thing that it is reflecting?
Do you have a rigorous definition of intelligence that is actually reductive and doesn't punt the definition to other ill-defined words like "reasoning" or whatever ?
Unless you can give such a definition of intelligence, then you are in no position to assess whether these systems are intelligent (or in what way, to what extent) or not, even to the extent of meeting your own criteria whatever that may be!
Sports illustrated already laid people off for AI. Artists already created a lawsuit.
There's a lot of people over hyping this, but there is an even larger group of people downplaying everything and refusing to believe that a paradigm shift in AI has just occured.
And you downplaying AI in every single thread like it's something completely insignificant is even less compelling. Are you seriously not at least a little impressed with recent developments?
"Globalstar said it is allocating 85% of its current and future network capacity to support the services and has agreed to prioritize the services on its network."
Lots of people get into trouble all the time and don't have a PLB or satellite messenger on them. It's not just on boats – hikers and climbers in the mountains get themselves into dangerous situations frequently.
Globalstar is probably preparing for an influx of new users to their service who would otherwise not own a satellite-capable device.
Boats? Denver to California is basically only covered if you can see a paved road… and their aren’t a ton of paved roads. Let’s not get into Canada, even on the main highway there are plenty of dead spots.
Also, don’t overestimate their bandwidth. I rented a sat-phone once for weather updates mid Atlantic. Text only emails could take a minute to ul/dl with full reception.
I think the UL/DL is more due to the design of the network (I’m talking about Iridium data packets). The connection isn’t persistent like a computer in many cases. For example, a handset does both passive and active checks at some interval rather than the satellites pushing messages down as they’re available.
edit: It’s also worth mentioning that the bandwidth is very limited, but I thought it worth calling out the above
It looks like Globalstar currently has around 700,000 subscribers including Commercial IoT. Apple sells what, 200 million iPhones a year? Most of those won’t be Pros or sold in the US but it’s still going to be massive numbers.
I think they refer to the failure mode where: Nothing happened for a day or two. All the experts travel to the location to try to understand what went wrong, in situ... and THEN the explosion occurs.
This really wasn't a plausible failure mode. They had many (9?) detonators which had to be very precisely simultaneous, and had done a lot of tests of those alone (this was cheap & easy). As long as just one of them worked, you would burn all the explosives (just not in the right order) and destroy the device.
Not sure how you would quantify this, but enough? Inventing detonators that worked fast enough (i.e. small enough error in firing time) was one of the challenges. They did a lot of tests of those explosive lenses. (32, not 9, of course.)
The electronics to fire them would have comparatively easy to test well, and I'm sure they over-designed it all. I doubt that duplicating it would have made anything better.
I am fairly new to Y-Combinators Hacker News. Unfortunately, I've run head-long into this very issue on this forum. It ruins the experience.
There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics.
In my opinion, one's inability to comprehend and respond to any given statement at multiple levels limits their upward mobility.
I think that HN is one of the rare forums where this article doesn't apply.
Usually the top comment in a particular thread contains the least hedges and most enthusiastically espouses a particular opinion. The comment is not usually overly bombastic (though it sometimes is). The comment almost always adopts the majority opinion on HN.
Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at most -4 points. I assert that downvotes more often correlate with disagreement than failure to abide by the standards of discourse. Since the penalty is limited, that's okay.
Therefore, if visibility and replies are your goal (who wants to comment without interesting replies?), then it's best to write boldly and concisely with a minimum of hedges.
It's not just the downvotes. They don't help, but it's also the responses.
There is a major psychological effect from getting attacked for stating an opinion you might hold to heart. As an avid reddit/hn commenter, I feel it often.
I don't really care if someone disagrees with me on something minor, but if it's something I truly believe is important and I see people disagreeing with it left and right and downvoting anything in line with that opinion, it makes me feel weakness and despair.
Weakness: I am overwhelmed by the people disagreeing with me. I can't answer everybody. Not because I don't have the arguments but because it's pointless, won't lead anywhere and will achieve nothing but make me look insane. The "hivemind" effects makes widely-held opinions even stronger and minority opinions even weaker. Alone, I am powerless to counter that.
Despair: Let's say someone thinks gays/black/women/whatever shouldn't [have some human right]. You truly believe that's wrong. If someone says to me "I think women shouldn't have the right to vote" and is impossible to convince, I feel pretty awful about it. I feel like that person is contributing in making the world worse, and I live in that world.
Now what if that's not about some minority-held opinion, but about something far more widespear? What if it's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.
My fiancée is a muslim. This is empathy kicking in. Not everything affects me that way, but I'm far less likely to comment on something I don't hold to heart.
But yes, I do enjoy HN because the hivemind effect is far more limited. The hidden downvotes and sorting algorithms are a million times better than Reddit's. It's not ideal, but it's still an excellent place to have discussion and a "good enough" place to have debates.
Yes, there is a psychological risk you take when you state an opinion on a topic that is important to you. The more important, the more disagreement hurts.
There isn't much one can do about opinions of others. We all try to keep things civil here, but it doesn't always work. Not immediately, at least. I remember the discussions after the last Paris attack; some comments were awful and literally heartbreaking, and I too was feeling a mix of anger and despair.
> What if it's, for example, similarly insensitive and disgusting comments about islam/muslims? I don't just feel awful being around that person, I feel crushed by the amount of people who would agree with it. I'm quite afraid of what happens when such opinion is widely held. I feel like I'm looking at a lifetime of awful and I feel crushed by it.
I recognize that feeling. Frankly, I prefer hanging on HN so much because it sometimes seems like one of the last few bastions of sanity on the planet. Back after Paris, my Facebook feed was literally breaking my heart, and it was HN that reminded me that not everyone holds harmful beliefs.
Anyway, when you see knee-jerk attacks and hurtful behavior, I recommend judicious use of the downvote and flag buttons. That's what they're for, and they seem to work pretty well at keeping the discourse at proper level.
You raise some excellent points. I have a few minority opinions and I have to essentially avoid some threads because I see how some brave souls who shared an unpopular opinion get vilified. It does hurt to be called names even on the internet. Thanks for replying!
I do not know if this is true. I have read that, although it only shows up to -4, it can cost you more than that. I have no idea if that information is still true or not. A lot of the algorithms have changed.
> Posting a comment not aligned with the majority opinion carries a risk of at most -4 points. I assert that downvotes more often correlate with disagreement than failure to abide by the standards of discourse. Since the penalty is limited, that's okay.
A comment can have far worse consequences than the loss of a few karma points. If you say the wrong thing, your reputation and (potentially) your livelihood are at risk. That's why, for anything remotely controversial, I use pseudonymous accounts. It's simply not worth it to have my real-world reputation ruined. I can't imagine the deluge of hate that would descend upon me if some of my views were known; doubly-so for misconstrued versions of them. I can already hear the haters: "Chroma approves of torture!"[1][2], "Chroma is sexist!"[3][4], "Chroma is ageist!"[5] "Chroma hates muslims!"[6][7], "Chroma hates the Amish!"[8], "Chroma hates pilots!"[9], "Chroma wants to slaughter all lions!"[10], "Chroma thinks motorcycle riders are mentally ill!"[11] Etcetera.
That said, I agree with you on defensive writing. When expressing anything controversial, defensive writing is mostly a waste of effort. Simply holding the opinion is cause enough for others to downvote and denigrate. Unless it's something very close to your audience's views, you might as well aim for good prose and avoid hedges.
There is value in communicating figuratively and/or with metaphors. When creatively solving problems, looking for trends or drawing a hypothesis out of the ether, it is often desirable to avoid specifics.
I raised a couple of incredibly pedantic sons. I am someone prone to using metaphors and communicating figuratively. I learned to up my game and use more accurate metaphors that do not count on the audience already having a good idea of what I am talking about so as to let me get away with real hand-wavy, vague comparisons.
My oldest is pretty aspie. In trying to explain anger and social stuff to him, I once tried to talk about anger being like fire and explosions. He knew too much science and not enough social skills. It resulted in him leaping to bizarre conclusions (think: "If you rub two people together, they ignite" type conclusions). I was all "Uhhh. No. Forget I said anything. Let me think about this and get back to you."
If your figure of speech or metaphor is not horrendously sloppy, it can still be used here. If you are getting a lot of flack here for such things, consider the possibility that simply isn't a great comparison point and try to think more clearly about the subject and come up with a better means to express it.
HN can be kind of rough to adjust to at first. So I do have sympathy. But, in general, the overall intent of such practices here is to improve accuracy and level of discussion. It mostly isn't just asshattery.
Since others covered the topic of metaphors, let me give just a quick practical hint instead. Ignore the downvotes. That is, try and detach yourself emotionally from them.
Even the most controversial opinions get a fair hearing if you take little care to keep them civil. Not politically correct, not hedged every other word, just civil. Still, even if Jesus himself were to write a HN comment that goes agaist status quo, he could catch occasional downvotes. Because people are people. But what ultimately matters here is if people engage with your argument. Catching a few downvotes is totally worth it if it leads to a constructive discussion.
And yes, you can expect that even most benign comments will occasionally catch some random downvotes. Your comment may get down to negative karma for a while, but it usually settles back to a positive score within an hour or two. Karma system isn't perfect and people aren't perfect either; hell, it's easy to get downvoted by accident because up and down arrows are way too close to each other, especially on mobile :).
I seriously doubt that the American population is that gullible. On top of that hispanics and blacks hate him. Those two groups represent a large voting block. Other groups like woman, muslim, and asians don't appear to like him very much so I don't see how he is going to win.
Black voters seem likely to vote in higher numbers for Trump than any other Republican as do working class White Democrats. That isn't to say Trump will win those demographics, but 20% of the Black vote should be enough for any Republican to win nationally when the Republican average is 5% lately.
Hispanics don't vote in large numbers and Chicanos -- the only category Trump might be especially unpopular with -- overwhelmingly don't live in swing states or turn out to vote. Muslims don't make up a large voting block and already are overwhelmingly Democrats.
I'm not predicting a Trump victory, but you are far too sanguine about his chances and the underlying demographic realities.
Well,every vote Trump looses counts. The White vote is not one unified voting block that will vote republican. You have his main supporters that will vote for him no matter what and then you have everybody else. Not every republican will vote for him. Unless he can unify the white vote, doubt it, then how is supposed to win?
I guess the newspaper articles claiming you need certain percentage of Hispanics to win the presidency have lied. I will not debate you on this point since I'm no expert. Add to the fact that he has pissed off more people than just Latinos and his chances appear slimmer. But maybe I'm just misinformed.
The fact that the measurements we got so far show it matches their previous detonation makes me wonder if it was an H-Bomb, or at least if it was a successful one. Since they have a fission bomb as part of the core, it could just be a failed H-bomb or, as someone else said, an attempt at a tritium enriched bomb.
As far as U.S. presidential politics goes, meh, it's 10 months from the election, we don't even know who the candidates will be for either (especially the GOP), and the only people who should be sweating are S. Korea and Japan.
How so? So Trump can aggressively address a nuclear armed country. This is ridiculous line of thinking. Only thing he will be good for is making empty threats like Kim Jong. And will surely get US isolated by those rhetorics.
Trump will just say he's going to bomb NK flat and that'll energize the base that thinks Obama is a total coward for not killing all of those filthy foreigners already.
The real question is whether there are enough people who will follow his kind of pandering. It seems obvious that the guy has absolutely no principles. He will say anything. I don't think there are enough of of them. If there are enough of them then I'm being stupidly naive and have not read the mood of the country correctly. If so we are all fucked, white, yellow, brown, black.
That assumes (a) that the US population wants a nuclear war and (b) the electoral college math has changed. I doubt North Korea and their routine blustering will have an effect on either.
Wow. I merely identified a possible voter inflection point based on current events --and I was hoping for an insightful, or at least informed, response.
For those of you who apparently missed the "American Politics" course in your higher education, Democrats have been better at resolving domestic challenges while Republicans have done better on international issues.
Not to be too cynical (which I doubt is possible when it comes to US politics) but I suspect that there will be no lack of demagoguery on either side of the aisle this year, irrespective of the actions of North Korea.
Considering the topic of a new photo-diode, the professor's name is perhaps unfortunate.*
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpP2S6c74Ts