Market's across the board are doing pretty bad this month - It would be interesting to how bad tech is doing relatively to oil futures and other commodities.
Why is it important how tech is doing relative to other unrelated markets?
Edit: I don't know why I'm being downvoted for asking a question. I've many times seen a stock sector performance chart (I don't know the technical name) with most of the market red and tech lit up bright green.
Because all markets are really related in some ways, and you can't judge performance without looking at alternatives. Sometimes, a sector goes down, or up, by itself, and then we can expect that the reason for the price change has something to do with that sector. The same thing happens when looking at companies: If Home Depot is down 3% but Lowes is also down 3% and the SP500 is down 5% on average, it's a likely explanation that the tumble has nothing to do with HD's outlook. Heck, by some measures, the home improvement retail sector would be doing better than average! The same thing happens when the market is on the way up: Looking at a company or a sector in isolation doesn't let us even speculate on the reasons of the price change.
In a site like this, where we care specifically about the health of tech, claiming that the sky is falling for our sector without looking at other sectors would be folly.
You can click two boxes on maybe 300 different financial websites and see this data. Which doesn't apply to the "unicorn" situation anyway.
Volatility appears (and is fed back) as people re-evaluate risk vs reward.
People who held unfashionable Microsoft stock made more money than people who got in on the last two Tumblr rounds over the same time period. Early investors are no longer just technology zealots who made $300 million 10 years ago -- actual financial companies are involved now.
Also early-stage startup investing is a drop in the bucket of the greater market. If people are even bothering to move their money out, that's an even more significant indicator.
I hope the unicorns lose their horns and then a genocide is performed to kill all the unicorns just so that I do not have to listen to anymore talks about is going to happen to the damn unicorns.
Could we talks about something else, like how to cure cancer ? rather than endlessly speculating about the future that no one can predict.
I don't understand why the public is so concerned with these valuations. Where was all the media coverage of over valuations of shale drillers that are now bankrupt?
The economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture.
The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat to civilization.
Car Makers especially americans ones have a lot of blood on their hand. Everything from helping redesign cities to make it impossible to not afford buying their product.
To making walking a crime ( jay walking ).
"Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven."
Good - we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars.
"we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars" ... I think we will have to... for a while.
Education is the best way of reducing population. Cars (or any type of personal transport) is crucial, moving the effort from humans to machines, leaving the human with more time and options. This leads to education and caring about the environment, politics etc.
So for a while we'll have to have 7 billion people using cars (or at least that's what the goal should be) then this will drop to 6 billion, then 5 then 4 etc.
We can power cars using solar. Terrestrial or orbital.
> Education is the best way of reducing population.
Going slightly off topic.
Overpopulation can be solved in 2 ways: reducing population or expanding our habitat.
Education contributes to both, but the second sounds like a more feasible path to take.
There are around ~400k people born every single day. If we expand our habitat to other planets, we'd need the capability to launch a million people a day to have even the remotest impact on population in the near future. Unless anti-gravity or some new weird physics is invented, this isn't ever going to happen.
Does that mean you assume reducing population to be easy/easier?
Increasing our habitat isn't simple. But it at least is likely to get more feasible over time. While reducing population seems to be the opposite of our 'nature' (not that we aren't able to go against that) and it requires the cooperation of basically everyone. Which isn't required by the former. Cooperation seems to get [insert mathematical function] harder when more people are involved.
Sidenote: expansion would of course not exclude taking care of existing habitats.
It's the net change after accounting for deaths that would count here. So the pertinent number is about 200,000/day. Not that this changes your overall point.
The problem is more of over consumption than over population, but I can see why the two would be confused because their is significant overlap. However I find the "over population" argument a red herring to make wealthy Americans feel better. I can assure you if we cut the population of the planet in half but consumed at US levels, that is unsustainable. Just like if we double the population but consume at India levels we'd be fine.
The sentiment that interplanetary colonization is more feasible than education is perhaps the most characteristic HN filter-bubble statement I've ever heard.
I absolutely didn't intend to say anything about the importance of education. The transfer of knowledge is one of the most important features of humankind.
The comment was intended solely as an extra view on the overpopulation subject.
Not only that... I don't think they will "refactor" the engine in the middle of the production, or include new features in the transmission before a deadline.
> We know how to build reliable (nearly) bug-free software.
Do we? Let's say, starting tomorrow, you have to write rocket-guiding software. If your program has bugs, you will be summarily executed. What are the odds that you will survive the process? I wouldn't estimate mine at anything significantly above zero.
I have no idea how much time this would take in the real world. Pulling a number totally out of my ass, let's say five years. You may not use subcontractors to develop the software.
To be honest, for commensurate reward, I'd probably be sufficiently confident that I could get something done bug-free in 5 years if it was something that I felt could hack out bug-full in a week. Much of that time would go toward task-specific verification-related tooling...
I understand that the cost of healthcare is rising rapidly and we need to figure out to control it. But doctors are the absolute last people responsible for this mess.
Telling the currently employed doctors to work harder is almost insulting.
Why don't we start by holding big food responsible for pushing unhealthy junk food for decades ? The biggest cause of death is cardiovascular diseases - not lazy doctors.
What about big pharma ? A huge part of rising health care cost goes towards paying for pills - and it's public knowledge that these companies have almost criminal profit margins. I do not think the biggest buyer of luxury yatch are doctors - who are still busy paying back their student debt.
Or the insane admin bloat created by insurance companies - why does a medical professional's judgment about their patient by a function of the the patient's economical value - To me that is inefficient - not doctors spending too much time with their patients.
I think among millennials drinking has been in a steady decline - not sure if its due to the recession and its effects.
I already have difficulty dealing with caffeine at work - and sugar generally due to how common it is everywhere.
I am not sure if I want to add any more drugs to my life. Already sleep is a premium these days - I would never understand why people would want to screw with it further by drinking or doing cannabis.
I wholeheartedly side with the author, in terms of alcohol consumption. I generally regret more than a glass of wine or 2, if for nothing else than that horrible stupid feeling that I likely did something I will regret. I get guilt hangovers...
but grass, man, that's what makes tiny niggledy piggledy details of an API interesting. That's what makes me take "one more crack at it" when I'm tired and shit's not working.
Coffee is merely a poop-inducer. Productivity in my life is related to grass consumption. I quit about 4 times in my life and even tried a sober winter in the arctic circle.
Least productive most self-indulgent moping time of my life, that last 10 month experiment.
What I did was cutout tobacco 100%. Now I feel great. I can run up hills, smoke a pipe, cough my lungs out, and I'm cleaner for having smoked it!
see, cannabis is an expectorant (by itself, NOT adulterated with even one flake of tobacco, which is a cough suppressant) so it self cleans, never mind that any resinous deposits contain potent anti-cancral agents...
anyway- in my book, cannabis is in the healthy category and is consumed during all waking moments and generally my sleep life is better than my wifes, who doesn't smoke cannabis.
I would lump diet and exercise in with consumed drugs in terms of the net effects upon the endocrine system and energy:
typical unhealthy eating style: jam it in poorly chewed, pour some acidic liquid in on top to help it "digest" even though we then complain of stomach acid and eat calcium (tums) after drinking yet another acidic liquid (coffee) and meanwhile wondering why sitting in a chair 20 hours a day plus such eating habits are leading to chronic constipation
contrast that with eating a healthy balanced diet with mostly fresh plant matter of some sort, stretching frequently, practicing deep stretching or yoga of some kind, frequent exercise involving sweating, consumption of copious amounts of good water...take the time to chew properly and eat small amounts of food slowly and then you will note greater absorbance of nutritional elements and more peace in the digestive tract.
Grouping alcohol, caffeine, and sugar together makes no sense. Alcohol is estrogenic and inflammatory and dramatically depletes B vitamins and vitamin A. Sugar is simply a clean source of calories; perfectly harmless and often beneficial. Caffeine is quite simply good for you. All the epidemiological studies bear out the idea that it's protective against stress and disease. It improves performance. There's zero reason to limit caffeine consumption.
Just like there were studies in the 70s which vilified saturated fats like butter and animal fat which have since been refuted? You can find a study claiming positive (and negative) health effects for near every substance. Ultimately caffeine is a neurotoxin produced by the coffee bean to repel insects.
I think saying there is zero reason to limit caffeine consumption is a bit of a stretch since we're talking about a drug which causes dependence, reduces motor control and increases anxiety.
I say this as a huge coffee fan. Grind my own single origin beans, brew them in my Hario pour over or Aeropress etc.
But I'm not going to pretend it's this wonderful health drink when it clearly has negative side effects.
Neurotoxin for insects = terrible evidence of toxicity in humans. We go by evidence of toxicity in humans, and all evidence shows it isn't toxic in the doses people consume it. If you want to say we haven't discovered the secret terrible cancer causing agent in coffee yet, but just you wait... Well it's going to take a lot of evidence. There are lots of controlled studies saying it's pretty good for you.
I think what you're picking up on is a distrust by analogy. In the past we thought some things were safe, but they weren't (smoking etc). But the opposite of being ignorant about the effects of chemicals we ingest isn't to suddenly say everything is unsafe. It's to test everything. And we have tested caffeine, and it's safe.
> Caffeine in plants acts as a natural pesticide: it can paralyze and kill predator insects feeding on the plant
Regarding my comment on it being a neurotoxin. Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. You're basically ingesting plant insecticide which in turn stimulates the nervous system, causes the adrenals to release adrenaline and causes a heightened alert response as well as many other positive AND negative effects. Hence my remark.
Most of the research I've seen promotes its health benefits in narrow isolation on one particular facet of human physiology. I haven't seen any evidence that could conclusively sway me towards going from 1 cup a day of coffee to say 4-6 which apparently is the amount a lot of people drink.
My own feeling on coffee is that like anything which has pros and cons it should be drunk in moderation.
I submitted the OP essay with an attribution ("see Chris Olah's blog for a fuller treatment") but it was removed by the editors of Edge before publication (apparently their policy is never to send readers away from Edge). I have asked them to at least re-insert Chris' name and I hope they do so soon.
Science converges on truths, so similar (and even the same) ideas form in many minds, often at the same time. And fundamental ideas like these are often -- in hindsight -- revealed to be pretty old; you can trace their lineage and formation across papers, talks, and books. Many people in the field, with a good measure of "conceptual agility", will get this quickly and be able to discuss at length. Not to detract any credit from individual discoverers: they are absolutely critical for the quantized improvement of ideas; often a single person will move science forward in ways the rest of the world could not. And sometimes it is many people that do. A constructive memetic environment is good for both. (it is unfortunate that Credit is THE scientific currency today; it interferes negatively...)
No doubt colah's excellent blog post dives much deeper than this essay, but please note that this was wrtten for Edge.org's http://edge.org/annual-questions book, for a general audience, with very high level perspective, with very little space, and without the ability to get technical. Don't pit them against each other! They complement!
By the way, for one interesting example of the "conceptual agility" of scientists at the very edge, check out this interesting story about Feynman -- from a David Deutsch interview (with Sam Harris) -- in which Feynman derives months of Deutsch's work in a few minutes (listen for ~5 min):
Scientists' minds are well primed to understand, derive, and formulate ideas -- they are super fertile memetic environments. And what's more-- they have the epistemic filters to annihilate untruths and converge on scientific knowledge (the best explanation not yet falsified). In math (inc. computer science), it's even better because we study and manipulate the objects themselves, not data from measurements of the things. The formulation, derivation, convergence, remixing, (and so on) of ideas is much, much faster.
Knowing both colah and davidad, I confidently assert they are both among the most brilliant young scientists alive. Humanity stands to gain much from the constructive interference of their minds. As readers and commenters, let's foster that.
You do realize that these things were already being studied in the 90's, right? The Grefenstette paper mentioned in this article makes use of an architecture from Das et al. in 1992. More generally, people have been talking about functional programming and relationships with AI since there was functional programming. However nice Colah's blog post is, he most certainly did not come up with any of these ideas first.
Thanks! Good to hear. We haven't yet but we're planning to in late 2016. We are hoping to produce an OS dev kit for A-Level / first-year univeristy students which we can sell at low cost.
Awesome that you're from UoB! Shame you weren't here last term when I ran the lectures/workshops. Are you still living in Bristol?
I have to say, I only come on here occasionally and signed up today to be able to reply to things about FlingOS - new user syndrome is limiting my number of comments though!
That sounds wonderful ! - A dev kit would be really cool - something like the arduino that students can get their hands dirty with.
I am working for a startup who are involved in the education space, but it's focused on the chinese market, somehow our sale's team figured out how to make chinese consumer pay us money to write code lol.
I moved to London.
yeah - hacker news is weird. Do not let the comments hear or on reddit affect you - you could cure cancer and still be shrugged off.
When I was in Uni I didn't take an modules on OS stuff - too complicated, too much time - and there aren't many things I do with it once it's done ? So if you can convince people of the application - something that will capture the imagination. Something they could do with FlingOS - make a robot, IoT, put on their car/bike ?
I mean I am having a difficult time thinking of writing a custom OS to solve some problem I am having.
I really like your youtube videos ! You should invest in a better microphone - it actually helps !
Yep but we're looking at the creator CI20 or CI40 boards as our compiler supports MIPS.
I tend to only listen to the positive stuff from Reddit and the like but that said, we've not had any notable amount of negative feedback online thus far which is rather remarkable!
Yeah cool projects are one aspect but we're also pushing the "if you understand low level, your high level and Web apps will be better and certainly much more secure"!
Thanks for the feedback about the videos. I have a pro microphone - Blue Yeti. The issue is actually the recording environment (my thin walled, noisy neighbours flat in Bristol) which means quality is lost in editing the noise out. I'm trying to organise I better recording environment for future videos.
Is there a link to the startup you're involved in? Or is it all in a language a I sadly don't speak? Haha.
Reduce the gain on your Blue Yeti - it's actually one of the disadvantages of the Yeti microphones - they capture a lot of the background noise.
For noise - try the starving artist method - record it under a thick duvet. The physics behind it is the same as those fancy expensive sound proof rooms. It actually works ! Many artists with no money use this method.
It does look ridiculous and when you present your audio to a bunch of people you do not want to reveal that you recorded it under a duvet wearing your underwear.
I am guessing you are living in a student house lol - I was lucky to live with working people who valued silence - Find a time - usually 10pm - 12 pm that is not too late and when things are quite to do your recording. If you can schedule it like that you should be fine.
I agree, understanding C helps me everyday - even though I used to complain about it in first year.
Its all in Javascript, so its something that you have experience with.
Have you thought about creating your board for the chinese market ? - in chinese for example lot of demand for educational content there ( Lots of demand for everything actually )
Haha it's always at the lowest! My flat really is that noisy. And the video I'm (slowly) uploading now is even worse because I don't have my mic so it's laptop recorded - wanted to post something to "ride the New Year wave" so to speak!
I have sound proof foam etc, it just doesn't help. Many things researched and tried (with much laughter from my flat mates on the occasion they saw me doing odd things) to no avail. A lot of it was recorded when heavy building work was going on just outside my window (basically all of the summer I was working the building works were going on but University buildings were even worse). If you'd heard the original audio, I think you'd be impressed by how clean I actually managed to get it in then end.
Targeting the Chinese is an interesting idea. The problem would be finding someone to translate the content (and documentation in the code) - which really requires a native Chinese speaker (what about both variants of the language?) and they need the technical language - a very rare person indeed in the UK, I expect!
Yes MVB has lots of international students (as social secretary of BEEES I do talk to them regularly! ;) ), but the ones who actually have all the technical language (good enough to translate the docs accurately) are (at a guess) busy third or fourth years. None the less, I'll ask around when I'm back in Bristol (and post exam season).
It was just after first year so sadly not. Most of my friends moved out of Bristol for the summer.
When you are on hacker news and think side effects means IO operations performed by your function.